Weekend Event Planner

These are the 11 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

Alamo Drafthouse will present a 30th anniversary screening of Robocop at Dallas City Hall on September 10.

Photo courtesy of Orion Pictures

It's an eclectic weekend in and around Dallas, with events landing all over the entertainment spectrum. You can see one of three new local theater productions, listen to music ranging from the Beatles to contemporary country, meet a superstar singer-turned-designer, help raise money with one of the best Rangers of all time, or enjoy a classic Dallas-filmed movie at its actual shooting location.

Below are the best options for your precious free time Thursday through Monday. Don't like what you see? Lucky for you, we have a much longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, September 7

2017 Cool Thursdays Series: A Hard Night's Day
Now that the weather is finally getting back to a manageable temperature, we can start enjoying outdoor activities again. The Dallas Arboretum will kick off the fall edition of its Cool Thursdays series with this concert by A Hard Night's Day, a great Beatles cover band. Attendees can bring picnics and beverages or purchase food items from some of DFW's favorite food trucks, including Not Just Q, Bellatrino, and dessert truck Shake Shack.

Theatre Three presents Cedar Springs or Big Scary Animals
The latest from Theatre Three is a homegrown story. An older white couple from the country unknowingly moves to the gayborhood in Dallas to be closer to their granddaughter. What begins as polite dinner conversation with their gay, multi-ethnic neighbors careens out of control, becoming a hilarious collision of race, sex, guns, and sports. The play will run through October 1.

Texas Ballet Theater presents Beauty and the Beast
It's already been a big year for Beauty and the Beast, with Disney releasing a "live action" version that earned big bucks at the box office. That makes it perfect timing for Texas Ballet Theater to launch its new season with a version of the classic storybook tale of Belle, the Beast, and the Beast's enchanted servants. The production will have four performances through Sunday at the Winspear Opera House.

Undermain Theatre presents So Go the Ghosts of Mexico, Part Two
One year after opening its 2016-2017 season with So Go the Ghosts of Mexico (part one), Undermain Theatre will open a new season with the second play in the three-play cycle. This one, about the U.S./Mexico drug wars, explores the extreme machismo of narco culture as shown through a cast of all women. The production will run through October 1.

Friday, September 8

Dallas Symphony Orchestra Pops Series: Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue
Depending on your age, you might know George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue from Woody Allen's Manhattan or as the theme music in commercials for United Airlines. But no matter where you know it from, it's always a pleasure to hear it performed live. The Dallas Symphony Orchestra will play the work with 1997 Cliburn winner Jon Nakamatsu on piano, as well as other Gershwin pieces, at Meyerson Symphony Center three times through Sunday.

Sturgill Simpson in concert
Country/Americana singer Sturgill Simpson's career got a hot start, including multiple Grammy Award nominations for his first three albums. His most recent album, A Sailor's Guide to Earth, took home the Best Country Album Grammy, as well as a nomination for Album of the Year. He'll play at Verizon Theatre in Grand Prairie in support of that album, with Fantastic Negrito serving as opening act.

Saturday, September 9

Fabletics at Legacy West presents Demi Lovato
To celebrate the relaunch of the Demi Lovato for Fabletics collection, Fabletics at Legacy West in Plano will host a special appearance by the Dallas native herself. Anyone who spends $50 or more on the Demi Lovato for Fabletics Collection will get to attend an autograph signing by the singer. The collection includes performance and lifestyle pieces with new design elements such as contouring waist straps, paint splatter camo, and vibrant heather prints.

Colin Hay in concert
Colin Hay has come a long way from his days as lead singer of Men at Work. That group's handful of hits led to a number of high-profile collaborations, including with Zach Braff for the TV sitcom Scrubs. Hay has released 13 solo albums over the past 30 years, including his newest one, Fierce Mercy. He will play at the Majestic Theatre.

ZZ Top in concert with Alejandro Escovedo
Let's try this again: One week after The Pavilion at Irving Music Factory had to abort its planned opening due to construction delays, it'll officially open to the public with this concert by Texas natives ZZ Top. The group, which is approaching its 50th anniversary, will play in support of its 2016 album, Tonite at Midnight: Live Greatest Hits from Around the World. Alejandro Escovedo will be the opening act.

