Ricardo Alarcon, executive director of the Mayan dance group Grupo Pakal, used to spend the night in the cemetery. While that might sound straight out of a horror movie, it is very common in Mexico during Dia de los Muertos. For many families, the loss of a loved one is…
Aesthetically, the two shows running concurrently at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Kathryn Andrews’ Run for President and Michael Dean’s Lost True Leaves, could not be more different. It’s a testament to much of contemporary art’s surprising simplicity that despite the drastic difference in appearance, both sets of work essentially explore the…
In September 1911, a man boarded a plane in Sheepshead Bay, New York. Three months and 70 stops later he landed in Long Beach, California, having completed the world’s first transcontinental flight. If you can’t think of his name, you’re not alone. Neither can 95 percent of pilots, say David…
When Sarah Waters published her gothic lesbian suspense novel Fingersmith in early 2002, the U.S. was beginning a relatively speedy transformation on the LGBT front, building to today’s legalized same-sex marriage and a presidential candidate’s full-throated support for expanded LGBT rights. Buoyed by that shift, Waters’ story of clandestine female lovers…
The Handmaiden, Korean director Park Chan-wook’s Gothic lesbian tale of romance, revenge and (light) bondage, is the kind of electrifying indulgence only he can make. The film is a loose adaptation of Welsh novelist Sarah Waters’ 2002 thriller Fingersmith, about a female pickpocket who poses as a maid for a…
It’s rare for a franchise, especially in the horror genre, to actually get better as it progresses — doubly so if the final part of said progression is a TV series. Yet in six-part miniseries form, currently airing on the you-didn’t-know-you-had-it Pop network following a broadcast in Australia earlier this…
Between The Night Manager, Veep and now Chance, a new Hulu series adapted from a nasty Kem Nunn novel, Hugh Laurie has had an exceptional year in television. The Hulu program stands out slightly above the rest, considering its resonant dialogue with the Oxford-born Laurie’s most famous role. Like House,…
An archeologist, a North Korean dictator, a Norse god, two photographers, the people of Indonesia and a tribal chief who believes Jesus is actually black American WWII soldier John Frum all look into a volcano and see their fates. That’s not the beginning of a joke; it’s the premise of…
America never understood Oasis’ hugeness. By that I don’t just mean the band’s epochal mid-’90s global popularity or the nationalistic fervor it stirred in the U.K. I mean, simply, its hugeness of sound. In the States, only the ballads connected, the glorious/meaningless Beatle raptures “Wonderwall,” “Live Forever” and “Champagne Supernova”…
If you’re a vulnerable young woman who gets hit on by lecherous older men, you might think that you could do worse than having a guy like Henry at your side. He has a low tolerance for ass grabbers, for one; he’s known to take such bird dogs by their…
At what point do we stop looking at a show like Black Mirror as a sign of things to come and start acknowledging it as a reflection of where we already are? All the Terminators and 2001s in the world couldn’t prevent us from lusting after self-driving cars, asking Siri…
Boo! A Madea Halloween was the number-one movie over this past weekend, baffling Hollywood once again and making the Hotep crowd pissed that a movie starring a black guy in a dress made more money than alleged rapist Nate Parker’s still-struggling The Birth of a Nation. (Meanwhile, these woke brothas…
Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, the names that make up the legendary comedy music duo Flight of the Conchords, have reached an unbelievable level of fame and creative freedom as actors, writers and musicians. Following the two-season run of the hilarious HBO sitcom that bore their band’s name, both became…
Haunted houses are easy to find this time of year. It is, after all, Halloween. But the haunted attractions that promise shocks and scares for a walk through a decorated warehouse or graveyard with costumed vampires and zombies are entertainment. In McKinney, paranormal investigators and some business owners say the…
Cellular Level6 to 8 p.m. Friday William Campbell Contemporary Art 4925 Byers Ave., Fort Worth Cellular Level, an exhibition of new works by acclaimed Fort Worth artist John Holt Smith, opens Friday at William Campbell Contemporary Art. While any mention of “stem cells” is often surrounded by controversy, Smith’s paintings…
Just this year, Facebook made live streaming possible, so that we — we being the 1.65 billion people using the social networking site — can watch the concert our friends are attending as it’s happening, or the protest, or even just tune is as they eat a bag of Doritos…
Thanks to Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions, which have turned into a flaming nuclear-powered train heading toward a brick wall, Texas could turn blue. A poll conducted by the University of Houston found that Trump and his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton are in a virtual dead heat among Texas voters. National…
It’s Thursday morning and the sun is starting to heat up the State Fair of Texas. The cast of Little Women: Dallas hangs out near the public relations office of the fair, talking with one another and their boyfriends. A few fair workers recognize Bri Barlup, a transplant from Little Women:…
Tue 10/25 What do we do on our lunch hour but eat and maybe gossip a little? It’s even worse, if we’re the folks who just stay at our desk and work with a sandwich in one hand and a mouse in the other, slogging through what could be a…
A person looking to make gobs of money is not likely to first think of opening a bookstore, but several new indie stores in Dallas, such as The Wild Detectives and Deep Vellum Books, have been able to attract a healthy customer base. Meanwhile, Lucky Dog Books, a local used…
Writer/director Osgood Perkins has been peeking at my Shirley Jackson book collection, and he’s already read through my favorites: The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Jackson, who penned chilling ghost stories and moral tales in the ‘40s, ’50s and ’60s — like her…
A few years ago, the Observer began a series calling out what we thought were some of the area’s ugliest buildings. The AT&T office building at Bryan Street and Haskell Avenue, the Dallas World Trade Center, the Turley Law Center on Central Expressway, Irving’s convention center, Dallas City Hall. (That…
