Weekend Event Planner

Selena Gomez and Polyphonic Spree top best weekend events in Dallas

It's Halloween week, which means the slate for this weekend includes several holiday-themed events. But there is plenty of non-spooky stuff going on, including the opening of a new area in downtown Fort Worth, a big festival in Carrollton and the return of a hometown girl who's now one of the biggest stars on the planet.

Below are the best options for your precious free time Thursday through Sunday. Don't like what you see? Lucky for you, we have a much longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, October 31

Alamo Drafthouse presents Alaween Halloween Carnival
The folks at Alamo Drafthouse love to play dress up on normal weeks, so you can only imagine what Halloween is like for them. They'll have all sorts of fun stuff going on, including trick-or-treating in the theaters, pumpkin carving, a costume contest with prizes and more. For those of age, you can also stay late for a special screening of Halloween.

Avenue Q Halloween Sing-along
Avenue Q has more-or-less become the permanent show in the Theatre Too space at Theatre Three, playing off-and-on there since September 2012. The latest incarnation with a couple of new cast members just started up again, and they'll celebrate Halloween by inviting the audience to dress up as their favorite characters and sing along to their favorite tunes.

Friday, November 1

Sundance Square Plaza grand opening
Sundance Square has been a huge draw for downtown Fort Worth for decades, and it's about to get another big boost with the opening of Sundance Square Plaza, a walkable open space smack dab in the middle of the square featuring fountains, giant umbrellas and entrances to multiple new buildings. They'll celebrate the opening with a variety of performances and other activities Friday through Sunday.

Dallas Black Dance Theatre presents Black on Black 2013
The 2013-2014 season for Dallas Black Dance Theatre continues with Black on Black, an opportunity for the audience to see DBDT's space in the Dallas Arts District, watch intimate and personal performances by the company's dancers and then possibly get on the action themselves at the after-party.

Saturday, November 2

2013 Travel & Adventure Show
The Travel & Adventure Show is kind of a catch-all title for an event that has a bit of everything. Taking place Saturday and Sunday at the Dallas Convention Center, it features everything from animals from SeaWorld to bubble rollers on a big pool to Bachelor host Chris Harrison. It also has loads of travel experts, a culinary theater and a melange of international music performances.

2013 Carrollton Festival at the Switchyard
If you missed your chance for a little '90s nostalgia when Smash Mouth and Sugar Ray came to Allen a few months ago, you can catch them headlining the entertainment at the Carrollton Festival at the Switchyard. The day-long fest in Historic Downtown Carrollton also has food, shopping, arts and crafts, games, rides and more.

2013 North Oak Cliff Music Festival
Anyone who frequents The Kessler for concerts will find more than a few familiar names at this second annual music festival, taking place at Lake Cliff Park. Artists like Jason Eady, The Relatives, Daphne Willis, Seryn, Ruthie Foster and Bob Schneider will all perform, with your usual array of food trucks and kid-friendly activities rounding out the event.

The Polyphonic Spree presents 1st Annual Halloween Hootenanny
The Polyphonic Spree has occasionally broken out a song or two from The Rocky Horror Picture Show at its concerts, but this will be a full-on Rocky Horror fest at Lakewood Theater, complete with costume contest and a post-concert screening of the film. The Spree will also perform some original songs to close out Halloween in style.

Sunday, November 3

2013 Festival of Church Music
Church-goers can get a full day of church music on Sunday by starting off going to their regular service and then ending the day at Meyerson Symphony Center for the Festival of Church Music. 450 singers from 19 churches, accompanied by a brass ensemble, will sing a variety of hymns and anthems, including several with the audience.

Selena Gomez in concert
Grand Prairie native Selena Gomez has accomplished a lot in her 21 years, including starring in her own Disney Channel series and dating Justin Bieber. Although she's been a hot commodity on the music scene for several years with her band The Scene, her 2013 album Stars Dance marks her first official solo effort. She'll bring all of her talent to the table for this concert at American Airlines Center.

Grand Prairie native Selena Gomez will perform at American Airlines Center on November 3.

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Movie Review

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma gives horror a surreal twist

Photo courtesy of MUBI

Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

The horror genre really ramped up in the 1970s and ‘80s, bringing with it a new subgenre - the slasher - that gave audiences new visuals of gore, but also a reliance on sexism and homophobia that would come to define the era. The new film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma wrestles with that legacy in ways that are funny, thought-provoking, and downright strange.

Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is a queer filmmaker who has been hired to reboot the moldy IP that is the Camp Miasma franchise, one that was fresh in the 1970s but which numerous shlocky sequels have rendered irrelevant. In an attempt to get to know the property better, Kris has scored a meeting with the reclusive Billy (Gillian Anderson), the star of the original film who has shunned the public eye for decades.

Turns out that Billy lives deep in the woods at Camp Rivoli, which served as the location for the first film. As Kris tries to get to know Billy and convince her to be a part of the new film, she starts to fall under Billy’s spell and the lore of the franchise as a whole. That includes believing that the movie’s villain, Little Death - a transgender person who has an air conditioning vent as a head/mask - may not just be a character created for the movies.

Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow), the film at first feels like it’s going to go the straight-up comedy route, with comic explosions of blood, a strange fascination with candy brands, and a production design that does nothing to hide that the two main actors are on a movie set with painted backdrops. This is backed up by Kris’ phone conversations with her girlfriend, Mari (Jasmine Savoy Brown) and her agent (Sarah Sherman), as well as numerous other details.

But the film starts to go down the surreal route the longer Kris stays at the camp with Billy, especially when they sit down to watch the original Camp Miasma. An extended sequence shows a good amount of that film-within-the-film, demonstrating why Kris and Billy have a love/hate relationship with the property. For Kris, though, the lines between the film and the real world start to blur, and Schoenbrun uses a variety of out-there elements to drive the point home.

The final act of the film can barely be described as Kris goes deeper down the rabbit hole, with Schoenbrun using her film to comment on the horror genre as a whole, its treatment of women and LGBT people, the movie industry, and more. All the while the “camp” of Camp Miasma maintains a presence, with candy wrappers showing up everywhere and the tongue-in-cheek references to Little Death (the French term La petite mort, which means “the little death,” is a euphemism for orgasm).

Einbinder, an Emmy winner for Hacks, is the perfect person to inhabit her role. Her established real-life and fictional personas color everything she does in the film, with her enthusiasm and curiosity shining through. Anderson leans heavily into another reference - Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard - to create a character that is as mysterious as she is alluring. Supporting actors like Brown, Sherman, Patrick Fischler, Dylan Baker, and Eva Victor keep the movie at the right pitch all the way through.

While other films have made fun of horror movie tropes before, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma finds a wholly unique way of doing so. It’s a funny and daring trip into the psyches of two women who may be victims of their own obsessions, and of the movies that made them that way.

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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is now playing in select theaters

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