Weekend Event Planner

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

It's a music-heavy weekend in and around Dallas, with each of the five options on our list featuring classic acts of some kind. Among your other choices are a documentary film festival, a new local theater production, a vintage airplane show, a visit from a best-selling author, and an arts and music festival.

Below are the best ways to spend your free time Thursday through Monday. Want more options? Lucky for you, we have a much longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, October 5

Dallas VideoFest presents DocuFest
The annual DocuFest, presented by Dallas VideoFest, will feature 23 feature length and short documentaries over four days. All screenings will take place on one screen, giving attendees the opportunity to view every film in the festival. Notable screenings include Alan Govenar’s new Extraordinary Ordinary People, the world premiere of Badass Beauty Queen, and Ex Libris by Frederick Weisman. The festival will take place at Studio Movie Grill Northwest Highway through Sunday.

Theatre Three presents Adding Machine
Adding Machine, a musical adaptation of Elmer Rice's incendiary 1923 play, tells the story of Mr. Zero, who, after 25 years of service to his company, is replaced by a mechanical adding machine. In a vengeful rage, he murders his boss. An eclectic score gives passionate voice to this stylish and stylized show, which follows Zero's journey to the afterlife in the Elysian Fields, where he is met with one last chance for romance and redemption. Theatre Three will present the musical through October 22.

Rick Springfield and Richard Marx in concert
Heartthrobs Rick Springfield and Richard Marx were two of the biggest stars of the 1980s, with their big hair and big songs setting the tone for pop music of the day. The singers will join forces at Majestic Theatre for a stripped-down storyteller's acoustic concert featuring hits like Springfield's "Jessie’s Girl," Marx's "Right Here Waiting," and many more.

Friday, October 6

Commemorative Air Force presents Wings Over Dallas WWII Airshow
The big highlight of this year's Wings Over Dallas WWII Airshow will be a 75th anniversary commemoration of the Doolittle Raid, featuring a flying re-enactment with eight B-25 bombers, pyrotechnics, sound effects, and narration. Texas native Dick Cole, who, at age 101, is the last surviving Doolittle Raider, will be on hand. The air show, taking place through Sunday at Dallas Executive Airport, will feature more than 80 World War II-era aircraft.

Arts & Letters Live: Dan Brown
Dan Brown, the international bestselling author of The Da Vinci Code and Inferno, will appear for the first time at DMA Arts & Letters Live. He'll discuss his new novel, Origin, writing chart-topping works, and making blockbuster movies, as well as his trademark interests in codes, science, religion, and art. Origin thrusts Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon into the dangerous intersection of humankind’s two most enduring questions and the earthshaking discovery that will answer them. The event will take place at McFarlin Auditorium on the SMU campus.

Cake in concert
Alternative rock band Cake has defined its own sound over the past 20 or so years, hitting it big with songs like "The Distance," "Never There," and "Sick of You." Unlike most bands that start hot and fade away, Cake has only gotten more popular over the years, with a 2011 album, Showroom of Compassion, being their first No. 1 album of their career. Cake will play at South Side Ballroom.

Saturday, October 7

Cottonwood Art Festival
The semi-annual Cottonwood Art Festival is a two-day event that brings music, art, food, and creativity to Cottonwood Park. The show will feature museum-quality exhibits from more than 240 artists around the country, live musical performances, an interactive children’s area, and delectable dining choices. The festival will take place through Sunday.

Laid Back Festival featuring Lynyrd Skynyrd
The Laid Back Festival, a traveling celebration of music and food, will make its way to the Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory in Irving. Lynyrd Skynyrd and Jimmie Vaughan & The Tilt-a-Whirl Band featuring Lou Ann Barton will headline the main, “Laid Back” stage, while The Texas Gentlemen, Bishop Gunn, and Jaimoe's Jasssz Band will keep the party going on the more intimate “Low Country” Plaza stage, named for the late co-founder Gregg Allman’s solo album, Low Country Blues.

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill in concert
Husband and wife Tim McGraw and Faith Hill are such luminaries in country music that it's easy to forget they're not as active as they used to be. McGraw's last album was 2015's Damn Country Music, while Hill's last major release was all the way back in 2005 with Fireflies. This is the first time Hill has toured since 2007, when she and McGraw teamed up for the Soul2Soul II Tour. They'll play at American Airlines Center.

Sunday, October 8

State Fair of Texas Concert Series: Wilson Phillips
As you make your way around Fair Park on Sunday, enjoying oodles of fried food, rides, animal races, butter sculptures, and more, you can also stop by to see a blast from the past, Wilson Phillips. The all-female trio was huge in the early '90s thanks to hits like "Hold On" and "Release Me," and have enjoyed a bit of a resurgence thanks to their appearance in the 2011 movie Bridesmaids.

Theatre Three presents Adding Machine through October 22.

Photo by Jeffrey Schmidt

Theatre Three presents Adding Machine through October 22.

event-planner festivals concerts theater state-fair

Movie Review

Comedy all-stars Jack Black and Paul Rudd can't save Anaconda sequel

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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