Celebrate 2017

These are the best ways to party on New Year's Eve in Dallas-Fort Worth

Whether you had a good or bad year in 2016, the dawn of 2017 brings the promise of a fresh start. End the year with a bang by taking in one of the best New Year's Eve events in Dallas-Fort Worth— presented in alphabetical order — most of which encompass more than just drinking, dancing, and counting down until midnight.

AT&T Performing Arts Center presents Reliant Lights Your Holidays
After being postponed due to weather, Reliant Lights Your Holidays is now taking place on New Year's Eve. AT&T Performing Arts Center's iconic venues and trees will be illuminated by hundreds of thousands of dazzling LED lights, and visitors can also enjoy a gigantic New Year's Eve fireworks show; a holiday concert featuring A.B. Quintanilla y Elektro Kumbia; a performance by the cast of The Book of Mormon; and community performances from South Grand Prairie High School Ballet Folklorico, the Tap Dazzlers, and Studio One Dance Center's Elite Competition Team.

Dallas NYE Ball
Organizers of the seventh annual Dallas NYE Ball expect a big crowd, so they've divided the party into two levels at Crowne Plaza. The Las Vegas Room in the grand ballroom hosts a massive dance floor where partygoers can enjoy a mix of pop, hip-hop, and electronic music; multiple bars; and the annual Beer Pong Tournament, among other things. The Times Square room in the upstairs ballroom offers a more intimate setting, with DJs spinning a mix of the best songs from the '80s, '90s, and '00s.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents New Year's Eve Celebration
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra rings in the New Year with your favorite Strauss waltzes and Viennese-inspired revelry, led by conductor Andrew Grams. The majesty of Meyerson Symphony Center and a free champagne toast at intermission ensure that the annual concert is one of the best places to be for New Year's Eve.

Fort Worth Symphony presents New Year's Eve Celebration
A strike by the musicians of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra wiped out their entire fall schedule, but they are putting that in the past by returning for their annual New Year's Eve concert. Ring in 2017 at Bass Performance Hall with a performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, a few other surprises, and a balloon drop at midnight set to "Auld Lang Syne."

Lights All Night
Taking place December 30 and 31, the two-day Lights All Night festival draws tens of thousands for the ultimate party experience. For its seventh annual celebration and second turn at Dallas Market Hall, Lights All Night features headliners deadmau5, Above & Beyond, Zedd, A$AP Ferg, Nero, RL Grime, and Tchami, among many other acts.

Marvelous Nerd Year's Eve
The inaugural Marvelous Nerd Year's Eve is a new kind of New Year's celebration: a four-day geek expo at Sheraton Dallas featuring over 30 celebrity guests, artists, and authors. Celebrities include Stan Lee, Michael Rooker, Nichelle Nichols, Jason Mewes, Brian O'Halloran, Sean Gunn, Robert Picardo, Maurice LaMarche, Glenn Morshower, and more. The event, taking place December 29-January 1, also includes an attempt to break the world record for largest gathering of people dressed as comic book characters.

New Year's Eve at Billy Bob's Texas: Eli Young Band with Green River Ordinance
The Eli Young Band, which started in Denton before heading to Nashville, returns to their roots with this special New Year's Eve concert at Billy Bob's. The group hit it big with their 2014 album, 10,000 Towns, and they're getting ready to release their sixth album in 2017. They're joined by another hometown band, Green River Ordinance.

Reunion Tower presents New Year's Eve Fireworks
You can't actually go to or around Reunion Tower to watch its fireworks, unless you're attending Cloud Nine's masquerade-themed party, but the best views are from a distance anyway. There's a watch party at the Old Red Museum, as well as the New Year No Rules party at W Dallas Victory. Or just find a nice parking spot within sight of the tower, and enjoy the show at midnight.

