Dylan Moran, the star of the British sitcom Black Books and actor in movies such as Shaun of the Dead, Notting Hill and Run, Fatboy, Run — and who is now writing a pilot for ABC — spoke to Mixmaster about what topics he plans to tackle when he takes…
Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave is the movie for people who think they’re too smart for The Butler. The story it tells, a true one, is horrifying: In 1841, Solomon Northup, a free, educated black man from Saratoga, New York, was kidnapped, sold into slavery and transported to Louisiana…
Plasmatically speaking, let’s give the new musical Fire and Blood, making its debut at Richland College, a B-negative. It’s a big, ambitious mess of a show, with book and lyrics by Richland drama prof Andy Long (who also directed) and music by Dallas composer and musical director Adam C. Wright…
The material has promise, but the production of TeCo Theatrical’s latest at the Bishop Arts Theatre, Black at the Assassination, doesn’t do it any justice. And justice is what this new play by Dallas writers Kyadal Robertson and Camika Spencer is all about. Connected by one event, the assassination of…
Think Little Miss Sunshine could have used an elastic penis? Behold: Bad Grandpa, in which a widower and an eight-year-old drive across the country hitting on chicks, farting in diners, and getting granddad’s manhood stuck in a vending machine before sending the boy out in drag to perform a striptease…
Although first viewings of most films should be experienced with as little prior knowledge as possible, few benefit as much from walking in cold as The Wicker Man. Newly restored in a “final cut” that’s apparently what the filmmaker originally put together before the distributor trimmed it down for double…
If you don’t already know DadBoner, here’s the breakdown. @DadBoner is the Twitter handle of a guy named Karl Welzein, who tweets pop culture commentary (“In the end, the Breaking Brad guy shoulda got erotic with a few babes, piled high with all the toppings. Close out the show with…
The Irish are a multi-talented people, churning out figures from Kenneth Branagh to Oscar Wilde to Bono. Ireland has produced great writers like W.B. Yeats and mediocre ones like Frank McCourt. And musical juggernauts like Enya and Sinead O’Connor. But all that historic oppression and drinking doesn’t just contribute to…
If you’re in Deep Ellum on Thursday and you see a hammered dude stumbling across the street with a bar stool and mic, you should know in advance that it’s not Zombie Carlin, as welcome a sight as that would be. It’s the Dallas Observer’s first-ever Comedy Crawl. We got…
She’s gone from Chelsea Handler’s sassy panelist to star of her own popular television show, and now Whitney Cummings will bring those size-zero jeans of hers to the White Swan Building at House of Blues (2200 N. Lamar St.). She’s a favorite because she’s bold, flipping the old “women are…
Ron White, whose headshot greatly resembles a bloated Don Johnson, called Kathleen Madigan “easily one of the best comics alive.” Lewis Black agrees, and that asshole doesn’t like anything. Except rage. One of Madigan’s first appearances was in 1988 on Stand Up Spotlight hosted by a poodle-headed Rosie O’Donnell so…
Carmen opens Friday in grand fanfare at the Winspear, kicking off another opera season. There, Dallas’ elite will gather, gowned and adorned in feathers, furs and exotic skins you will never afford for the Dallas Opera’s First Night. You’ll want to see Carmen during its run: It’s the ultimate tale…
Barbecue comes in many forms and seasonings — all of them delicious. From Tennessee’s dry-rubbed slabs to Georgia’s hickory-fired pit-smoked pork, it’s tough to find a variety that we won’t chomp down. Still, Texas rules this game of roasted meats, and you can cheer on your favorite brisket (or other…
Sometimes we don’t have to look far to find reasons to get super indulgent. Just finished a big project at work? Let’s eat some Nutella straight from the jar. Successfully ran a 5K without vomiting more than once? Order a couple baskets of potato skins and then dump them onto…
“Halloween is the story of a shy young man who comes home and finds himself stalked by a creepy, three-note piano riff,” begins Master Pancake’s Facebook invite for its Sunday night show, happening at the Alamo Drafthouse, Richardson (100 S. Central Expressway). Birthed from the cunning mind of John Erler…
It’s been lampooned on SNL, mocked at every water cooler and gushed about over skinny caramel lattes at the corner coffee shop. It’s Fifty Shades of Grey, the soft-core porn that never should’ve been. Have I heard legend of women eating beans out of a can at their office desk…
We love a good movie-making competition, and there’s a new one divined through the intoxicated holy union of the Oak Cliff Film Festival and Four Corners Brewery. It’s called the Four Corners Film Race and it dares you to make one film in one week. I know what you’re thinking:…
Seven out of 10 girlfriends can thank George Romero for Sunday nights spent hiding their eyes from zombie slaughters. Romero didn’t actually invent the now-ubiquitous undead flesh eaters — they’ve been lurching through films since the 1920s — but he did revolutionize the horror genre with his 1968 classic Night…
Storytelling as an art form has existed since primitive humans figured out how to articulate grunts to convey just how spectacularly bad their date last night was. So shows like This American Life and The Moth didn’t prove that even the most normal-seeming people have some hilarious, insightful and seriously…
In the annals of horror films, so much of it targets multiple levels. In all the blood and gore and one-dimensional sexuality and gotcha moments, there lies a social commentary that tears the movies away from the stunts, making it truly scary. And then there are the ones that don’t…
The Greeks took 10 years to sculpt Discobolus. Michelangelo needed three to build the statue of David. The Statue of Liberty required nine. Today, they could have rendered the things, then pressed “print,” thanks to free-form technology like Rapid Prototype Printing, 3D Scanning and Digital Sculpture. It’s a hot button…
As younger women we studied up on feminism. When Gloria Steinem said that “some of us are becoming the men we’d thought we’d marry,” well, it seemed positively delightful. Limitless, even. As adults, that sentence is a bit more depressing. There’s an inherent push/pull between who should and who shouldn’t…
