Political junkies and HBO subscribers should mark their calendars for Friday, August 16. At 10 am, individual tickets for An Evening with Bill Maher go on sale.
Maher — comedian, political satirist and host of HBO's Real Time — performs at the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House on Sunday, November 17 at 7:30 pm. The AT&T Performing Arts Center promises it will be a "boundary-stretching evening of sharp wit and satire."
Tickets range from $58 to $88 and can be purchased on the AT&T PAC website, by phone at 214-880-0202, in person at the AT&T PAC information center (2353 Flora St., open 10 am–9 pm daily), or at the remote box office at Park Place Lexus Plano at 1025 Preston Rd.
Since August 5, Center Members have been able to purchase the best available tickets before they go on sale to the public. If you still want to try and beat the GP, you can join by calling 214-978-2888 or going to attpac.org/support.
Real Time, which has aired on HBO for the past seven years, just wrapped up filming August 2 for a summer break. Recent guests have included Jay Z and Barney Frank. Maher released a documentary called Religulous in 2008, and he has written four bestsellers. His latest book is The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass.
Maher started his career as a stand-up comedian in 1979, and he still performs at least 50 dates a year in Las Vegas and theaters across the country. He tailors his routines to the location, calling out local politicians and skewering sacred cows.
Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films likeM3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).
A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.
Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.
Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.
It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.
Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.
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Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.
