When you think of animated movies, family features like Walt Disney’s groundbreaking classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarves or Pixar’s computerized Toy Story may come to mind. But lately, animation means more than a colorful movie that will keep your kid in a seat for 90 minutes. Brian and…
The reckless teenager is a common figure in comedic films, like Superbad and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but most of them depict rich kids. How else would teenagers get away with crimes like smuggling beer out of a private residence in detergent bottles or hacking into a school district’s computer system…
The title character of S. Craig Zahler’s novel Hug Chickenpenny: The Panegyric of an Anomalous Child is a child with deformities. His teeth are all sharp fangs. One of his legs is smaller, and the other is curved and can barely hold the weight of his body. His spine is serrated…
The new Alamo Drafthouse movie theater that’s coming to Denton next year won’t look like just another theater in the company’s chain. “We definitely are working on some fun stuff to celebrate the city with the opening,” says James Wallace, creator director for Alamo Drafthouse DFW. “Maybe even a very…
Two years ago, comedian Josh Johnson was at the top of his form. He was opening for comedy greats like Janeane Garofalo at Granada Theater; scored features on two major comedy showcases, Fox’s Laughs and Comedy Central’s Adam Devine’s House Party; and recorded his first album, Tabitha. Then Johnson’s depression…
It takes more than superhero outfits to make people superheroes. It’s what they do when they wear them. For the last two years, Dallas On-Air founder and On-Air Media founding partner Jantzen Ray and his girlfriend, Catherine Chensky, have turned their Christmas Day celebration into a chance to play Santa…
Joe Bob Briggs, the B-movie buff who celebrated blood, breasts and beasts with his Dallas newspaper column, is planning a trip back to the town that made him the sage of the drive-in movie theater. The outlaw drive-in movie critic from Grapevine with a massive collection of bolo ties will…
Cinestate’s Brawl in Cell Block 99 premiered in an interesting setting for a gritty, grindhouse-style action flick starring Vince Vaughn. The arthouse moviegoing crowds of the Venice Film Festival became the first public audience to see director S. Craig Zahler’s prison action thriller. “We premiered it at the Venice Film Festival,…
Competitors and attendees of the Call of Duty World League tournament evacuated Dallas’ Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center twice this weekend after anonymous bomb threats. Dallas police confirmed that they received a second bomb threat against the convention center Sunday afternoon, prompting another evacuation of the building and a second interruption to…
Dallas Police and Major League Gaming tournament officials confirmed that a bomb threat prompted the evacuation of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center on Friday evening. The Dallas Police Department released a statement confirming that emergency dispatchers received “a call about a bomb threat” just after 4 p.m. on Friday…
It seems unthinkable that the “King of Country” has yet to be named Texan of the Year, but the Texas Legislative Conference announced this week that it will fix the problem in March at its annual forum in New Braunfels. The nonpartisan collection of Texas business and political leaders chose country…
The recent death of John Dunsworth, the actor who played trailer park supervisor Mr. Lahey on the Canadian comedy series Trailer Park Boys, was a big shock to the show’s legions of fans. It also shocked the show’s stars and creators — John Paul Tremblay, Mike Smith and Robb Wells — who…
If you’re an old-school football fan who’s never touched a joystick, you probably look at professional gaming with a confused, scrunched-up face. But there’s at least one football fan in Dallas who’s in the know, and he owns the Dallas Cowboys. Jerry Jones and John Goff, the founder of Goff…
When the Stomping Ground Comedy Theatre hosted its first official show in October, it did so without a theater it could call its own. A new fundraising campaign on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter could change that. Last week, nonprofit theater company Stomping Ground launched its first campaign to raise $30,000 to lease space in…
It’s been a while since film and TV actor Brad Leland has performed on a stage, but he decided to take a chance and return to it when Dallas Theater Center director Lee Trull asked him to play Ebenezer Scrooge in his latest production of A Christmas Carol. “He said,…
The Christmas shopping season is officially underway, and if you’ve visited a shopping mall or a megastore recently, you already know that it’s a tough battle. You have the bruises and black eye — from fighting over the newest Nintendo Switch — to prove it. Geeks are some of the…
Two Hollywood legends will grace the stage of the Winspear Opera House next year. The AT&T Performing Arts Center announced yesterday afternoon that actor and movie star Rob Lowe and film and comedy icon Bill Murray are on the lineup for its next season of #HearHere lectures, along with Neil…
While some politicians still — still — debate whether humans are contributing to climate change, Jill Ahrens, a Fort Worth native and executive producer of the highly acclaimed documentary Chasing Coral, says she and a team of filmmakers found the surest evidence lying at the bottom of the ocean. “It was a…
Deep Ellum has so many events and shows taking place every night that it can be hard to keep track without the help of an insider or a cabal of street orphans who report the latest shows and concerts. But you no longer need to violate child labor laws with a…
Captured! By Robots plays Double Wide Saturday Jay Vance started his one-man metal band Captured! By Robots in San Francisco 20 years ago because he couldn’t deal with people. “It was born out of my frustration with the human condition,” Vance says. “I’m just as bad as everybody else but I…
In the ’80s, cartoonist and Far Side comic strip creator Gary Larson drew a comic with the caption “Hopeful parents” that somehow came to fruition. The comic featured a pair of proud parents looking at their buck-toothed kid playing a video game. The thought bubble above their heads showed the “help wanted”…
The games that professional eSports athletes compete on aren’t just netting them tired thumbs and a few pixelated coins. The collegiate and professional eSports industry that’s on the rise in Dallas is fueled by games from a multibillion-dollar media industry and it’s starting to rival the revenues of film and…
