Bad cop movies — whether bad movies about cops or movies about bad cops — can be like those Arctic core samples from which scientists determine long-gone CO2 levels, though in this case they’re measuring American anxiety about police authority. Pop on John Hillcoat’s agonized pulp thriller Triple 9 in…
Here comes the money! 24 hours removed from having a majority of wrestling fans fuming, the WWE pulled another rabbit out of their hat when Shane McMahon returned last night on Monday Night Raw after being away from the company since 2009. And oh yeah, he will be facing The…
It’s probably not a coincidence that February, the worst month of the year, becomes the busy season in Dallas theater. The post holiday hangover has passed but it’s still not spring. We need something to do, to invigorate us into leaving the couch. New works and premieres are popping all…
The sound of pounding mallets pour out of Felipe Ramirez Jr.’s small red-brick house in North Oak Cliff. He’s hammering a new heel onto a pair of boots, just how his father showed him. “There are people [in DFW] who do belts and wallets and seats, which is all good,…
The eighth episode of this season of The Bachelor aired last night, which for every season means the chosen Bachelor visits his remaining ladies’ hometowns, which means he probably meets an over-protective father and possibly too-drunk-for-TV mother. Last night was no different. The ladies paraded Bachelor Ben around their hometowns…
The Wrestlemania 32 card began to take form last night at “WWE Fastlane” as Roman Reigns defeated both Brock Lesnar and Dean Ambrose in a #1 contender match to face Triple H for the World Heavyweight Championship in the main event of Wrestlemania. With a little less than 6 weeks…
Flutist Marina Piccinini made clear from her opening comments where Friday night’s concert downstairs at the Nasher Sculpture Center was headed: toward those twelve minutes of ear-splitting energy otherwise known as Boulez’s Sonatine for Flute of 1946. Getting there was half the fun, in a program which was part of…
If you want to find some drama to dive into, you don’t have to look far right now. You could jump right into the Tent City debate, get riled up about Ted Cruz, or ignite a heady debate over hosting porn conventions in a city that refers to itself all…
Even if you aren’t familiar with the drunken, poetic stories and words of comedian Kyle Kinane, you’ve at least heard his voice. The Chicago native who has three very funny comedy albums and two Comedy Central specials to his name has also done voices on animated series such as “Aqua…
In a September interview with GQ, Constance Wu, star of NBC’s Fresh Off the Boat, observed of the HBO series Togetherness, “It’s a show about white people.” She’s not wrong: Created by indie-film luminaries Jay and Mark Duplass, along with the actor Steve Zissis, Togetherness is a low-key look at…
Media creates a spectacle and a dialogue. To compete with other spectacles, art may have to embrace the spectacular. And social practice is a great way to create a dialogue. Art tries to pursue things that are not yet fully understood, often pushing boundaries. It can certainly help to have…
The centerpiece of Hail, Caesar!’s mid-century Hollywood satire is the eponymous film-within-a-film itself, an overwrought biblical epic in which a skeptical Roman centurion played by George Clooney has a literal come-to-Jesus moment. Risen, whose plot can be described in exactly the same way, never inspires one of its own. Co-writer/director…
There is precisely one attempted coup de cinema in the Jesse Owens biopic Race, which otherwise defaults to the backlot handsomeness of other Great Men tributes from Hollywood. In 1935, Owens (Stephan James), a freshman sensation on the Ohio State University track team, returns to the locker room after practice…
Do This! The Pin Show is one of the most beloved fashion events in Dallas. Dreamed up by local designer, Julie McCullough, the event is dedicated to independent designers who work in everything from swimwear to jewelry. Sneak a peek at the endless sartorial creativity in our backyard. If you…
Like many entertainers before him, Dustin Carlson shed his real name. The tall 25-year-old with long red hair and thick-rimmed, black glasses chose a different path, and with that path came a new name, a tag – DentiSSBB. Denti is a professional video game player. So when he plays –…
Benicio Del Toro has the basset-hound look of a beast you can trust — or, at least, he’ll happily admit when he’s lying. He’s the right man for a rotten world, with heavy-lidded, handsome eyes made for giving any tough spot an appraising squint. Recently, he’s played a string of…
A laugh comes at last just before the end credits of Robert Eggers’ lit-class horror-bummer The Witch: a boastful note attesting to the documentary truthfulness of the dialogue in the movie we’ve just seen. Over 90 minutes that prove shriekiness is no impediment to ponderousness, we’ve beheld the harrowing of…
In 1922, Buster Keaton, one of the reigning film comedians of the day, applied his deadpan, rubber-limbed genius to the creation of one of the masterpieces of silent cinema, The Goat. Mistaken identity, cop chases, train-top sequences, tangled dog leashes, stairway and elevator stunts, and a bit of boy-meets-girl romance…
Familial dysfunction and tales of addiction reign supreme on two Dallas stages currently. I’m Gonna Pray For You So Hard a 2015 two-hander at Kitchen Dog Theater owes a lot to Long Day’s Journey Into Night the classic Eugene O’Neill play at Undermain Theatre. Similarly both plays feature star turns…
If you’re looking for a rowdy night out, there’s one more weekend to catch Ochre House Theater’s latest Brothers’ Harvest. Writer and director Matthew Posey’s off the wall comedy digs into the life of a small town girl named Indigo Sue (an irresistible Cassie Bann). It’s a musical romp through…
Listen: James Franco has come unstuck in time. In the TV-MA debut (there are many, many excellent F-bombs) of 11.22.63, the Hulu miniseries partly shot in Dallas, James Franco is bouncing back and forth between present day and 11:58 a.m. on October 21, 1960. Chris Cooper is there, coughing. A…
Endless plays have been written about the brittle matriarch; the woman whose vulnerability intertwines with a vitriolic instability. Many, many playwrights it seems struggle with the mother-child relationship, or perhaps more accurately, the mother-son relationship. But as the work of female playwrights reaches more stages, it follows that new dynamics…
