Weekend Event Planner

These are the 10 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

You'd better hope you didn't plan to go out of town for Memorial Day weekend, because it is absolutely packed with big events. Among your choices will be a social media star, a Broadway musical tour, new local theater, the finale of a classical music festival, three concerts featuring big name performers, and a great way to honor those who have sacrificed for our country.

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, May 24

Jake Paul and Team 10 in concert
Social media entrepreneur and influencer Jake Paul, who has just north of 15 million subscribers for his YouTube channel, will bring his debut Team 10 Tour to the Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory in Irving. The outing will feature live musical performances, exclusive merchandise, audience participation, special guests, games, and challenges.

AT&T Performing Arts Center Broadway Series: Jersey Boys
One of the most popular jukebox musicals of all time, Jersey Boys returns to Dallas, playing at Winspear Opera House through Sunday. The story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons tells how a group of blue-collar boys from the wrong side of the tracks became one of the biggest American pop music sensations of all time. The show features all their hits including “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Oh What A Night,” “Walk Like A Man,” “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” and “Working My Way Back To You.”

Theatre Three presents Self-Injurious Behavior
For anyone who has cared for a child with ASD, it can be all-consuming and exhausting. In this very personal account of a woman’s struggle to raise her autistic son, we are reminded that life never turns out the way you plan it. Through every effort to do what is best for her son, she discovers that loss, sacrifice, and little leaps of faith can lead to the life that maybe you didn’t plan — but the life you love. The play will run in the Theatre Too space at Theatre Three through June 10.

Final days of SOLUNA Festival
The SOLUNA Festival will come to a close with three final events. The highlight will be Beethoven's Ninth at Meyerson Symphony Center Thursday through Saturday, featuring Jaap van Zweden's final appearance as Music Director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. There will also be Passport to the Park at Klyde Warren Park on Sunday, featuring a day of free, culturally diverse performances and activities, and the Memorial Day Concert and Fireworks Display at Flag Pole Hill Park on Monday.

Friday, May 25

Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers in concert
Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers will co-headline this concert at the Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory. Steely Dan, which will be without founding member Walter Becker, who died in 2017, has released nine albums in their career, including 2003's Everything Must Go. The Doobie Brothers have released 14 albums in their career, including 2014's Southbound.

AT&T Performing Arts Center presents Off Broadway on Flora: Celebrity Autobiography
Celebrity Autobiography features a first-rate comedic ensemble performing from the actual memoirs of a wide range of celebrities. The passages run the gamut from the “poetry” of Suzanne Somers to the most famous Hollywood love triangle in history — Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, and Eddie Fisher. The production, playing on Friday and Saturday at Moody Performance Hall, has a cast that includes Mario Cantone, Laraine Newman, Robert Wuhl, and creators Eugene Pack and Dayle Reyfel, plus a special appearance by the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.

Saturday, May 26

97.1 The Eagle presents BFD 2018
The annual BFD concert, presented by 97.1 The Eagle, is a festival-style event featuring performances by a slew of hard rock bands. This year's event will include A Perfect Circle, Stone Temple Pilots, Theory of a Deadman, Nothing More, I Prevail, Candlebox, 10 Years, and The Blue Stones.

Exodus Music & Arts Festival
Gospel artist Kirk Franklin, in a unique partnership with Live Nation Urban, will host and headline the inaugural Exodus Music & Arts Festival at the Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory. This first-of-its-kind festival, which champions the genre of gospel music, will feature a spiritual lineup with performances by Franklin, Marvin Sapp, Tamela Mann, Tye Tribbett, and more.

Sunday, May 27

Carry The Load presents Dallas Memorial March
Carry The Load will present its eighth annual Dallas Memorial March to honor and celebrate the nation’s heroes over Memorial Day weekend. The event will feature music, inspirational speeches, stories of fallen heroes, flag ceremonies, and more. The march is the culmination of two national relays that have traveled more than 6,400 miles to Dallas carrying the American flag. The event will take place Sunday and Monday, ending at 3:30 pm on Memorial Day in Reverchon Park.

Justin Timberlake in concert with The Shadowboxers
It's been 3 1/2 years since pop superstar Justin Timberlake graced Dallas with his presence, and fans are definitely going to get their money's worth. Timberlake will perform at American Airlines Center on both Sunday and Monday, giving the masses songs from his new album, Man of the Woods, along with his other hits. If for some reason you can't get into these two concerts, he'll be back yet again next January.

A Perfect Circle headlines BFD 2018, taking place on May 26 at Dos Equis Pavilion.

A Perfect Circle/Facebook

A Perfect Circle headlines BFD 2018, taking place on May 26 at Dos Equis Pavilion.

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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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