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…
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,…
Despite the fact that etsy has officially been infiltrated by crap, there are still a few gems out there. Some even call Dallas their home. Here’s a list of the top etsy Dallas vendors that’ll make you proud to share your tap water with them. They’re listed in no particular…
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…
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…
Why does it makes me so happy? It’s a toss-up between the discount tickets available at Williams Chicken and the curious punctuation of Christmas n’ Da Hood. When people omit a letter — “I” in this case — they generally sub in an apostrophe to neck with the next letter…
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…
Sunday night’s Funniest Comic in Texas finals featured six very funny sets from six talented comedians, but the crown went to Raul Sanchez. The San Antonio native beat out Brad LaCour, Linda Stogner, Ryan Perrio, Josh Johnson and Jason James to win the trophy, a big check and a week’s…
Tweed is an oddly versatile textile. Tug the stuff on and assume all kinds of mothballed personalities, from tuppence-snatching chimney sweeps to classy bootleggers and warbly penny farthing operators. It all works, and it’s all fun. Each year those scamp cyclists at Bike Friendly Oak Cliff celebrate the throw-back fiber…
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…
As you’ve no doubt heard, a new “ice rink” opened at Klyde Warren Park in Dallas on Friday. Instead of ice, this 32-by-100-foot rink is made of several giant interlocking sheets of a synthetic skating surface called “Super-Glide” that fit together like puzzle pieces. Visitors with their own skates can…
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…
The calendar’s date is usually arbitrary when retro movie screenings are concerned. But in the case of Camp Crystal Lake, Friday the 13th is the only day that really matters. The Alamo Drafthouse keeps an eye on such things and it saw today as an opportunity for a sort-of film…
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…
(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…
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…
“It’s funny to me when I see films of parades and there are people standing on the sidewalks waving. In New Orleans,” Ben Jaffe explains, “everybody is in the parade. There is nobody watching because they are just in it.” Ben Jaffe knows a thing or two about New Orleans…
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…
Bronx-born filmmaker Abel Ferrara considers all of his fiction films to be documentaries: What you see is what happened in the moment that was shot. That mentality informed the making of Ms. 45, Ferrara’s characteristically complex 1981 rape-revenge drama. In the film, a mute teenager (Zoë Lund) copes with being…
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…
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…
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…
