AUSTIN  

Two for the Road
Before Midnight, the new movie starring Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, completes the Austin filmmaker Richard Linklater’s trilogy spanning the wide arc of love. It began with a fictional couple’s courtship in Before Sunrise (1995), in which Delpy and Hawke’s characters meet on a train in Europe and spend a blissful night in Vienna revealing their souls to each other. That serendipitous encounter is followed by bona fide destiny in Before Sunset (2004), when they are reunited in Paris, but again only for a limited time, seemingly unable to act on their romantic feelings because she has a boyfriend and he is married with a son. Now Delpy and Hawke play the same couple—married (to each other), parents and on the verge of middle age—questioning their desire. On Thursday, Linklater, who earlier this year celebrated the twentieth anniversary of his high school stoner flick Dazed and Confused, will introduce a hometown presentation of Before Midnight, a day before its national release. Delpy and Hawke (an Austin native) will join him at the prescreening cocktail party and in introducing the film. But for those who cannot wait even that long to see whether this marriage triumphs, there is a five-hour triple-feature marathon screening on Sunday.
The Marchesa Hall & Theater, May 19, 11 a.m., and Violet Crown Cinema, May 23 at 6 p.m., austin 2film.org

IRVING 

The Greens
The Byron Nelson Championship, named for the golfer from Waxahachie who in 1945 had arguably the best PGA season ever, looks to be fertile training ground for up-and-coming young players. Guan Tianlang, a fourteen-year-old golfer from China and the youngest person ever to make the halfway cut at the prestigious Masters, has accepted an invitation to Irving, where he will try to become the first male amateur to win a PGA tournament since Phil Mickelson in 1991. But Guan faces tough competition from Jordan Spieth, who was a star during his high school career in Dallas and his college days at the University of Texas. In 2010, when Spieth was only sixteen, he made his PGA Tour debut at the Byron Nelson and tied for sixteenth, a feat that still stands as the best amateur finish in tournament history. Yet crafty veterans like Ángel Cabrera, Padraig Harrington, and Vijay Singh will fight to hold on to this tournament for at least one more year.
TPC Four Seasons, May 17-19, hpbnc.org

SAN ANTONIO 

The Art of Symbiosis
Just as the lines between fact and fiction, good and evil, and black and white can be blurred, so can those between art genres. “Real/Surreal,” an exhibition of paintings, drawings and photographs from the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, shows in part how American hyper-realism, influenced by European surrealism, became its own kind of ism. Pieces by Man Ray, Philip Guston, and Jared French, among others, convey what Rene P. Barilleaux, the McNay Art Museum’s chief curator, described   in an email as  “skillfully crafted realistic images of subjects that are clearly inventions of an artist’s mind.” One of the best examples of this convergence of schools will be on display in Edward Hopper’s painting “Seven A.M.,” a 1948 oil of a small country store.
McNay Art Museum, May 17-19, mcnayart.org

DALLAS

Black Is the New Black
The little black dress (LBD if you’re texting or if your name is Carrie Bradshaw) never goes out of style. In 1926, the designer Coco Chanel popularized the garment and its utilitarianism with a jersey dress that Vogue magazine nicknamed the Ford (as in the mass-produced Ford Model T). Since then, the little black dress has been a staple of every fashion-savvy woman’s wardrobe. The color is flattering, and the look is versatile, as suitable for a funeral as for a night on the town—or, in Audrey Hepburn’s case, breakfast at Tiffany’s. You can see ten modern-day variations of this classic at the fifth annual Little Black Dress Designer Fashion Show, where fashion students and emerging designers from Dallas and Houston will vie for $30,000 in scholarship prize money.
House of Blues, May 22, 6:30 p.m., littleblackdressdesigner.com

AMARILLO

The Out-of-Towners 
“The AMoA Biennial 600: Printmaking,” a juried exhibition of prints submitted by artists living within a 600-mile radius of Amarillo, brings attention to 75 works from some lesser-known but still deserving arts scenes, including Little Rock, Arkansas; Omaha, Nebraska; and Oklahoma City.
Amarillo Museum of Art, May 17-Aug. 11, amarilloart.org

SAN ANTONIO

Military City, U.S.A.
San Antonio’s beauty and brawn will both be on display at the Armed Forces River Parade, a National Armed Forces Day processional of 25 professionally decorated river barges leading the way down the River Walk, with military personnel on board for onlookers to salute.
San Antonio River Walk, May 18, 6 p.m., thesanantonioriver 2walk.com