Weekend Event Planner

These are the 8 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

The beginning of June is the unofficial start to summer, as kids are finishing up school across Dallas-Fort Worth. To celebrate that new freedom, kids and adults can enjoy an outdoor movie, the opening of an anticipated new development, the conclusion of a classical music festival, a classic story told through dance, a concert with country music superstars, and more.

Below are the best options for your precious free time Thursday through Sunday. Don't like what you see? Lucky for you, we have a much longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, June 1

Main Street Garden presents Movies in the Park
In honor of the reawakening of its neighbor, The Statler, Main Street Garden is presenting a monthly throwback Movies in the Park series. This month, the series has reached the 1970s, celebrated with a screening of the original Superman from 1978, starring Christopher Reeve.

Friday, June 2

Legacy West Grand Opening
If you've driven on the Dallas North Tollway in North Plano recently, it's impossible to miss the construction of the monolithic Legacy West, the largest new mixed-use development in the area. Legacy West finally celebrates its grand opening all weekend long with live music, food and drink tastings, special store discounts, and a “sneak peek” first look inside Legacy Hall, the 55,000-square-foot food hall.

Soluna Festival conclusion
The three-week-long Soluna Festival comes to a close with a special concert from the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. On Friday and Sunday, the orchestra presents a regular version, featuring Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5 and Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2, while on Saturday, it enhances the show with Beyond the Score, which incorporates projections of moving and still images, actors, soloists, and narration into the performance, setting the composers and their masterpieces in an artistic, social, political, and cultural context. All performances are at Meyerson Symphony Center.

WaterTower Theatre presents Native Gardens
Gardens and cultures clash, turning friendly neighbors into feuding enemies in this funny regional premiere written by Karen Zacarías. Pablo, a high-powered lawyer, and his very pregnant wife, Tania, a doctoral candidate, are realizing the American dream when they purchase a house next door to community stalwarts Virginia and Frank. But a disagreement over a longstanding fence line soon spirals into an all-out war of taste, class, privilege, and entitlement. The play runs at WaterTower Theatre through June 25.

CeCe Winans in concert
The best-selling and most-awarded female gospel artist of all time, CeCe Winans has long-since cemented her status as one of the most accomplished and celebrated women in modern music history. Winans performs at the Majestic Theatre in support of her new album, Let Them Fall In Love, her first in nearly a decade.

Texas Ballet Theater presents Alice in Wonderland
Texas Ballet Theater ends its season with Ben Stevenson’s Alice in Wonderland. The Dallas Opera Orchestra accompanies TBT for the famous storybook ballet, which features the rushed rabbit, a spiteful queen, the Cheshire cat, the Mad Hatter and, of course, Alice. The production plays five times through Sunday at Winspear Opera House.

Saturday, June 3

VolunteerNow presents Voly in the Park
Voly in the Park is Dallas' only volunteerism festival and showcase of vibrant nonprofits in North Texas. More than 75 organizations set up booths at Klyde Warren Park with games, interactive information, and hands-on volunteer projects. The festival showcases VolunteerNow's volunteer matching program, VOLY.org, which makes it quick and easy for volunteers to connect with more than 1,000 North Texas nonprofits and 900-plus volunteer opportunities.

Florida Georgia Line in concert with Nelly and Chris Lane
Country duo Florida Georgia Line hit the ground running in 2012, reaching No. 1 with their debut album, Here's to the Good Times, a feat they repeated with their next two albums, including 2016's Dig Your Roots. They play at Starplex Pavilion in support of that album, and are joined by opening acts Nelly and Chris Lane.

Florida Georgia Line plays at Starplex Pavilion with Nelly and Chris Lane on June 3.

Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo RodeoHouston entertainers January 2015 Florida Georgia Line

Photo courtesy of Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo

Florida Georgia Line plays at Starplex Pavilion with Nelly and Chris Lane on June 3.

event-planner

Movie Review

A-list actor Saoirse Ronan proves award-worthy in new film The Outrun

Photo by Yunus Roy Imer/courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

undefined

In Hollywood, there are two levels of being an A-lister, with occasional overlap between the two. There are the movie stars who can be counted on time and again to deliver at the box office, and there are the actors who put on Oscar-level performances in nearly every film they’re in. Saoirse Ronan resides firmly in the latter category, which she proves yet again in The Outrun.

The first time we see Rona (Ronan), she is drunk in a pub in London, so far gone that she has to be thrown out by security. In quick succession, she is shown with a severe black eye while giving a police report, and then working on her family farm on Scotland’s Orkney Islands, accompanied by text stating simply “117 days.” With a modicum of storytelling, it’s readily apparent that Rona is an alcoholic, and that the film will spend time with her at various stages of her tumultuous life.

The “present” of the film is her time on the Orkney Islands, with Rona helping her dad, Andrew (Stephen Dillane), run the farm, putting up with her overtly religious mom, Annie (Saskia Reeves), and doing her level best to stay sober. The fact that the 29-year-old has no clue what to do with her life and that she’s still pining over her old boyfriend, Daynin (Paapa Essiedu), doesn’t exactly help her predicament.

Directed by Nora Fingscheidt and adapted by Fingscheidt and Amy Liptrot from Liptrot’s memoir of the same name, the film treads familiar ground seen in other movies about alcoholism, with the biggest difference being the setting. The harsh beauty of the landscape where she spends most of her time seems to be a metaphor for her life, a place that can be unforgiving but also capable of the occasional positive surprise.

Fingscheidt eschews a straightforward narrative in favor of one that offers glimpses of Rona’s life throughout her drunkenness and sobriety. While she is able to keep Rona’s story legible for most of the film, there are times when the back-and-forth takes extra effort to understand. A clever marker the film uses to help viewers track time is Rona’s changing hair color, which is bright blue when she’s in her drinking phase in London, with only blue tips remaining during her time of recovery.

The film contains other elements to try to enhance the central story, some of which are more successful than others. Rona recounts various Scottish legends through voiceover, most notably one about selkies, shapeshifters that can change between seal and human form. The idea is interesting, but the connection between the legend and Rona is not strong. A subplot involving her dad’s lifelong mental health issues hits a bit harder, although it rightly is not explored all that much.

Ronan is, as always, an acting force. When an actor plays an alcoholic, it can be easy for them to fall into clichés, but Ronan manages to avoid most of them. Her skills have always been in the smaller, quieter moments anyway, and it’s when her character has to delve into self-reflection that she shines the most. Dillane and Reeves are veteran actors who complement Ronan well, and Essiedu does nicely in a role that is chopped up.

The Outrun - named for a certain part of the landscape on Rona’s family farm - doesn’t necessarily have a lot of new things to say about the states of addiction or soberness, but the personal story is compelling enough to hold interest. And with Ronan in the lead, moviegoers are in good hands, as her performance proves to be award-worthy once again.

---

The Outrun opens in theaters on October 4.

movies film