Twenty-one things to do in Dallas from Thursday, June 22, through Wednesday, June 28: Thursday An entertaining animated fantasy film for audiences of all ages, Ponyo centers on a friendship between 5-year-old Sõsuke and a magical goldfish named Ponyo, who is the young daughter of a sea wizard and a…
What will become of Zion? No, not the loosely defined term for a Jewish homeland in the Middle East, but a mild-mannered and fundamentally righteous shopkeeper living in Jerusalem and pulled between conservative religious forces and modernity. (Oh, so maybe I do mean the Jewish homeland in the Middle East.)…
Everything you know about Tupac is likely wrong. Casual fans think of him as a loyal left coast soldier in hip-hop’s East Coast/West Coast war, but he actually had tremendous love and admiration for New York, where he was born and largely raised. Others cite his 1994 Manhattan shooting as…
Ana Lily Amirpour’s comic post-apocalyptic action-drama offers little explanation of what exactly its “bad batch” is, or how the members of its motley, unfortunate tribe of humans wound up banished to a desert wasteland. Instead, Amirpour lets her camera linger on a sign warning that everything beyond a 10-foot-high metal…
Despite my fondness for Quentin Tarantino, I’ve never been a Reservoir Dogs fan. Back in 1992, the writer-director’s feature debut seemed to me little more than a clever and grotesquely violent one-act play, gussied up with structural whimsy. Yes, the opening scene — black-suited crooks bantering about Madonna and the…
Moira Dobbs is a mermaid. Her makeup is still intact when she emerges gracefully from the water. She can hold her breath underwater for minutes at a time. She tears up when she thinks about all the trash in the ocean. She swims with a fin and cloth tail. Before she…
Dancer Jesse Morales is like a real-life Channing Tatum from Magic Mike — except his story of finding stardom involved the real Channing Tatum. Morales, a Dallas native who was born in Cleveland, Texas, had dreams of becoming a dancer from a young age. So when he made that big,…
It’s been exactly one year since The Real Housewives of Dallas graced our televisions, and we’ve been thirsty for more. Are Stephanie Hollman and Brandi Redmond still friends? Did LeeAnne Locken ever gut Marie Reyes? Did anyone ever figure out if Locken pooped in a box? All of that is…
It’s the end of a work day for John Benton, and he’s about to leave his Design District studio and make the drive back to his home in Coppell. On the way, he will give an over-the-phone consultation to a model in London. His phone rings and an unknown number…
Chuck Klosterman speaks at the Dallas Museum of Art 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 20 Nostalgia is a controversial topic in artistic circles. Critics hate it (it’s uncritical and lazy), but audiences love it (it’s fun and escapist). Culture critic Chuck Klosterman traffics heavily in nostalgia, with essays and novels written…
Queen Sugar airs on OWN. In her Netflix documentary The 13th, director Ava DuVernay traces the criminalization of blackness — enacted by a white power structure that ascribed violence and villainy to African-Americans — back to the Emancipation Proclamation. Motivated by political expediency and obvious projection, former slave owners —…
Mondays Don’t Suck Action Park Grand Prairie 1002 Lone Star Parkway 6-10 p.m. Monday Free Mondays are no longer for complaining about Mondays, thanks in part to the aptly named “Mondays Don’t Suck” hosted monthly by Action Park Grand Prairie, 1002 Lone Star Parkway. If you’ve ever watched any of…
The 2Pac biopic All Eyez on Me completes an unofficial trilogy of what we could call the Bad Boy/Death Row cinematic universe. It began with 2009’s Biggie Smalls bio Notorious and continued with NWA’s Straight Outta Compton in 2015. Too bad that, like a lot of trilogies, the third movie…
Father’s Day is coming up fast, and chances are you’ve completely forgotten to schedule something fun to do with the old man. You just got done making sure that your mother was properly honored, and your plans for her completely overshadowed Father’s Day. He also hasn’t said anything because not…
Big news around this year’s pride festivities includes Skittles receiving online backlash after selling bags of all-white candies to show its support for the LGBTQ community and President Donald Trump breaking former President Barack Obama’s tradition of proclaiming June Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month. Meanwhile in Dallas, pride…
It was two weeks before Salma Hayek’s 49th birthday when Mike White told her he was finally going to write that script about the dinner party, the one he’d promised her almost a year earlier. The screenplay would be loosely inspired by a real-life dinner the two had attended, but…
The Book of Henry really wants us to believe that its 12-year-old title character (Jaeden Lieberher) is the smartest kid on Earth. Well, in many ways, he is. He’s a rational, logical thinker who knows how to play the stock market. He handles his family’s finances and works on cute,…
In 2017, most people in the business of property development don’t see a company like Sears as a retail company. They see the one-time titan of American commerce as a real estate business. That’s where its value comes from now. As companies face stiff competition from online marketplaces and are…
Friday During his time working for The Dallas Morning News from 1907-57, John Knott created many cartoons and characters, many of which were reprinted across America. But his “Old Man Texas” character was meant to represent rural property owners who desired low taxes along with honest politicians. Spend Friday night…
No one in the theater world works harder than an actress who’s also a mom. Don’t believe it? Gal Godot famously reshot certain scenes of Wonder Woman while five months pregnant. Google “baby brain.” That’s a real thing that happens where your kids suck all of your mental energy. When…
A new exhibit at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art delves into the creative side of an invention that made life’s fun and fleeting moments instantly tangible. The Polaroid Project: At the Intersection of Art and Technology showcases the work of more than 100 artists through 175 images and…
ThursdayDuring his time working for The Dallas Morning News from 1907-57, John Knott created many cartoons and characters, many of which were reprinted across America. But his “Old Man Texas” character was meant to represent rural property owners who desired low taxes along with honest politicians. Spend Friday night at…
