Weekend Event Planner

These are the 9 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

This weekend around Dallas features a nice array of events, including a visit from a multi-hyphenate author, the start of a fun fundraiser, three big-name concerts, laughs with a well-known comedian, closing day for a big art exhibition, and the annual celebration of a French holiday in Oak Cliff.

Below are the best ways to spend your free time this weekend. Want more options? Lucky for you, we have a much longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, July 11

DMA Arts & Letters Live: Elaine Welteroth
Elaine Welteroth is an award-winning journalist, author, judge on the new Project Runway, and the former editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue. She comes to Dallas to talk about her new memoir, More Than Enough, which unpacks the lessons she learned about race, identity, and success through her own journey. The event will take place at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Friday, July 12

Dallas CASA presents Parade of Playhouses
The 24th annual Dallas CASA Parade of Playhouses will feature 17 amazing children’s playhouses, including adorable campers, a food truck, an Apollo 11 space capsule, sweet cottages, and a lemonade stand. During the 17-day event, going on through July 28, raffle tickets for a chance to win a playhouse are sold online and at ticket tables throughout NorthPark Center. All proceeds benefit the abused children served by Dallas CASA.

Christopher Titus: Stories I Shouldn't Tell
Employing what he’s labeled "hard funny," Christopher Titus, star and creator of the Fox show, Titus, has released eight 90-minute albums in as many years. Known for leaving no stone unturned, especially within his own life and family, Titus takes his audience on a 90-minute ride that will leave them exhausted from laughter. He'll perform a one-night-only stand-up set at Texas Theatre.

The Head and The Heart in concert
Indie rock band The Head and The Heart may not be that well known among mainstream music fans, but they've carved out a nice niche in their chosen lane. They've scored three No. 1 hits on the Adult Alternative charts, including their most recent single, "Missed Connection," off their new album, Living Mirage. They'll play at The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory in Irving with opening act Hippo Campus.

Saturday, July 13

Michael McDonald & Chaka Khan in concert
Singer/songwriter Michael McDonald has had quite the career, starting as a member of both Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers before moving on to a highly successful solo career. One of the progenitors of the "yacht rock" genre, he's known for hits like "I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near)" and "Sweet Freedom." He'll play at The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory with Chaka Khan.

Sunday, July 14

Dallas Museum of Art presents "Jonas Wood" closing day
The Dallas Museum of Art will bring to a close the first major solo museum exhibition of work by American painter Jonas Wood. Bringing together approximately 35 works across 13 years of Wood’s career, the exhibition traces the artist’s fascination with psychology, memory, and the self to shed light on a practice that is both deeply personal and universal.

Bastille on Bishop
Bastille on Bishop is an annual festival in the heart of the Bishop Arts District that celebrates Oak Cliff's unique French roots. Visitors can don their best berets and join friends for a little champagne and dancing in the streets. To consume alcoholic beverages at the festival, guests must have one of the event wine glasses, which come with two tokens, which can be redeemed for either beverages or food.

Khalid in concert with Clairo
In just two albums, R&B singer Khalid has vaulted himself to the top of the genre, thanks to hits like "Location," "Love Lies," and "Talk," many of which have been collaborations with other current top artists. His new album, Free Spirit, went straight to No. 1 and is an early contender for album of the year. He'll perform at American Airlines Center with opening act Clairo.

Rock The Yacht featuring Ambrosia, Stephen Bishop, and more
In what can't be a coincidence, the night after The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory welcomes the Yacht Rock king, they'll play host to a bunch of other singers who know a thing or two about the genre. Among the performers will be Ambrosia, Stephen Bishop, Player lead singer Peter Beckett, John Ford Coley, Albert Hammond, and Looking Glass.

Bastille on Bishop will take place in the Bishop Arts District on July 14.

Photo by Elliott Munoz

Bastille on Bishop will take place in the Bishop Arts District on July 14.

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Movie Review

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma gives horror a surreal twist

Photo courtesy of MUBI

Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

The horror genre really ramped up in the 1970s and ‘80s, bringing with it a new subgenre - the slasher - that gave audiences new visuals of gore, but also a reliance on sexism and homophobia that would come to define the era. The new film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma wrestles with that legacy in ways that are funny, thought-provoking, and downright strange.

Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is a queer filmmaker who has been hired to reboot the moldy IP that is the Camp Miasma franchise, one that was fresh in the 1970s but which numerous shlocky sequels have rendered irrelevant. In an attempt to get to know the property better, Kris has scored a meeting with the reclusive Billy (Gillian Anderson), the star of the original film who has shunned the public eye for decades.

Turns out that Billy lives deep in the woods at Camp Rivoli, which served as the location for the first film. As Kris tries to get to know Billy and convince her to be a part of the new film, she starts to fall under Billy’s spell and the lore of the franchise as a whole. That includes believing that the movie’s villain, Little Death - a transgender person who has an air conditioning vent as a head/mask - may not just be a character created for the movies.

Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow), the film at first feels like it’s going to go the straight-up comedy route, with comic explosions of blood, a strange fascination with candy brands, and a production design that does nothing to hide that the two main actors are on a movie set with painted backdrops. This is backed up by Kris’ phone conversations with her girlfriend, Mari (Jasmine Savoy Brown) and her agent (Sarah Sherman), as well as numerous other details.

But the film starts to go down the surreal route the longer Kris stays at the camp with Billy, especially when they sit down to watch the original Camp Miasma. An extended sequence shows a good amount of that film-within-the-film, demonstrating why Kris and Billy have a love/hate relationship with the property. For Kris, though, the lines between the film and the real world start to blur, and Schoenbrun uses a variety of out-there elements to drive the point home.

The final act of the film can barely be described as Kris goes deeper down the rabbit hole, with Schoenbrun using her film to comment on the horror genre as a whole, its treatment of women and LGBT people, the movie industry, and more. All the while the “camp” of Camp Miasma maintains a presence, with candy wrappers showing up everywhere and the tongue-in-cheek references to Little Death (the French term La petite mort, which means “the little death,” is a euphemism for orgasm).

Einbinder, an Emmy winner for Hacks, is the perfect person to inhabit her role. Her established real-life and fictional personas color everything she does in the film, with her enthusiasm and curiosity shining through. Anderson leans heavily into another reference - Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard - to create a character that is as mysterious as she is alluring. Supporting actors like Brown, Sherman, Patrick Fischler, Dylan Baker, and Eva Victor keep the movie at the right pitch all the way through.

While other films have made fun of horror movie tropes before, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma finds a wholly unique way of doing so. It’s a funny and daring trip into the psyches of two women who may be victims of their own obsessions, and of the movies that made them that way.

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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is now playing in select theaters

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