Sunday, September 10

Uncork for a Cause with Adrian Beltre
Unfortunately, Texas Rangers third baseman Adrian Beltre is out with an injury for the rest of the regular season. But you can get up close and personal with him and his wife, Sandra, at this event at Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek, which will benefit The Texas Rangers Baseball Foundation. The event also will serve as the release party for Beltre’s “3000 Hit” 2014 Sonoma Red wine; only two barrels of this limited-edition blend were bottled for Beltre’s charity program.

Alamo Drafthouse presents RoboCop at OCP Headquarters
Alamo Drafthouse is marking the 30th anniversary of RoboCop, Paul Verhoeven’s wild cybernetic vision of future of law enforcement, with a once-in-a-lifetime event from the real OCP Headquarters shooting location, aka Dallas City Hall. RoboCop himself, Peter Weller, will be on hand for a Q&A that’ll get beamed into RoboCop movie screening parties across the country. The audience will get special props that help interact with the film, and there will be photo ops, food trucks, full bars with robo-cocktails, and the opportunity to watch the film at the site of RoboCop and ED-209’s final showdown.

Alamo Drafthouse will present a 30th anniversary screening of Robocop at Dallas City Hall on September 10.

Photo courtesy of Orion Pictures

Alamo Drafthouse will present a 30th anniversary screening of Robocop at Dallas City Hall on September 10.

event-planner

Movie Review

New film I Want Your Sex somehow makes kinky activity boring

Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde in I Want Your Sex.

Writer/director Gregg Araki has been making provocative movies for nearly 40 years, releasing his debut - Three Bewildered People in the Night - in 1987. Most of them have had plotlines that revolved around sex in one way or another, and for his latest - his first film in 12 years - he’s putting it right there in the title, I Want Your Sex.

Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) is an aimless twenty-something who can’t even afford the rent for his apartment with best friend, Apple (Chase Sui Wonders). Thankfully, he finds a job at the gallery of artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), who is open with her sexuality both in her artwork and in her day-to-day life. That soon includes Elliot, whom she convinces to enter into a dominant-submissive relationship with her, with sessions taking place both at work and her home.

Elliot, who’s in a going-nowhere coupling with Minerva (Charli XCX), is more than willing to participate, both because it lets him feel something he doesn’t get normally and because Erika offers a perspective on sex that’s much different from people of his generation. But as he gets in deeper with her, he starts to lose a sense of himself, going down a path in which he finds himself talking to police detectives Zem (Johnny Knoxville) and Zola (Margaret Cho).

Araki does his level best to make I Want Your Sex into a broad comedy, and early on it seems as if he might succeed. The deadpan way that sexual objects appear in the film (a penis-shaped rug in Elliot and Apple’s apartment, a vagina artwork with chewed gum as the medium) make for amusing sight gags. He also makes Elliot the bewildered other in multiple twosomes, with Minerva being the funniest, as she’s way more interested in studying than his ham-fisted attempts at sex.

It’s clear that Araki wants the film to be a commentary on the generational differences about sex, but he fumbles his own idea. It starts with an on-the-nose conversation between Erika and Elliot, and continues with the various dalliances, which seem to be more about making Elliot look and feel ridiculous than giving true insight. Their encounters certainly open his mind about what sex can be, but their one-note nature makes them repetitive and frankly boring, odd considering the acts in which the two engage.

The uninspired storytelling makes the 90-minute film drag way more than it should. Araki includes a few other characters to try to vary the tone of the film, including gallery workers Zap (Mason Gooding) and Vikktor (Daveed Diggs), but their early promise yields little results. The framing device of Elliot’s interview with the detectives never works, especially because Araki completely neuters the personalities of Cho and Knoxville for seemingly no good reason.

The cast as a whole goes to waste. Hoffman is showing the promise of his late father (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and even though he’s appealing here, the material pulls him down. Wilde just made her own provocative movie about sex (The Invite), and this one pales in comparison despite her heightened performance. Wonders, Charli XCX, and Gooding are all young stars who deserve to be showcased much better than they are in this film.

A film called I Want Your Sex is announcing itself as daring and alluring, but this film contains almost none of those qualities. Instead, it’s a slog that only occasionally has something interesting to show or say, mostly relying on the power of its actors to hold viewers’ attention - and failing at even that.

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I Want Your Sex is now playing in select theaters.