Weekend Event Planner

These are the 12 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

It's another eclectic weekend event-wise in Dallas, as a confluence of big holidays — spring break, St. Patrick's Day, and Easter — combine to create a lot of fun activities. Among the happenings are a block party downtown, traditional St. Patty's Day fun all along Greenville Avenue, two big music festivals, and much more.

Below are the best options for your precious free time Thursday through Sunday. Don't like what you see? Lucky for you, we have a much longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, March 17

Dallas Summer Musicals presents The Little Mermaid
Two years after its last visit, The Little Mermaid returns to the Music Hall at Fair Park courtesy of Dallas Summer Musicals. The story is familiar if you know and love the Disney movie, but it includes many more songs to make it into a proper Broadway musical. The production runs through March 27.

An Evening with Elayne Boosler
Comedian/writer/animal activist Elayne Boosler is best known for her thoughtful and feisty political humor, and her love of baseball and animals, all of which share a big part of her act. Boosler is most familiar to those who came of age in the 1980s, but funny knows no age limit, as she demonstrates at The Kessler.

Friday, March 18

Dallas Holocaust Museum presents Conversations with Anne
In collaboration with the Anne Frank Center USA, the Dallas Holocaust Museum presents four performances of Conversations with Anne, a 40-minute play. The play, showing on Friday and Saturday, features a solo actor in the role of Anne Frank. The monologue is followed by a Q&A session where kids in the audience can ask Anne questions about her life before the war and her experiences while in hiding.

Dallas Arts District Spring Break Block Party
The third Friday in March lines up with spring break for a lot of people, so why not have a block party? Running from 6 pm to midnight, the Dallas Arts District's three big museums — Dallas Museum of Art, Nasher Sculpture Center, and Crow Collection of Asian Art — each present special events, and Flora and Harwood streets are lined with food trucks and other activities.

Spillover Music Fest
The ninth annual Spillover Music Fest, taking advantage of bands playing at SXSW, has expanded to three days at three separate locations in Deep Ellum. Taking place through Sunday at Three Links, Trees, and Club Dada, the festival features performances from bands like Anamanaguchi, The Orwells, Le Butcherettes, Nothing, Broncho, and more.

Heritage Farmstead Museum presents Adults-Only Night Easter Egg Hunt
Plano's Heritage Farmstead Museum hosts its third annual adults-only night Easter egg hunt event, which allows adults to hunt for the more than 2,000 prize-filled eggs hidden throughout the farmstead’s property. Prizes include Texas Rangers tickets, Hawaiian Falls tickets, and a variety of other coupons and gift cards. Online pre-registration is required.

Saturday, March 19

St. Patrick's Day events
It will be officially two days past St. Patrick's Day on Saturday, but who cares when you have this much fun stuff to do? All you need to do is roam Greenville Avenue, starting with the annual Dallas St. Patrick’s Parade and Festival. Then enjoy a concert by Third Eye Blind at Energy Square before heading down to Lower Greenville for its day-long block party.

So What? Texas Music Festival
The So What? Texas Music Festival, formerly known as South by So What, features well over 100 bands on multiple stages over the course of two days at QuikTrip Park in Grand Prairie. Headliners include New Found Glory, Bayside, Neck Deep, State Champs, Real Friends, Underoath, and Devil Wears Prada.

2016 Mudbug Bash
The annual Mudbug Bash at Main Street Garden features 4,000 pounds of crawfish, live music, games, beer, specialty drinks, and fun for the whole family, including four-legged members. Also expect live music from Steve ‘N’ Seagulls, Travis Matte & The Kingpins, and Dallas favorites Calvin Sexton & The Inner City All-Stars.

