This mean and vigorous men’s adventure pulp throwback has everything going against it. It’s a late-August release whose leads, Owen Wilson and Lake Bell, tend to be the best things in movies you otherwise regret seeing. The trailers, teasing the story of a toothsome American family hunted by peasant-rebels in…
Brooke, Greta Gerwig’s latest Manhattan creation, is a hurricane gobbling up lives. She’s a singer, restaurateur, interior decorator, math coach, spinning instructor and self-described autodidact. When 18-year-old admirer Tracy (Lola Kirke), Brooke’s sister-to-be following their parents’ Thanksgiving wedding, squeaks that she wants to write short stories, Brooke devours that idea,…
There’s steady, scary thrill in the final third of Meru, the latest attempt to conquer the climb-and-tweak-the-nose-of-God mountaineering documentary, a genre that has yet to reach its apex. The terrible beauty of the Shark’s Fin point of northern India’s Mount Meru is enough to make this worth seeking out on…
Comedian Josh Johnson has made some great strides in his life and not just as a comic. His progress shows as he talks about Tabitha, the first album he’s set to record on Thursday at Andy’s Bar in Denton. “For the most part, I have to tell myself that it’s…
Dude, remember that time the entire arts district was filled with light sculptures and art? I don’t mean some pansy, boring event that says it’s going to blow your mind but then because it’s set such high expectations inevitably lets you down. Aurora is the bi-annual art event that puts…
Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek of the Village Voice, along with Amy Nicholson of the LA Weekly, run down the worst and best of the movies they saw this summer, which as summers go, wasn’t so terrible! Among the best performances were those by Sam Elliott, wonderful in two movies,…
Longtime filmmaker/podcaster Kevin Smith returns to town for a Q&A and a live podcast recording on Friday night at the Texas Theatre. He loves to do these kinds of events, as they are part storytelling, stand-up act and fan interaction, all in one. He’s done them his entire career, from…
Robert “Breaking News” Wilonksy has been running some pretty stellar coverage of the Lakewood Theater re-do, getting scoop right and left. He just shared a juicy tidbit about the space’s would-be operators, and it’s something straight out of our moviegoing dreams. He reported a while back that Kinney, the Lakewood…
Summer’s on its way out, fall is coming, and even though we may not measure our lives in semesters anymore, I have a goal for you to make with me, a leaf to turn over. Let’s see more theater this year? Whadya say? There’s something really great stuff hitting the…
This time of year, everything just feels a little more boring. We’re all waiting around for fall television premieres and football that these last few weeks of August can feel a little empty. You could do something productive like figure out how to pay off those student loans or repave…
Joe M. Nanez’s family found out he died in World War II when they saw him killed on a Dallas movie theater screen. His brother-in-law, Regulo Vasquez, saw i t on a newsreel after a film as a teenager. He stayed for the next showing and watched the film again,…
On this week’s Voice Film Club podcast: We love Guy Ritchie’s stylish, charming The Man From U.N.C.L.E., while LA Weekly film critic Amy states her case for American Ultra. We move onto Lily Tomlin’s memorable performance in Grandma (be sure to read our interview with Tomlin, too). Later, Village Voice film editor…
Here at the Dallas Observer Arts and Culture section, we are proud, sort of, we guess, to announce Another Former Bachelor Contestant Hosts A Thing And You Can Go If You Want. It’s art and culture, baby. For this edition, Dallas guy and a former Bachelor himself Sean Lowe and…
Thursday, Aug. 20 Spelling Bee You’ll never forget the moment when it all came crashing down. You made it through the classroom trials, passed the grade-level competition with flying colors, and advanced from the school finals to the district spelling bee. “Soliloquy”, no problem. “Puerile”, you got it. And then,…
“True always trumps clever,” says character actor and podcast raconteur Stephen Tobolowsky at the top of his one-man show The Tobolowsky Files, playing through the end of August at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. Speaking directly to a crowd of about 50 in a small corner cabaret bar at…
It’s better to be lucky than smart, the saying goes, but being both is best of all, if you can pull it off. The first season of thinkspeak, the summer lecture series produced jointly by KERA and AT&T Performing Arts Center, managed to do that, wrapping up earlier this month…
The business model is not, sadly, unique: Come up with a novel idea to sell something, perhaps a rock. Pick an item and sales pitch that a distressing number of people find humorous. Get press (like this story). Pray to the Internet gods that the idea goes viral. Collect cash…
In a city that is appearance-focused and occasionally shallow, no one is likely to be surprised to learn that many Dallas daters lie about their particulars on their dating profiles. When you’re trying to score a date, it’s easy enough to gloss over that five (or 15) pounds you’ve gained,…
If you make less than $3 million per year, then you are familiar with the rough part of NorthPark Mall. You know, the dark side. The wing where there aren’t gowns you wear to the Academy Awards and the basic white T-shirts don’t run $75. The side without the contraption-pond-thing…
Nima Nourizadeh’s American Ultra is a bloody valentine attached to a bomb. It’s violent, brash, inventive and horrific, and perhaps the most romantic film of the year. Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart star as Mike and Phoebe, two West Virginia stoners blissed out on weed and each other. “We’re the…
Is it in honor of its subject that the high-flying doc Being Evel indulges so often in hilarious overstatement? “He opened the door and invited people to buy a ticket to watch truth,” one talking head insists, somehow keeping his face straight. Another speaks of how in the early 1970s…
“You could make five different N.W.A movies. We made the one we wanted to make.” That’s director F. Gary Gray during an audience Q&A after a recent screening of Straight Outta Compton, the long-awaited N.W.A movie. In our review, Amy Nicholson writes that there’s much more to the group’s story:…
