Kevin Laroy had a constant case of what he calls “swamp hands” while competing on the most recent season of Spike TV’s Ink Master. Sweating palms may seem like a major setback during a televised tattoo competition, but Laroy managed to beat out more than two dozens artists on the show…
In 1899, French actress Sarah Bernhardt famously played Hamlet and brought an impishness to the Danish prince that audiences had never seen before. There is a movement catching fire now for women to take on these classic, meaty Shakespearean roles traditionally played by men: The latest production of Twelfth Night…
“Rob has this ridiculous beard and it’s such great, self-effacing, wonderful work he’s doing,” James Gray says about his film recounting the life of a British explorer who disappeared while pursuing his lifelong obsession with a mythical city in the Amazon.
Jay Pharoah performs at the Arlington Improv Friday, April 21, and Saturday, April 22 You won’t see Jay Pharoah doing anymore Barack Obama impersonations on Saturday Night Live, but that’s just about the only place you won’t see him. Pharoah is still doing regular stand-up gigs just like he’s done…
This week, the Dallas Museum of Art opened its Keir Collection Gallery, and in doing so it’s exhibiting more than the third largest collection of Islamic art in North America: It’s also exhibiting a great sense of timing. Islam is one of the most frequently maligned religions today, and now…
Earth Day Texas Fair Park 3710 Parry Ave. Friday-Sunday Free Saturday is Earth Day but North Texas is celebrating all weekend at Fair Park. Over 150,000 people are expected in the park to attend expos about green technology, summits about alternative fuel vehicles and legal symposiums. If that all starts…
Nasty, brutish and not short enough, Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire has a simple — and ultimately simpleminded — premise: to protract what would normally be a brief shoot-out scene to the majority of the movie’s 90-minute running time. On the surface, this reductio ad absurdum has a kind of pleasing…
Terry George’s The Promise has the rare good fortune of turning up in theaters just weeks after another film showed how necessary a movie like this is. The second star-driven war-adventure film of 2017 to set a cross-cultural love triangle against the horror of the Armenian Genocide, The Promise would…
“I’ve been trained for this.” Those words — or some variation — come up several times throughout James Gray’s The Lost City of Z, and they serve as one key to this strange, sprawling, majestic film. In adapting the 2009 nonfiction book about the search for a fabled city in…
HBO’s acid-bathed Beltway satire Veep didn’t exactly predict our absurd political reality. But it did come close enough that revisiting past seasons is like watching footage of a train wreck run backwards in slow motion. The episode called “C**tgate” brought a vaginal euphemism into a presidential election. “Election Night” saw…
Eight months ago, Mary-Brennan Reich started making jewelry in the middle of the night, on a whim. Now, the 24-year-old Southern Methodist University graduate has successfully launched her own online accessory shop, Bare & Golden. “I was working a retail job to pay rent while doing improv and taking acting…
Simeen Farhat – Blood Shot Is Blood Loved Cris Worley Fine Arts 1845 E. Levee St. Ongoing through May 6 Blood is one of those things that you need for survival. Pakistan native Simeen Farhat has taken this intrinsic component to living to the next level with Blood Shot is…
For one night only on a Saturday evening at the end of April, a private residential arts incubator at an undisclosed location in Dallas will host work by Los Angeles artist, Jay Stuckey, counterbalanced with a performance by Denton punk band, Thin Skin. Taking its name from the immediacy and…
Below the April 3, 1957, Dallas Times Herald headline “Tornado’s One-Sided Bite” sits a photo of the intersection of Willomet Avenue and Jefferson Boulevard. Its caption reads, “Rootless homes and scattered debris mark the path of the tornado which moved slowly but destructively through Oak Cliff and West Dallas.” Driving…
There’s no excuse for skipping this year’s Thin Line Fest in Denton. The festival, which celebrates film, music and photography, takes place from Wednesday to Sunday during the post-Easter traffic lull. The weather will be crisp and clear after a weekend of wind and rain. Oh, and here’s the most…
A film festival, a 36-hour hackathon and free scuba diving lessons in a 20-by-30 foot pool are just some of the attractions you can expect if you show up to to the free Earth Day celebrations at Fair Park this week. Earth Day Texas, a nonprofit organization dedicated to environmental…
You may not have noticed, but Deep Ellum has an illegal street art problem. And local artists who are painting legally have had enough. Steve Hunter, community award winner in the 42 Murals contest, has organized a public event on Tuesday, April 18, to restore commissioned pieces of art by…
Dallas’ Valley View Mall has been on its death bed for years now. The demolition permit, which was finally pulled back in December, gives Lloyd D. Nabors Demolition 180 days to get the wrecking ball started or it will expire. There’s not too much sand left in that hourglass. Before…
Tue 4/18 It seems more than a little apropos that the Magnolia is doing a screening of the classic John Frankenheimer political thriller The Manchurian Candidate in these frustrating times. It’s not because they have a political vendetta against the current administration or anyone who follows them. It’s more of…
First things first. The new Mystery Science Theater 3000, that basic-cable and UHF puppet show that was above all else a treatise about what it was like to grow up on basic cable and UHF, is a cheery, companionable continuation, an almost business-as-usual new season Kickstarted and Netflixed that Febreezes…
In spring 2016, the co-owners of the Wild Detectives bookstore approached Dallas-based literary wunderkind Lauren Smart with a question: How can we address gender disparity in the publishing industry? Smart loved what the bookstore – which is also a bar, music venue and sometimes a theater – represented and saw…
Set immediately after World War I, Frantz, the latest by the prolific François Ozon, is structured by, and titled after , an absence: a young German soldier killed in battle. Other deficiencies, not intended, soon become apparent in this Lost Generation tale of love, grief and lies, which Ozon liberally…
