Open Air Concerts

The best Dallas-Fort Worth outdoor concerts for families in summer 2018

Even with the temperatures rising, plenty of venues in the Dallas-Fort Worth area will present outdoor concert series this spring and summer. These seasonal outings make for fun family picnics, great friend-gatherings, and romantic date nights under the stars.

Tribute bands are a big theme, but you can also get your fill of original artists, classical music, and more. Below are the best places to listen to music in the great outdoors this summer. And as a bonus, nearly all of them are completely free.

Box Garden at Legacy Hall Concert Series
Foodies have had months to enjoy all of the food options at Legacy Hall in Plano, and now The Box Garden, their outdoor beer garden and live entertainment venue, is up-and-running with a new performer almost every day. The series focuses on all-local musicians, running the gamut from up-and-comers to established veterans like The Polyphonic Spree and Kirk Thurmond.

Dallas Arboretum presents Cool Thursdays Concert Series
Boasting one of the best views in Dallas-Fort Worth alongside White Rock Lake, the Dallas Arboretum's Cool Thursday Series continues through June 28 before taking a break until after Labor Day. Among the tribute and party bands on the docket over the next month include U2 by UV, Memphis Soul, Rio (Duran Duran), The Prince Experience, and Sounds of Summer (The Beach Boys).

Dallas Zoo presents Safari Nights
Dallas Zoo's Safari Nights concert series features original artists and tribute bands who will fill the park with music every Saturday night. Free with zoo admission, it allows guests to enjoy all that the zoo has to offer before settling down for the concert. Taking place through July 14, it'll feature bands like Desperado (Eagles tribute band), Trout Fishing in America, and The O's.

Levitt Pavilion presents Music Under the Stars
Every weekend through July 22, the Levitt Pavilion for the Performing Arts in Arlington welcomes in local, regional, and national artists to perform for the masses. Performers this summer will include Vocal Trash, Bowling for Soup, Green River Ordinance, Rick Trevino, Radney Foster, and Marcia Ball. As a bonus, they also show the occasional movie, like Frozen, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, and Mamma Mia.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Parks Concerts
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra decamps from the Meyerson Symphony Center and takes its act outside with the Parks Concerts series. Over the course of two weeks between May 28 and June 12, Assistant Conductor Ruth Reinhardt will lead the DSO in a program featuring light classics, patriotic tunes, and other popular fare. Concerts will take place at Flag Pole Hill, Timberglen Park, Crawford Memorial Park, Kidd Springs Park, and Paul Quinn College.

Sounds of Lewisville
Sounds of Lewisville is a free concert series that has been going strong for close to 30 years. Taking place at Wayne Ferguson Plaza in Lewisville, it will feature a tribute band-heavy lineup every Tuesday in June and July. Among the performers will be Just Like P!nk, Me & My Monkey (Beatles tribute), Las Vegas Nights with Elvis, Forever Mac (Fleetwood Mac tribute), and Dancing Dream (ABBA tribute).

Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra presents Concerts in the Garden
The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra's annual Concerts in the Garden series is always highly anticipated, presenting a variety of great music every weekend in June. Among the popular events at Fort Worth Botanic Garden this season will be The Music of Michael Jackson, Star Wars and Beyond: A Laser Light Spectacular, The Music of Journey, and Old 97's. As always, the series will end with the Old-Fashioned Family Fireworks Picnic, taking place the nights of July 2-4.

Vitruvian Nights Live
Vitruvian Nights Live will feature popular party and tribute artists every other Thursday night starting June 14 in the amphitheater at Vitruvian Park in Addison. Performers will include Emerald City, Warehouse (Dave Matthews Band tribute band), King George (George Strait tribute band), The Landsharks (Jimmy Buffett tribute band), and Blaze of Glory (Bon Jovi tribute band). In addition to the live music, guests may purchase bites from food trucks and shop from the mobile boutiques.

Panther Island Pavilion presents Rockin’ the River
Once the weather gets blazin' hot in July, head to Panther Island Pavilion in Fort Worth for the Rockin' the River series. Taking place July 7-August 11, it features live bands, a fireworks show, and the ability to take it all in from a tube on the Trinity River or from the shore. Headliners will include Micky and the Motorcars, Kody West, Cody Canada and the Departed, The Dirty River Boys, Dalton Domino, and Shinyribs.

The Cool Thursdays Concert Series takes place at Dallas Arboretum through June 28, starting up again on September 6.

Cool Thursdays Concert Series at Dallas Arboretum

Photo courtesy of Dallas Arboretum

The Cool Thursdays Concert Series takes place at Dallas Arboretum through June 28, starting up again on September 6.

music concerts

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.

movies film