Weekend Event Planner

These are the 11 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

There are a lot of interesting events to take in this weekend in and around Dallas. There are no fewer than five new theater productions, including a national tour of a Broadway favorite. There will also be a film festival of Asian movies, an art film from Solange Knowles, an Apollo 11 celebration, an appearance from a big comedian, and two big-name concerts.

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

Thursday, July 18

Dallas Summer Musicals presents Hello Dolly!
The bold and enchanting Dolly Gallagher Levi, played by inimitable Betty Buckley, is a widow, matchmaker, and professional meddler. When she decides the next match she needs to make is for herself, she weaves a web of romantic complications for her newest client, the cantankerous “half-a-millionaire” Horace Vandergelder, his two clerks, a pretty hat maker, and her assistant. Hello Dolly!, playing at the Music Hall in Fair Park through July 28, features Broadway classics like “Before the Parade Passes By,” “It Only Takes a Moment,” “Put on Your Sunday Clothes,” and the title number.

Asian Film Festival of Dallas
The Asian Film Festival of Dallas celebrates its 18th year with its largest amount of documentaries, comedies, and women-directed and produced films. Fifty-four films will screen throughout the week, including six short blocks (Drama, Experimental, Women’s, Students’, Late Night, and Documentary) and 32 feature films. The festival will take place through July 25 at Angelika Film Center Dallas.

Nasher Sculpture Center presents Solange Knowles: When I Get Home
Visual artist and singer/songwriter Solange Knowles presents an extended director’s cut of her interdisciplinary performance-art film When I Get Home, featuring new scenes and musical arrangements. The film is an exploration of origin and spiritual expedition that confronts how much of ourselves we have taken or left behind in our evolutions, and how much of that is determined by fear. The free screening is at Nasher Sculpture Center.

Cry Havoc Theater Company and Kitchen Dog Theater presents Crossing the Line
Based on interviews conducted in Dallas, via Skype, and at the border, Crossing the Line is an original documentary-style performance focusing on the immigration debate and the situation at the border. The co-production from Cry Havoc Theater Company and Kitchen Dog Theater will play at Trinity River Arts Center through August 4.

WaterTower Theatre presents Godspell
WaterTower Theatre in Addison will present a special, limited-engagement run of Stephen Schwartz’s beloved musical Godspell. Inspired by parables taken from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Godspell offers a fun, modern take on classic stories mixed with a vibrant score of pop, folk, and gospel music that brings these iconic stories to life for audiences of all ages. The production will run through July 28.

The Firehouse Theatre presents Mamma Mia!
In Mamma Mia!, ABBA's hits tell the hilarious story of a young woman's search for her birth father. The sunny and funny tale unfolds on a Greek island paradise where, on the eve of her wedding, a daughter's quest to discover the identity of her father brings three men from her mother's past back to the island they last visited 20 years ago. The musical will play at The Firehouse Theatre in Farmers Branch through August 11.

Friday, July 19

MainStage Irving-Las Colinas presents Boeing, Boeing
In Boeing, Boeing, it’s the 1960s, and swinging bachelor Bernard couldn’t be happier. He has a fantastic flat in Paris and three gorgeous stewardesses all engaged to him. Of course, the ladies know nothing of each other ... yet. Bernard’s perfect life gets bumpy when his pal Robert drops in for a visit and a new and speedier Boeing jet throws off all of his careful planning. The farcical play will run at Irving Arts Center through August 3.

Saturday, July 20

Frontiers of Flight Museum presents Moon Day
The Frontiers of Flight Museum will present Moon Day, the largest annual space-themed exposition in Texas. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 on the day it happened, the event will feature a full day of family-friendly, entertaining programs and activities and more than three dozen exhibitors. The first 200 students will receive a special lunar sample bag.

Hyena's presents Andrew Dice Clay
Andrew Dice Clay is proud to be one of America's most controversial and outrageous comics. Over the last few years, Clay’s career has experienced a resurgence, with roles in movies like Blue Jasmine and A Star is Born, and recurring roles on Entourage and Vinyl. He'll perform stand-up comedy at Hyena's Comedy Club in Plano on Saturday and Dallas on Sunday.

Chris Young in concert with Chris Janson and Jimmie Allen
Country singer Chris Young has been a star since his 2009 album, The Man I Want to Be, and 2011 album, Neon, yielded five No. 1 hits in a row, including "Gettin' You Home," "Voices," and "You." He hasn't hit No. 1 again since, but he's always been near the top of the charts. His new album, Raised on Country, will come out soon, but fans can enjoy all of his old songs in this concert at Dos Equis Pavilion.

Sunday, July 21

Korn and Alice in Chains in concert
Hard rock legends Korn and Alice in Chains will be in Dallas to co-headline their North America Summer Tour. Korn's most recent album was 2016's The Serenity of Suffering, while Alice In Chains released Rainier Fog in 2018. They will be joined at Dos Equis Pavilion by opening acts Underoath, Ho99o9, and FEVER 333.

Hello, Dolly! will play at the Music Hall at Fair Park through July 28.

Photo by Julieta Cervantes

Hello, Dolly! will play at the Music Hall at Fair Park through July 28.

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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.

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