George C. Scott Watches Rick Perry

George C. Scott has been forced to watch the Jack & Jill trailer recently, and now he’s pretty fed up with Rick Perry. Follow the Mixmaster on Twitter and Facebook…

Basking In The Glow Of The Sunshine Boys

Whatever you had planned for tonight, forget it. Go see The Sunshine Boys at the Eisemann Center in Richardson. If you can’t make it tonight, see it Saturday night at Casa Mañana in Fort Worth. After that, it’s gone, possibly to Broadway (there’s an offer on the table), or maybe…

Get In It To Win It: Free Night Of Theater Returns

The Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs and a bunch of Dallas theaters are once again offering free tickets for performances as part of the National Free Night of Theater. Starting today, September 9, enter to win tickets for performances at local theaters in October. Once you’re on the site, you’ll…

France Can Forgive Some Celebrities, But Not John Galliano

Having already lost his position as creative director of his own fashion line and the Christian Dior label, John Galliano’s life just got worse. The former fashion designer was convicted in a Paris court today for racist and anti-Semitic remarks made at a bar in Paris earlier this year. He…

Days and Days of New Plays, Starting Right Now

Every few months Dallas-area theaters pile on the new shows. This is one of those weekends, with 10 productions opening. One of those, Dallas Pride Performing Arts Festival at Uptown Players, is a multi-show offering filling several performance spaces at Kalita Humphreys Theater. So go see a show. Tickets start…

October’s Opera Out in the Open, OK?

Dallas Opera and the AT&T Performing Arts Center open the 2011-’12 “Tragic Obsessions” opera season at 7:30 p.m., Friday, October 21, with a live street-level “Plazacast” in Sammons Park in front of the Winspear Opera House. Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor starring Romanian soprano Elena Mosuc and Italian baritone Luca Grassi…

Contagion: Time for Widespread Panic

Currently the fifth-to-last film on Steven Soderbergh’s ever-expanding pre-retirement slate, Contagion opens on day two of a global viral epidemic. Gwyneth Paltrow plays Beth Emhoff, an American employee for an ominously unspecific multinational corporation who returns from a business trip in Hong Kong to her wintry Midwestern home feeling like…

Higher Ground’s Passionless Prodigal

At one point in Higher Ground, Vera Farmiga’s decade-spanning directorial debut, the actress, playing Corinne, a woman still soaked with lake water after her baptism into an evangelical sect, resembles no less a touchstone than Ronee Blakley in Robert Altman’s Nashville: slightly high hair; starchy, sexless, long tunic dress; swaying…

There Goes the Neighborhood

As much as we love DIY design and craft projects, there just isn’t enough room in our house for a studio worthy of Martha Stewart’s praise. That’s why workshops at Oil & Cotton make more sense, especially when it’s no-brainer creativity craft time like the Neighborhood Collage workshop. Go to…

Sum Small Treats

Dim sum is one of the greatest inventions of all time. All the bite-sized tasty Chinese treats are the perfect way to enjoy a meal – the only real problem with the dim sum tradition is waiting for a table and dodging the carnival of carts weaving their way through…

Tigers Might Tap the Keg

We adults would be as enamored with the zoo as our kids are if, say, there was an adults-only evening replete with food, music and plenty of beer on tap. Where can we sign up for that? We’ll tell you where you can sign up for the Dallas Observer’s inaugural…

Rev Your Imported Engine

Over the past few years, the Italian culture has garnered lots of attention, not always so positive. First, we were graced with The Real Housewives of New Jersey, and now just about everyone seems to talk about Snooki as if she’s a disdained yet household name. At least there’s still…

Serious Saute

Ballet has a bum rap. It evokes cute little girls with chubby cheeks running around in pink leotards. At worst, it brings back memories of suffering through stodgy performances of Sleeping Beauty with a grandma determined to get her grandkids some culture. The Aspen Santa Fe Ballet will crush those…

The Man Behind the Rocketman

It’s nearly impossible to talk about Bernie Taupin without acknowledging his work with Elton John. As John himself has said, “Without Bernie Taupin, there would be no Elton John,” but chances are that even without Elton John, Bernie Taupin would still have managed to find a way to make it…

Return of the Gelfings

There is absolutely no better time to watch Jim Henson’s tour de force, The Dark Crystal, than at the crack of midnight. The dark and dreamy fantasy film, noted for its then state-of-the-art animatronics and absurd folklore-inspired plot, is going to be 30 years old in just a couple of…

Faith on Film

Hollywood likes to think that it will fearlessly tackle any topic of cultural relevance. Terrorism? Check. The LGBT experience? Ok. Bullying? Sure. Zookeeping? Obviously. Christianity? Hello? Is this thing on? There are scant recent films from mainstream Hollywood about the American Christian experience that aren’t skewering satire. This is surprising:…

Everything’s Home-Growing

With more than 700 vendors, the Dallas Home & Garden Show is a little less “show” and a little more “every damn thing you’ll ever need for a home expo.” Sweet Hercules, that’s a lot of vendors. If it continues to expand, they’ll have to hold it on the moon…

For the Troops

Just because we can’t remember just what the hell our country is doing in Afghanistan now that 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden has been sent to hell, or just why we’re still in Iraq after toppling first Saddam Hussein’s statue and then the dictator himself, doesn’t mean we should forget…

May Will Make You Laugh

With three different Comedy Central stand-up shows and a breakout performance in 2003 on Last Comic Standing, it’s safe to say that Ralphie May is funnier than the average stand-up performers. Known for his sarcasm and politically incorrect jokes, May’s become a well known comedian on the boob tube. Addison…