Weekend Event Planner

These are the 12 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

You won't have to worry about not being entertained in Dallas this weekend, as it's yet another packed slate. You can start things off with a great CultureMap event on Thursday, and then take in one of two big-name concerts, two new theater productions, a new opera, a documentary film festival, women's soccer, TV drag queens, and more.

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 11

West Village and CultureMap Dallas present It's Fall Y'All
This fun party will feature bites from favorite West Village restaurants like MidiCi, Pōk The Raw Bar, Paciugo, and more. There will also be beverages from Absolut Elyx and Peroni, fresh fall looks from West Village retailers, tunes, games, and more. Proceeds will benefit The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center.

Dallas VideoFest presents DocuFest
Dozens of documentary features and shorts will be screened over the course of five days. Films will include 13 Hours to Midnight, about former Texas State Senator Wendy Davis; opening night film The Great Buster, about filmmaker Buster Keaton; and Run Like the Devil, about the 2018 Senate race between Ted Cruz and Beto O'Rourke. Opening night takes place at the Texas Theatre, followed by four days of screenings at the Angelika Film Center in Dallas.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3
World-renowned pianist David Fray is performing two selections from Beethoven, along with the “Háry János Suite” by Kodály and Hindemith’s bracing and uplifting “Concert Music for Strings and Brass.” The concert, under the direction of Ruth Reinhardt, will have four performances through Sunday at the Meyerson Symphony Center.

Edie Brickell & New Bohemians in concert
It's always great when hometown bands stay true to where they came from, and Edie Brickell & New Bohemians will do just that with this album release concert at Granada Theater in support of their new album, Rocket. The band has only released five albums in its career, and this is their first new music in 12 years, so this concert is bound to be extra special.

Friday, October 12

Dallas Opera presents The Flying Dutchman
Dallas Opera opens its new season with Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman. Cursed to roam the seas for all eternity and only allowed to go ashore every seven years, The Dutchman searches for the one who might finally bring him peace: a faithful wife. His fortune may have changed when he meets the father of Senta, a beautiful girl whose only wish is to free the mythical Dutchman from his curse, at any cost. The production will play four times through October 20 at the Winspear Opera House.

WaterTower Theatre presents A Doll’s House
Nora and Torvald Helmer are the perfect couple living a storybook life. But for years Nora has been paying off a secret debt, obtained through forging a signature, which saved her husband’s life. When Torvald is back in good health and has garnered a promotion at the bank, his first order of business is to fire the man who confidentially loaned Nora the money. Confronted with shame and blackmail, Nora is pushed to expose her secret to Torvald, but the true revelation might just be that their lives are not their own. Joanie Schultz's new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's thriller plays at WaterTower Theatre in Addison through November 4.

Uptown Players presents The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey
In The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey, solo actor Terry Martin portrays about a dozen roles; male and female, old and young. Chuck DeSantis is a brash New Jersey detective looking into the disappearance of teenager Leonard Pelkey. Digging deeper and deeper into Leonard’s life, Chuck follows clues that lead him to unexpected places and show him how one boy’s bravery can light the way toward truth. Uptown Players presents the production at Bryant Hall through October 21.

Saturday, October 13

Trinity River Kite Festival (UPDATE: Due to anticipated rain all day Saturday, this event has been canceled.)
Let's try this one more time: After getting rained out back in September, the Trinity River Kite Festival at the Commerce Street Viaduct is once again on. The high-flying event celebrates all kinds of kites and wind-driven toys, featuring dragon kites from China, paper airplane crafts, and kite makers from Japan. Visitors can fly their own kite, or make one at the festival.

Dallas Chamber Symphony presents Our Hospitality
Buster Keaton will get another showcase when Dallas Chamber Symphony opens its season with his groundbreaking 1923 comedy, Our Hospitality. The classic helped pave the way for cinematic comedy, merging the physical gags for which Keaton became famous with a dramatic storyline. A live orchestra, featuring the world premiere of an original score by Scott Glasgow, will play along to the film at Moody Performance Hall.

Sunday, October 14

U.S. Women's National Soccer Team - CONCACAF Women's Championship
The only reliable U.S. national soccer team in recent years has been the women's team, which won the 2012 Olympic gold medal and the 2015 World Cup. In preparation for the 2019 World Cup and as part of the CONCACAF Women's Championship, they will play two matches against to-be-determined opponents at Toyota Stadium in Frisco. The match on Sunday will be followed by a second match on October 17, and both days will feature a second match featuring the other semi-finalist teams.

Bruno Mars in concert
It's been five long years since pop superstar Bruno Mars appeared in Dallas, an extended break made even more egregious since it's also been two years since he released his third monster album, 24K Magic. To make up for that absence, Mars will be playing not one but two shows at American Airlines Center, with help from opening act Charlie Wilson. The second show will be on Monday night.

RuPaul’s Drag Race: Werq The World Tour
RuPaul's Drag Race has been around since 2009, but it's only gotten its due as a great reality TV competition in the past few years, with RuPaul winning the Emmy for Best Host three years straight and the show winning for Best Program in 2018. This fierce new show, taking place at Majestic Theatre, is hosted by Bob The Drag Queen, and features performances by the queens from season 10 along with fan favorites Kim Chi, Valentina, Shangela, and Violet Chachki.

Bruno Mars performs at the American Airlines Center on October 14 and 15.

Photo by Kai Z. Feng

Bruno Mars performs at the American Airlines Center on October 14 and 15.

sports concerts opera event-planner cocktails music theater uptown movies

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.

---

Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

movies film