Event Planner

Taylor Swift tops packed weekend of Memorial Day events in Dallas

Memorial Day weekend is typically a big travel weekend for many in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Coming just before the end of the school year, it gives families a chance to kick start their summer with a little out-of-town fun.

But there's so much going on in town this year that it might make you rethink your plans. Below are the best options for your precious free time Thursday through Memorial Day Monday. Don't like what you see? Lucky for you, we have a much longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, May 23

Delta Rae in concert with Jillette Johnson and The Saint Johns
The North Carolina folk rock band Delta Rae has made so many recent area appearances that you could mistake it for a local group. In reality, it's just a band that's hitting at the right time, riding the Mumford/Lumineers wave for all it's worth. Delta Rae plays The Kessler on Thursday night, but if you can't make this one, scroll down to Friday.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Carmina Burana
If you haven't been to a Dallas Symphony Orchestra concert during the 2012-2013 season, there's no time like the present. DSO wraps up its schedule at Meyerson Symphony Center with Orff's dramatic Carmina Burana, a piece you know even if you don't think you know it. Playing Thursday through Saturday, the group is joined by the Dallas Symphony Chorus and Children's Chorus of Greater Dallas.

Friday, May 24

The Fourteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition
Coming just three months after Van Cliburn passed away after a long battle with cancer, this quadrennial competition features 30 young pianists hoping to make it as big as Cliburn did. The preliminary rounds take place Friday at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, with semifinals happening June 1 and finals June 6.

Sarah Jaffe in concert with Delta Rae
Levitt Pavilion for the Performing Arts in Arlington kicks off its 2013 concert season with a Memorial Day weekend music festival. Following this concert with two very familiar names on Friday, The Polyphonic Spree headlines Saturday's concert, and The Old 97's take center stage on Sunday. The festival also features food from area restaurants.

Kitchen Dog Theater presents Se Llama Cristina
The annual New Works Festival from Kitchen Dog Theater is just that, a variety of new plays and readings from local and national playwrights. The festival's featured play is Se Llama Cristina, about a man and a woman who wake up in a room with no memory of how they got there. It plays at McKinney Avenue Contemporary through June 22.

Saturday, May 25

Taylor Swift in concert with Ed Sheeran and Austin Malone
If you couldn't tell, country music is pretty huge in Texas. Just two weeks after Kenny Chesney filled up Cowboys Stadium, Taylor Swift does the same. She gets a little help in that regard from one of her opening acts, Ed Sheeran, a Brit who's nearing the popularity of boy band One Direction — which is only right because he's written songs for them.

Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds in concert
The name Babyface still rings a certain bell in soul/R&B circles, even though the man otherwise known as Kenny Edmonds hasn't put out any new music since 2007. But nostalgia is a big hook for anybody who came of age in the late '80s or early '90s, so expect a packed crowd at Majestic Theatre to hear songs including "When Can I See You" and "Every Time I Close My Eyes."

Sunday, May 26

Dallas Museum of Art openings
As it's the 50th anniversary of his assassination in Dallas, 2013 is the year of tributes to President John F. Kennedy. The Dallas Museum of Art honors the president with two new exhibits, Hotel Texas: An Art Exhibition for the President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy and DallasSITES: Charting Contemporary Art, 1963 to Present. The first features art that was installed in the Kennedys' hotel room during their visit, and the second looks at how the local art world has changed in the half-century since his death. Both are part of the museum's free exhibits and will be on display through September 15.

2013 Tomato Battle
Have you ever had the urge to get into a food fight but were too chicken and/or law-abiding to go through with it? This event at Fair Park gives you full permission — for a price — to hurl tomatoes at friends and strangers alike. In the event of bad weather or a tomato shortage, event organizers will use an equally messy alternative — mud.

Soundgarden in concert
Soundgarden, one of the progenitors of the grunge movement of the early '90s, burned hot and heavy for less than a decade before splitting up in 1997. They reunited three years ago and just released their first new album in 16 years, King Animal, at the end of 2012. You can see if they've still got it when they play the soon-to-be-renamed Palladium Ballroom.

