Jolly holiday news

Prairie Lights holiday drive-thru unwraps new COVID-19 measures and reduced prices

Prairie Lights drive-thru holiday lights

Don't worry — the grand finale tunnel will be back.

Photo courtesy of Prairie Lights

A Dallas-Fort Worth tradition 15 years strong, Prairie Lights holiday light park is returning for 2020 — with some modern updates for the COVID-Christmas season, and one special gift for guests.

The popular drive-thru lights experience will kick off Thanksgiving night and run through December 31, according to a release.

Per usual, the dazzling display of over 5 million lights, all arranged in festive holiday scenes, will wind for two miles along the shores of Joe Pool Lake in Grand Prairie. Given that most of Prairie Lights is enjoyed by car, visitors will need to make few adjustments for social distancing, organizers say.

But the park’s out-of-car experience, the Holiday Village — the traditional stop midway through with hot chocolate, cookies, and other goodies for sale — will not open this year due to pandemic. It will be replaced by a new drive-thru concession option, they say.

Santa also has different plans.

"Since Santa is practicing social distancing, he won’t be able to make his annual visit to the Prairie Lights Holiday Village," the release says. "However, he will be offering virtual greetings via personalized video messages sponsored by the Grand Prairie Chamber of Commerce and available after November 1 via the Prairie Lights website."

One positive change this year is the price. Admission has been reduced to $30 per car (up to eight people) — down from last year's $45. A Fast Pass (line jump pass) is available for $99.

A shuttle or van holding up to 30 people is just $60, down from last year's $100. There are additional fees for limos and commercial vehicles.

Prairie Lights welcomed more than 29,000 vehicles and 165,000 guests last year alone, says Duane Strawn, executive director for the city’s Parks, Arts, and Recreation Department, and they are expecting an even larger turnout in 2020.

“Given the challenges of this year, people need something fun, exciting, and comfortingly familiar to look forward to this holiday season — and for thousands of North Texans, that’s Prairie Lights,” he says in the release. “People also need to know that they’re going to enjoy a safe experience, and given the fact that we already have 14 years of practice under our belt when it comes to offering a large-scale, drive-through only experience — plus the minor safety adjustments we’ve made to this year’s event — we’re quite confident that we’ll be able to meet our guests’ expectations.”

They offer the following tips for visitors this year:

Pre-purchase of online tickets is highly recommended, both in consideration of minimizing “touch” and in keeping park admission lines moving as quickly as possible.
Allow plenty of time to fully enjoy the park — at least 45 minutes on slower nights, and up to three hours on holidays and weekends. Longer wait times are also anticipated once schools dismiss for winter break.
Guests are encouraged to have masks on hand for possible interactions with park staff at the entrance gate or at the park’s public restroom area.
Drive-thru concessions will be available via card purchase only (no cash).
Follow Prairie Lights on social media for special offers (such as the annual Prairie Lights “Cyber Monday” ticket sale the Monday after Thanksgiving) and for inclement weather announcements.

Prairie Lights is the third big DFW holiday lights event to announce its arrival. A new "holiday light spectacular" called Radiance will debut in Frisco, Weatherford, and Decatur. An immersive experience called Luminova Holidays promises millions of twinkling lights, an outdoor ice rink, and larger-than-life displays in and around Arlington's Globe Life Field.

Other popular yuletide events, including Fort Worth's Parade of Lights and Arlington's Texas Christkindl Market, are going virtual this year.

Prairie Lights will be open nightly, 6-10 pm, from Thanksgiving to New Year's Eve. The entrance is at Lynn Creek Park at Joe Pool Lake, 5610 Lake Ridge Pkwy., Grand Prairie. For more information, visit the website.

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Movie Review

New film I Want Your Sex somehow makes kinky activity boring

Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde in I Want Your Sex.

Writer/director Gregg Araki has been making provocative movies for nearly 40 years, releasing his debut - Three Bewildered People in the Night - in 1987. Most of them have had plotlines that revolved around sex in one way or another, and for his latest - his first film in 12 years - he’s putting it right there in the title, I Want Your Sex.

Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) is an aimless twenty-something who can’t even afford the rent for his apartment with best friend, Apple (Chase Sui Wonders). Thankfully, he finds a job at the gallery of artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), who is open with her sexuality both in her artwork and in her day-to-day life. That soon includes Elliot, whom she convinces to enter into a dominant-submissive relationship with her, with sessions taking place both at work and her home.

Elliot, who’s in a going-nowhere coupling with Minerva (Charli XCX), is more than willing to participate, both because it lets him feel something he doesn’t get normally and because Erika offers a perspective on sex that’s much different from people of his generation. But as he gets in deeper with her, he starts to lose a sense of himself, going down a path in which he finds himself talking to police detectives Zem (Johnny Knoxville) and Zola (Margaret Cho).

Araki does his level best to make I Want Your Sex into a broad comedy, and early on it seems as if he might succeed. The deadpan way that sexual objects appear in the film (a penis-shaped rug in Elliot and Apple’s apartment, a vagina artwork with chewed gum as the medium) make for amusing sight gags. He also makes Elliot the bewildered other in multiple twosomes, with Minerva being the funniest, as she’s way more interested in studying than his ham-fisted attempts at sex.

It’s clear that Araki wants the film to be a commentary on the generational differences about sex, but he fumbles his own idea. It starts with an on-the-nose conversation between Erika and Elliot, and continues with the various dalliances, which seem to be more about making Elliot look and feel ridiculous than giving true insight. Their encounters certainly open his mind about what sex can be, but their one-note nature makes them repetitive and frankly boring, odd considering the acts in which the two engage.

The uninspired storytelling makes the 90-minute film drag way more than it should. Araki includes a few other characters to try to vary the tone of the film, including gallery workers Zap (Mason Gooding) and Vikktor (Daveed Diggs), but their early promise yields little results. The framing device of Elliot’s interview with the detectives never works, especially because Araki completely neuters the personalities of Cho and Knoxville for seemingly no good reason.

The cast as a whole goes to waste. Hoffman is showing the promise of his late father (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and even though he’s appealing here, the material pulls him down. Wilde just made her own provocative movie about sex (The Invite), and this one pales in comparison despite her heightened performance. Wonders, Charli XCX, and Gooding are all young stars who deserve to be showcased much better than they are in this film.

A film called I Want Your Sex is announcing itself as daring and alluring, but this film contains almost none of those qualities. Instead, it’s a slog that only occasionally has something interesting to show or say, mostly relying on the power of its actors to hold viewers’ attention - and failing at even that.

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I Want Your Sex is now playing in select theaters.