Weekend Event Planner

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

Appropriately enough, a running theme through this weekend's events in Dallas is politics. With Inauguration Day on Friday, over half of the events on the slate below have an implicit or explicit political bent, with those expressions coming through dance, theater, comedy, and an actual march.

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, January 19

Danielle Georgiou Dance Group presents War Flower
With this new offering, Danielle Georgiou Dance Group investigates the establishment of culture itself. War Flower examines the cyclic and savage laws of time, nature, and ritual. In addition to original text by Danielle Georgiou, the show references political and philosophical texts, as well as political and ritual practices in animal ecosystems. War Flower is presented six times through January 28 at Bath House Cultural Center.

Friday, January 20

WaterTower Theatre presents Silent Sky
WaterTower Theatre presents the regional premiere of Silent Sky, a new play by Lauren Gunderson. The play blends humor and romance in a riveting exploration of the life and career of celebrated astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who fearlessly asserted herself in the male-driven, turn-of-the-century world of science and academia. The play runs through February 12.

Chippendales 2017: Best. Night. Ever. Tour
Some things may come and go, but buff male dancers stripping down to their g-strings for their admirers is something that's almost guaranteed to remain popular. The dancers of the Chippendales Touring Show provide a whirlwind of sexy goodness at House of Blues Dallas, with a lot of pants dropping and handclapping.

Saturday, January 21

2017 Texas Rangers Fan Fest
Spring training is only a month away, so it's time to get excited about the Texas Rangers again. The 2017 Texas Rangers Fan Fest features autograph sessions with current Rangers players and coaches; interactive Q&A sessions; on-field events; pitching, hitting, and fielding clinics; and more. If that's not enough, there's also the Rangers Awards Dinner on Friday night at Gilley's Dallas.

Dallas Women's March
On Saturday, millions are gathering in Washington, D.C., for the Women's March on Washington. In solidarity with that march, thousands more are expected to gather at Dallas City Hall for a so-called "Sister March." The Women’s March is designed to send a message to the world and to the new administration on its first day in office that women's rights are human rights. There is also a planned march in Denton.

USA Film Festival presents 2017 KidFilm Festival
KidFilm, presented by USA Film Festival, is the oldest and largest-attended children’s film festival in the United States, featuring an entertaining, educational, and diverse line-up of new and classic films for both children and adults. The free event, taking place at Angelika Film Center Dallas on both Saturday and Sunday, also features tributes to several prominent children's book authors.

Iliza Shlesinger: The Confirmed Kills Tour
Dallas native Iliza Shlesinger is the only female and the youngest comedian to hold the title of NBC’s Last Comic Standing. In addition to her stand-up work, her new TBS series, Separation Anxiety, premiered in March of 2016. If for some reason you can't get into this concert at Majestic Theatre, you might just see her earlier in the day at the Women's March, which she has pledged to join.

Sunday, January 22

The Dallas Opera presents Michael Fabiano
Michael Fabiano is considered one of the greatest tenors in the world today. In 2014 he was the first singer ever to be awarded the prestigious Beverly Sills Artist Award and the Richard Tucker Award in the same year. This exclusive recital, produced by the Dallas Opera, takes place at Dallas City Performance Hall.

Bill Maher in concert
For more than 20 years, Bill Maher has set the boundaries of where funny, political talk can go on American television — first on Politically Incorrect, then, for the last 13 years, on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. With this concert at the Music Hall at Fair Park taking place just after Inauguration Day, you can expect Maher to have a lot to say about the current state of politics.

Pitcher Cole Hamels and the rest of the Rangers are going to be on hand for Texas Rangers Fan Fest at Globe Life Park in Arlington on January 21.

Photo by Kelly Gavin/Texas Rangers

Pitcher Cole Hamels and the rest of the Rangers are going to be on hand for Texas Rangers Fan Fest at Globe Life Park in Arlington on January 21.

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Movie Review

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first but not by much

Blumhouse

Five Nights at Freddy's 2

Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films likeM3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.

Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.

Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.

It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.

Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.

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Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.

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