Weekend Event Planner

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

There is a lot going on in and around Dallas this weekend, and the variety is so much that you can do something different and cool every day. The events include a chance to tour some really old airplanes, a thoroughly unique theater experience, a music festival featuring a TV star as a headliner, an honoring of a master filmmaker, and science on display right in front of your eyes.

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, March 23

Frontiers of Flight Museum presents Wings of Freedom Tour 2017
The annual Wings of Freedom Tour is a rare opportunity to tour inside and out and fly on World War II aircraft like the Boeing B-17G “Flying Fortress” Nine-O-Nine, Consolidated B-24J “Liberator” Witchcraft, North American B-25J “Mitchell” Tondelayo, and North American TF-51D “Mustang” Toulouse Nuts. The tour is at the Frontiers of Flight Museum through Sunday.

AT&T Performing Arts Center presents Robot Planet Rising: An Intergalactic Nemesis Live-Action Graphic Novel
In Robot Planet Rising: An Intergalactic Nemesis Live-Action Graphic Novel, a sequel to The Intergalactic Nemesis: Target Earth, three actors voice the dozens of characters, a Foley artist creates all the sound effects, and a pianist plays a cinematic score while more than 1,250 individual full-color hi-res comic book panels tell a hilarious sci-fi adventure story visually from an enormous movie screen. There are three performances at Wyly Theatre through Saturday.

NPR presents Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me!
Now in its 20th season, Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me! is National Public Radio’s Peabody Award-winning quiz show in which host Peter Sagal leads a rotating panel of comedians, humorists and journalists, listener contestants, and celebrity guests through a comic review of the week’s news. Panelists for the show are Paula Poundstone, Roxanne Roberts, and Peter Grosz, and singer Charley Pride participates in the "Not My Job" segment. The show takes place at the Music Hall at Fair Park.

A Dallas Retrospective: JR Ewing Bourbon presents Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy
At this special event at Winspear Opera House, Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy, two legendary icons from the television series Dallas, discuss their careers, inside stories, and the effect the popular television show had on the Dallas community and the world. The event, sponsored by JR Ewing Bourbon, is moderated by Dallas Morning News city columnist Robert Wilonsky.

Louie Anderson in concert
Iconic comedian Louie Anderson is one of the country's most recognized and adored comics, named by Comedy Central as "One of 100 Greatest Stand-up Comedians of All Time." His career has received a recent bump after he was cast to co-star along with Zach Galifianakis and Martha Kelly in the FX series Baskets, playing Christine Baskets, the matriarch of the Baskets clan. He performs at Granada Theater.

Friday, March 24

Toyota Texas Music Revolution 21
Country music star Kacey Musgraves and actor-turned-singer Kiefer Sutherland headline Toyota Texas Music Revolution 21 at Oak Point Park and Preserve in Plano. The two-day festival also features performances by Josh Ritter, Zane Williams, Castro the Band, The O’s, Red Shahan, Pail Cauthen, Kevin Deal, Austin Cunningham, 1100 Springs, Tejas Brothers, Max Stalling, Vandoliers, The Birddogs, and Buffalo Ruckus.

So What?! Music Festival
The 10th anniversary celebration of So What?! Music Festival takes over multiple venues in Deep Ellum on Friday, followed by two more days of music at AirHogs Stadium in Grand Prairie. Expect lots of 10-year album celebrations from bands like Mayday Parade, Envy on the Coast, Forever the Sickest Kids, Four Year Strong, Set Your Goals, and We the Kings. The festival features performances from more than 100 bands on multiple stages, and it includes an array of musical acts including rock, metal, folk, dance, pop, and pop-punk.

Saturday, March 25

American Heart Association presents BeautyKind Unites Concert
The BeautyKind Unites Concert, benefiting the American Heart Association, is a chance for the audience to raise its voice; help build a community movement to change health disparities in the community; and sing along with music stars like Demi Lovato, Jake Owen, the Band Perry, Cole Swindell, and stroke survivor Randy Travis. The event takes place at AT&T Stadium.

