On this week’s Voice Film Club episode, film critics Alan Scherstuhl, Amy Nicholson and Stephanie Zacharek recommend seeing Matt Reeves’ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (12:00) and Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (20:00), a movie filmed over twelve years with the same cast…
Who knows why, but the sight of apes sitting tall and proud on horseback is stirring in a primal way. That’s one of the best images in Matt Reeves’ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the sequel to the enormously successful 2011 Rise of the Planet of the Apes…
Plays adapted into movies always feel naked by the time they make it to the screen, their theatrical bones showing through in a most awkward and unbecoming way. That’s more or less true of Roman Polanski’s screen version of David Ives’ Venus in Fur, in which a playwright and first-time…
Turns out the revolutionary way to stage Les Misérables is to take the French revolutionaries out of it entirely. No frilly shirts. No peasants waving big red flags. None of that ghastly marching-in-place every other Les Miz (or Les Mis, if you prefer) uses for clap-bait toward the end of…
In contemporary genre-splash Indiewood, the task is often simple but bedeviling: You have an HD camera and a modest house in the L.A. hills; now what do you do? Shane Carruth, among others, has proven that you don’t need much more — just add ideas. Call it Home-Based Sci-Fi, from…
A major achievement in sunny wretchedness, Álex de la Iglesia’s splatter-comedy Witching & Bitching projectile pukes its outrages at you with a gusto recalling the early days of those (sadly) reformed upchuckers Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson. De la Iglesia doesn’t share those directors’ interest in making clear just why…
How has there not already been a Nicolas Cage movie called Rage? That title could fit many of the Drive Angry star’s late-career time-wasters. Here it works best as an imperative rather than an announcement of theme: You may feel some anger if you pay to watch this. Or you…
“It’s the secret films you have to watch out for,” jokes Richard Linklater of his new movie Boyhood, a furtive experiment that he kept quiet for more than a decade. In 2002, he chose a first-grader named Eller Coltrane, the 6-year-old son of two Texas artists; cast Patricia Arquette and…
Do you enjoy stand-up comedy? Do you like bar hopping? Do you think getting trashed on Friday is so passe? Well then it’s time to count your lucky stars, mark your calendars and keep your bail money in hand, because we’re doing all three. The second annual Dallas Observer Comedy…
Let’s be very clear here: the last Queen show was performed 28 years ago at Knebworth House in England. It was the last show because that was the last time bad leader, vocalist and rock icon Freddie Mercury shared a stage with band mates Roger Taylor and Brian May. Since…
“I forget that people think that I’m the girl with a ponytail and a briefcase,” says Anna Kendrick, perched on a couch in a T-shirt and jeans. Her career-launching role as a prim go-getter in Up in the Air is so far removed from her actual self that she’s still…
Sirens blare and an eerie voice announces that it’s best to remain indoors if you don’t plan to participate. While others make safety arrangements, and some sharpen their knives, one man loads his black, steel-armored car with plenty of guns and begins cruising. Fires erupt along the street, and gunshots…
For the next full week, the 2014 Asian Film Festival of Dallas presents over 50 eclectic movies back to back. From thrillers to comedies, horror films to dramas, animated sci-fi flicks to documentaries, this festival covers the gamut of contemporary and classic Asian film. You can stretch your imagination with…
Find a theater company without a theater to call its own is sort of like searching for a bathroom close to your departing gate in an airport terminal. You’re going to have to go out of your way to find it, but you’ll be so happy you did. Luckily, the…
Of the works by the three founding members of 1962’s Panic Movement, those of author/illustrator Roland Topor have generally been eclipsed by that of his co-conspirators Alejandro Jodorowsky and Fernando Arrabal. Cinephiles may be vaguely familiar with Topor via Roman Polanski, who based The Tenant on Topor’s novel Le Locataire…
If you’ve ever been in a band, you know how difficult it is to manage all the disparate talents involved and make them sound like one cohesive voice. It’s a feat that can drive damn near anyone to drink, pitting bass players against drummers and resulting in dreams as crushed…
Comics who make it as premiere funny men or women usually have humdrum backgrounds and stumble into comedy as a way to escape the drudgery of their day lives. We know the drudgery of which comedian Steve McGrew sprung from the way that Papillion sprang himself from that Devil’s Island…
There’s nothing sexy about comedy, right? Carrot Top is a total boner shrinker and don’t get us started on Louie Anderson… But there’s an exception to every rule, or maybe just an ironic title. Starting at 7 p.m. Thursday and running through the weekend, The Alternative Comedy Theater at Margo…
If you have stepped foot in a bar, turned on the television or used the Internet in the last three weeks, you know that the 2014 FIFA World Cup is taking place. Yep, it’s that one time every four years where Americans obsess over one of their top 100 pastimes…
Every year tens of thousands of people show up to learn what Dallas tastes like. At least, that’s what the name of the event would seem to imply. In many ways, the Taste of Dallas encapsulates Dallas’ true flavor. These aren’t the trendy restaurants that have found 20 new takes…
North Texas is home to a major animation and voiceover studio, FUNimation studios, which not only creates beloved anime shows like Cartoon Network’s Toonami block and Dragon Ball Z, but also translates many popular Japanese manga shows into English. Just imagine all of the bloody sword fighting and incredibly complex,…
Looking at the fast food habits of Dallas, you’ll easily figure two of the city’s major international influences: Mexico and France. OK, fine, so french fries originated in Belgium, but “French” is in the dang name and this landlocked joint hasn’t come far enough to have mussels and crepes in…
