Richard Kelly hasn’t written or directed a film since 2009, but his three features Donnie Darko, Southland Tales and The Box have done plenty to cement him in the hearts of fans forever. And those fans will get a chance to revisit Kelly’s challenging and imaginative work with the man himself this…
Political comedy is such a lazy and misleading way to describe a comedian’s work. The two-word term implies comedy that pushes an agenda and mines jokes from meaningless horse races or whatever stupid thing Donald Trump tweets at 3 a.m. because his staff is too scared to take away his…
You might have let yourself act surprised as the waters have risen and the floods have come. But you can’t anymore, not after 13th, Ava DuVernay’s miraculous cine-history of the criminalization of American blackness. Few films shake and astonish like this one, even though nothing in it should be a…
“How could a big man like you fuck up like this?” That’s the question that Nathan Zuckerman fears being asked — in Philip Roth’s Pulitzer-winning American Pastoral (1997) — if he were to show the book he’s written about the tragic life of his old Newark classmate Seymour “Swede” Levov…
Rob Zombie can do better than 31. For proof, just watch any other Rob Zombie movie. The musician-turned-filmmaker’s body of onscreen work is as nasty and brutal as you’d expect of a metal singer whose first band took its name from a pre-Code horror film, but it’s also been marked…
Michael Moore has mellowed — and mostly stopped playing dumb. His new film, a present-tense rah-rah-Hillary insta-job put together on the schedule of an episode of South Park, seems from its title to promise the provocations of his early work, another round of the prankish lefty everyschlub wandering a red…
The Taj Mahal, Texas State Capitol and Roman Pantheon put dome-shaped structures on the map, but now people are using those same design elements to build doomsday shelters. In Italy, Texas, an entire community built of concrete domes can be found at the Monolithic Dome Institute, established in 1996. The “research…
Toasting Texas Lands The Foundry 2303 Pittman St. 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Friday Free Show your appreciation for Oak Cliff Nature Preserve, the 120-acre public park recently hailed as best hiking by a highly respected alt-weekly publication which shall remain unnamed. The Texas Land Conservancy will host Toasting Texas Lands,…
My cousin loves ceiling fans. He’s so fascinated by them that he makes his own fans out of Legos and plastic forks. He loves doing that so much that he calls himself “Forkfan.” Nearing 40 years old, Forkfan lives alone in an apartment. He keeps himself busy buying and selling…
I’m looking at old WFAA news clips with Jeremy Spracklen, moving image curator of SMU’s G. William Jones Film & Video Collection, and the kid on screen has an awful lot of ventriloquy dummies. This footage is from the mid-’70s, and shows a 14-year-old Richardson boy with his right hand…
While some sights and sounds of the State Fair of Texas stay the same year after year, Jack Libby is on the verge of saying goodbye to the annual attraction after nearly 17 years of traveling from one fair to the next with his wife, Regina, and his father’s Jeltron…
Jay Shinn: Air Space Barry Whistler Gallery 315 Cole St., Suite 120 6 to 8 p.m. Friday If you know what a decahedron is, you are probably either A) a high school geometry teacher or B) the artist Jay Shinn. Shinn uses the 10-faced, three-dimensional wooden shapes as canvasses for…
Aurora, the Dallas Arts District’s biennial light, video and sound art extravaganza is back this weekend in its off-year, scaled-down iteration to preview next year’s festival and resolve some of the issues that come when you’re just too darn popular. Prelude is the title of this year’s two-day preview event…
Wed 10/19 If there’s something that’s truly necessary when watching the presidential debates of this election season, it’s food and drink. Food that will satisfy instincts to eat emotionally, while preventing yelling. Possibly several stiff drinks to numb the pain. Camaraderie also helps, so both the Dallas and Richardson locations…
Out of all the actors known for playing iconic roles in movies and plays, Texas native Ted Neeley easily wins the award for the most interesting public approach by fans who encounter him. Neeley played Jesus of Nazareth in the original Broadway production and feature film of Jesus Christ Superstar. “They come…
Dallas VideoFest enters its 29th year on Tuesday, Oct. 18, and that means more than 150 boundary-pushing things to see and do. Its programmer/creator, Bart Weiss, is a local counter-culture staple who’s helped push new media to the forefront of Dallas life for more than three decades. His reach runs…
“I’m over this life,” said a homeless man named Bobby, as he was hanging out in Tent City with Rachel Nash, the resident art therapist for The Human Impact, a homeless services organization. “And I think I’m ready to do something about it,” he continued, after a particular breakthrough. He’d…
Have there ever been entertainment-media product tie-ins like the Ouija movies? The shriekingly enjoyable Ouija: Origin of Evil, like its less successful 2014 predecessor Ouija, lays out as its best case that the toy it’s advertising will destroy your life, maybe kill your family and damn your very soul. 30…
Even those of us with a soft spot for dumb, high-concept Hollywood comedies might be outraged by the limp, unfunny nothingburger that is Keeping Up with the Joneses. A wan attempt to mix the comedy of domestic anxiety with the comedy of inept espionage — think Neighbors meets Central Intelligence…
In one of the more bizarre coincidences of film scheduling, the brief life of a TV journalist whose biggest scoop was announcing her own death on air is recapitulated for the second time this year. Released in August, Robert Greene’s porous documentary Kate Plays Christine highlights the impossibility, even the…
Bucky’s Moonshine looked like the Fourth of July. Red, white and blue confetti, strands of beads, and patriotic streamers adorned the walls, tables and just about every other exposed surface of the Deep Ellum spot last Saturday night. Heaping portions of chicken and waffles, fried shrimp and jambalaya were passed…
Better Block Market — Swingtober Edition The Better Block 700 W. Davis St. 7-11 p.m. Friday, free Swing into action this weekend when the Better Block hosts a party featuring swing dance lessons with a live band. There will also be a mini flea market in the backyard where local…