Monday, May 27

Dallas Arboretum presents Eddie Coker Memorial Day Children’s Concert
Heading out to a park is sure to be a popular activity on Memorial Day, so you might as well get a two-for-one deal by taking in the beauty at Dallas Arboretum and being treated to a concert by children's musician Eddie Coker. Coker plays two different sets, and there is also kid-friendly stuff like a petting zoo, arts and crafts, and face painting.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Memorial Day Concert and Fireworks Display
Every good holiday deserves a fireworks show, and that's what you get when the Dallas Symphony Orchestra starts its outdoor season by performing at Flag Pole Hill Park. Get there early to grab a great spot, then settle in for a program of patriotic music and bombs bursting in air.

Taylor Swift plays at Cowboys Stadium with Ed Sheeran and Austin Malone on May 25.

Photo by Chinh Phan

Taylor Swift plays at Cowboys Stadium with Ed Sheeran and Austin Malone on May 25.

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Movie Review

Survival takes on new meaning in intense but hokey Whalefall

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Austin Abrams in Whalefall.

Austin Abrams has been a professional actor for 15 years, but the 30-year-old seems to just now be getting his due. After years of mostly supporting roles in films like Paper Towns, Brad’s Status, and Weapons, he has been charged with leading two films in 2026 where he’s largely acting by himself: First Resident Evil and now Whalefall.

Abrams plays Jay Gardiner, who has returned home to California a year after the death of his hard-ass father, Mitt (Josh Brolin). The two had a tempestuous relationship, and while his mom (Elisabeth Shue) and sisters (Jane Levy and Emily Rudd) reminisce fondly about him, Jay finds it difficult to come up with good memories. The two did share a connection with the ocean, and Jay decides to honor him by going scuba diving.

Ignoring warnings of whale activity in the area, Jay makes his way out into a notoriously dangerous part of the ocean near their home. Soon after he starts swimming, he encounters a sperm whale chasing after a giant squid. Jay inadvertently gets sucked into the enormous creature’s mouth and, ultimately, inside its body. Faced with a seemingly inescapable situation, Jay’s only hope lies in the lessons his father taught him.

Directed by Brian Duffield and adapted by Duffield and Daniel Kraus from Kraus’ book of the same name, the film is at its best when it depicts Jay struggling to survive within the whale. The claustrophobic nature of the setting and the various obstacles (multiple contracting chambers, the squid, and more) he faces make every scene inside the whale feel as intense and cover-your-eyes scary as any great horror movie.

Naturally, the entire movie can’t be about his survival efforts, and so the filmmakers toggle back and forth between Jay’s ordeal in the whale to memories of times with his father. Not so coincidentally, these remembrances come with subtle or overt wisdom from Mitt that would serve Jay well in his current situation. More often than not, these flashback scenes are so on-the-nose that they come off as cheesy instead of inspirational.

It’s also difficult to derive any big emotions from the story other than revulsion at the way Jay’s body is brutalized while he’s inside the whale. None of the characters in the film receive a notable introduction to the audience before big events start happening. It’s next-to-impossible to be invested in their stories when their personalities are being revealed in bits and pieces throughout the movie.

Abrams does well enough in bringing out the terror Jay feels in the whale and the sullenness/anger he has toward his father in other scenes. But whether it’s because his lines in the whale are hard to understand (he’s often talking around a scuba mouthpiece) or the disconnect the character has with father, there’s just something missing in his performance. Brolin’s performance is one-note, and Shue, Levy, Rudd, and John Ortiz don’t appear enough to make a big impact.

With Kraus onboard as the co-writer of the film, it may be the case that Duffield was not given leeway to change the story of Whalefall too much. What might have worked in the book doesn’t seem to translate equally to the film, and while Jay’s nightmare in the whale is effective, the rest of his story doesn’t come across as successfully.

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Whalefall is now playing in theaters.

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