The movie follows Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), an orphaned teenager living in Columbus, Ohio, in 2045, who spends pretty much all his time, along with everyone else in this world, inside a virtual universe called The Oasis …
Viewers will need to be quick with the pause button to catch a mention of late Dallas businessman Robert K. Hoffman in A Futile and Stupid Gesture, the new Netflix film about the founding of the National Lampoon humor empire. The film’s name comes from a line from Animal House…
Late last fall, a strange voicemail popped up on Alia Tavakolian’s cellphone. It was an automated female voice saying, “Goodbye from Yahoo.” It’s the kind of message you receive when you’ve permanently shut down your account or when it’s been hacked. No cause for alarm. Unless, of course, you’re about…
Probably the deepest impact Dallas has had on the lexicon of pop culture (save for greatest of the Kennedy tragedies) was the ever-popular TV show of the same name. A mere two years after its debut, 83 million people sat in front of TVs to find out “Who shot J.R.?”…
Mai Lyn Ngo has found a way to get paid to eat fried chicken and work out — through blogging. Deep Fried Fit is Ngo’s food and fitness blog. The Southern Methodist University journalism alumna went from a marketing job to an all-out blogging career almost two years ago. “I…
If you were old enough to pay attention in the 1970s, you might remember attempts to pass an Equal Rights Amendment. State after state ratified the bill, which the majority of both houses of Congress had passed in 1972, and its passage seemed foreordained — until the rhetoric heated up…
When you sit down to watch Cirque Italia’s Water Circus, you can’t help but be filled with questions. What is a water circus? Do the performers act out impossible feats submerged in a tank of water? Can you tame a lion underwater? What would a lion look like with a…
Writing a memoir about your family that holds nothing back sounds like a perfect way to make every Thanksgiving awkward for the rest of your life. But Dianna de la Garza, the mother Demi Lovato, says the pop singer, as well as her other daughters, Dallas Lovato and Madison de…
A splendid jewel box of a movie about rather grisly matters, the filmmaker’s latest represents another example of the clash between his playfully self-aware aesthetic and his growing obsession with our inhumanity
Through her chosen medium of painting — which wasn’t exactly a safe bet for a young artist in the 1990s, when Laura Owens’ career began — the contemporary artist checks most boxes: Her art references art history; it’s highly personal; it’s collaborative; and despite its undeniable painterliness, Owens incorporates a…
In 2010, a small building in Deep Ellum known as Dallas Comedy House hosted the first Dallas Comedy Festival. This week, DCH, now one of the neighborhoods’ longest-running establishments, is welcoming performers from all over the country for its ninth year of the festival, which is expanding to two locations…
If you’ve ever wondered what it might look like to crossbreed an edgy cable comedy with a jovial network sitcom, A.P. Bio, created by former SNL writer Mike O’Brien, suggests just that sort of Frankenfood
Sasheer Zamata is a woman of many talents. While she gained prominence as a cast member on Saturday Night Live, she is also an accomplished writer, actress and stand-up comedian. On March 30-31, she will perform both her stand-up and her variety show, Sasheer Zamata’s Party Time, at the Dallas Comedy…
Terrance M. Johnson describes the seven men and seven women who make up his eponymous dance company as ambassadors. Dancers don’t audition for the Terrance M. Johnson Dance Project but are invited, and they must serve the community with their talent and be willing to help him on his mission…
The WE Day gathering in Garland may have looked like a raucous kids’ concert filled with famous faces and loud DJ music, but this gathering aspired to a higher purpose than selling tickets. In fact, kids didn’t have to pay to get into the festivities at the WE Day celebration,…
A Google search for “Dallas fashion bloggers” pulls up 1.3 million results. Walk through Nordstrom during the summer #NSale or attend a weekend SoulCycle class, and you’ll likely spot a handful. Fashion bloggers are ubiquitous. They’re becoming international fashion icons, sitting at the front row of runway shows, debuting their…
After the Gamergate controversy in 2014, the harsh realities of being a female nerd became the topic of endless think pieces. The harassment campaigns targeting women made it easy to spot issues of misogyny in video game culture, but what about more subtle, everyday name-calling or exclusion? Even in the age…
Friday Turtle Creek Chorale has chosen anthems of past and present “to help bring peace and harmony to our chaotic humanity” in its program at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday at Moody Performance Hall, 2520 Flora St. “We Shall Overcome” and the premiere of a new…
The film tells the story of a terrorized woman in a mental hospital who’s trying to convince the staff and patients that she shouldn’t be there and is being held against her will
Think of Flower as a little like Sofia Coppola’s teen-thief satire The Bling Ring with the realism and consequences to bad behavior of Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen
A bad day at work is never fun. At a typical 9-to-5, a bad day could involve being forced to stay late, getting into a fight with a co-worker or visiting to HR after they looked at your browser history. For a stand-up comedian, a bad day at work is…
It all began with the idea to sell organic 1-pound pumpkins. Although Free Range Pumpkins, Arlington’s newest geek culture warehouse, never sold pumpkins, owners Herb and Amy Kaplan sold lots of other stuff through Amazon. Now they’ve opened their first brick-and-mortar store. A decade ago, it might have been the…