Texas Theatre and USA Film Festival present An Evening with Whit Stillman
Writer/director Whit Stillman is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker known for movies like Metropolitan and Damsels in Distress. The Texas Theatre and the USA Film Festival in Dallas are honoring Stillman in conjunction with a double feature of two of his best-loved films, Love & Friendship and The Last Days of Disco. The evening includes screenings of both films and an on-stage Q&A session with Stillman.

Sunday, March 26

Brain Candy Live!
Adam Savage and Michael Stevens present Brain Candy Live!, a one-of-a-kind interactive, hands-on, minds-on theatrical experience. The master explainers bring along crazy toys, incredible tools, and mind-blowing demonstrations for a celebration of curiosity at Majestic Theatre. Members of the audience act as both test subjects and participants as they spend two hours laughing, learning, and exploring during a theatrical experience like no other.

Demi Lovato is one of the performers at the BeautyKind Unites Concert at AT&T Stadium on March 25.

Photo by Michelle Watson/Catchlight Group

Demi Lovato is one of the performers at the BeautyKind Unites Concert at AT&T Stadium on March 25.

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Movie Review

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma gives horror a surreal twist

Photo courtesy of MUBI

Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

The horror genre really ramped up in the 1970s and ‘80s, bringing with it a new subgenre - the slasher - that gave audiences new visuals of gore, but also a reliance on sexism and homophobia that would come to define the era. The new film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma wrestles with that legacy in ways that are funny, thought-provoking, and downright strange.

Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is a queer filmmaker who has been hired to reboot the moldy IP that is the Camp Miasma franchise, one that was fresh in the 1970s but which numerous shlocky sequels have rendered irrelevant. In an attempt to get to know the property better, Kris has scored a meeting with the reclusive Billy (Gillian Anderson), the star of the original film who has shunned the public eye for decades.

Turns out that Billy lives deep in the woods at Camp Rivoli, which served as the location for the first film. As Kris tries to get to know Billy and convince her to be a part of the new film, she starts to fall under Billy’s spell and the lore of the franchise as a whole. That includes believing that the movie’s villain, Little Death - a transgender person who has an air conditioning vent as a head/mask - may not just be a character created for the movies.

Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow), the film at first feels like it’s going to go the straight-up comedy route, with comic explosions of blood, a strange fascination with candy brands, and a production design that does nothing to hide that the two main actors are on a movie set with painted backdrops. This is backed up by Kris’ phone conversations with her girlfriend, Mari (Jasmine Savoy Brown) and her agent (Sarah Sherman), as well as numerous other details.

But the film starts to go down the surreal route the longer Kris stays at the camp with Billy, especially when they sit down to watch the original Camp Miasma. An extended sequence shows a good amount of that film-within-the-film, demonstrating why Kris and Billy have a love/hate relationship with the property. For Kris, though, the lines between the film and the real world start to blur, and Schoenbrun uses a variety of out-there elements to drive the point home.

The final act of the film can barely be described as Kris goes deeper down the rabbit hole, with Schoenbrun using her film to comment on the horror genre as a whole, its treatment of women and LGBT people, the movie industry, and more. All the while the “camp” of Camp Miasma maintains a presence, with candy wrappers showing up everywhere and the tongue-in-cheek references to Little Death (the French term La petite mort, which means “the little death,” is a euphemism for orgasm).

Einbinder, an Emmy winner for Hacks, is the perfect person to inhabit her role. Her established real-life and fictional personas color everything she does in the film, with her enthusiasm and curiosity shining through. Anderson leans heavily into another reference - Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard - to create a character that is as mysterious as she is alluring. Supporting actors like Brown, Sherman, Patrick Fischler, Dylan Baker, and Eva Victor keep the movie at the right pitch all the way through.

While other films have made fun of horror movie tropes before, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma finds a wholly unique way of doing so. It’s a funny and daring trip into the psyches of two women who may be victims of their own obsessions, and of the movies that made them that way.

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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is now playing in select theaters

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