• Home
  • popular
  • Events
  • Submit New Event
  • Subscribe
  • About
  • News
  • Restaurants + Bars
  • City Life
  • Entertainment
  • Travel
  • Real Estate
  • Arts
  • Society
  • Home + Design
  • Fashion + Beauty
  • Innovation
  • Sports
  • Charity Guide
  • children
  • education
  • health
  • veterans
  • SOCIAL SERVICES
  • ARTS + CULTURE
  • animals
  • lgbtq
  • New Charity
  • Series
  • Delivery Limited
  • DTX Giveaway 2012
  • DTX Ski Magic
  • dtx woodford reserve manhattans
  • Your Home in the Sky
  • DTX Best of 2013
  • DTX Trailblazers
  • Tastemakers Dallas 2017
  • Healthy Perspectives
  • Neighborhood Eats 2015
  • The Art of Making Whiskey
  • DTX International Film Festival
  • DTX Tatum Brown
  • Tastemaker Awards 2016 Dallas
  • DTX McCurley 2014
  • DTX Cars in Lifestyle
  • DTX Beyond presents Party Perfect
  • DTX Texas Health Resources
  • DART 2018
  • Alexan Central
  • State Fair 2018
  • Formula 1 Giveaway
  • Zatar
  • CityLine
  • Vision Veritas
  • Okay to Say
  • Hearts on the Trinity
  • DFW Auto Show 2015
  • Northpark 50
  • Anteks Curated
  • Red Bull Cliff Diving
  • Maggie Louise Confections Dallas
  • Gaia
  • Red Bull Global Rally Cross
  • NorthPark Holiday 2015
  • Ethan's View Dallas
  • DTX City Centre 2013
  • Galleria Dallas
  • Briggs Freeman Sotheby's International Realty Luxury Homes in Dallas Texas
  • DTX Island Time
  • Simpson Property Group SkyHouse
  • DIFFA
  • Lotus Shop
  • Holiday Pop Up Shop Dallas
  • Clothes Circuit
  • DTX Tastemakers 2014
  • Elite Dental
  • Elan City Lights
  • Dallas Charity Guide
  • DTX Music Scene 2013
  • One Arts Party at the Plaza
  • J.R. Ewing
  • AMLI Design District Vibrant Living
  • Crest at Oak Park
  • Braun Enterprises Dallas
  • NorthPark
  • Victory Park
  • DTX Common Desk
  • DTX Osborne Advisors
  • DTX Comforts of Home 2012
  • DFW Showcase Tour of Homes
  • DTX Neighborhood Eats
  • DTX Comforts of Home 2013
  • DTX Auto Awards
  • Cottonwood Art Festival 2017
  • Nasher Store
  • Guardian of The Glenlivet
  • Zyn22
  • Dallas Rx
  • Yellow Rose Gala
  • Opendoor
  • DTX Sun and Ski
  • Crow Collection
  • DTX Tastes of the Season
  • Skye of Turtle Creek Dallas
  • Cottonwood Art Festival
  • DTX Charity Challenge
  • DTX Culture Motive
  • DTX Good Eats 2012
  • DTX_15Winks
  • St. Bernard Sports
  • Jose
  • DTX SMU 2014
  • DTX Up to Speed
  • st bernard
  • Ardan West Village
  • DTX New York Fashion Week spring 2016
  • Taste the Difference
  • Parktoberfest 2016
  • Bob's Steak and Chop House
  • DTX Smart Luxury
  • DTX Earth Day
  • DTX_Gaylord_Promoted_Series
  • IIDA Lavish
  • Huffhines Art Trails 2017
  • Red Bull Flying Bach Dallas
  • Y+A Real Estate
  • Beauty Basics
  • DTX Pet of the Week
  • Long Cove
  • Charity Challenge 2014
  • Legacy West
  • Wildflower
  • Stillwater Capital
  • Tulum
  • DTX Texas Traveler
  • Dallas DART
  • Soldiers' Angels
  • Alexan Riveredge
  • Ebby Halliday Realtors
  • Zephyr Gin
  • Sixty Five Hundred Scene
  • Christy Berry
  • Entertainment Destination
  • Dallas Art Fair 2015
  • St. Bernard Sports Duck Head
  • Jameson DTX
  • Alara Uptown Dallas
  • Cottonwood Art Festival fall 2017
  • DTX Tastemakers 2015
  • Cottonwood Arts Festival
  • The Taylor
  • Decks in the Park
  • Alexan Henderson
  • Gallery at Turtle Creek
  • Omni Hotel DTX
  • Red on the Runway
  • Whole Foods Dallas 2018
  • Artizone Essential Eats
  • Galleria Dallas Runway Revue
  • State Fair 2016 Promoted
  • Trigger's Toys Ultimate Cocktail Experience
  • Dean's Texas Cuisine
  • Real Weddings Dallas
  • Real Housewives of Dallas
  • Jan Barboglio
  • Wildflower Arts and Music Festival
  • Hearts for Hounds
  • Okay to Say Dallas
  • Indochino Dallas
  • Old Forester Dallas
  • Dallas Apartment Locators
  • Dallas Summer Musicals
  • PSW Real Estate Dallas
  • Paintzen
  • DTX Dave Perry-Miller
  • DTX Reliant
  • Get in the Spirit
  • Bachendorf's
  • Holiday Wonder
  • Village on the Parkway
  • City Lifestyle
  • opportunity knox villa-o restaurant
  • Nasher Summer Sale
  • Simpson Property Group
  • Holiday Gift Guide 2017 Dallas
  • Carlisle & Vine
  • DTX New Beginnings
  • Get in the Game
  • Red Bull Air Race
  • Dallas DanceFest
  • 2015 Dallas Stylemaker
  • Youth With Faces
  • Energy Ogre
  • DTX Renewable You
  • Galleria Dallas Decadence
  • Bella MD
  • Tractorbeam
  • Young Texans Against Cancer
  • Fresh Start Dallas
  • Dallas Farmers Market
  • Soldier's Angels Dallas
  • Shipt
  • Elite Dental
  • Texas Restaurant Association 2017
  • State Fair 2017
  • Scottish Rite
  • Brooklyn Brewery
  • DTX_Stylemakers
  • Alexan Crossings
  • Ascent Victory Park
  • Top Texans Under 30 Dallas
  • Discover Downtown Dallas
  • San Luis Resort Dallas
  • Greystar The Collection
  • FIG Finale
  • Greystar M Line Tower
  • Lincoln Motor Company
  • The Shelby
  • Jonathan Goldwater Events
  • Windrose Tower
  • Gift Guide 2016
  • State Fair of Texas 2016
  • Choctaw Dallas
  • TodayTix Dallas promoted
  • Whole Foods
  • Unbranded 2014
  • Frisco Square
  • Unbranded 2016
  • Circuit of the Americas 2018
  • The Katy
  • Snap Kitchen
  • Partners Card
  • Omni Hotels Dallas
  • Landmark on Lovers
  • Harwood Herd
  • Galveston.com Dallas
  • Holiday Happenings Dallas 2018
  • TenantBase
  • Cottonwood Art Festival 2018
  • Hawkins-Welwood Homes
  • The Inner Circle Dallas
  • Eating in Season Dallas
  • ATTPAC Behind the Curtain
  • TodayTix Dallas
  • The Alexan
  • Toyota Music Factory
  • Nosh Box Eatery
  • Wildflower 2018
  • Society Style Dallas 2018
  • Texas Scottish Rite Hospital 2018
  • 5 Mockingbird
  • 4110 Fairmount
  • Visit Taos
  • Allegro Addison
  • Dallas Tastemakers 2018
  • The Village apartments
  • City of Burleson Dallas

