The friends from Sesame Street will come to Dallas for a special 50th anniversary celebration, culminating with a free festival at Main Street Garden on July 6.
Photo courtesy of Feld Entertainment
Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, will celebrate the iconic program’s 50th anniversary with a visit to Dallas. They'll be in town July 3-6, culminating in a free family festival and stage show at Main Street Garden on July 6.
During their visit, Sesame Workshop will collaborate with community partners, celebrities, and elected officials to highlight the many ways Sesame Street helps kids in Dallas and around the country grow smarter, stronger, and kinder.
A production crew will film a new segment for the show’s 50th season, which premieres in November on HBO, and a variety of Sesame Street characters will visit local landmarks and community organizations across the city.
“We are excited to welcome Sesame Street to Dallas this summer,” said Mayor Mike Rawlings in a statement. “Over the past 50 years, Sesame Street has been teaching our young children, putting smiles on their faces, and helping our families grow stronger. On behalf of the city of Dallas, thank you to Sesame Workshop and all the partners involved in bringing this fun, engaging family festival to our city.”
Dallas will be the only Texas stop and one of only 10 cities on Sesame Workshop's nationwide tour. The tour starts in New York City on June 1 and takes place every Saturday in a new city before finishing on August 3 in Los Angeles.
The opening scenes of the new drama Dreams are bracing, fictional sequences that call to mind real-life scenarios. In them, a young Mexican man named Fernando (Isaac Hernández) goes through a somewhat harrowing journey from the back of a semi truck in South Texas all the way to San Francisco. It’s a familiar immigrant story that seems to set the stage for a film with something interesting to say.
It turns out, however, that Fernando has not made the long and arduous trek for a job. Instead, it’s to be with Jennifer McCarthy (Jessica Chastain), a rich woman who helps lead a foundation dedicated to multiple things, including funding dance academies. Fernando, a talented dancer, and Jennifer have been in an off-and-on affair for years, with Jennifer wanting to keep their relationship a secret.
Although both are drawn to each other in an inexplicable, lustful way, their bond is tenuous, with each of them dissatisfied for different reasons. Fernando clearly sacrifices much more of himself than Jennifer, who wants for nothing except maybe more affection from her father, Michael (Marshall Bell), and brother, Jake (Rupert Friend).
Writer/director Michel Franco seems to try to inject tension into Fernando and Jennifer’s relationship from the start, an attempt that is only halfway successful. It’s clear from the way they greet each other - not to mention a steamy sex scene shortly thereafter - that they have known each other for a good length of time. Franco is able to get across this familiarity with an economy of scenes, and the intensity of their bond holds for a while.
But as the film progresses and both of them grow disenchanted with their arrangement, Franco starts taking the story in some odd directions. The biggest issue is that it’s never clear at what point in time the story is taking place. Fernando ends up making multiple trips back and forth across the border, with Jennifer doing the same at one point, and Franco’s use of flashbacks muddies the waters, wrong-footing the audience when he should be trying to draw them further into Fernando and Jennifer’s complications.
Revelations in the final act make the story even more confusing, as both main characters start saying and doing harsh things that seem to come out of nowhere. That would be all well and good if Franco actually committed to their changes of heart, but he keeps things wishy-washy for most of the final 15 minutes, resulting in an ending that makes little sense for either character.
Despite the story issues, both Chastain and Hernández give compelling performances. Chastain has been a little under the radar since winning an Oscar for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, but she keeps this character interesting longer than it should have been. Hernández has limited credits and appears to have been cast for his dancing ability, but he goes toe-to-toe with Chastain on more than one occasion and acquits himself well.
Dreams had all of the ideas to explore a more in-depth story about the complicated immigration policies between Mexico and the U.S., or how wealthy people take advantage of those less fortunate. But Franco never finds the right footing, settling instead for a titillating and somewhat mystifying relationship story that feels half-baked.