The Rustic presents NYE Bash
Singer Charley Crockett headlines The Rustic's New Year’s Eve Bash. Crockett, who has a unique sound blending a rich and diverse heritage of both new and traditional music, is joined by The Voice's Dana Harper and Medicine Man. Tickets to the event are free, but special tickets that include complimentary appetizers and a reserved seat on The Rustic’s outdoor patio are being given away by KXT 91.7.

South Side Ballroom '80s NYE Bash
We may be going into 2017, but you can flashback to the 1980s at South Side Ballroom this NYE. The concert features a bunch of '80s tribute bands, including Strangelove, a Depeche Mode tribute; The Cured, a Cure tribute; Panic, a tribute to The Smiths and Morrissey; Electric Duke, a tribute to David Bowie; and DJ PFM spinning '80s before and between sets.

Reunion Tower is launching fireworks at midnight to welcome the beginning of 2017.

Photo courtesy of Reunion Tower

Reunion Tower is launching fireworks at midnight to welcome the beginning of 2017.

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Movie Review

Film sequel Avatar: Fire and Ash is a technical and visual feast

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Oona Chaplin in Avatar: Fire and Ash.

For a series whose first two films made over $5 billion combined worldwide, Avatar has a curious lack of widespread cultural impact. The films seem to exist in a sort of vacuum, popping up for their run in theaters and then almost as quickly disappearing from the larger movie landscape. The third of five planned movies, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is finally being released three years after its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water.

The new film finds the main duo, human-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his native Na’vi wife, Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), still living with the water-loving Metkayina clan led by Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis). While Jake and Neytiri still play a big part, the focus shifts significantly to their two surviving children, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as two they’ve essentially adopted, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Spider (Jack Champion).

Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who lives on in a fabricated Na’vi body, is still looking for revenge on Jake, and he finds help in the form of the Mangkwan Clan (aka the Ash People), led by Varang (Oona Chaplin). Quaritch’s access to human weapons and the Mangkwan’s desire for more power on the moon known as Pandora make them a nice match, and they team up to try to dominate the other tribes.

Aside from the story, the main point of making the films for writer/director James Cameron is showing off his considerable technical filmmaking prowess, and that is on full display right from the start. The characters zoom around both the air and sea on various creatures with which they’ve bonded, providing Cameron and his team with plenty of opportunities to put the audience right there with them. Cameron’s preferred viewing method of 3D makes the experience even more immersive, even if the high frame rate he uses makes some scenes look too realistic for their own good.

The story, as it has been in the first two films, is a mixed bag. Cameron and co-writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver start off well, having Jake, Neytiri, and their kids continue mourning the death of Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in the previous film. The struggle for power provides an interesting setup, but Cameron and his team seem to drag out the conflict for much too long. This is the longest Avatar film yet, and you really start to feel it in the back half as the filmmakers add on a bunch of unnecessary elements.

Worse than the elongated story, though, is the hackneyed dialogue that Cameron, Jaffa, and Silver have come up with. Almost every main character is forced to spout lines that diminish the importance of the events around them. The writers seemingly couldn’t resist trying to throw in jokes despite them clashing with the tone of the scenes in which they’re said. Combined with the somewhat goofy nature of the Na’vi themselves (not to mention talking whales), the eye-rolling words detract from any excitement or emotion the story builds up.

A pre-movie behind-the-scenes short film shows how the actors act out every scene in performance capture suits, lending an authenticity to their performances. Still, some performers are better than others, with Saldaña, Worthington, and Lang standing out. It’s more than a little weird having Weaver play a 14-year-old girl, but it works relatively well. Those who actually get to show their real faces are collectively fine, but none of them elevate the film overall.

There are undoubtedly some Avatar superfans for which Fire and Ash will move the larger story forward in significant ways. For anyone else, though, the film is a demonstration of both the good and bad sides of Cameron. As he’s proven for 40 years, his visuals are (almost) beyond reproach, but the lack of a story that sticks with you long after you’ve left the theater keeps the film from being truly memorable.

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Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters on December 19.

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