Every Thursday we highlight the best comedy of the coming weekend. Find more comedy events at dallasobserver.com/calendar. LOL! at the House of Blues Local comedy stalwart Paul Varghese will be celebrating his birthday on Saturday in the best way possible — a show featuring some of DFW’s hottest comics all…
The Pancakes & Booze Art Show – Los Angeles, CA – SEPT.10.2010 from Tom Kirlin on Vimeo.Pancakes and art are not natural bedfellows, and yet the two keep seducing one another. Local arts/music promotion group Green Bandana brought flapjacks into Dallas’ afterparty scene over the summer, and now another disk-shaped…
Queen’s operatic rock anthem. Intergalactic football fighting. A plot as gapped and breezy as an open knit. Flash Gordon (1980) is a cosmic cog in the machinery of big budget releases — and that is precisely why we adore it. Texas Theatre appreciates the B-ist of all B-cinema, so it’s…
Seeing Pegasus Theatre’s one-and-only annual production of a “black-and-white play” is as much a New Year’s ritual for some of us as eating a good-luck bowl of black-eyed peas. Lucky then for theatergoers who both have and have not seen a Pegasus comedy, this year’s show is a delicious revival…
“Just so you know, it’s going to take a while,” says the CIA officer to his newly arrived colleague at the start of Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. The year is 2003, the place a secret prison (or “black site”) somewhere in the deserts of the Middle East or Asia,…
Salesmen are typically depicted in screen drama as the quintessential American phonies. The exceptions — in Barry Levinson’s Avalon or Whit Stillman’s Barcelona — are buried under a mountain of films proving the rule. When we first meet Promised Land’s phony, played by Matt Damon, he’s preparing to sell himself,…
We think it’s pretty cool when the old-school arts make a comeback, but what, exactly, qualifies as old school? Many, many viewings of KERA and Smithsonian Channel docs have taught us all about the good old days, like the birth of blues and jazz, but let’s face it: Artswise, Americans…
The term “royal watcher” conjures up an image of a proper blue-haired lady with a chipper British accent and a doily collection dating back to the 1950s. It’s probably not the way you’d want to spend your Friday night, unless you prefer tea and scones to beer and pizza. But…
With a kick-ass soundtrack by Queen and big-screen comic book whiz bang like no other, 1980’s Flash Gordon has earned its cult status. Full of insane costumes, wacked-out special effects and some of the most quotable dialogue ever, the story of football star/savior of the universe Flash has been in…
It’s a fabulous time to be raising a little one in Dallas — our Arts District has virtually exploded in the past few years, meaning that your children have many new avenues of entertainment beyond just the run-of-the-mill swings-and-slides and touring Disney productions. Now we’ve got fancy downtown parks and…
Bernadette Peters is one of Broadway’s biggest stars. She has won Tony awards, Drama Desk Awards, Outer Critics Circle Awards, appeared on stage, screen and now, in person, for one night only at Bass Performance Hall. Backed by the Fort Worth Symphony, Peters will sing a collection of hits from…
If a movie boasts Dom DeLuise on its roster, you better get your keister in a theater seat stat. No, it’s not Baby Geniuses. And double no, it’s not All Dogs Go To Heaven. It’s Blazing Saddles! The one with the campfire scene! And it’s showing at Midnight at the…
Every Wednesday and Sunday, The Church takes over the Lizard Lounge and with it comes a host of Dallas’ most dramatically clothed. Some of them even hotties with bodies … and fishnets, leather bras and painted red sneers. These are the Girls of the Church and every year they put…
CGI superheroes are saturating the action film genre lately, and it’s becoming harder and harder for audiences to identify with our digitally caped acquaintances on the silver screen. There is little humanity for us to marvel at these days, and a sad shortage of amazing acts of real flesh-and-blood heroism…
They say that everything is bigger in Texas, so it’s only appropriate that the Dallas Safari Club 2013 Journeys Convention will bring big-game hunting to downtown for four solid days. For more than 40 years, the club has been connecting experts and vendors in the hunting industry with big-game hunters…
Have you always regretted letting your college counselor talk you out of that drawing class and into intro accounting? Is the Pictionary app on your smartphone no longer sating your creative impulse? Well, thanks to the instructors at Oil and Cotton creative exchange, you can make up for lost time…
Is your pocketbook looking a bit piqued, perhaps from a bit too much holiday cheer or over-jubilation on New Year’s Eve? Well, the fine folks at Second Thought Theatre (3636 Turtle Creek Blvd.) are here to help. Friday through Sunday, the theater is performing the comedy A Behanding in Spokane…
Once there were gatekeepers to popular culture, people who controlled which movies and shows got televised, which bands were allowed to put out an album. The Internet has changed that. First Tuesday Films screens PressPausePlay at its second annual Art Film Discussion and Silent Auction. This documentary explores the impact…
Your New Year’s resolution this year: Be a better host. You’ve always thought that as long as everyone was together, that was all that really mattered, but as you were defrosting shrimp cocktail in a colander minutes before this year’s Christmas shindig, you decided that maybe your party planning skills…
Professor Du Chau has a remarkable and flexible mind. In addition to a long career in laboratory sciences, he also teaches sculpture at a local college. He first popped onto our radar in early 2012 when Kirk Hopper Fine Art featured his work in one of the gallery’s smaller viewing…
Dallas, we’re proud of you for calling cabs on New Year’s Eve, because I’ve got to say: this city got blacked-out drunk. We had no business attempting to stand for prolonged periods, much less driving. Since we don’t remember much of the night, it occurred to us that the cabbies…
Never has there been an event as catastrophic or storied in maritime lore quite like that of the Titanic. It’s the story of an impermeable ship with giant expectations. It sought to revolutionize the way goods were shipped; improve and increase the transportation of immigrants; and change the game of…
