Weekend Event Planner

Drake, John Legend and movies galore top best weekend events in Dallas

This weekend in Dallas events is packed to the gills, offering big names in concert, a chance to be entertained by some reality TV dancers and more movie events than you can shake a stick at, including a couple that offer more than just sitting in a theater.

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, November 7

2013 Lone Star Film Festival
The annual Lone Star Film Festival kicks off Thursday at the AMC Palace 9 in downtown Fort Worth, featuring almost 40 different films and short film programs through Sunday. Among the offerings that should be high on any movie lover's list are advanced screenings of August: Osage County, Philomena and Nebraska.

USA Film Festival presents Bottle Rocket screening and Kumar Pallana tribute
Of the dozens of films that have been shot in the Dallas area, Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket is among the most beloved as it launched the careers of Anderson, Owen Wilson and Luke Wilson. The USA Film Festival will show both the original short film and the feature film at Texas Theatre, as well as pay tribute to the recently deceased Kumar Pallana, who appeared in four of Anderson's films, including Bottle Rocket.

John Legend in concert with Tamar Braxton
It may or may not surprise you that John Legend is not the soul/R&B singer's real name. But he probably couldn't have picked a more apt moniker, as he one of the more popular singers in his genre nowadays and he was able to marry a supermodel, Chrissy Teigen. Legend was originally scheduled to stop by Verizon Theatre in Grand Prairie a year ago, but for his fans, it will have been worth the wait.

Friday, November 8

Dallas Contemporary presents Alive for 35
Dallas Contemporary is pulling out all the stops to celebrate its 35th anniversary, showcasing the work of 35 different artists in a massive event lasting 35 straight hours from 1 pm on Friday to midnight on Saturday. There will also be a bunch of other activities, including, one hopes, a coffee station.

Dallas Film Society presents The Art of Film: Lee Daniels
Lee Daniels is one of the more provocative filmmakers working today, having made films like Monster's Ball, Precious and 2013's The Butler. Dallas Film Society's annual Art of Film event at the Hall of State at Fair Park will allow fans to get an insight into Daniels' mindset when he's interviewed by film critic Elvis Mitchell.

Dallas Pops presents The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in concert
Purists may argue, but the art of classical music continues to live on thanks to the magnificent work being done by film composers, including Howard Shore, who scored all of the Lord of Rings films. Shore's score for The Fellowship of the Rings will be brought to life by the Dallas Pops in three separate concerts at the Music Hall at Fair Park through Sunday, accompanied by scenes from the classic film.

Saturday, November 9

Undermain Theatre presents The New Frontier: Landmark Speeches of John F. Kennedy
As we countdown to the 50th anniversary of the assassination of JFK, the latest tie-in event is a multimedia presentation by Undermain Theatre at Dallas Museum of Art honoring some of the late president's greatest speeches. The theater will play original recordings of some speeches and have actors perform others, including one JFK was set to deliver before he was assassinated.

So You Think You Can Dance Tour 2013
So You Think You Can Dance is a rarity in the world of reality TV as it doesn't traffic in negativity. The summer TV staple recently finished its 10th season, with many proclaiming it to be the show's best ever, as it finished with the ultra-adorable Fik-Shun and Amy as its two winners. That duo and the rest of the top 10 will strut their stuff at Verizon Theatre at Grand Prairie.

Sunday, November 10

2013 Spirit Fest DFW
Last week had a Festival of Church Music at Meyerson Symphony Center, and this week's chance to get your religion on outside of the church setting is Spirit Fest DFW at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. Some of the biggest names in Christian music will be performing, including Third Day, Switchfoot, Israel Houghton and The Royal Royal.

Drake in concert with Miguel and Future
Those in charge of event management at American Airlines Center are getting ready to gird their loins, as Drake's concert represents the first of five concerts at the venue over the ensuing seven days, and is one of eight different events it'll host over nine days. The rapper will get things started by giving his fans a taste of his latest, Nothing Was the Same.

Drake will perform at American Airlines Center on November 10 in the middle of an extraordinarily busy week for the venue.

Glogster.com

Drake will perform at American Airlines Center on November 10 in the middle of an extraordinarily busy week for the venue.

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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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