Director Ty Roberts and actor Lane Garrison have done something that the Hollywood machine hasn’t been able to do in more than 60 years. They made a movie based on Tom Pendleton’s acclaimed 1966 novel, The Iron Orchard, about an ambitious wildcatter seeking his fortune on the West Texas oil patch…
If you think of yourself as a Star Wars fan and you don’t have any Star Wars-related plans on Star Wars Day, you don’t get to call yourself a Star Wars fan. You might as well burn your entire Star Wars Kenner toy collection, run your special Jar-Jar-less edition of the prequels through…
When the National Rifle Association’s convention kicks off Friday, its leaders, supporters and President Donald Trump won’t be the only people at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center talking about guns. The gun lobby group’s annual gathering will find protesters and marchers in Dallas from national groups such as #NoRA…
Fireball Island was the board game that could beat up any other game in a fight in the ’80s if board games suddenly grew arms and feet and developed a taste for hand-to-hand combat. The 1986 board game published by Milton Bradley came in a box four times the size…
Americans pay a high price for health care. The Global Burden of Disease Health Financing Collaborator Network collected data from 184 countries with similar life expectancies and found that the average American spends $9,237 per person for health care access, the most in the world. The struggle strikes both insured and…
It’s official. We’re in one of the strangest and most contentious points in the history of our great democracy. A group of beered-up guys and a smattering of women who kept their clothes on shared the same room with a naked woman on Saturday whom we’ve been told has also…
The band members who’ve stuck with comic musician Weird Al Yankovic for more than 30 years of funny music take their jobs seriously, mainly because the comedy wouldn’t work without them. “We love these songs and hit records we re-create, and we have the greatest respect for the musicians and…
You know it’s not real. You know you’re not actually Spider-Man. You know you’re not really standing on top of a collapsing crane overlooking a crowded metropolitan area. You know you’ll still be alive if you don’t attach your web sling on the leg of the helicopter and swing down…
Let the video games begin. The University of North Texas launched its official esports program last week with an intramural Overwatch tournament in front of a crowd of student spectators in the University Union Lyceum theater. Some competitors are on the college’s varsity esports teams, and others hope to be…
The new Steven Spielberg movie Ready Player One, based on the popular adventure novel by Ernest Cline, takes movie audiences to a not-to-distant future when gamers log on to massively multiplayer online game called The Oasis to be whatever their pop-culture-loving hearts desire. The main character, Wade Watts, played by actor Tye…
It’s not an act. When comedian Lewis Black is screaming into a microphone on a stage or thrusting his pointer fingers at the camera to punctuate his rage during one of his editorials on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, it’s not something he picked up from his years in theater…
News reports after the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and similar school killings often tell inconsistent stories about the number of such cases because of incomplete data, adding to fear and confusion. Nadine Connell, an associate professor of crime at the University of Texas at…
Conservative TV and radio show host Glenn Beck once had the ear or the ire of almost every political wonk and zealot in America, depending on which side of the political aisle they were on. These days? Well, let’s just say that his on-air crying fits would make a lot…
Comedian Maria Bamford may be brilliant at playing with comedic concepts and characters and finding new ways to elevate her art, but she says she doesn’t have goals beyond doing comedy. “The goal is to just keep doing it,” she says. “I don’t have any higher aspirations except to make…
When you watch the Trailer Park Boys live, you’re not always sure if you’re in reality. The cult comedy creations of Ricky, Julian and Bubbles, who have run on Canadian TV and Netflix for 12 seasons, are always in character, even in press interviews. This is the third time we’ve…
Raising children can feel like the world’s most thankless and demanding job, especially if you’re new at it. You cater to the whims of a demanding human being who can’t take care of his or her basic needs and is immune to reason, logic and the construct of a speakable…
Comedian Margaret Cho has never been afraid to tackle tough subjects. So naturally, her new Fresh Off the Bloat tour covers subjects like the #MeToo movement, the rise of Trumpism and Asian-American representation in entertainment, including her controversial ABC sitcom All-American Girl. The challenge has changed, though. Thanks to social…
Jonny Cruz, an El Paso native who moved to Dallas and studied acting at the University of Texas at Arlington, never really considered voice acting as a viable career until he saw what video games could do with a good actor behind the microphone. Years ago, Cruz was spending time…
The latest Alamo Drafthouse movie theater in the Austin-based chain’s Dallas-Fort Worth collection is on John Carpenter Freeway and pays homage to John Carpenter. And with all due respect to the agriculturalist and businessman who once owned the largest dairy farms in North Texas and helped found Big Bend National…
The Fan Expo Dallas convention has had to do some serious celebrity shuffling with less than a week to go before it opens the floodgates for fans. The massive fan convention confirmed Monday that Back to the Future star Michael J. Fox won’t be able to attend the festivities that…
This Sunday is no ordinary April Fools’ Day. It’s an April Fools’ Day that’s also on Easter Sunday. Such an occurrence hasn’t appeared on the Gregorian calendar since 1956 and it won’t happen again until 2029. This is a perfect time to pull a prank if you’re the kind of shameless…
Getting to fly one of the few remaining operational World War II aircrafts is more than just a thrilling opportunity. “It’s like flying a piece of history,” says pilot Rick “Thug” Kelly of San Antonio, who flew a World War II-era B-17 Flying Fortress plane into Love Field on Thursday. “When…
