Weekend Event Planner

These are the 13 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

There will be lot of different things to do this weekend around Dallas. Choices include a display of historic planes, a college basketball tournament, a visit by a famous musician/filmmaker, new local theater and opera, a renowned magician, an opera star back from the dead, St. Patrick's Day celebrations, a controversial comedian, an iconic rapper, and more.

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, March 14

Frontiers of Flight Museum presents Wings of Freedom Tour
The Collings Foundation’s Wings of Freedom Tour will feature the B-17 Flying Fortress “Nine O Nine,” B-24 Liberator “Witchcraft,” B-25 Mitchell "Tondelayo" Bombers, P-51 Mustang fighter, and Vietnam-era Huey helicopter. This is a rare opportunity to visit, explore, and learn more about these unique and rare treasures of aviation history. The tour will be at Frontiers of Flight Museum through Sunday.

Conference USA Basketball Championships
Conference USA is bringing its premiere basketball event back to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The basketball championships will feature 24 men's and women's basketball teams playing 22 games at the Ford Center at The Star in Frisco through Saturday, with C-USA titles and NCAA automatic bids on the line. Men's No. 1 seed Old Dominion and women's No. 1 seed Rice are the favorites, with UNT only qualifying on the men's side.

USA Film Festival presents True Stories with David Byrne
The USA Film Festival presents 33rd anniversary screenings of True Stories, with director David Byrne in attendance to talk with the audience after the 7 pm screening at Angelika Film Center in Dallas. The Texas cult classic and audio voyage was shot in the Dallas area with a mostly Texas cast and crew. There will be a second screening at 7:30 pm with an introduction by Byrne, but no Q&A.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Mahler’s Titan Symphony
If you've been missing former DSO conductor Jaap van Zweden, the now-conductor laureate returns to town for this concert that will include Schumann’s lush Piano Concerto alongside Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, "Titan.” The concert, which will also feature pianist Louis Lortie, will take place three times through Saturday at the Meyerson Symphony Center.

Theatre Three presents Foxfire
Pensioner Annie Nations has peacefully settled on her mountain farm in Southern Appalachia. But at the approach of a reckless real estate developer who has begun uprooting the neighborhood, Annie is faced with an agonizing decision. Is there a price tag for the Nations’ family memories, and can their deep, tangled roots be replanted without wilting? The humorous and heart-wrenching play will run through April 7.

Eisemann Center presents Callas in Concert
The Eisemann Center for the Performing Arts in Richardson will present the return of the original opera diva, Maria Callas. Accompanied by the Richardson Symphony Orchestra, the concert uses cutting edge technology and extraordinary theatrical stagecraft to bring a hologram version of the famed opera star back on stage 40 years following her passing.

Friday, March 15

Michael Carbonaro Live! Tour
Magician Michael Carbonaro comes to Dallas with his highly-acclaimed national theater tour. On his hit TV series, The Carbonaro Effect, Carbonaro performs inventive tricks on unsuspecting members of the public who are unaware that he is a magician. Jaws drop when he causes a car to disappear from under a security guard’s nose or makes alien crabs transform into kittens in a science lab. He'll do similar illusions for the audience at this event at Majestic Theatre.

Dallas Opera presents La Bohème
Puccini’s timeless La Bohème combines soaring music and heartbreaking drama to show how love affects the lives of a group of friends. As the fragile seamstress Mimi asks the poet Rodolfo to light her candle, they fall head over heels in love with each other. At the same time, Marcello is falling back into the arms of the feisty and flirtatious Musetta. It soon becomes clear that Mimi’s health is failing, and she and Rodolfo must decide if their relationship can survive the inevitable tragedy ahead. The opera will be performed six times through March 31 at Winspear Opera House.

Teatro Dallas presents Fur
Fur is the story of Citrona, a hirsute young woman who is purchased at a sideshow to become the bride of a young man with a fetish for animals in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. This tragi-comic, triangular love story reimagines a beauty and a beast, but with uncompromising results. The production, part of the Latinx Theatre Commons’s El Fuego Production Initiative, will play at Latino Cultural Center through March 30.

Saturday, March 16

Dallas St. Patrick’s Parade & Festival
There are multiple ways you can celebrate St. Patrick's Day on Saturday, starting with the annual parade down Greenville Avenue. The 40th anniversary parade will have all the usual festivities, plus some extra special goings-on. Following the parade, you can continue down Greenville to keep the party going at the Lower Greenville St. Patrick’s Day Block Party or St. Patrick’s Day Celebration at the Truck Yard.

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 from 1993-2002, and for the last 15 years on HBO’s Real Time, Maher’s combination of unflinching honesty and big laughs have garnered him 38 Emmy nominations. He'll bring his outrageous style to The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory in Irving.

Ice Cube in concert with Paul Wall
There are few hip hop musicians who have made themselves into more of a mogul than Ice Cube. He has parlayed his early fame with N.W.A. and as a solo act into a multi-hyphenate career, one which has included stints in movies, television shows, and as the co-founder of the BIG3 basketball league. He'll perform at South Side Ballroom in support of his 2018 album, Everythang's Corrupt, joined by opening act Paul Wall.

Sunday, March 17

Klyde Warren Park presents Dallas Symphony Orchestra Day
Klyde Warren Park will present a free day of music and family fun provided by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Musicians of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra will perform on the stage of the Muse Family Performance Pavilion throughout the day in a variety of styles, showing off the range of the city’s orchestra. DSO staff will be on hand with prizes and games for the whole family, as well as an instrument petting zoo.

The Dallas St. Patrick’s Parade & Festival will take place on March 16.

Greenville Ave St. Patrick's Day parade 2013

Photo by Jerry McClure

The Dallas St. Patrick’s Parade & Festival will take place on March 16.

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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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