For professional film critics, you’ll notice, the year in film tends to conclude prematurely. Those “Best Of” lists you see popping up everywhere around now have often been tallied, decided, and finalized by mid-November — and in the web’s ever-harried race for clicks and pageviews, that date seems to be…
After spending prolonged periods of time trapped inside with your family and either too much or not enough alcohol, you’re probably in need of a good date night. And after several holiday season’s worth of little lights and Christmas music, something a little classy is a welcome relief. The Samurai…
There’s a new YouTube program called The Grotto Talk Show launching in January. It’s only natural to have a launch party, and this one includes dinner and drinks. Oh, and it’s free. The only catch is you have to wear cocktail attire and it’s in a chapel in Aubrey. But…
If you’ve worked in a restaurant before, you know the crazy mechanics that go down in the kitchen that keep the whole place running. It’s an apparatus hidden from the customers (even chefs in an open kitchen try not to let the crowd see them sweat), but even fewer people…
Christmas is past and all that happy family Norman Rockwell stuff is done. There’s no question you need to get out to shake your tail feathers a little bit, and there’s no better way to let off some of that post-holiday steam than to buy yourself a stout cocktail and…
During the holidays, everyone gets hung up on tradition. If one aspect of the dinner table is off on the big day, all hell breaks loose: “I don’t care if you made your own, what do you mean you don’t have the canned cranberry sauce?” “You can’t do vegetable curry…
So, you’ve been a well-behaved little crumpet avoiding all Downton Abbey Season Four spoilers? You made it through the ice storm, Thanksgiving and Christmas without renting the three import discs from Premiere Video? You didn’t download the app that lets you stream U.K. programming months ahead of its U.S. air…
It’s ladies’ night, oh what a night: Paint the Town Red Parties will be holding its first quarterly event at Quixotic World in Deep Ellum at 7 p.m. Saturday. Fulfill all your bow-chicka-wow-wow dreams with demonstrations on burlesque, strip tease and sex-goddess empowerment party packages. Yeah, yeah, they’re hocking services,…
Dallas has undergone a shocking culture shift over the last few years in the area of local craft beer. In just two years the region has spawned nearly half a dozen local breweries, and the flag-bearer for the hoppy armada is Peticolas Brewing Co. In the two years since Peticolas…
The Hobbit may have been the epic movie that every movie buff just had to see this holiday season, but it required almost three hours of your life. The Texas Theatre has a way to experience true cinema in a much shorter form. The movie house is bringing eight award-winning…
A documentary-like dazzler, Michel Gondry’s Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? is another edifying treasure hunt into the depths of a living mind. Gondry meets with linguist/philosopher/activist Noam Chomsky in his MIT office, where they launch into a wide-ranging conversation that starts with Chomsky’s childhood, crashes into the origins…
Don’t force New Year’s Eve. That’s a rookie move. If you apply too much pressure to an evening’s plans, you’ll smother the thing and it’ll die on the vine. Here’s how you do New Year’s like a champ: Get a cab with your favorite people, then drink in excess. Make…
Some New Year’s Day football is just what you need to prevent, assuage or postpone your hangover, depending on how you party the night before. The Heart of Dallas Bowl pits the 8-4 UNT Eagles against the 7-5 UNLV Rebels at 11 a.m. at the Cotton Bowl, 3750 Midway Plaza…
The presents are opened, the leftovers are questionable and you still have your kids at home for another week. It’s beginning to look a lot like … a total nightmare. Don’t fret. There are still plenty of holiday holdovers to occupy those precious little snowflakes — like the Sparkle! spectacular…
The old-style, big-tent circus couldn’t feel more like an antiquated form of entertainment if the venue were powered by steam engine. The Dallas Children’s Theater, in partnership with Lone Star Circus, has found a way to make it look and sound more like the modern spectacle that all circuses should…
Flowers can blossom in the harshest environments, much like the art scene that bloomed in Mexico City after the devastating 1985 earthquake. The ’90s was a time of growing violence, economic disruption and widespread political corruption. It also saw an explosion of contemporary artists rising to explore the social changes…
Some art is rooted in lofty thought, meant to be sifted and worked over philosophically. Then, there’s the kind of art currently on display at RO2 Gallery’s (110 N. Akard St.) show Objectified. Here you get to play, think and admire, because a whole slew of sculptors, object makers and…
Right now, the world’s procrastinators and the just plain lazy are sitting in their homes in fear of the world they’ll have to face if they don’t want to look like the chintziest cheapskate at their family Christmas get-together. They’ve put off going to the malls or the stores for…
Blunders, politicking and a few points of honest success topped culture headlines in 2013. Some of it was exciting, pointing to a new era of community interaction and cultural immersion. Other times it felt like we had allowed those old notions of what Dallas is — socialites bickering, sexist opportunists…
“Tis the season to be jolly” is a fine attitude to take as you shop for Santa’s gifts this Christmas season, but for those of us who prefer a little more naughty for our significant or not-so-significant others, just the right gift from Bad Santa isn’t something that showcases during…
If you’re looking for a panel discussion on the current eco-balance of the arts in Dallas, no problem: Art panels are like AA meetings, another one starts somewhere in about 15 minutes. Unlike AA meetings, nobody chain smokes or reaches a grand realization at an arts panel. Implementable ideas are…
It wasn’t that long ago or even in a galaxy far, far away (unless you count the feeling of trying to get to McKinney during the 5 p.m. rush hour traffic on U.S. 75) that Jeff Durazzo and his son Josh bought a tiny, 500-square-foot place off of East Virginia…
