Dream Minimally, Please

You may think you have the seasons in Dallas figured out, but North Texas weather is a fickle pickle. The city can go from unseasonably warm to crusted over with ice in a matter of days, seemingly irrespective of what month it is. So it’s not really surprising that Dallas…

See Landscapes in Meadows

Until Pablo Picasso came along with all his cubes and chest hair and lady friends, the star of the Spanish art world was Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida. Sorolla specialized in stunning (and seriously, they are stunning) oil paintings of Spanish life — including scenes from the sea and fishing villages,…

5 Moments in August: Osage County That Will Give You Chills

The all-star film version of Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play August: Osage County opens here January 10 (postponed from December 25, which means we have to suffer our own horrible relatives all Christmas day instead of escaping to spend time with Letts’ fictional ones). Meryl Streep tops the cast list…

Dallas Symphony Announces New Assistant Conductor

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra announced Tuesday morning that American conductor Karina Canellakis will join the orchestra as assistant conductor beginning in 2014. Canellakis, a New York native, comes to Dallas with an impressive resume as both violinist and conductor. She studied violin at the elite Curtis Institute of Music and…

Tony Tasset Will Discuss His Giant Eyeball at the Nasher

Front Row’s Peter Simek recently pointed out this Interview Magazine article with Tony Tasset. In it the artist discussed Eye, his three story sculpture that’s currently locked in a staring contest with the Joule hotel, dismissing notions that surveillance serves as an intentional underlying theme. It’s a fun read, and…

The Ten Best Photos From Santa Rampage 2013

Roughly 100 holiday party specialists tackled Dallas on Saturday night to spread cheer, do shots and get a little freaky with the mistletoe. Mohawked rude boy Santa, bearded banana Santa and church mice of questionable virtue were all present for the annual bar crawl, and so was photographer Kerry Langford…

Elaine Liner’s Sweater Curse Will Keep You In Stitches

How many plays has Dallas Observer Theatre Critic Elaine Liner reviewed in her career? “I’d say 3,000,” she reports from her writer’s enclave near White Rock Lake. “And at least 500 of those were Steel Magnolias.” She goes on: “I wish more characters had died in Steel Magnolias. There’s a…

21 Movie Romances That We Loved in 2013

In 2013, love came in many forms: girl on zombie, boy on smartphone, and James Franco on — count ’em — two hot bikini babes at the same damn time. Sure, romantic comedies are as extinct as Oprah Winfrey’s chances of winning Best Supporting Actress at the Golden Globes, but…

25 Awesome Things to Do in Dallas this Weekend, December 12 to 15

(We Are 1976’s Soul Train Party happens Saturday. Break out the butterfly collar.) What’s that old saying? Last week’s ice storm is this week’s party bender? Since Cleon dialed our collective metabolism down to “suspended animation,” most of last weekend’s events were rescheduled for — you guessed it — this…

Adults May Regress, Wear Pants, Inside the Tubes at Neiman Marcus Tonight

There’s no joy to be found in adventuring through the McDonald’s playscape. Just suspicious smells and discarded french fry evidence. But those magical tubes at Neiman’s? Well, that’s a different story. Tonight you can become a human hamster and journey through the things, while simultaneously being a generous adult who…

Goofy Visuals Save Off-key Plaid Tidings

The harmonal balance is way off among the quartet of singers in One Thirty Productions’ Plaid Tidings, the holiday musical now doing matinees at the Bath House Cultural Center. But does it matter? This is writer Stuart Ross’ terrible sequel to his awful show Forever Plaid, which was about a…

This Hobbit is Everything the Last Wasn’t

Elves snore, it turns out. Their maidens make teensy-peen jokes and pine for the hottest of dwarves. And Bilbo Baggins, so concerned about his doilies just three hours of screen time ago, now punches his sword right through the trachea of a goblin — and then looks rather proud of…

Lavish and Lurid, The Great Beauty Is What It Says It Is

Some movies come barreling out of their caves like armies on the sociocultural warpath, self-consciously defining themselves as psychographic events, marking The Way Things Are Now and becoming part of history in the process. Given the ambition, we should embrace these rare explosions when they happen, even more so now…

Plano’s Panto Pigs Porks Fun at Fairy Tales

Beneath the groaning puns, audience singalongs and glow-in-the-dark puppets, Theatre Britain’s annual Christmas “panto,” The Three Little Pigs, offers some cunningly subversive comedy. Good pantos always do. It’s taken 16 years for Theatre Britain, now based at the Cox Building Playhouse in Plano, to educate the audience about this style…