Weekend Event Planner

Concerts of all kinds fill the bill of best weekend events in Dallas

If you throw a rock almost anywhere in the Dallas area this weekend, chances are it'll land at the location of a big concert. From small venues to the outdoors to the suburbs, multiple places are hosting stars both new and old. If those aren't your speed, there are also some homegrown events in which to partake as well.

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

Thursday, October 8

UTA Maverick Speaker Series: Mia Farrow
Perhaps best known for her role as Rosemary in Rosemary’s Baby, Mia Farrow has appeared in more than 50 films, winning numerous awards since her career began in 1964. Farrow has worked extensively as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and is involved in humanitarian activities in Africa. She'll talk about her wide body of work at this free event at UT Arlington.

Billy Idol in concert with The London Souls
If you think Billy Idol just faded away after his heyday in the 1980s, you're sorely mistaken. He did take an extended break for around 12 years, but he's released three new albums in the past 10 years, including 2014's Kings & Queens of the Underground, and was just at Austin City Limits this past weekend. He'll play both old and new songs at the House of Blues Dallas, with support from opening act The London Souls.

Friday, October 9

NorthPark Center presents Fifty Years of Fashion
As part of a series of 50th anniversary celebrations, NorthPark Center will present Fifty Years of Fashion, showcasing a variety of stores and high-end designers. There will be multiple fashion shows over the course of two days, including ones from Mulberry, Nordstrom, Cusp by Neiman Marcus, Elie Tahari, Salvatore Ferragamo, and Roberto Cavalli.

The Reunion featuring Weezer, Fitz & the Tantrums, and Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue
Reunion Park hosted a series of lawn parties during the summer, and though this isn't related to those, while the weather is still warm it's time for one last blowout. The festival will feature a happy hour showcasing local bands before giving way to performances by Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue and Fitz & the Tantrums. After a fireworks show, headlining band Weezer will take the stage.

Saturday, October 10

Counting Crows in concert with Citizen Cope and Hollis Brown
Back in the late '90s, Counting Crows lead singer Adam Duritz was known to hang around Friends stars Courtney Cox and Jennifer Aniston. His famous friends may have dwindled since then, but the band is still going strong, putting out Somewhere Under Wonderland in 2014. They'll play at Allen Event Center with Citizen Cope and Hollis Brown.

Joe Jackson: The Fast Forward Tour
The ever-restless songwriter Joe Jackson traveled the world to record Fast Forward, his first collection of original songs in seven years. He'll play at the Majestic Theatre in support of the album that features four sets of four songs recorded in four different cities: New York, New Orleans, Berlin and Amsterdam.

Sunday, October 11

Dallas Museum of Art presents International Pop opening day tour
The Dallas Museum of Art's latest exhibition, International Pop, chronicles the global emergence of Pop art in the 1960s and early 1970s. While previous exhibitions have primarily focused on the dominance of Pop activity in New York and London during that time, this exhibition examines work from artists across the globe who were confronting many of the same radical developments. Gabriel Ritter, curator of the exhibition, will lead a special opening day tour; the exhibition will be on display through January 17, 2016.

Ariana Grande in concert with Prince Royce
As is typical these days, it's been a relatively short rise to fame for Ariana Grande. After starring in not one but two different Nickelodeon shows, Grande has risen to the top of the pop world, hitting No. 1 with her 2014 album, My Everything. She'll play at American Airlines Center with help from opening act Prince Royce.

Billy Idol will play at House of Blues Dallas on October 8.

Photo courtesy of Billy Idol

Billy Idol will play at House of Blues Dallas on October 8.

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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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