Weekend Event Planner

These are the 10 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

It'll be another big weekend in and around Dallas as we move into October. A certain mega female pop star will play not one but two concerts at the area's biggest venue. She'll be joined by two other big concerts, and a festival-style event featuring both bands and politicians. There will also be two new local theater productions and a semi-annual arts festival.

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, October 4

Angelika Film Center and Cafe presents Hitchcocktober
There's no better time to enjoy the creepy movies of Alfred Hitchcock than in October, which is why Angelika Film Center in Dallas and Plano will once again present Hitchcocktober. They will screen a different Hitchcock movie every Thursday of the month, starting with Rear Window. Other movies will include Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train, 39 Steps, and Psycho on Halloween.

Wingspan Theatre Company presents On The Verge or The Geography of Yearning
In On The Verge or The Geography of Yearning, three Victorian lady travelers — Mary, Fanny, and Alexandra — take it upon themselves to explore “the mystery of things” and set out for “Terra Incognita” and soon discover the future. These intrepid trekkers pass through a jungle bejeweled with artifacts of the yet to come, hack through history’s underbrush, sojourn with cannibals, bridge-guarding trolls, gas station attendants, and night club crooners. The production will run through October 20 at Bath House Cultural Center.

Kitchen Dog Theater presents Radiant Vermin
When a young couple is offered an ideal house by a mysterious stranger, it prompts the question: How far would any of us go to get our dream home? A fast-paced, pitch-black comedy, Radiant Vermin is a provocative satire about consumerism, gentrification, and inequality. The production will run through October 28 at Trinity River Arts Center.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Carmina Burana
Arguably one of the most popular orchestral pieces performed today, Orff's Carmina Burana features vocals from over 200 members of the Dallas Symphony Chorus. The concert, conducted by Brett Mitchell, will also include Theofanidis’ Rainbow Body and Elgar’s Cockaigne Overture. There will be four performances through Sunday at the Meyerson Symphony Center.

Friday, October 5

Taylor Swift in concert with Camilla Cabello and Charli XCX
It's been almost three years since Dallas-Fort Worth fans have had a chance to see Taylor Swift perform in person, so she's doubling down and giving them two chances. Swift's latest album, Reputation, has not been quite the crowd-pleaser as her previous albums, but her level is so high that it dwarfs pretty much any other singer. She'll perform on both Friday at Saturday at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, with support from Camilla Cabello and Charli XCX.

Phoenix in concert with The Voidz
French indie pop band Phoenix has long been one of those bands that is the soundtrack to many people's lives without ever truly breaking through into the mainstream. Their biggest success was their 2009 album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, which yielded hit songs like "1901" and "Lisztomania." They'll play at South Side Ballroom in support of their 2017 album, Ti Amo, with The Voidz as opening act.

Saturday, October 6

Crow Museum of Asian Art Grand Opening Celebration
The Crow Collection of Asian Art completes its transformation into the Crow Museum of Asian Art with this grand opening event. They'll celebrate with wellness classes, performances, art making, and tours, including the Dallas premiere of "Jacob Hashimoto: Clouds and Chaos." Guests can also stop by the new Pearl Art Studio, watch Tibetan monks create a sand mandala, and visit the newly-designed museum gift shop.

Cottonwood Art Festival
Cottonwood Art Festival is a semi-annual event that features works from the nation's top visual artists. Approximately 1,400 artists submitted their work for consideration, and jurors select over 240 artists to exhibit their museum-quality work and compete in 14 separate categories. The festival, which also features local bands performing the best in rock, country, jazz, blues, swing, and folk, will be at Cottonwood Park in Richardson through Sunday.

David Byrne in concert
We've barely recovered from David Byrne's last visit to Dallas in April, and now we get another chance to enjoy his musical genius. The legendary former Talking Heads lead singer will play at The Theatre at Grand Prairie in support of his new album, American Utopia. He will perform songs from the new album, as well as classics from his solo career and his days with Talking Heads.

Sunday, October 7

The Buffalo Tree Festival
The name of this festival belies its purpose and the big names that will be there. It's a family-friendly music and political engagement festival that will feature musical acts like Spoon, The Polyphonic Spree, and Sarah Jaffe alongside Texas Democratic candidates like Beto O'Rourke, Colin Allred, and Lupe Valdez. It will be a day of entertainment, voter registration, and democracy in action.

Taylor Swift will perform at AT&T Stadium on October 5 and 6.

Getty Images for DIRECTV

Taylor Swift will perform at AT&T Stadium on October 5 and 6.

event-planner

Movie Review

Comedy all-stars Jack Black and Paul Rudd can't save Anaconda sequel

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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