Weekend Event Planner

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

The weekend marking the transition from March to April will not be short on celebratory events. It will include two separate grand openings, a tour showing off warplanes of the past, a whole festival of comedy, the national tour of an acclaimed musical, an annual Easter event, and a commemoration of the city's most iconic TV show.

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

Thursday, March 29

Big Beat Dallas Grand Opening Weekend
Big Beat Dallas, a highly anticipated food and entertainment venue at the Toyota Music Factory in Irving, is the creation of Billy Bob Barnett, best known for starting Billy Bob's in Fort Worth. The venue is opening with a multiday celebration featuring concerts from acts like The Texas Gentlemen, Ruthie Foster, and Joe Ely. Events will take place through Sunday.

Frontiers of Flight Museum presents Wings of Freedom Tour
The Wings of Freedom Tour will bring extremely rare bomber and fighter aircraft to the Frontiers of Flight Museum for a local living history exhibit as part of 110-city nationwide tour. Visitors will not only get a chance to view the interactive display, but they will also have an opportunity to “fly into history” aboard these legendary aircraft. The event will go on through Sunday.

The Star in Frisco presents Entertainment District Grand Opening Weekend
The Star in Frisco will host a weekend celebration for the grand opening of its Entertainment District, including live entertainment, special appearances, dining and shopping specials, and prizes for the public. Festivities throughout the weekend will include a concert by Pat Green, a Dallas Cowboys football academy, performances by the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and Dallas Cowboys Rhythm and Blue, and more.

Off Broadway on Flora: 600 Highwaymen - The Fever
The Fever, the latest work by 600 Highwaymen, tests the limits of individual and collective responsibility, and our willingness to be there for one another. Performed in complete collaboration with the audience, The Fever examines how we assemble, organize and care for the bodies around us. Who will you be when our eyes are on you? What will we see when we all look your way? The production will play multiple times each day through April 1 at Wyly Theatre.

Dallas Comedy Festival
Former Saturday Night Live cast member Sasheer Zamata and the award-winning improv/sketch group 3Peat will be the headliners at the 2018 Dallas Comedy Festival. The four-day festival, taking place through Sunday at Dallas Comedy House and Independent Bar & Kitchen, will feature nearly 80 other performances, including stand-up, improv, and sketch.

Dallas Summer Musicals presents Waitress
Brought to life by a groundbreaking all-female creative team, Waitress features original music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles. Inspired by Adrienne Shelly’s beloved film, the musical tells the story of Jenna, a waitress and expert pie maker who dreams of a way out of her small town and loveless marriage. A baking contest in a nearby county and the town’s new doctor may offer her a chance at a fresh start. The production will run through April 8 at the Music Hall at Fair Park.

Friday, March 30

Visit Dallas presents Dallas 40th Year Reunion
Visit Dallas will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the debut of the original Dallas TV series with cast members Linda Gray, Patrick Duffy, Charlene Tilton, and Steve Kanaly. Guests can enjoy exclusive fan events at Southfork Ranch in Parker on Friday and Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas on Saturday, experiencing up-close-and-personal memories as the cast reminisces about their careers and their time on the iconic show.

TITAS presents L.A. Dance Project
The creation of famed dancer/choreographer Benjamin Millepied, L.A. Dance Project has established itself as a force to be reckoned with in just five short years. It features great dancers, bold artistic vision, and stunning choreography. The group will perform once on Friday and once on Saturday at Moody Performance Hall.

Saturday, March 31

Dallas Art Dealers Association Spring Gallery Walk
The Dallas Art Dealers Association will present its 2018 Spring Gallery Walk, with over 20 galleries staying open into the evening hours to allow visitors to visit multiple locations. Art enthusiasts, private and corporate collectors, artists, designers and visitors to Dallas will enjoy a full spectrum of gallery openings and special exhibitions around Dallas.

Sunday, April 1

The Conservancy presents Easter in the Park
The annual Easter in the Park at Oak Lawn Park features an afternoon of festivities, including The Conservancy Pooch Parade, live music by DJ Jennifer Miller, an Easter egg hunt, a special appearance from the Easter Bunny, and a variety of food trucks. A portion of sales from the food trucks will be donated to The Conservancy.

Easter in the Park will take place at Oak Lawn Park on April 1.

Photo courtesy of The Conservancy

Easter in the Park will take place at Oak Lawn Park on April 1.

event-planner

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.

---

Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

movies film