Weekend Event Planner

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

There is plenty to do in and around Dallas this weekend, including a rare appearance by a sports event. You can check out some great college basketball, a former first lady, four different theater productions, concerts by big names from two countries, superheroic dance, and more.

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, March 8

2018 Conference USA Basketball Championship
The UNT men's and women's basketball teams will be in action on Wednesday. It's the first time the Conference USA Basketball Championship takes place at the Ford Center at the Star in Frisco, so it's not yet known if either will be playing on Thursday or beyond. If they are, they'll have to contend with higher seeds Old Dominion and Louisiana Tech, respectively. The basketball action will continue through Saturday.

AT&T Performing Arts Center presents #hearhere: A Conversation with Former First Lady Michelle Obama
As a transformative first lady, Michelle Obama launched and led four key initiatives: Let’s Move!, to address the challenge of childhood obesity; Joining Forces, to support veterans, service members and their families; Reach Higher, to inspire young people to seek higher education; and Let Girls Learn, to help adolescent girls around the world go to school. She'll speak about those and other subjects in this event at the Winspear Opera House.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4
French pianist Lise de la Salle will be showcased during the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's latest concert. Under the direction of Maestro Fabio Luisi, de la Salle will play on selections like Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 and Strauss' "Ein Heldenleben." The concert will be performed four times through Sunday at the Meyerson Symphony Center.

Wayne Newton in concert
Entertainer Wayne Newton is such a longtime Las Vegas institution that you'd think he doesn't go on the road at all anymore. But he'll come to the Eisemann Center for the Performing Arts in Richardson to sing songs from his illustrious career, during which he has released 30 albums. If you can't make this show, he'll also play at Arlington Music Hall on Friday.

Theatre Three presents She Kills Monsters
A comedic romp into the world of fantasy role-playing games, She Kills Monsters tells the story of Agnes Evans as she leaves her childhood home in Ohio following the death of her teenage sister, Tilly. When Agnes finds Tilly’s Dungeons & Dragons notebook, however, she stumbles into a journey of discovery and action-packed adventure in the imaginary world that was Tilly’s refuge. The play will run through April 1 at Theatre Three.

Friday, March 9

The Dallas Opera presents Sunken Garden
A filmmaker’s obsession with the disappearance of a young girl leads to the discovery of a walled garden, which is the barrier between life and death. Does this place actually exist or is it just a stunning journey of the imagination? Either way, it immerses audiences into a world of crime and mystery to create a one-of-a-kind production. The opera will be performed four times through March 17 at the Winspear Opera House.

Giant Entertainment presents Hitchcock Blonde
Hitchcock Blonde intertwines three stories: Alex, a media professor suffering from a midlife crisis, invites one of his students to Greece to examine a long-lost film fragment that Alfred Hitchcock made in 1919. Meanwhile, in 1959, Hitchcock is auditioning an actress for the shower scene of his film Psycho. And finally, the lost film is recreated, arguably explaining the director's obsession with persecuted blondes. The play will run through March 24 in Frank's Place, a black box space at Kalita Humphreys Theater.

Dallas Theater Center presents The Great Society
Following the success of DTC’s 2016 production of All the Way, The Great Society continues the story of Lyndon B. Johnson’s turbulent presidency. While the president fights a “war on poverty” at home, his war in Vietnam begins to spiral out of control. Besieged by political enemies, Johnson desperately fights to pass civil rights legislation and some of the most important social programs in American history, even as the country turns against him and descends into chaos. The play will run through April 1 at Wyly Theatre.

TITAS presents Lucky Plush
A group of washed-up superheroes join forces to create a nonprofit think tank but get caught up in the politics of branding and group dynamics. Fighting evil ain’t what it used to be. This is the basis for Trip the Light Fantastic: The Making of SuperStrip, Lucky Plush’s newest creation. Funny, smart and thought provoking, Lucky Plush is a breath of fresh air in the dance world. They'll perform once on Friday and once on Saturday at Moody Performance Hall.

Sunday, March 11

Gloria Trevi & Alejandra Guzmán in concert
Born just six days apart 50 years ago, Gloria Trevi and Alejandra Guzmán are two of Mexico's most popular singers. They joined forces in 2017 for a duets album, Versus, and have been touring almost constantly since its release. They'll return to the Dallas area to play at the Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory, singing songs from that album and hits from throughout their careers.

Former First Lady Michelle Obama will speak at Winspear Opera House on March 8.

Photo by © Jewel Samad/Getty Images

Former First Lady Michelle Obama will speak at Winspear Opera House on March 8.

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Movie Review

Faces of Death returns with modern twist on cult horror film

Photo courtesy of of IFC Films

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death.

True horror fans will likely be familiar with the 1978 cult film Faces of Death, which purported to be a documentary showing real-life killings in gory detail. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop rumors from continuing to spread for decades. Now, almost 50 years and multiple sequels later, comes a new version of Faces of Death, an actual movie that pays homage to the original in interesting ways.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a YouTube-like company called Kino as a content moderator, flagging videos that violate the company’s policies. This means her job often involves seeing some truly despicable things from all manner of depraved people. One day, though, she comes across a video that seems a little too real, and after seeing more similar videos, she starts to believe they’re genuine murders.

Going against her company NDA, she starts to investigate the videos on her own, which puts her on the radar of Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is actually kidnapping people and killing them on camera through methods seen in the original Faces of Death film. It’s not long before Arthur tracks her down, with a plan to make her one of his next victims.

Written and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-written by Isa Mazzei, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, with the occasional gross-out sequence. The idea of having someone emulate the killings in the cult film is a good idea, and pairing it with the modern-day attention economy - in which content creators go to increasing lengths for clicks - is a clever twist on a concept that other films have done.

The film as a whole is a commentary on how social media and video sharing sites have often decided to prioritize profits over the well-being of their users. Margot is shown allowing videos involving violence and sexual assault to stay on the site while nixing ones depicting how to use Narcan or demonstrating putting on a condom on a banana. Josh (Jermaine Fowler), Margot’s boss, is even explicit in the company mandate that outrageous videos drive views.

While Arthur has the makings of a good villain, there are few attempts to make him seem truly diabolical. His kidnappings often seem more spur-of-the-moment than calculated, and even though he has a well thought-out dungeon at home, the house’s location in the suburbs seems to make him vulnerable to easy discovery. Goldhaber and Mazzei leave more than a few unanswered questions along the way that take away from the intensity of the story.

Ferreira is yet another actor from Euphoria who’s capitalizing on her exposure from that show. She plays Margot’s increasing anxiety well, and when the action ratchets up in the final act, she meets the moment in a satisfying way. Montgomery returns to the vibe he had while playing the evil Billy on Stranger Things, and even though his character doesn’t fully live up to his potential, Montgomery sells his evil for all it’s worth.

The new Faces of Death may not be what some are expecting given the reputation of the previous films, but it’s a solid horror/thriller that uses the brand as a launching pad into something different. It doesn’t make much of a dent in the scare department, but it does give its violence and gore a degree of relevance in today’s often desensitized world.

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Faces of Death is now playing in theaters.

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