Weekend Event Planner

These are the 6 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

It's no surprise that the first weekend of the new year is relatively slow, as many people are still on holiday break. However, you'll still be able to choose from things like the final days of holiday events, a pyramid-shaped entertainment venue, a new local theater production, a melding of acrobatics and classical music, one final holiday concert, and the closing of an art exhibition.

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

Thursday, January 2

Holiday event closings
Now that we're into the new year, it's time for the remaining holiday events to come to a close. Finishing up their runs will be Gaylord Texan's Lone Star Christmas, featuring millions of twinkling lights, lavish large-scale décor, 2 million pounds of hand-carved ice, and more; and The Trains at NorthPark, featuring more than 750 railcars on a 1,600-foot elaborate configuration of tracks and scenes. Both events will end on Sunday.

PY1
Imagined by Guy Laliberté, co-founder of Cirque du Soleil, PY1 is a pyramid-shaped entertainment venue that features Through the Echoes, a custom multimedia production for the pyramid, as well as Stella – The time machine journey, a show for the entire family. The experience, taking place in a parking lot just outside of Globe Life Park in Arlington, also features PY1 Nights, a nightlife experience. The special event will take place through March 1.

Junior Players presents The Wild Party
Based on Joseph Moncure March's 1928 narrative poem, The Wild Party is a darkly brilliant show featuring one of the most pulse-racing scores ever written. Lovers Queenie and Burrs, who are in a relationship marked by reckless behavior, decide to throw the party-to-end-all parties in their Manhattan apartment. After the colorful arrival of a slew of guests living life on the edge, Queenie's wandering eyes land on a striking man named Black. But as the decadence is reaching a climax, so is Burrs' jealousy. The production will run through Sunday at Moody Performance Hall.

Friday, January 3

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Cirque de la Symphonie
Cirque de la Symphonie returns to Meyerson Symphony Center with a program that includes aerial silks, juggling, cyr wheel, quick change, contortion, dance, and strongmen. The Dallas Symphony Orchestra will accompany the high-flying action with works by Bizet, Piazzolla, and more. There will be performances on both Friday and Saturday night.

Saturday, January 4

Orchestra of New Spain presents Baroque Christmas Concert
This unique Christmas program incorporates the Orchestra of New Spain’s vast research into the undiscovered music of Spain and the New World, yielding discoveries of the joyful Villancicos — Christmas Carols — that filled cathedrals and village churches throughout Hispanic America. The work of Chilean composer Alfonso Letelier Llona will be featured, along with Christmas cantatas of Francisco Courcelle and the Villancicos of Padre Antonio Soler. The performance will be at St. Philip The Apostle Catholic Church.

Sunday, January 5

Crow Museum of Asian Art presents "Hands and Earth: Contemporary Japanese Ceramics" closing day
Sunday will be the final day to view the Crow Museum of Asian Art's "Hands and Earth: Contemporary Japanese Ceramics," which features works by the country’s greatest ceramicists, including seven artists deemed “Living National Treasures” by the Japanese government. The exhibition showcases significant examples of avant-garde approaches to clay in a range of shapes and glazes.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Cirque de la Symphonie at Meyerson Symphony Center on January 3 and 4.

Photo courtesy of Cirque de la Symphonie

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Cirque de la Symphonie at Meyerson Symphony Center on January 3 and 4.

concerts holidays museums event-planner theater

Movie Review

Great acting and directing drive The Christophers to artistic heights

Photo by Claudette Barius

Michaela Coel and Ian McKellen in The Christophers.

Director Steven Soderbergh is one of those filmmakers who — aside from the Ocean’s series — never seems to make the same kind of movie twice. He is somehow able to adapt his abilities to all sorts of different stories, making each of them as compelling as any other. His latest masterclass is in the London-set film, The Christophers.

Lori Butler (Michaela Coel), who restores art for a living, is approached by brother and sister Sallie and Barnaby Sklar (Jessica Gunning and James Corden) with a scheme. They want her to become the new assistant for their aging father, Julian (Ian McKellen), a famous artist known for a series called “The Christophers,” in order to gain access to unfinished paintings from the series and complete them herself.

Lori accepts the deal despite having some uneasy feelings about Julian, with whom she had a bad interaction years ago. Julian is just as wary, both because he knows of his children’s interest in the unfinished works, and because he would prefer to be left in peace. Although the trepidation on both sides continues for the bulk of the story, a grudging respect arises between two artists who know skill when they see it.

Directed by Soderbergh and written by Ed Solomon, who last collaborated on No Sudden Move, the film is astonishing in its ability to be compelling with such a small story. Much of the film is spent inside Julian’s multi-story home as Julian and Lori have low-level confrontations about a variety of things, including the meaning of his art, her abilities, the fate of the remaining “Christophers,” and more. Each conversation brings out more detail about their worldviews and their thoughts about their lot in life.

Much of the success of the film lies in the performances of McKellen and Coel. The 86-year-old McKellen has not lost his ability to astonish with the spoken word, and the monologues he delivers are engrossing even when they’re about mundane things. Coel, best known for the 2020 HBO show I May Destroy You, is a great foil for McKellen, never backing down from his challenges and giving her own unique takes on her lines.

While the film can be enjoyable for non-art lovers, those who appreciate the vagaries of the art world will have a lot to chew on. Soderbergh and Solomon debate a lot of aspects of art, including whether it’s possible to separate the art from the person making it, why some art is valued more than others, the ethics of forgery, and more. Because the film is about a fictional artist, it gives the filmmakers a bit more freedom in their criticisms.

Aside from McKellen and Coel, Gunning (Baby Reindeer) and Corden are the only other two people who get significant screen time in the film. Both of them are, let’s say, acquired tastes, and each gives an elevated performance that matches the energy of their respective characters. Tilly Botsford makes a nice impression in a small role as Julian’s masseuse.

Soderbergh’s last three films — Presence, Black Bag, and now The Christophers — have nothing in common other than the expert filmmaker helming all of them. When you can make a ghost story, a spy film, and a small film about artists equally interesting, you know you’re doing something right.

---

The Christophers is now playing in theaters.

movies film