Weekend Event Planner

These are the 9 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

Music is a big theme for events in and around Dallas this weekend. You can celebrate the songs of a late, great singer, watch some phenomenal dancing, enjoy a two-day festival, attend two big-name concerts, or run to the tune of multiple bands. Also on tap will be a water circus, new art, and the continuation of a growing activism movement.

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 22

Eisemann Center presents Sweet Dreams: The Music of Patsy Cline
Performer Mandy Barnett, who originated the role of “Patsy Cline” in the theatrical production Always… Patsy Cline, will take audiences on a sparkling musical journey performing an evening of Cline’s hits. The concert, taking place at Eisemann Center for the Performing Arts in Richardson on Thursday and Friday, will include "Sweet Dreams," "Crazy," "I Fall to Pieces," and more, along with other classic country and pop standards, and selections from Barnett's own albums.

AT&T Performing Arts Center Broadway Series: Riverdance: The 20th Anniversary World Tour
Celebrating its 20th anniversary, Riverdance draws on Irish traditions as the performers propel Irish dancing and music into the present day, capturing the imagination of audiences across all ages and cultures in an innovative and exciting blend of dance, music, and song. The production will run through Sunday at Winspear Opera House.

Friday, March 23

Toyota Texas Music Revolution
The 2018 edition of Toyota Texas Music Revolution is a two-day festival featuring great music from multiple genres. The festival, taking place at Oak Point Park and Nature Preserve in Plano, will include performances by Ryan Bingham, Margo Price, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Gary P. Nunn, Two Tons Of Steel, The Texas Gentlemen, The Buffalo Ruckus, Drew Kennedy, Austin Cunningham, Jesse Dayton, The Bird Dogs, and The O's.

Cirque Italia Aquatic Spectacular
Cirque Italia's Aquatic Spectacular, which was in Hurst the past couple of weeks, will feature aerialists dazzling and shimmering on a chandelier high above the ground, contortion in a bubble, a Venetian aerial duo, and even someone hula hooping while in the air. The event will take place in a tent in the parking lot of Grapevine Mills through April 1.

Alabama in concert
There was no bigger country band in the 1980s than Alabama. They racked up nine consecutive No. 1 albums thanks to an unprecedented run in which 27 out of their 28 singles went to No. 1. That level of success earned them a hall pass for the rest of their lives, allowing them to release only two albums in the 21st century, including Southern Drawl in 2015. They'll play at Verizon Theatre at Grand Prairie.

Beck in concert
Beck has had one of the oddest careers of any rock musician. He's arguably best known for his first official single, 1994's "Loser," but it wasn't until 2002's Sea Change that one of his albums hit the top 10 on the Billboard charts. He's had a steady run of top-selling albums ever since, including his latest, 2017's Colors. He'll play at the Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory, with Twin Shadow as opening act.

Saturday, March 24

March for Our Lives
The school shooting in Parkland, Florida on February 14 has led to an unprecedented call for gun control from high school students and others. As part of the growing movement, the March for Our Lives will take place in Washington, D.C. and hundreds of other cities around the world, including sister marches in Dallas, McKinney, and Denton.

Sunday, March 25

Toyota Rock n’ Roll Dallas Half Marathon
The musically themed Toyota Rock ‘n’ Roll Dallas Half Marathon is expected to draw 13,000 runners. The 13.1-mile race will start near the Omni Dallas Hotel on Young St. and Lamar St. and will take runners on a tour of downtown and the Dallas skyline, including Deep Ellum, Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, the Bishop Arts District, and Houston Street Bridge. Live bands will be performing along the course, while Hayes Carll will perform at the finish at The Lawn at Reunion.

Dallas Museum of Art presents "Laura Owens" opening day
For more than 20 years, artist Laura Owens has pioneered an innovative, and at times controversial, approach to painting, challenging traditional assumptions about figuration and abstraction, as well as the relationships among avant-garde art, craft, pop culture, and technology. This exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art is the most comprehensive exhibition of her 20-year career, featuring over 60 paintings and objects from the mid-1990s until today. The exhibition will be on display through July 29.

Riverdance will take the stage at Winspear Opera House through March 25.

Photo courtesy of Riverdance

Riverdance will take the stage at Winspear Opera House through March 25.

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Movie Review

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first but not by much

Blumhouse

Five Nights at Freddy's 2

Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films likeM3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.

Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.

Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.

It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.

Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.

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Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.

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