Weekend Event Planner

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

There's some great stuff going on in and around Dallas this Labor Day weekend, including three music festivals, a one-weekend-only theater event, a different way to enjoy a classic movie, and a huge college football game.

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, August 30

Uptown Players presents Perfect Arrangement
Uptown Players closes out its two-weekend-only regional premiere of Topher Payne’s Perfect Arrangement, playing through Sunday at Kalita Humphreys Theater. It’s 1950, and new colors are being added to the Red Scare. Two U.S. State Department employees, Bob and Norma, have been tasked with identifying sexual deviants within their ranks. There’s just one problem: both Bob and Norma are gay, and have married each other’s partners as a carefully constructed cover.

Friday, August 31

The Black Academy of Arts and Letters Riverfront Jazz Festival
The 2nd annual Black Academy of Arts and Letters Riverfront Jazz Festival will feature three days of music performances, food, and vendor booths. Led by honorary chair and performer Erykah Badu, the festival, taking place through Sunday, will feature performances by Bobby Rush, Lalah Hathaway, Tito Puente, Jr., Julio Iglesias, Jr., Kenny Lattimore, Malik Woods, and many others. Each night will feature post-event parties at nearby hotels.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Jurassic Park
If you've been as disappointed in the Jurassic World movies as I have, this is a great chance to enjoy the movie that started the franchise in a unique setting. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, Steven Spielberg’s thrilling dinosaur adventure will be shown in HD with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra performing the celebrated score by John Williams. There will be three performances through Sunday at Meyerson Symphony Center.

Dallas Theater Center presents The Winter's Tale
The Winter’s Tale brings Shakespeare’s tale of mystery and magic to life as never before. Featuring Public Works Dallas’ signature blend of professional actors, community members, and special guests, this musical adaption will explode with authentic performances that come together to tell Shakespeare’s beloved fable of hard-won joy and the promise of renewal. There will be five performances through Sunday at Wyly Theatre.

Saturday, September 1

AdvoCare Champions Festival
The inaugural AdvoCare Champions Festival, preceding the AdvoCare Classic on Sunday, will be an entire day devoted to “Celebrating our Champions.” Teams from each branch of the U.S. military, first responders, and teams representing LSU, Miami, and AdvoCare will compete in a grueling 5K obstacle course. That will be followed by a music festival featuring performances by Fastball, Nate Kenyon, Medicine Man Revival, Kirk Thurmond, and more. The event will be at Viridian in Arlington.

Music Fest at Southfork Ranch
The inaugural Music Fest at Southfork Ranch in Parker will feature some big names in adult contemporary, country, jazz, and soul, including David Sanborn, Spyro Gyra, The Temptations, The Whispers, Peter White, Norman Brown, Najee, and many more. The event will also include food, arts and crafts exhibitors, and collectible official festival souvenirs.

Sunday, September 2

Dallas Museum of Art presents "Fine Lands" closing day
Mexican artist Minerva Cuevas' first U.S. solo museum presentation, "Fine Lands," comes to a close on Sunday at the Dallas Museum of Art. Her site-specific mural, which fills both the walls and the ceiling of the Museum’s main thoroughfare, engages directly with the history of Dallas. It is a panorama of the city told from the perspective of indigenous wildlife. Merging industrial and natural landscapes, the work encompasses themes as diverse as the militarization of civilian culture, pollution, and migration.

AdvoCare Classic: LSU vs. Miami
In one of the final games of the first big weekend of the college football season, the No. 25 LSU Tigers will face off against the No. 8 Miami Hurricanes at AT&T Stadium. It's an odd match-up for the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but given the history of the two teams, one that's sure to be popular nonetheless. The teams have played each other 12 times over the years, most recently in the 2005 Chick-Fil-A Bowl.

Erykah Badu will be one of the performers at Black Academy of Arts and Letters Riverfront Jazz Festival, taking place August 31-September 2.

Photo courtesy of Erykah Badu

Erykah Badu will be one of the performers at Black Academy of Arts and Letters Riverfront Jazz Festival, taking place August 31-September 2.

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Movie Review

Film sequel Avatar: Fire and Ash is a technical and visual feast

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Oona Chaplin in Avatar: Fire and Ash.

For a series whose first two films made over $5 billion combined worldwide, Avatar has a curious lack of widespread cultural impact. The films seem to exist in a sort of vacuum, popping up for their run in theaters and then almost as quickly disappearing from the larger movie landscape. The third of five planned movies, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is finally being released three years after its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water.

The new film finds the main duo, human-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his native Na’vi wife, Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), still living with the water-loving Metkayina clan led by Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis). While Jake and Neytiri still play a big part, the focus shifts significantly to their two surviving children, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as two they’ve essentially adopted, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Spider (Jack Champion).

Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who lives on in a fabricated Na’vi body, is still looking for revenge on Jake, and he finds help in the form of the Mangkwan Clan (aka the Ash People), led by Varang (Oona Chaplin). Quaritch’s access to human weapons and the Mangkwan’s desire for more power on the moon known as Pandora make them a nice match, and they team up to try to dominate the other tribes.

Aside from the story, the main point of making the films for writer/director James Cameron is showing off his considerable technical filmmaking prowess, and that is on full display right from the start. The characters zoom around both the air and sea on various creatures with which they’ve bonded, providing Cameron and his team with plenty of opportunities to put the audience right there with them. Cameron’s preferred viewing method of 3D makes the experience even more immersive, even if the high frame rate he uses makes some scenes look too realistic for their own good.

The story, as it has been in the first two films, is a mixed bag. Cameron and co-writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver start off well, having Jake, Neytiri, and their kids continue mourning the death of Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in the previous film. The struggle for power provides an interesting setup, but Cameron and his team seem to drag out the conflict for much too long. This is the longest Avatar film yet, and you really start to feel it in the back half as the filmmakers add on a bunch of unnecessary elements.

Worse than the elongated story, though, is the hackneyed dialogue that Cameron, Jaffa, and Silver have come up with. Almost every main character is forced to spout lines that diminish the importance of the events around them. The writers seemingly couldn’t resist trying to throw in jokes despite them clashing with the tone of the scenes in which they’re said. Combined with the somewhat goofy nature of the Na’vi themselves (not to mention talking whales), the eye-rolling words detract from any excitement or emotion the story builds up.

A pre-movie behind-the-scenes short film shows how the actors act out every scene in performance capture suits, lending an authenticity to their performances. Still, some performers are better than others, with Saldaña, Worthington, and Lang standing out. It’s more than a little weird having Weaver play a 14-year-old girl, but it works relatively well. Those who actually get to show their real faces are collectively fine, but none of them elevate the film overall.

There are undoubtedly some Avatar superfans for which Fire and Ash will move the larger story forward in significant ways. For anyone else, though, the film is a demonstration of both the good and bad sides of Cameron. As he’s proven for 40 years, his visuals are (almost) beyond reproach, but the lack of a story that sticks with you long after you’ve left the theater keeps the film from being truly memorable.

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Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters on December 19.

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