Any excuse to throw a music and craft beer festival is a good one, but The Shops at Park Lane has three: terrific location, awesome participants, and the onset (finally) of fall.
A day of brews, brats, and beats is slated for Saturday, October 15, when the second annual Parktoberfest returns. The lawn at the popular shopping center, placed at the southeast corner of Park Lane and Central Expressway, will transform into a tasting garden where guests can sip and sample some of Dallas’ finest food and drink from 11 am to 8 pm.
All the local craft-beer brands will be there, from Franconia, Deep Ellum Brewing Co., and Texas Ale Project to Oak Highlands Brewery, Community Beer Co., and Peticolas Brewing Company.
Handmade brats from Rudolph’s Market & Sausage Factory and soft pretzels from Slow Dough Bread Co. will keep bellies full. Local bands — including Vincent Neil Emerson, Kirk Thurmond, and Charley Crockett — will be playing the jams, and be sure to capture the day with some silly poses in the photobooth. Want swag? You got it, with giveaways happening all day.
A portion of the ticket proceeds benefit the Wilkinson Center, an organization that helps Dallas citizens stabilize financial crises through a food pantry, benefit screening, and temporary rent and utility assistance. The group also helps prepare them for the future with GED and ESL education, financial coaching, and job training and placement.
VIP tickets cost $30 and come with the bonus of admission, three 8-ounce beers, a bratwurst, and a pretzel; get them here. General admission is $10 and only available for purchase at the door. Kids 12 and under are free.
Craft beer and a pretty day — what more do you need?
Photo courtesy of The Shops at Park Lane
Craft beer and a pretty day — what more do you need?
Describing the new movie Pillionis almost an act of futility. It contains a variety of seemingly disparate parts that coalesce into a whole to make it utterly fascinating. Few other recent films have been able to walk the line between filthy and wholesome in quite the way this one does, and that’s only because few other filmmakers would actually dare to try.
It centers on Colin (Harry Melling), a meek man in his mid-thirties who still lives at home with his parents, Pete (Douglas Hodge) and Peggy (Lesley Sharp), while working a dead-end job giving out parking tickets. While performing in a barbershop quartet at his local pub, Colin catches the eye of biker Ray (Alexander Skarsgård), who summons him for a clandestine hook-up the following day (which just so happens to be Christmas Day).
With barely a word exchanged between them, Ray establishes a dominance over Colin that quickly leads to them starting a relationship in which Colin does anything Ray asks. And that means more than just sex: Colin, whether desperate for any kind of affection or unlocking a side of himself he hadn’t known, readily agrees to cook, clean, shop, and basically do whatever else Ray wants him to do.
Written and directed by first-time feature filmmaker Harry Lighton, the film is astonishing in the way it’s able to mine humor from Colin and Ray’s atypical bond. To call Ray “unfeeling” might not be totally accurate, but the way he treats Colin borders on cruel. However, the way Lighton structures the film, it’s easy to understand why someone like Colin would be willing to go along with the situation. It’s both hilarious and heartbreaking to see Colin debase himself in a variety of ways.
On the flip side is Colin’s heartfelt arc with his parents. It’s established right away that Peggy, who is sick with cancer, is a bit too involved with Colin’s love life, with the opening scene featuring her setting him up on a blind date. But their easy acceptance of his queerness and desire to see him find love is as heartwarming as it gets. The juxtaposition between the wholesomeness of their family and Colin’s new life is also the source of a good amount of comedy.
Lighton does not shy away from the sexual side of Colin and Ray’s relationship, and the scenes he depicts are as graphic as you are likely to see in an R-rated film. Some go up to and a little past what might be expected in a mainstream movie (including the use of a certain fake appendage). Other times they play out in a comical way to illustrate just how far Colin has progressed from the person he was when the film started.
Skarsgård, who stole the show in the Charli XCX movie The Moment, is the attraction in more ways than one in this film. The part calls for someone who’s not only impossibly handsome, but also a person who can stop dissent with just a glance, and he lives up to both qualities equally well. Melling, best known for playing Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter movies, also embodies his role perfectly. He plays Colin as weak enough to be run roughshod over by Ray, but not so hopeless as to not be worth rooting for.
Pillion (which is the name of the secondary seat on a motorcycle on which Colin rides multiple times in the film) operates at a storytelling level that is difficult to achieve. Many people will not fully understand the film’s central relationship, but the way it is showcased by Lighton makes it compelling, gut-wrenching, and sexy.