Arts & Letters Live: Rainn Wilson — Quirks, Comedy & Creativity
For nine seasons, Rainn Wilson built his career playing obnoxious Dwight Schrute, everyone’s favorite work nemesis, on the hit television series The Office. Now he’s ready to explain his socially awkward climb to stardom in his memoir, The Bassoon King: My Life in Art, Faith, and Idiocy. Wilson talks about the book at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Sunday, March 20

Knife at Highland Dallas presents Sunday Cinema Series: Wes Anderson WesFest
Chef John Tesar's restaurant Knife kicks off a new series of special movie screenings with Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket. Guests enjoy themed gourmet bites by Tesar and craft beer from Four Corners Brewing Company. Other films to come in the series include Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Moonrise Kingdom, and The Grand Budapest Hotel.

AT&T Performing Arts Center presents An Evening with Sophia Loren
Synonymous with grace, beauty, and artistry, Oscar-winning actress Sophia Loren participates in an intimate onstage conversation and Q&A at Winspear Opera House. Loren's career spans over five decades, and she's earned a remarkable array of notable accolades, including the first Academy Award presented for a foreign-language role for her work in Two Women.

You can celebrate St. Patrick's Day up and down Greenville Avenue on March 19.

Greenville Avenue St. Patrick's Day Parade in Dallas

Photo by Jerry McClure

You can celebrate St. Patrick's Day up and down Greenville Avenue on March 19.

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Movie Review

Andrew Garfield leads peasant rebellion in medieval film The Uprising

Photo by Betina La Plante/Focus Features

Andrew Garfield in The Uprising.

Writer/director Paul Greengrass made his name with a cinéma vérité style of filmmaking that brought immediacy and depth to three Jason Bourne films, United 93, Captain Phillips, and more. In The Uprising, he uses those skills to tell the story of the so-called Peasants’ Revolt in 14th century England.

Greengrass wastes no time starting the main plot as Ploughman (Andrew Garfield) and his fellow villagers object to onerous taxes put on them by the country’s nobility, led by the young King Richard II (Woody Norman), to fund an ongoing war. Ploughman initiates a violent response over the tone-deaf — and unseemly — way the king’s guard go about their business, and the rebellion soon starts to spread across the countryside, with the citizens looking for a degree of autonomy.

The ever-expanding group makes their way toward London to try to make their case to the king himself. Meanwhile, the king’s top advisors, including Archbishop Sudbury (Stephen Dillane) and Treasurer Hales (Tom Hollander), try to usurp power from the inexperienced monarch even as the king’s mother (Katherine Waterston) tries to get him to be more assertive.

The history of the English monarchy is long and lurid, as Shakespeare detailed in multiple plays, including Richard II. Though the events in the film took place almost 650 years ago, it’s easy to see parallels between what the peasants were fighting for and modern-day politics. Greengrass’ storytelling intent is solid, and the righteous anger the citizens feel is initially relatable and palpable.

But the populism theme of the story soon gets bogged down in drudgery and minutiae that is difficult to understand, especially when the details are lost in the thick regional English accents. The leaders of the rebels — including John Ball (Jamie Bell), Wat Tyler (Cosmo Jarvis), and Alyce (Thomasin McKenzie) — are shown doing a lot of planning, but the strong feelings they have about their quest don’t come across well, leaving the audience as passive observers.

When there is action, Greengrass and his team employ a frenetic style that is not great for comprehension. While the gist of what is happening and what side is winning is legible, individual moments go by so quickly so as to be nearly meaningless. Save for Ploughman, any connection that has been made with various characters proves futile, as Greengrass doesn’t seem to have any time for emotion. Scenes that should feel thrilling or heartbreaking instead come off as empty.

Garfield is a two-time Oscar nominee who has done great work across multiple genres. He’s fine in this role, but whether it’s the story, the filmmaking, or something else, he’s not as captivating as usual. The same goes for other strong actors like Bell, McKenzie, Dillane, Hollander, and Waterston, who each seem to be giving their all to their performances but are somehow muted in the process.

Done right, The Uprising could have been a rip-roaring account of people standing up against their oppressors. What Greengrass has made, though, is a film that can’t translate its medieval story for a modern audience and concentrates too much on unexciting elements and too little on thrilling ones.

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The Uprising is now playing in theaters.

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