Weekend Event Planner

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

It's a festival kind of weekend in and around Dallas, with one film festival, two music festivals, and a dance festival offering up great entertainment. You can also see new Halloween events, two legendary music acts, a fantastic comedian, a homegrown singer made big, and more.

Below are the best ways to spend your precious free time this weekend.

Thursday, September 30

Dallas VideoFest presents Docufest+
Docufest+ will serve as the final event ever for Dallas VideoFest, the longest running independent film festival in Dallas. The festival, running through Sunday at Angelika Film Center in Dallas, will feature a lineup of independent documentaries from Texas filmmakers and beyond, including On the Divide, a portrait of three key players in the abortion battle in McAllen, Texas, and Socks on Fire, poet Bo McGuire’s cinematic love letter to his grandmother.

More Halloween events
Last weekend was the start of most Halloween events in the Dallas area, but two more will join in on the fun this weekend. Starting Thursday is Frights 'n Lights at Riders Field in Frisco, an adventure trail lined with thousands of shining jack-o-lanterns, intricately carved in the shape of different fictional and real-life people. It will be open on weekends through November 6. The Parker House in Denton is another haunted attraction, featuring two different houses to scare the wits out of visitors. It will be open through October 31.

Crystal Gayle in concert
Country singer Crystal Gayle has been a big name in the country genre for over 40 years, scoring 16 No. 1 hits over the years, most notably 1977's iconic "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue." Even though her heyday ended in the late 1980s, she's maintained a presence thanks to those great songs and the occasional new release, including 2019's You Don't Know Me: Classic Country. She'll perform at Arlington Music Hall.

America in concert
The year 2020 marked the 50th anniversary of perennial classic rock band, America. Founding members Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell (along with former bandmate Dan Peek) met in high school in London in the late 1960s and quickly harmonized their way to the top of the charts on the strength of their signature song, "A Horse With No Name." They'll play this special concert at Annette Strauss Square.

Friday, October 1

Denton Arts & Jazz Festival
The annual Denton Arts & Jazz Festival will return after a one-year break, featuring performers on six outdoor stages and one indoor stage, as well as roving musicians. The festival, taking place through Sunday at Quakertown Park in Denton, will also include arts, a children’s art area, various activities, and food.

Ramblin' Roads Music Festival
The Ramblin' Roads Music Festival will take over the city of Arlington, taking place just about everywhere there's a stage in the city, including Levitt Pavilion, Arlington Music Hall, Texas Live, and more than 15 other venues. Performers will include Chromeo, William Clark Green, Mike Ryan, Bobby Pulido, Jamestown Revival, Monica Saldivar, Gene Watson, Tatiana Mayfield, and more. The festival takes place through Sunday.

Brian Regan in concert
Setting a comedic standard of excellence that others continually try to follow, Brian Regan is a unique comedian who is relatable to generations of fans and revered by comedians as the best in the business. Known as a "clean" yet hilarious comedian, his comedy can be enjoyed by audiences of all ages. He'll perform at The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory.

Dallas Black Dance Theatre presents 16th Annual DanceAfrica
Dallas Black Dance Theatre celebrates the rich heritage and ancestry of Africa with the 16th Annual DanceAfrica performances at Moody Performance Hall on Friday and Saturday, featuring guest artists Bandan Koro African Drum and Dance Ensemble and the DeSoto High School A Cappella Choir. The event also includes the free Saturday daytime DanceAfrica Festival & Marketplace, which fills Klyde Warren Park with performances, food, fun, and vendors.

Saturday, October 2

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Philharmonia Fantastique
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra will present Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra, an animated film that flies through the instruments of the orchestra to explore the age-old connection of creativity and technology. Guided by a magical sprite, the audience will see violin strings vibrate, brass valves slice air, and drum heads resonate. The kid-friendly event will take place at Meyerson Symphony Center.

St. Vincent in concert
Dallas can claim musician and songwriter Annie Clark — aka St. Vincent — as its own, as she spent her formative years here and was once a member of The Polyphonic Spree. One of the most distinctive artistic voices and original guitarists of her generation, she's collaborated with such big names as David Byrne, Taylor Swift, and The Chicks. She'll play at The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory in Irving in support of her latest album, Daddy's Home.

Sunday, October 3

TLC in concert with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
It's been almost 20 years since Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes died in a car crash, and surviving bandmates Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins and Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas have kept the TLC name going in a variety of ways, including the 2017 release of their self-titled album. At this concert, they'll celebrate their 1994 breakout album, CrazySexyCool, performing selections from that album and additional hits. They'll be joined by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.

TLC will perform at The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory in Irving on October 3.

TLC/Facebook

TLC will perform at The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory in Irving on October 3.

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Movie Review

Dallas gets showcased in witchy new movie Forbidden Fruits

Photo courtesy of IFC

Alexandra Shipp, Lili Reinhart, and Victoria Perfetti in Forbidden Fruits.

There was a time when Dallas was a prime location for movies, whether it was for films set in and around the city, like Tender Mercies, or ones that used it to stand in for other locations, like Robocop. Dallas is getting its first notable shoutout in a long time thanks to the new film, Forbidden Fruits.

Set mostly in a NorthPark Center-like location called Highland Place Mall, the film centers on a group of young women known as the Fruits. Apple (Lili Reinhart), Cherry (Victoria Perfetti), and Fig (Alexandra Shipp) all work at a clothing store called Free Eden, with the three of them essentially lording over everyone else in the mall. That includes Pumpkin (Lola Tung), who works at the pretzel store Sister Salt’s and who wants to join their group.

Pumpkin soon discovers that, apart from being an entitled clique, the group also claims to be a coven of witches, with Apple especially using their combined power to get back at anyone who’s wronged them. When Pumpkin starts noticing Cherry and Fig going astray of the group’s code, she uses this knowledge to get in tighter with Apple, although she’s unprepared for how far Apple will go to protect her interests.

Written and directed by Meredith Alloway (who grew up in Dallas and graduated from both Lake Highlands High School and SMU) and co-written by Lily Houghton, the film seems to have the aim of combining movies like Mean Girls and The Craft. The peer pressure of being part of an exclusive group is evident from the start, as Apple essentially forces the others to live by her code or be ostracized (or worse).

One of the biggest problems the film runs into, though, is that any conflict comes from within the group itself. With no pressure coming from other friends, family, or co-workers, the group has to create its own drama. The story quickly gets redundant and stagnant, with almost no plot movement until the final act of the film, when it’s almost too late.

Alloway is clearly aiming for a campy vibe with the film, but the execution leaves something to be desired. The four characters are established in a perfunctory manner, and even as they get fleshed out as the film goes along, there’s nothing to compare them with, so it’s as if they’re just acting off-the-wall in a vacuum.

Those who know the Dallas area well will enjoy the local references (the women hail from Plano, Irving, Grapevine, and Highland Park), and Alloway makes sure to include the looming threat of a tornado into the plot. But since the film was actually filmed in Toronto, there are no visuals that make it feel like Texas, and so any goodwill she gets from setting the film in the city is muted by that lack.

While Reinhart (Riverdale) and Shipp (Storm in X-Men movies) have been around longer, both Pedretti (You) and Tung (The Summer I Turned Pretty) have made big impressions on streaming shows in recent years. The foursome play off each other well even when the story is not that compelling.

If there was a message in Forbidden Fruits that Alloway wanted to get across, she didn’t communicate it clearly enough. Her solid cast can only do so much to sell a story that doesn’t have enough on the bone to be filling. It would have been nice for the movie to be filmed in Dallas, but such is the way of the world in modern Hollywood.

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Forbidden Fruits opens in theaters on March 27.

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