Weekend Event Planner

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

The two themes of the week for events in Dallas are fictional characters and Dos Equis Pavilion. You can enjoy different ways of experiencing characters from two monster movie franchises, while the aforementioned outdoor venue will host three completely different types of concerts. There's also an anticipated grand opening, one-minute plays, and a free screening of a classic animated film.

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, August 9

Texas Live! Grand Opening Celebration
The opening of the new Texas Rangers stadium, Globe Life Field, is still almost two years away, but the grand opening for the adjoining Texas Live! complex is happening this weekend. The $250 million dining, entertainment, and hospitality district will debut a variety of restaurants and its outdoor event pavilion, Arlington Backyard. Performers during the celebration, taking place through Sunday, will include Toadies, Eleven Hundred Springs, Bleachers, Joywave, and Kip Moore.

Marvel Universe Live!: Age of Heroes
Marvel Universe Live!: Age of Heroes brings together the Avengers, Spider-Man, and new fan favorites, the Guardians of the Galaxy, to stop Loki in his quest to rule the universe. The live, action-packed arena performance features cutting-edge special effects, pyrotechnics, aerial stunts, martial arts, motorcycles, and more. The show will run at American Airlines Center through Sunday before making its way to Fort Worth next weekend.

Potted Potter: The Unauthorized Harry Experience
The Olivier Award-nominated Potted Potter: The Unauthorized Harry Experience takes on the ultimate challenge of condensing all seven Harry Potter books (and a real life game of Quidditch) into 70 hilarious minutes. Even if you don’t know the difference between a horcrux and a Hufflepuff, Potted Potter will make you roar with laughter. The production will play at Wyly Theatre through Sunday.

Friday, August 10

2018 Leaky Con
Speaking of Harry Potter, fans from around the world will gather in Dallas for a celebration of “The Boy Who Lived” and the extraordinary impact his story has had on both the Wizarding and Muggle worlds. The convention, taking place through Sunday at Hyatt Regency Dallas, features celebrity appearances, autograph and photo sessions, panels, programs, discussions, and performances.

G-Eazy in concert with Lil Uzi Vert, Ybn Nahmir, P-Lo, and Murda Beatz
Thanks to the art of collaboration, rapper G-Eazy has become a bigger and bigger name in the hip hop world over the past decade. He's found success recording songs with Bexha ("Me, Myself & I"), ASAP Rocky and Cardi B ("No Limit"), and Halsey ("Him & I"). He'll perform at Dos Equis Pavilion in support of his 2017 album, The Beautiful & Damned. The concert will also feature Lil Uzi Vert, Ybn Nahmir, P-Lo, and Murda Beatz.

Saturday, August 11

Miranda Lambert in concert with Little Big Town, The Steel Woods, and Tenille Townes
Country singer Miranda Lambert has had quite the public life, and her singing career is only the half of it. She's had four No. 1 songs, five top 10 albums, and one very high-profile marriage to another country star, Blake Shelton, that ended in divorce. That split led to her acclaimed 2016 double album, The Weight of These Wings, in support of which she'll play at Dos Equis Pavilion alongside Little Big Town, The Steel Woods, and Tenille Townes.

Kitchen Dog Theater presents One-Minute Play Festival
Kitchen Dog Theater will present the 5th annual One-Minute Play Festival, featuring 84 original one-minute plays by 42 local playwrights, 12 directors, 60 actors, and one insanely wild night of theater. The festival, which has iterations in multiple cities across the country, will take place in the Bob Hope Theater on the SMU campus every night through Monday.

Sunday, August 12

Alamo Drafthouse presents Pix on the Plaza
The final week of Pix on the Plaza, a free summer outdoor screening series taking place outside of Alamo Drafthouse Las Colinas, will feature a screening of Pixar's Up. There will be pre-show activities themed to the movie like bounce houses, music, face painters, games, tasty treats, themed non-alcoholic beverages, and other fun surprises.

Godsmack and Shinedown in concert
The genre of hard rock/metal is one that continues to thrive despite not getting nearly the amount of attention as pop or hip hop. Godsmack and Shinedown, who are co-headlining this concert at Dos Equis Pavilion, are two big examples of that. Each has had a string of top 10 albums even though they have one top 10 single between them. Godsmack is touring in support of their new album, When Legends Rise, while Shinedown is touring in support of their new album, Attention Attention.

Miranda Lambert will perform at Dos Equis Pavilion on August 11.

Photo by Michelle Watson/Catchlight Group

Miranda Lambert will perform at Dos Equis Pavilion on August 11.

event-planner

Movie Review

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma gives horror a surreal twist

Photo courtesy of MUBI

Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

The horror genre really ramped up in the 1970s and ‘80s, bringing with it a new subgenre - the slasher - that gave audiences new visuals of gore, but also a reliance on sexism and homophobia that would come to define the era. The new film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma wrestles with that legacy in ways that are funny, thought-provoking, and downright strange.

Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is a queer filmmaker who has been hired to reboot the moldy IP that is the Camp Miasma franchise, one that was fresh in the 1970s but which numerous shlocky sequels have rendered irrelevant. In an attempt to get to know the property better, Kris has scored a meeting with the reclusive Billy (Gillian Anderson), the star of the original film who has shunned the public eye for decades.

Turns out that Billy lives deep in the woods at Camp Rivoli, which served as the location for the first film. As Kris tries to get to know Billy and convince her to be a part of the new film, she starts to fall under Billy’s spell and the lore of the franchise as a whole. That includes believing that the movie’s villain, Little Death - a transgender person who has an air conditioning vent as a head/mask - may not just be a character created for the movies.

Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow), the film at first feels like it’s going to go the straight-up comedy route, with comic explosions of blood, a strange fascination with candy brands, and a production design that does nothing to hide that the two main actors are on a movie set with painted backdrops. This is backed up by Kris’ phone conversations with her girlfriend, Mari (Jasmine Savoy Brown) and her agent (Sarah Sherman), as well as numerous other details.

But the film starts to go down the surreal route the longer Kris stays at the camp with Billy, especially when they sit down to watch the original Camp Miasma. An extended sequence shows a good amount of that film-within-the-film, demonstrating why Kris and Billy have a love/hate relationship with the property. For Kris, though, the lines between the film and the real world start to blur, and Schoenbrun uses a variety of out-there elements to drive the point home.

The final act of the film can barely be described as Kris goes deeper down the rabbit hole, with Schoenbrun using her film to comment on the horror genre as a whole, its treatment of women and LGBT people, the movie industry, and more. All the while the “camp” of Camp Miasma maintains a presence, with candy wrappers showing up everywhere and the tongue-in-cheek references to Little Death (the French term La petite mort, which means “the little death,” is a euphemism for orgasm).

Einbinder, an Emmy winner for Hacks, is the perfect person to inhabit her role. Her established real-life and fictional personas color everything she does in the film, with her enthusiasm and curiosity shining through. Anderson leans heavily into another reference - Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard - to create a character that is as mysterious as she is alluring. Supporting actors like Brown, Sherman, Patrick Fischler, Dylan Baker, and Eva Victor keep the movie at the right pitch all the way through.

While other films have made fun of horror movie tropes before, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma finds a wholly unique way of doing so. It’s a funny and daring trip into the psyches of two women who may be victims of their own obsessions, and of the movies that made them that way.

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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is now playing in select theaters

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