Last month we gave you “Your July Guide to Dallas’ Free Outdoor Movies. You’re Welcome, Cheapskate.” Well, July’s come and gone, and it’s effing hot. It’s time to move the free movie screenings indoors. With beer. But not free beer…
The commissioned public art project at Love Field, which contributing Observer arts writer Betsy Lewis has pointed out isn’t really public at all, has been the inspiration for much backslapping and many sweaty, congratulatory handshakes. Good for it. Some artists got paid and their names were circulated. Baby steps, people…
The members of Samurai Drunk, the comedy improv group from the Dallas Comedy House, have been hanging out at a nearby Cafe Brazil after almost every rehearsal since their first days together in the club’s “Level 1” improv training sessions. Founding member Brian Moody said they would spend two or…
We’ve all collectively scanned a block of text and clicked on the “agree” button before thoroughly reading through the terms and conditions for iTunes, Google, Facebook, and other massive corporations to whom we willingly give our personal info. What’s in the fine print and what happens after we click is…
There’s still plenty of summer left, so now’s the time to unstick your sweaty butt from the couch and get festive. Whether you’re searching for the perfect prom dress or in need of craft beer, culture or Jesus, August is full of cool (indoor) stuff to do. We’ve rounded up…
Get amped, Dallas! There’s about 20 ways to cool down this weekend — from weird sound art and throw-back movies, to a Revenge of the Nerds costume party, drag theater and a massive video game marathon. (Something in here is worth braving your blistering steering wheel for, I swear.) Share…
Today QuakeCon 2013 kicks off its 17th annual celebration of id Software, their legacy and the love of gaming. The BYOC (bring your own computer) party has grown into a music-festival-type atmosphere in which 3,000 gamers camp out to live and breath video games for four days. This year the…
With Alamo Drafthouse’s first DFW location opening this week, we talked to their creative manager, James Wallace. Those in the Dallas film community will know Wallace from Gordon & the Whale, a movie website that trafficked in reviews and advance screening, and following that, I Heart Cinema. He has also…
All you need for a movie are two guys and two guns. Unless that movie is 2 Guns, in which case you probably need a good deal more. The problem with so many current action movies, this one included, is that once you’ve seen one, you can’t help feeling you’ve…
More terrifying than any horror film, and more intellectually adventurous than just about any 2013 release so far, The Act of Killing is a major achievement, a work about genocide that rightly earns its place alongside Shoah as a supreme testament to the cinema’s capacity for inquiry, confrontation and remembrance…
With an offhand precision that suggests he might prove one of his generation’s major actors, Michael Cera lays bare two specific human weaknesses in writer-director Sebastián Silva’s altered-states/group dynamics road drama Crystal Fairy — weaknesses you’ll likely recognize from life rather than from other movies. The first is the pushy,…
The lauded “Golden Age” of television just makes Vince Gilligan sad. Let’s get specific: “The sadness for me at the heart of it is that television now makes stories for grown-ups that Hollywood movies don’t allow filmmakers to make,” the Breaking Bad creator/writer/director/producer said Sunday at New York’s Museum of…
Porn re-inserts itself into the arthouse with this week’s The Canyons, co-starring adult industry stud James Deen, and next week’s Lovelace, a biopic of the Deep Throat star–two highly publicized releases that reconfirm the hopelessness of going hardcore in mainstream movies. Whether it’s works that inject un-simulated sex into their…
A movie can be highly imperfect, stilted, or implausible in all sorts of ways—and still be everything you go to the movies for. The Canyons, Paul Schrader’s contemplation of moral decay in Hollywood, is that kind of picture, in some places so crazy-silly you want to laugh and in others…
This article contains major spoilers. A white suburban teen, urged on by friends, makes the decision to finally get laid, maybe by the end of summer. That’s the premise of Sixteen Candles, American Pie, Superbad, and now The To Do List. Comedy pin-up Aubrey Plaza gives a characteristically low-wattage performance…
This summer has been largely bereft of quality action flicks. We had our usual apocalyptic entries, the predictable superhero flicks, but nothing so far that just took our breath away. And it’s not like those are super hard to do, Hollywood. Good adventure stories have practically been around since the…
Lamar’s limp-wristed throwing technique. Gilbert’s adorable DOS program of that dancing, hand-holding couple. Booger’s badass collection of pit-stained T-shirts, like “Gimmie Head Til I’m Dead” and “High on Stress!” Lewis boning that cheerleader on the moon and her weirdly positive response to their nonconsensual union. And dear God: the Greek…
New things are stupid. Old things rule. Originals always crush remakes, reboots and sequels. Like, everyone knows they got Planet of the Apes right the first time and fortunately, the guys over at Texas Theatre get that and will be showing Planet of the Apes in 35-mm on Friday. Surely…
What do you get when you combine two icons of mystery and suspense? A pipe smoker with blonde ambition? A rounded silhouette with a penchant for deerstalkers? Sort of, not really, and something way more fun. In celebration of the birthday of the Master of Suspense, Sherlock’s Baker St. Pub…
Leave it to Woody Allen to tackle two sacred subjects with humor and insight touched with a bit of existentialism, and leave it to Denton Community Theatre’s Black Box Theatre to bring that humor to the stage. Nearly 40 years ago, New York’s most beloved writer/director/actor/musician/etc. put his brilliant neurosis…
You adore Pedro Almodóvar’s knack for absurdist smut-wrangling. His approach to film is just more exotic, primal — like a drag-queen cheetah hyped on uppers. He’s got a new one, the enthusiastically titled I’m So Excited! and reviews have fluctuated between gazpacho cold and fiery dominatrix hot. You’re still going…
When you picture online gamers, the image in your mind is pretty clear. You probably see a dorky, socially awkward geek holed away in his parents’ basement, floating alone in a pile of Pizza Rolls and Mountain Dew, talking to friends he’ll never see IRL in some sort of code…
