Weekend Event Planner

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

There are some weekends when some of the big venues in Dallas sit vacant, but this weekend they are all hosting big events. And even better, those events include a variety of types of entertainment, including concerts, a Broadway musical, a new kind of basketball, stand-up comedy, and a live podcast.

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 16

Women Texas Film Festival
The Dallas-based Women Texas Film Festival focuses solely on the work of female filmmakers. The festival, taking place through Sunday at Studio Movie Grill Spring Valley, will feature the world premiere of Amanda Kramer’s mind-bending film, Paris Window, as their Opening Night selection, with Jenn Wexler’s SXSW hit, The Ranger, serving as the Closing Night selection. In all, the festival will showcase 10 feature-length films and 25 short films.

Rob Zombie & Marilyn Manson in concert
Both Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson occupy a unique place in the music industry in that they've achieved a great level of success without ever having a mainstream hit song. Of course, it doesn't matter if the hits don't come as long as hardcore fans keep buying their albums and showing up to concerts like this at Dos Equis Pavilion. Zombie’s most recent album was 2016's The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser, while Manson released Heaven Upside Down in 2017.

Dallas Summer Musicals presents School of Rock
Based on the hit film, School of Rock is a hilarious musical that follows Dewey Finn, a wannabe rock star posing as a substitute teacher who turns a class of straight-A students into a guitar-shredding, bass-slapping, mind-blowing rock band. The high-octane smash features 14 songs from Andrew Lloyd Webber, all the original songs from the movie, and musical theater’s first-ever kids rock band playing their instruments live on stage. The production will run through August 26 at the Music Hall at Fair Park.

Friday, August 17

Big3: 3-on-3 Basketball League Playoffs
Dallas will host the first round of playoffs for Big3, the American 3-on-3 professional basketball league. Created in part by rapper/actor Ice Cube, the games feature half-court play and rules designed for competition and intensity. The league combines former NBA players and fan interaction before and after the games to make for an exciting live experience. There will be four games throughout the evening at American Airlines Center.

Rockwall Summer Musicals presents The Music Man
In this beloved family show, Professor Harold Hill shakes up a quiet Midwest town by posing as a band leader and selling instruments to naive Iowa townsfolk. The Broadway sensation features classic songs such as “76 Trombones," "The Wells Fargo Wagon,” and “Gary, Indiana.” The production will run at the Rockwall High School Performing Arts Center through Sunday.

Saturday, August 18

Ice Cube in concert with Bun B
After his duties are done with Big3 on Friday, Ice Cube will get back to his day job with this concert at the Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory. Cube is a rap legend whose time with N.W.A., as a solo act, and as an actor have made him into an entertainment industry mogul. Cube hasn't released a new album since 2010, but rumor has it that he'll release the long-anticipated Everythang's Corrupt later this year.

J. Cole in concert
The reason Ice Cube isn't just staying put at American Airlines Center is because another superstar rapper kicked him to the curb. J. Cole has yet to have an album that didn't go to No. 1, starting with 2011's Cole World: The Sideline Story and continuing through his newest album, KOD. He'll be joined at this concert by Young Thug, Jaden Smith, Earthgang, and Kill Edward.

Kathy Griffin: Laugh Your Head Off World Tour
Comedian Kathy Griffin caused a big stir last year when she posted a photo of herself holding up a bloody head that looked like Donald Trump. Despite being shunned by many for the stunt and subsequently apologizing, Griffin now seems to be taking total ownership over it, referencing the image in the name of her new tour. Fans who have stuck with her can catch her act at Winspear Opera House.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard Live
Since March 2018, actor Dax Shepard (Parenthood, CHIPS) has been hosting a weekly podcast where he talks to various other celebrities about their lives, philosophies, and "the messiness of being human." The live taping of the podcast at Majestic Theatre will feature a yet-to-be-named guest, but considering the quality of his previous guests, it's sure to a bold-faced name.

Sunday, August 19

Lyle Lovett and His Large Band in concert
A singer, composer and actor, Lyle Lovett has broadened the definition of American music in a career that spans 14 albums over three decades. Coupled with his gift for storytelling, the Texas-based musician fuses elements of Americana, swing, jazz, folk, gospel and blues in a convention-defying manner that breaks down barriers. He'll perform at Winspear Opera House.

Dallas Summer Musicals presents School of Rock at the Music Hall at Fair Park through August 26.

Photo by Matthew Murphy

Dallas Summer Musicals presents School of Rock at the Music Hall at Fair Park through August 26.

event-planner

Movie Review

Animated Disney film Elio is fun but falls short of Pixar top tier

Photo courtesy of Pixar

Elio (Yonas Kibreab) and Glordon (Remy Edgerly) in Elio.

Pixar has done a ton of different things in the 28 feature films they’ve released over the past 30 years, but the one they’d never done is deal with aliens (and, no, the alien toys in Toy Story don’t count). Now they’re going where many storytellers have gone before, but in their own unique way, in the new film Elio.

Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) is a space fanatic who has recently lost both of his parents in an unnamed event. His Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña) is now his guardian, and because she happens to be a member of the U.S. Space Force, Elio finds himself tantalizingly close to communications from space. With a desire to be abducted by aliens for both curiosity and sentimental reasons, Elio sends a message into space, hoping for some kind of response.

He gets that and more when a ship full of multiple types of beings takes him into space, believing him to be a leader instead of a child. An encounter with a hostile force led by Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett) gives Elio both a new friend, Grigon’s son Glordon (Remy Edgerly), and responsibility for maintaining peace during an unexpected galactic crisis.

Pixar has not typically followed the route of many Disney movies of giving their child protagonist the trauma of dead parents, and doing so here is the first of a few minor missteps. Having Olga be his mom instead of his aunt would have altered their dynamic, but only slightly. While Elio is shown to miss his parents, his major focus is on making contact with aliens. Since the film only briefly deals with his grief, it would have been better served by excising it altogether.

For the most part, the film is goofy, with Elio’s enthusiasm for aliens matched by the oddness of the creatures he meets in space. The filmmakers - there are three credited directors and three credited writers - seem to have taken inspiration from sea creatures and Pixar’s own history, as the main bad guy emulates Mike and Sully’s boss from Monsters, Inc. Almost every character in the film is heightened to a degree that makes for funny situations, but not as much sentimentality as other Pixar offerings.

Surprisingly, especially since the film ends with a voiceover from notable astronomer Carl Sagan, the filmmakers play fast and loose with real-life science. Elio’s journeys to and from the alien spaceship are treated as close-to-instantaneous trips, even involving portals directly to Earth. The idea of the story doesn’t allow them to delve into things like relativistic time dilation, but there still could have been other scientific references to keep the story aboveboard.

There are very few stars to be found among the film’s voice cast other than Saldaña and Garrett, who are each fine if unmemorable. Kibreab and Edgerly are given many more scenes than anyone else, and they each do a great job of bringing out both the joy and naivete of their characters. Some lesser-known actors like Jameela Jamil, Atsuko Okatsuka, and Brendan Hunt show up in minor roles, but they don’t stand out in any way.

The story and characters in Elio are sweet and fun, but the film as a whole falls well short of the top tier Pixar movies. The filmmakers could have gone many different directions with a story about a boy who wants to be abducted by aliens, and the way they chose ended up being innocuous and less than compelling.

---

Elio opens in theaters on June 20.

movies film