There are few sounds in life more pleasing than the crackle of the night sky on the fourth of July. Apparently this tradition dates back to the very first Independence Day, which was celebrated with fireworks at the request of John Adams (read more in Slate’s History of Fireworks). This…
Five films into the franchise, Terminator: Genisys feels like a VHS cassette that’s been rewound and recorded over for 21 years. Director Alan Taylor (of the unmemorable Thor: The Dark World) gives us images — a thumbs-up, an abandoned factory, a liquid-metal cop smashing through the windshield of a car…
Steven Soderbergh’s 2012 Magic Mike was a cocktease. The ads tempted audiences with sweaty chests and thrusting crotches, but after Soderbergh lured us into his all-male strip club, he turned on the lights to show us the squalor. His hunks were drugged and morally decayed. The women — the sober…
Crystal Moselle’s documentary The Wolfpack is a Manhattan fable about fear. Two decades ago, a Hare Krishna, conspiracy theorist and self-described god named Oscar Angulo moved from Peru to a public housing tenement on the Lower East Side with his American bride, Susanne, whom he’d met and wooed on the…
If you go to a comedy club with the intention of getting drunk or even just enjoying a stiff drink, you have poor priorities in life. Going to a comedy club for drinks is like buying an airline ticket to score some peanuts. Any lightly seasoned alcoholic will tell you that…
In a world inundated by images, ideas, and mindless chatter, it seems we’re increasingly drawn to post-apocalyptic, science fiction narratives. At least, that’s the case for Dallas-based artist Dwayne Carter. He says there’s something alluring in the simplicity of a man, a dog and his gun. “We create a leader,…
Director Kevin Smith has added a second Dallas show to Texas Theatre this fall and now Jason Mewes will be along for the ride. After selling out a spoken word performance that will no doubt involve a long Q&A session, Smith has added a podcast recording of “Jay & Silent…
For a guy who murders two men and drives a 13-year-old girl to suicide, Romeo sure gets good PR spin in history. Thanks to William Shakespeare and centuries of skewed interpretation, “Romeo” is now synonymous with “great lover.” But considering what the boy gets up to in Romeo & Juliet,…
Alan and Michael Fleming have spent their whole lives together. These Brooklyn-based twin artists didn’t just grow up mirror reflections of one another, they decided to turn it into an artistic practice. Their latest body of work, Gemini, is currently on display at Cydonia Gallery, in which they use a…
Last Friday started out on a quiet and unassuming note for Kenneth Denson and Gabriel Mendez, the owners of Oak Cliff’s Red Pegasus Games and Comics. The night before, Denson composed the following note, placed it on the front door of the store and posted a picture of it on…
As important as it is to support the local arts scene, it’s also important that you have a damn good time while doing it. If you’re still working out whether you’re more into experimental theater or visual art, it can be difficult to drop a bunch of cash on something…
The football teams at TCU and SMU battle over an Iron Skillet. The Texas Rangers contend with the Houston Astros for a silver boot. Clearly, sports rivalries are a big deal in these parts, but probably only in Texas would two teams duke it out over possession of a really…
The Charles W. Eisemann Center for Performing Arts is presenting two one-act plays with social commentary on the very timely topic of race relations. Director Rockne Ragsdale wrote the first play, Guilty or Not Here I Come, in 1979 when he was just 22-years-old. This is the first time it…
When Ser Steak and Spirits’ executive chef was updating the restaurant’s dessert menu, he thought kicking it old school was the best bet. For whatever reason, the Millionaire Pie disappeared from the menu, but after much popular demand, the chef felt it was time to bring it back. “Why come…
Favio Moreno is constantly losing his religion. It’s always falling out of his wallet. Well, the catholic prayer cards his mother is always giving him. “My wallet is full of these little cards of religious iconography and credit cards,” he says. “Although I don’t subscribe to religion, I still feel…
Phantom Eye There is a phenomenon known as “phantom limb,” which describes the experience of some amputees who continue to sense a missing arm or leg. Scientifically, it’s related to muscle memory, but it’s a poignant illustration of how our minds sometimes cope with loss by imagining the continued existence…
Summer is a sexy time. Maybe its the unrelenting heat. Maybe it’s the infectious freedom left over from school-free childhood summers. Maybe it’s because everyone is wearing less clothing. Regardless, it looks like summer is finally here in Dallas. When you’re not lounging by the pool, you’ll want to be…
Some movies are indefensible, and Ted 2 is one of them. Not only is this a movie about a libidinous, foul-mouthed stuffed bear; it’s the sequel to an earlier movie about a libidinous, foul-mouthed stuffed bear. But I laughed and laughed at Ted 2 — as I did at the…
A romance about wanting to see a romance, a comic tragedy about an onlooker willing something tragic, Anne Fontaine’s Flaubert-inspired meta-pleasure Gemma Bovery takes as its subject the act of watching the lives around us — and of wishing those lives were literature. Or films: Here’s a French film thick…
In this week’s Dallas Observer we profile 20 of the metro area’s most interesting characters, with new portraits of each from local photographer Can Turkyilmaz. On a gloriously warm Saturday in the middle of February, Jonathan Braddick led another bicycle ride, and everyone on the Internet was invited. Around 500…
In this week’s Dallas Observer we profile 20 of the metro area’s most interesting characters, with new portraits of each from local photographer Can Turkyilmaz. “At this point I’ve become about 97 percent authentic,” says Rawlins Gilliland, the master storyteller who turned 70 in April and is coming off what…
In this week’s Dallas Observer we profile 20 of the metro area’s most interesting characters, with new portraits of each from local photographer Can Turkyilmaz. Kate Canales is a problem solver. The current problem she’s working out? Building a master’s in design and innovation, the first of its kind, at…