    The Review Is In

    Iron Man 3 kicks off summer movie season with ingenious plot twist

    Joe Leydon
    May 5, 2013 | 11:08 am
    Iron Man 3 kicks off summer movie season with ingenious plot twist
    play icon

    Don’t know about you, but if I’d recently tangled with gazillions of unfriendly extraterrestrials, and flown through a worm-hole to dispose of an inconvenient nuclear missile, and almost crash-landed in the middle of Manhattan before being snatched and saved in mid-air by the Incredible Hulk — and did all those things while worrying whether the electromagnetic dingus secured on my chest would continue working properly, and keep bits and pieces of shrapnel from piercing my heart — I think I might find myself prone to anxiety attacks for weeks, if not decades, afterward.

    Which is one of the reasons why, right from the get-go, I had an unreasonably good time with Iron Man 3, the first big blast of the summer movie season.

    As Tony Stark, the super-rich, ultra-cool brainiac inside the red-and-gold Iron Man armor, Robert Downey Jr. usually comes across as almost arrogantly insouciant and unflappable — the snarkiest hipster ever to do derring-do in a comic-book movie. So it’s a nifty change of pace — and, yes, an effectively humanizing touch — for Downey to appear beset by spasms of post-traumatic stress during the first several minutes of this new movie while Stark recovers from all the sound and fury (and the demands of S.H.I.E.LD. boss Nick Fury) that defined The Avengers.

    Iron Man 3 often has the pleasurably anything-goes air of a '70s James Bond movie as Tony Stark goes globe-trotting after clues and connections.

    Of course, you can’t keep or a good man — or, to use Stark’s own self-deprecating phrase, a man in a can — down for very long. But even after Stark shakes off the funk and gets into gear, Iron Man 3 indicates that everyone involved in this sequel wanted to add a few new pages to the playbook, or at least take a couple detours while covering familiar ground.

    Stark actually spends long stretches of the flick outside of his armor while tracking down The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), a fearsome international terrorist who evidently took grooming tips from Osama Bin Laden, and Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), a brilliant scientist whose bad intentions are so obvious — even during the opening scenes, set in 1999, when he’s supposed to be a needy and nerdy Stark worshipper — that I feel safe in announcing without a spoiler alert that he’s no damn good.

