Weekend Event Planner

Jeff Bridges and Dallas Art Fair headline this weekend's best events

The Final Four may have left North Texas, but many of the venues in town have simply reloaded to bring you more big events. Among the best ones are two more big arts festivals, opera on a big stage, and a movie star-turned-musician playing in one of the most intimate places in town.

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, April 10

2014 Main St. Fort Worth Arts Festival
Deep Ellum hosted its arts festival last weekend, and now downtown Fort Worth has its turn to showcase some of the best art and music the area has to offer. Taking place Thursday through Sunday, the free festival features 213 hand-picked artists lining Main Street and three different performance stages, with headliners like The Mavericks and Bob Schneider.

Performing Arts Fort Worth presents Stomp
Stomp, which originally started in England, has been entertaining audiences with its unique musicality for almost 25 years. Utilizing trash cans, brooms, hubcaps and multiple other non-traditional percussion instruments, the performance is part concert, part theater and all fun. The show runs at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth through Sunday.

Ben Folds in concert with Dallas POPS
Ben Folds has been putting out music since 1995, which pretty much gives him carte blanche to do whatever he wants. For his latest solo tour, titled the Ben Folds Orchestra Experience, he's teaming up with orchestras across the country — in this case, the Dallas POPS — to play a piano concerto he composed, as well as a few of his hit songs. The performance takes place at Annette Strauss Square at the AT&T Performing Arts Center.

Friday, April 11

2014 Dallas Art Fair
There are a lot of events going on for Dallas Arts Week, but the Dallas Arts Fair is definitely the headliner. Taking place Friday through Sunday at Fashion Industry Gallery, the fair features more than 90 art dealers and galleries showing off art works in every medium imaginable, all of which are for sale. There is also a preview gala on Thursday night if you want to get in on the action early.

Texas Rangers Baseball Foundation presents Evening with a Legend: Michael Young
The Texas Rangers are off to slow start to the 2014 season, mostly thanks to some key injuries. But they take some time out just prior to the start of their series against Houston Astros to honor one of their all-time greats, Michael Young, who retired as a Ranger back in January. The event at Globe Life Park in Arlington also includes tickets to that night's game.

Dallas Opera presents The Barber of Seville simulcast
The Dallas Opera celebrates the end of its 2013-2014 season with what has become an annual occurrence: a free simulcast at AT&T Stadium. The performance of The Barber of Seville is broadcast on the Jumbotron at Jerry World, along with a pre-show screening of the classic Bugs Bunny cartoon The Rabbit of Seville.

Saturday, April 12

TITAS presents Motionhouse: Scattered
Some dance troupes amaze you simply through their movements, but Motionhouse goes above and beyond that. Using a special projection technology, the dancers move in, on and through images projected on the stage. The blend of imagery and theatricality is like nothing you've ever seen. They perform on Saturday and Sunday at Dallas City Performance Hall.

WaterTower Theatre presents Spunk
Liz Mikel and Tiffany Hobbs were both part of the stellar one-two punch of Raisin in the Sun and Clybourne Park that Dallas Theater Center put on in 2013, and the two are teaming up again for WaterTower Theatre's Spunk. The play is a series of vignettes of African-American life in the first half of the 20th century. It plays at Addison Conference Centre through May 4.

Sunday, April 13

2014 Dallas International Film Festival: The Outsiders
The Dallas International Film Festival comes to a close on Sunday, and although it is a day for honoring the best of the festival, it's this screening of The Outsiders at Texas Theatre that caught our eye. The soon-to-be famous cast brought S.E. Hinton's book to life, which is appropriate because the screening is part of the Big D Reads program going on all month. If you'd rather not pay to see the movie, Main Street Garden also shows it for free on Friday night.

Jeff Bridges & The Abiders in concert with Somebody's Darling
We've long known that the Granada Theater is one of the best live music venues in Dallas, and it's starting to attract bigger and bigger names. Jeff Bridges has been making music for a long time — he put out an album in 2000 — but it was his Oscar-winning role in Crazy Heart that put his musicianship to the forefront. He and his band, the fantastically-named The Abiders, play on Sunday night, with locals Somebody's Darling as opening act.

The Outsiders plays at Texas Theatre on April 13 as part of the Dallas International Film Festival. It also screens for free on April 11 at Main Street Garden.

Photo courtesy of Dallas International Film Festival

The Outsiders plays at Texas Theatre on April 13 as part of the Dallas International Film Festival. It also screens for free on April 11 at Main Street Garden.

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Movie Review

Chris Hemsworth tries to steal diamonds and hearts in Crime 101

Photo courtesy of Amazon Content Services

Chris Hemsworth in Crime 101.

The career of actor Chris Hemsworth is a curious one, as it feels like he’s a huge star (mostly from playing Thor in Marvel movies) and not at the same time, with most of the non-MCU movies featuring him in a lead role failing to become big successes. But he still has a certain presence about him, which is why he’s being given another chance to prove his star power in the new thriller, Crime 101.

Hemsworth plays Davis, a talented thief who knows how to get what he wants without resorting to violence. When a job early in the movie turns slightly sideways, it makes him think twice about working with his handler (Nick Nolte), who seems to prefer someone with a stronger touch, like the up-and-coming Ormon (Barry Keoghan).

Davis is the main character, but two others who come into his orbit get their own subplots. Lou (Mark Ruffalo) is a slightly schlubby LAPD detective who’s convinced he knows the pattern of an unknown thief that likes to hit places close to Highway 101. Sharon (Halle Berry) works for a high-end insurance agency known for working with ultra-wealthy clients, the types who might be a great target for a thief like Davis.

Written and directed by Bart Layton, the film has a decent propulsion to it that comes with most crime thrillers. Davis and Ormon represent the yin and the yang of criminal approaches, and and it’s interesting to see the juxtaposition between the two as their simmering rivalry heats up over the course of the film. When the film commits to actually showing its crimes, it has an excitement that’s worth watching.

Unfortunately, Layton displays a real lack of focus, taking the audience into subplots with each of the three main characters that prove unnecessarily distracting. Lou’s marriage problems may explain his disheveled appearance, but there’s no need to see him deal with them with wife Angie (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Sharon’s troubles with her male-dominated company prove slightly pivotal, but still don’t merit the time put into exploring them.

The most baffling subplot is Davis pursuing a relationship with Maya (Monica Barbaro), a woman he randomly meets. At different points in the movie, including many of his interactions with Maya, Davis seems like the most uncomfortable, antisocial person in the world. And yet he somehow morphs into a suave smooth-talker who’s able to convince anyone to do what he wants at other key points, making it unclear exactly what kind of person he really is.

Hemsworth does relatively well in the lead role, but he’s still missing that certain something to make his character, and therefore the movie, truly compelling. The rest of the cast is fine, too, but each of them seem to be putting in just the minimal amount of effort to make the film watchable. Ruffalo and Barbaro come off the best, but with the talent in the cast (11 Oscar nominations and one win), they could have been used better.

Crime 101 has most of the ingredients to be another great entry in the genre, and it succeeds when it actually decides to deliver on its promise. But too much of the film is spent on things that have no real bearing on plot or character development, leaving the movie in the middle of the pack.

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Crime 101 is now playing in the theaters.

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