They say when one door closes, another one opens. Well, in the case of big D film festivals, when one ends its yearly run, another begins. Starting on Wednesday at The Angelika in Dallas, the USA Film Festival will open for its 2015 showcase of Texas and American independent films…
For some playwrights, winning the Pulitzer Prize for a first or second play marks the end of a promising career as a dramatist. It happened with Margaret Edson and her 1999 Pulitzer winner W;t (she’s never written another play). With Charles Fuller and A Soldier’s Play (1982). And with Paul…
When writing of WaterTower Theatre’s production of All My Sons, which opens tonight, the Morning News’ Nancy Churnin raises an interesting point about the show’s playwright Arthur Miller. She says that in the past decade her admiration for Miller has been challenged by the 2007 revelation in a Vanity Fair…
Spring is festival season in Texas and before it gets too hot head over to Cowtown for this years’ Fort Worth Opera festival. Since the Fort Worth Opera shifted from a traditional season to a festival format in 2007, fans look forward to this opportunity to spend a weekend focused…
There are plenty of excuses to stay home. The couch is comfortable, Netflix is full of cool documentaries that you haven’t seen, and food can actually be delivered to your front door. The comforts of the 21st century are great, but it is also occasionally cool to get out into…
Here we have the sound of creativity longing for immortality, reaching for infinity and failing brilliantly–melancholy fashioned as a grand statement on the frustration of living with an expiration date. Inside, genius is showcased as elegantly brittle, the transcendent made vulnerable to the grim and the lowly; the supernatural grounded,…
In this series of articles, Leslie Moody Castro takes on the role of journalist or interlocutor to explore the inequity in the creation, curation and exhibition of art. Read more here. Telling my story By Leslie Moody Castro I have a longstanding inside joke that I bounce around regularly with…
Leslie Moody Castro arrived in Dallas with an idea for an exhibition. Moody Castro, a curator based in Mexico City and Austin, is currently a resident at CentralTrak, the University of Texas at Dallas’ artist residency program in Exposition Park. While there, she was planning to curate an exhibition filled…
The sequence that opens True Story tells you plenty about what you’re in for: A rumpled teddy bear drifts down from our vantage point like a puffy brown snowflake, landing with slow-motion deliberateness on the form of a PJ-clad toddler curled up in a suitcase, seemingly asleep. She’s like an…
Ex Machina is an egghead thriller with a scary selling point: Unlike Liam Neeson shooting up half of Boston, this actually could be taking place right now. It’s a smart film about the shrinking divide between man and robot. It’s also a hoot, an anti-comedy where all of the jokes…
The trolling is coming from inside the house! Mere emojis can’t capture the plugged-in joys of the first hour or so of haunted-Internet teen flick Unfriended, which knives with dexterous wit The Way We Live Now. Here’s a clutch of horny high school dopes hanging out on Skype, getting doxed…
There’s not quite as much desert and dancing as you might expect in Desert Dancer, an earnest and occasionally hokey drama about kids wanting to hoof it in a world that forbids all hoofin’. Since it’s a based-on-a-true-story job, and since the killjoys this time are the Iranian government, much…
If you’ve ever played music, or even just attempted to coax a pleasing sound from a keyboard or a guitar string, you may have some sense of the dissonant signals that the desire to make music can set off: Are you playing toward some idea of perfection, perhaps in the…
The weather’s great, the weekend is on its way (or arrived, depending on when you’re reading this), and we’re looking at nothing but culturally relevant fun for the next four days. Kick it off tonight with a play or two of your favorite comedians, and then head into some galleries,…
Even though we’re terribly far away from the East Coast, Dallas frequently plays host to some of the most beloved Broadway shows when they head out on the road. If you’re interested in the theatre and don’t mind seeing a touring cast, you can damn near see any Broadway musical…
TV’s Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally are one of Hollywood’s most powerful comedy couples and not just because they are one of the few to actually stay married long enough to merit a ridiculously overpriced wedding. That’s because they do more than just live together. They also perform together on…
What’s worse than going on three dates with someone before realizing they are a horrible human being and can never be trusted? It’s not that they have a criminal past or put ketchup on their eggs, it’s that they listen to that … music. You know, Nickleback or slow jazz…
For centuries, pioneers have been heading west. They find something alluring or interesting about following the sunset and off they go to conquer the American plains. Nowadays we’d call them early adopters. But just as valuable to the creation of communities and culture are the people who let others test…
While we all love the movies, not many of us have adequate exposure to the stage. However, what if the stage brought the movies to us? In Infinity Dance Productions latest feature production Cinema, they’re able to choreograph decades-worth of material into dance and stage ready adaptations. The best part,…
There are few places in this world where high art mixes with high commerce as successfully as at NorthPark Mall. That’s part of the ongoing legacy of the Nasher family, who developed and own the mall, as well as the venerable Arts District sculpture museum that bears their name. The…
The outdoor art festival is a thing that never gets old—and how could it? Even if you don’t consider yourself a hardcore art aficionado, the mix of artists with food vendors and entertainers is an irresistible draw for anyone looking to stretch their legs, broaden their horizons, and fill their…
Kalachandji’s is one of Dallas’ most perfect little secrets. Anytime I have an out of town visitor to impress (who isn’t hell-bent on barbecue), that’s the first place I take them—it’s a little oasis with a gorgeous patio and some of the finest vegetarian cuisine in the city. It’s also…
