Weekend Event Planner

A giant eyeball and unforgettable theater top best weekend events in Dallas

After a slow start, things are starting to rev back up, events-wise. This weekend's offerings include visits by a couple of bold names, the first Dallas Theater Center production of the year, an art extravaganza and a preview screening of a highly anticipated movie.

Below are your 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, January 16

Authors Live!: Jane Pauley
Jane Pauley has been mostly out of the broadcasting game since 2004, but her history on the Today show and on Dateline NBC still makes her one of the more recognizable journalists out there. Pauley appears at Highland Park United Methodist Church in support of her new book, Your Life Calling: Reimagining the Rest of Your Life. The forum is free for all, but there is also a pre-forum reception for $30, which includes a copy of her book.

Dallas Theater Center presents Oedipus El Rey
The 2013-2014 Dallas Theater Center season has already been a smashing success, and now the company kicks off 2014 with another hotly anticipated production, Oedipus El Rey. The show, adapted by playwright Luis Alfaro, takes the story out of Greek mythology and puts it in the barrios of Los Angeles, where a young Chicano rises to power among gangs. The play runs through March 2 in the Studio Theatre at Wyly Theatre.

Rick Springfield in concert
It's barely been four months since the last time Rick Springfield graced a Dallas stage, so we really haven't had much time to miss him. But this concert, the second of two performances in the main space at Wyly Theatre, promises something different, with some storytelling, songs he's never played live and a Q&A session with KLUV's Jody Dean. But don't fret: He's virtually guaranteed to still play "Jessie's Girl" at some point.

Friday, January 17

Uptown Players presents Broadway Our Way 2014
The traditional kickoff to any Uptown Players season, Broadway Our Way is a fundraiser that delivers Uptown's patented skewed take on recent and classic Broadway musicals, including Motown the Musical, Newsies, My Fair Lady and West Side Story. The musical plays at Kalita Humphreys Theater through January 26.

TITAS presents Pilobolus
Dance is an art form that's not appreciated often enough, but you can change that by going to see the wondrous Pilobolus. Using their bodies as props, the dancers' moves appear to be more illusions than anything else. You can see the magic for yourself when they perform Friday and Saturday night at Winspear Opera House.

Saturday, January 18

Dinosaur Zoo Live
Dinosaur Zoo Live is a theatrical experience that's both entertaining and educational at the same time. The show features large-scale dinosaur puppets that are used to re-create prehistoric scenes with insects and mammals, giving children and adults alike an insight into what life was like millions of years ago. The production plays five different times on Saturday and Sunday at Majestic Theatre.

2014 Artopia
Presented by the Dallas Observer, Artopia is a celebration of local art and culture that promises sensory overload. That's because the event, taking place at Three Three Three First Avenue, also incorporates food, drink, music, fashion, performing arts, visual arts and more into one big feast that'll more than fill your arts quota for the month.

Sunday, January 19

Kimbell Art Museum presents The Monuments Men screening
A movie about saving art is right up any art museum's alley, but the story behind The Monuments Men is especially close to the heart of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, as several pieces recovered by the group in the movie now reside there. These preview screenings are for Kimbell members only, but because this is an Oscar-type movie starring George Clooney and Matt Damon, among others, it just might be worth becoming a member for the privilege.

Nasher Sculpture Center presents 360: Tony Tasset
If you, like many others, have been ~~freaked out by~~ curious about the gigantic eyeball sculpture that currently resides across the street from The Joule, you can get answers from artist Tony Tasset by attending this free forum (RSVP required) at The Joule, presented by Nasher Sculpture Center.

Dinosaur Zoo Live puts on five shows over two days on January 18 and 19 at Majestic Theatre.

Photo courtesy of Dinosaur Zoo Live

Dinosaur Zoo Live puts on five shows over two days on January 18 and 19 at Majestic Theatre.

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Movie Review

War is hell takes on new meaning in intensely personal film Warfare

Photo courtesy of A24

Cast of Warfare

At this point in movie history, there are precious few ways to make a war film feel original. Every major American war, including the most recent ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been covered, and the “war is hell” idea has been featured in too many films to count. So for a film like the new Warfare to stand out, it needs to do something that other war films have not.

To say that it accomplishes that goal is an understatement. Set in Iraq in 2006, it follows a platoon of soldiers tasked with helping to gain control of the city of Ramadi, a hotbed of activity in the war at that time. But this is not a story of good triumphing over evil, nor one that tries to examine exactly what the U.S. military was trying to accomplish in the war. Instead, it’s just a story of a group of young men trying to do the job they’re asked to do, and what happens to them during that mission.

It presents as fact, with no judgment either way, that one squad of the platoon overtakes the home of two Iraqi families as part of the mission. An ensuing firefight pins the soldiers down with almost no way to escape, and subsequent rescue attempts by other squads result in multiple casualties. The bulk of the film focuses on how the shell-shocked and injured soldiers react to the situation in which they find themselves.

Written and directed by Alex Garland (Civil War) and Ray Mendoza, the film is based on the memories of Mendoza and his fellow soldiers of this exact situation they experienced. As such, the film does not attempt to add extra drama or even emphasize one character over another. In fact, the first 30-40 minutes of the film are relatively boring, as the squad relays information about their position to other, unseen people.

The men in the platoon are not exactly interchangeable with each other, but the way the film is structured, they’re essentially equals. It’s easy to tell who the leaders are, but those giving orders are not treated as more important to the film than those carrying them out. This is especially true when things go to hell, as each person goes from trying to fight to trying to survive, with their training coming into play in different ways.

The situation depicted in the film is somewhat mundane - it’s not some big battle or a turning point in the war - but the intensity with which Garland and Mendoza stage it makes it enormously impactful. They put the audience right in the thick of the carnage, and the horrific injuries inflicted on some of the men, as well as the seemingly never-ending screams of pain emanating from them, can be difficult to take.

The cast features a few actors who are starting to make names for themselves (Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, Noah Centineo, Charles Melton, Michael Gandolfini), others who’ve had smaller impacts (D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai, Cosmo Jarvis, Evan Holtzman), and plenty of others who have yet to get their big breaks. Each of them does their job extremely well, which in this case means that they complement each other’s performances, with none of them overshadowing the others.

Warfare is not an overtly political film, and yet the politics of war are inextricable from the story it tells. Neither anti-war nor pro-war, it simply lays out the facts of one individual mission in a larger conflict, and each viewer will likely take away something different from the experience of watching it.

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Warfare is now playing in theaters.

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