This piece has spoilers for the first six episodes of the second season of Stranger Things. Look, I like the show, but the title is a lie. Seemingly inspired by that one line from Hamlet that I kept hearing in presentations the time I reported on a UFO convention, the…
When you think of Saudi Arabia and its people, a great sense of humor probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind, but last week The Middle East Institute was in Dallas to prove that the country has actually produced some fine comedians. The institute sponsored a free, hourlong…
Kitchen Dog Theater launched its 27th season this week with the regional premiere of Ironbound, Polish-born playwright Martyna Majok’s sobering look at the plight of immigrants in America. Ironbound follows immigrant Darja (Karen Parrish) during three periods of her life. The play begins with a scene between Darja and Tommy…
The Funky Knuckles Sundown at Granada 3520 Greenville Ave. 10 p.m. Monday Free The Funky Knuckles have been together for over six years. The fusion jazz band released an album called Meta-Musica in 2014 that climbed to No. 1 on iTunes’ jazz charts on the first day of its release…
Netflix’s Stranger Things is one of those rare television phenomena that TV executives dream about having on their schedule. Not only is the Duffer brothers’ ’80s throwback horror story about dimension-bending Demogorgans and the plucky small-town kids who fight them an unexpected hit (almost no one in Hollywood wanted to produce it)…
Friday Forth Worth art gallery Neighborhood Cult tears down taboos and embraces unconventional art experiences through quarterly conceptual events. Just in time for Halloween, the collective is hosting its Taboo event, where donning a disguise and embracing the seven deadly sins is mandatory. You’ll become a work of art through…
Sean Baker’s The Florida Project, the follow-up to the breakout indie comic drama Tangerine, sparkles with joy and hope even as it tells a not-so-hopeful story. In the film, little Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) and her mother Halley (Bria Vinaite) reside in Kissimmee, Fla., in a rundown motel that’s as colorful as…
The last few months have seen some welcome innovation in the cry-along subgenre of dramas about finding the will to keep living after bodily catastrophe. First, in the notably sincere and unsensational Stronger, director David Gordon Green and his crew strove to strip away as much of such films’ usual…
During season two of the reboot of the ’90s classic Full House, Netflix’s Fuller House introduced fans to Kimmy Gibbler’s brother Jimmy. Kimmy, whose character has been the annoying neighbor since the original series, now has a ditzy and hunky counterpart. The actor playing Jimmy is Dallas’ Adam Hagenbuch. Jimmy Gibbler…
Halloween is on a Tuesday this year, which really lengthens the celebration. Let’s be honest: Any holiday when you aren’t expected to go gift hunting, get to dress up in costume and eat large quantities of candy … that’s a pretty good holiday. Here are a dozen spooky events going…
Imagine a remake of Cape Fear shot like Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, with Max Cady recast as a child, and you’ll have some idea of the strangeness of Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer. It was one of the most divisive titles at this year’s Cannes festival, thanks…
Something of a prank, a farewell, an art project, a buddy comedy, a vox populi tour of the French countryside, and an inquiry into memory and images and what it means to reveal our eyes to the world, Faces Places is a joyous lulu. It finds the great documentarian and…
The labyrinthine nature of memory, trauma and guilt is made concrete in Benedict Andrews’ Una, a film that intermittently sends its characters wandering around what looks like an actual maze. In the title role, Rooney Mara puts her perpetually haunted gaze to good use as a melancholy woman whiling her…
Filmmaking is not a poor man’s game. Even as digital cameras get cheaper, making a film worthy of release still requires dough to get off the ground, which means the folks who tell stories through cinema tend to come from backgrounds of privilege. That breeds movies aimed at middle- to…
For all his reputation as a capital-A Auteur, Todd Haynes has always demonstrated impressive stylistic versatility. The Sirkian pastiche of Far from Heaven is a far cry from the lo-fi expressionism of Poison, and the music video wonderland of Velvet Goldmine has relatively little in common with the fractured minimalism…
“I make a lot of paintings based off childhood memories,” artist Esther Pearl Watson says. “We moved around a lot, so we don’t have many photos. It’s interesting to paint what I remember.” Her latest work draws upon her memories of her father and his fascination with UFOs. Watson’s father…
Thursday Dave Chappelle has been doing stand-up since he was 14. He appeared in movies such as Blue Streak and Half Baked, which he helped write with director Neal Brennan. He and Brennan also created his groundbreaking sketch comedy series, Chappelle’s Show, for Comedy Central and walked away from the…
During season two of The Real Housewives of Dallas, LeeAnne Locken starts a rumor about the husband of fellow Housewife Cary Deuber. “Her husband gets his dick sucked at the Round-Up. I know the boys who did it,” a drugged-up Locken confesses to fellow Housewife Brandi Redmond before a plastic surgery…
Maybe it’s encouraging, in a way, that an America in crisis struggles so mightily to make crowd-pleasing war movies. Whatever their politics, no studio exec today would let a wide-release desert-war drama come right out and say what even the GOP increasingly admits: that Iraq was a mistake, that Afghanistan has…
Gyms and yoga studios are famous for the bait and switch. “Come for a first-time free session,” they say. A few months later, your wallet has lost more inches than your waistline. Any exercise routine has to be consistent to produce results. Below are nine exercise options in Dallas that…
We Slaughter Barbecue isn’t easy to find. On the outskirts of Bastrop about 30 miles east of Austin, it sits off the side of state Highway 304 in what was once known as the Last Chance Gas Station. It was the only full-service gas station for miles around, and it had the…
Rob Paulsen and Randy Rogel bring Animaniacs Live! to Arlington Music Hall this Friday. Every child of the ’90s remembers the Warner Bros. cartoon Animaniacs. The zany show featured a cast of wise-cracking, physics ignoring, violence-prone characters presented in a loosely connected series of animated shorts like a moving comic…