    Iron Man 3 often has the pleasurably anything-goes air of a '70s James Bond movie as Tony Stark goes globe-trotting after clues and connections, all the while dressed in civilian attire, and even karate-chops a bit-player or two. (The 007 flavor is enhanced at the very end with a wink-wink on-screen promise: “Tony Stark will return …”)

    Indeed, like Bond, Stark relies on his wits as much as he utilizes gadgetry. For a while, at least.

    And then .... well, hey, this is an Iron Man movie, right?

    Shocking plot twist
    The plot has something to with a limb-regenerating therapy that has rather unfortunate side effects — some human guinea pigs turn into incendiary bombs and/or villainous variations of the Human Torch — and something else to do with a beautiful research scientist (Rebecca Hall), who may not be entirely unhappy about how her breakthroughs are ruthlessly exploited.

    There’s an audaciously ingenious plot twist at the midway point that may shock and upset those who view Marvel Comics mythos as sacrosanct — and, come to think of it, might also additionally peeve people already queasy about the use of terrorist mayhem as a comic-book movie plot device. But it will greatly amuse just about everyone else. (More than that, alas, I cannot tell you.)

    And there’s a very welcome and largely successful effort on the part of director and co-scriptwriter Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) to elevate the relationship between Stark and gal pal Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow, a.k.a. The World’s Most Beautiful Woman) to the level of a compellingly passionate romance. (Jon Favreau, director of the first two Iron Man adventures, has stuck around to continue playing Happy Hogan, Stark’s bodyguard.)

    It also helps, by the way, that Pepper gets more actively involved in the action this time around, and Paltrow is more than up to the challenge.

    Rousing action
    The pacing is appropriately propulsive, the action sequences — especially Iron Man’s rescue of passengers rudely ejected from Air Force One, and a climactic confrontation involving mammoth explosions, massive destruction and an entire posse of Iron Man suits — are satisfyingly rousing, and the comic relief is frequently and refreshingly laugh-out-loud funny.

    Granted, the narrative logic is something less than watertight, and a few plot developments are, at best, fuzzily finessed. To be honest, I’m still trying to figure out why Don Cheadle’s War Machine — here rechristened Iron Patriot, and tricked out with a red-and-white-and-blue paint job — is so easily immobilized without doing lasting damage to his high-tech hardware.

    But never mind. Truth to tell, I sometimes have a hard time with the narrative logic (or the lack thereof) in James Bond movies too. And that’s never gotten in the way of my having a good time with that franchise.

    With Downey cracking wise in his trademark fashion while fighting the good fights, Paltrow and Kingsley at the forefront of a first-rate supporting cast, and a whole mess of stuff blowing up real good, Iron Man 3 is a super-sized comic-book epic that’s licensed to thrill.

    And yes, you should stick around until after the closing credits.

    unspecified
    news/entertainment

    This week's hot headlines

    Death of Dallas Caramel Company founder leads week's most-read stories

    Stephanie Allmon Merry
    Jun 14, 2025 | 10:00 am
    Dallas Caramel Company
    Dallas Caramel Company
    Dallas Caramel Company

    Editor's note: It was a newsy week in Dallas. Sadly, the founder of a Dallas sweets company passed away; there was also news of a new gourmet European market in the works and peach cobbler coming to DFW Airport. Here's a chance to get caught up on the week's most-read stories, and here's help planning a fun weekend.

    1. Dallas Caramel Company founder Rain McDermott dies at 52. Dallas entrepreneur Rain McDermott, who founded artisan caramel maker Dallas Caramel Company when she was only 34 years old, died after a battle with breast cancer; she was 52.

    2. Gourmet European Market to open in north Dallas with pierogi and more. A new food shop with a distinct European flair is coming to Dallas: Called Gourmet European Market, it's opening at 17435 Preston Rd., in a shopping center south of Frankford Road, where it will feature food products from all over Europe but with a special focus on the Eastern European countries of Poland, Germany, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Israel, and Bulgaria.

    Gourmet European Market Polish gingerbreadPolish gingerbread at Gourmet European Market.Photo courtesy of GEM

    3. Chef and caterer opens Southern to-go cafe south of Dallas. A chef and caterer has opened an eponymous to-go cafe south of Dallas: Called The Cedric Frazier Experience, it’s an upscale soul food kitchen located at 103 Waller St., in Red Oak, where it opened on June 7.

    4. Dallas cuts slack on senior homeowners with new property tax exemption. Dallas seniors who own a home got cut a break: On June 11, the Dallas City Council approved additional property tax relief for senior and disabled homeowners by increasing the city’s property tax exemption for residents who are 65 or older or disabled.

    5. Peach cobbler concept to open 2 locations at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. Southern desserts are coming to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW): The Peach Cobbler Factory, a chain based in North Carolina, will open not one but two locations at the airport. The first DFW location will open in Terminal D in late 2025; a second location will open in the new Terminal C Pier in 2026.

    airportdeathsdessertsmost popularopeningspopular storiestaxeshot-headlines
    news/entertainment
    Loading...