Weekend Event Planner

These are the 7 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

While the majority of events around Dallas have either been postponed or canceled, there are a few that have popped up to offer the masses some entertainment while still adhering to the social distancing necessary during the coronavirus pandemic.

Below are the best ways to spend your free time this weekend. While they're not all outside of the house, they all promise to provide a nice distraction from the everyday life.

Thursday, August 27

Rooftop Cinema Club: The Drive-In at The Central
Dallas is getting another drive-in movie option this week thanks to Rooftop Cinema Club. Taking place at The Central in East Dallas, the drive-in will project movies onto a 52-foot screen with skyline views as the backdrop, with audio broadcast through the FM transmitter radio in cars. Moviegoers are welcome to bring their own food, but food and beverage are also being offered through a contactless system. Opening weekend movies include Selena, Dazed and Confused, Dirty Dancing, Friday, Jurassic Park, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Little Mermaid, and Pulp Fiction.

Friday, August 28

Twilight at the Tin Star
Twilight at the Tin Star, taking place at Tin Star Theater in Trinity Groves, is an immersive art event that guests can experience from the safety of their vehicle in an in-the-round, drive-in theater setting. The performance features music by Danny Goldman and MAKE trio, and percussionist Austin Allen. Bruce Wood Dance will perform a site-specific work created by choreographer Gregory Dolbashian under the canopy of TETRA, an illuminated structural art piece by Colin Hendee.

Improv Arlington presents Lavell Crawford
Audiences are becoming increasingly familiar with Lavell Crawford’s giant-sized talent from his numerous television appearances. Crawford gained national exposure on NBC’s hit reality series Last Comic Standing, leading to his own half-hour standup special on Comedy Central. Crawford is best known for his recurring role on AMC’s Emmy Award-winning Breaking Bad. He'll perform five times through Sunday at Improv Arlington.

Improv Addison presents Terry Fator
Terry Fator is perhaps the first entertainer to combine the art of ventriloquism with singing celebrity impressions. His puppets, including Cowboy Walter, Emma Taylor, and Winston the Impersonating Turtle, effortlessly perform the singing styles of an eclectic group of stars, including Tony Bennett, Elvis, Maroon 5, Garth Brooks, Nat King and Natalie Cole, Roy Orbison, Etta James, and more. He'll perform five times through Sunday at Improv Addison.

Saturday, August 29

Legacy Hall presents End of Summer Luau
Legacy Hall in Plano will present a safe and socially distant tropical getaway with an End of Summer Luau. The festive evening will feature a traditional Hawaiian pig roast, hula dancers, a fire performer, tiki cocktails, a limbo competition, and a performance by Summer of ’69, a Bryan Adams tribute band. Food is not included in the overall ticket cost; the pig roast is $18 when pre-purchased with an event ticket, or $22 at the door.

CarBaret: Pee Wee's Big Adventure + Mr. Rid + Lily Taylor
CarBaret, the pop-up drive-in theater/performance space at Brizo in Richardson will present a 35th anniversary screening of Tim Burton's cult classic, Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Prior to the screening, DJ Mr. Rid will present music and selected short films, and Lily Taylor featuring Black Taffy will play live music. Guests can order food from a drive-in menu that will be delivered to cars or chairs, featuring beer bratwurst, grilled kebabs, veggie tacos, and more. Guests can stay in their cars, on top of their cars, or in folding chairs near their cars.

Sunday, August 30

Dallas Museum of Art exhibition openings
The Dallas Museum of Art will open two new exhibitions on Sunday: Love is the Message, The Message is Death, Arthur Jafa’s renowned film that juxtaposes representations of Black artists, scholars, athletes, and politicians with depictions of events ranging from faith-based transcendence to police brutality; and "Contemporary Art + Design," which presents recently acquired paintings, installations, jewelry, furnishings, and design objects made by artists from 11 countries that show new directions for the growth of the DMA's collection. Both exhibitions will remain on display through March 7.

Rooftop Cinema Club: The Drive-In at The Central will show a variety of classic movies.

Photo courtesy of Rooftop Cinema Club

Rooftop Cinema Club: The Drive-In at The Central will show a variety of classic movies.

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Movie Review

Dallas gets showcased in witchy new movie Forbidden Fruits

Photo courtesy of IFC

Alexandra Shipp, Lili Reinhart, and Victoria Perfetti in Forbidden Fruits.

There was a time when Dallas was a prime location for movies, whether it was for films set in and around the city, like Tender Mercies, or ones that used it to stand in for other locations, like Robocop. Dallas is getting its first notable shoutout in a long time thanks to the new film, Forbidden Fruits.

Set mostly in a NorthPark Center-like location called Highland Place Mall, the film centers on a group of young women known as the Fruits. Apple (Lili Reinhart), Cherry (Victoria Perfetti), and Fig (Alexandra Shipp) all work at a clothing store called Free Eden, with the three of them essentially lording over everyone else in the mall. That includes Pumpkin (Lola Tung), who works at the pretzel store Sister Salt’s and who wants to join their group.

Pumpkin soon discovers that, apart from being an entitled clique, the group also claims to be a coven of witches, with Apple especially using their combined power to get back at anyone who’s wronged them. When Pumpkin starts noticing Cherry and Fig going astray of the group’s code, she uses this knowledge to get in tighter with Apple, although she’s unprepared for how far Apple will go to protect her interests.

Written and directed by Meredith Alloway (who grew up in Dallas and graduated from both Lake Highlands High School and SMU) and co-written by Lily Houghton, the film seems to have the aim of combining movies like Mean Girls and The Craft. The peer pressure of being part of an exclusive group is evident from the start, as Apple essentially forces the others to live by her code or be ostracized (or worse).

One of the biggest problems the film runs into, though, is that any conflict comes from within the group itself. With no pressure coming from other friends, family, or co-workers, the group has to create its own drama. The story quickly gets redundant and stagnant, with almost no plot movement until the final act of the film, when it’s almost too late.

Alloway is clearly aiming for a campy vibe with the film, but the execution leaves something to be desired. The four characters are established in a perfunctory manner, and even as they get fleshed out as the film goes along, there’s nothing to compare them with, so it’s as if they’re just acting off-the-wall in a vacuum.

Those who know the Dallas area well will enjoy the local references (the women hail from Plano, Irving, Grapevine, and Highland Park), and Alloway makes sure to include the looming threat of a tornado into the plot. But since the film was actually filmed in Toronto, there are no visuals that make it feel like Texas, and so any goodwill she gets from setting the film in the city is muted by that lack.

While Reinhart (Riverdale) and Shipp (Storm in X-Men movies) have been around longer, both Pedretti (You) and Tung (The Summer I Turned Pretty) have made big impressions on streaming shows in recent years. The foursome play off each other well even when the story is not that compelling.

If there was a message in Forbidden Fruits that Alloway wanted to get across, she didn’t communicate it clearly enough. Her solid cast can only do so much to sell a story that doesn’t have enough on the bone to be filling. It would have been nice for the movie to be filmed in Dallas, but such is the way of the world in modern Hollywood.

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Forbidden Fruits opens in theaters on March 27.

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