Weekend Event Planner

These are the 13 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

There will be no escaping holiday events now through New Year's, as a new wave will hit every weekend. Among your choices this week are two shopping events — including an exciting one from CultureMap — a Broadway musical, a local world premiere theater production, several outdoor festivals, concerts, and more. The only non-holiday options will be a crucial college football game and an awards showcase for local bands.

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, November 29

Downtown Dallas Inc. presents Unbranded: Downtown’s Holiday Pop Up Shop
Unbranded is an innovative Downtown holiday pop-up retail experience that provides free retail and event space to a curated group of entrepreneurs, designers, photographers, artists, chefs, and more. The holiday pop-up shop, open every Friday-Sunday through December 22, features 8-10 different brands each week, a complimentary gift-wrapping lounge, coffee from Flying Horse Cafe, drinks, crafts and workshops, and more.

Dallas Summer Musicals presents Elf
Elf the Musical is the hilarious tale of Buddy, a young orphan child who mistakenly crawls into Santa’s bag of gifts and is transported back to the North Pole. Unaware that he is actually human, Buddy’s enormous size and poor toy-making abilities cause him to face the truth. With Santa’s permission, Buddy embarks on a journey to New York City to find his birth father, discover his true identity, and help New York remember the true meaning of Christmas. The production will run through Sunday at the Music Hall at Fair Park.

Friday, November 30

Deck the Plaza: City Hall Lights
At this new event, visitors can join Mayor Mike Rawlings for the official illumination of City Hall Plaza, including a 40-foot-tree lighting. The family-friendly event will feature interfaith speakers; a special arrival from Santa Claus; musical entertainment by Dallas Winds and the Castro band; and holiday treats including hot chocolate, apple cider, and cookies.

A Charlie Brown Christmas Live on Stage
You can take a break from watching A Charlie Brown Christmas on TV this year and catch it live on stage at the Majestic Theatre instead. This new touring production features everyone’s favorite Peanuts gang — Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, Snoopy, Sally, and more — as they discover the true meaning of Christmas. The production, playing one time only on Friday, showcases the music of Vince Guaraldi, as well as a concert of holiday carols led by the Peanuts characters.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents "A John Williams Christmas"
This concert from the Dallas Symphony Orchestra will feature famous movie music from John Williams, like Harry Potter and Home Alone, plus Christmas favorites and many more surprises. The concert, playing four times through Sunday at Meyerson Symphony Center, will also feature the Children’s Chorus of Greater Dallas. There will also be a shorter performance aimed at families on Saturday morning.

Saturday, December 1

Dallas Holiday Parade
It's not truly the holidays in Dallas until the Dallas Holiday Parade takes place. As always, the parade will march down Commerce Street in Downtown Dallas to kick-off the holiday season with marching bands, festive floats, and fun family activities to carry into the new year.

Big XII Conference Championship Game: Texas vs. Oklahoma
The Red River Rivalry between the Texas Longhorns and the Oklahoma Sooners usually happens only once a season, but the usual dominance of the Sooners and the resurgence of the Longhorns has them on a collision course in the Big XII Conference Championship Game at AT&T Stadium in Arlington. At stake is a possible berth into the College Football Playoff for the Sooners, while the Longhorns are likely headed to the Sugar Bowl.

Reliant Lights Your Holidays
Another Dallas holiday tradition is this event at AT&T Performing Arts Center, featuring hundreds of thousands of LED lights placed on the Center’s venues and trees, live performances by Sheila E. and Anita N. Martinez Ballet Folklorico, fireworks, and more. This nighttime event is preceded by a Holiday Show & Tree Lighting at Klyde Warren Park, featuring a variety of holiday entertainment.

98 Degrees in concert
Boy bands always have to grow up, but they never truly go away, no matter how successful their individual members become. 98 Degrees had a great four-year run, releasing one album every year from 1997-2000 and scoring hits like "Because of You" and "Thank God I Found You." This concert at House of Blues Dallas will feature songs from their two Christmas albums, 1999's This Christmas and 2017's Let It Snow.

Dallas Observer Music Awards
The 30th Annual Dallas Observer Music Awards will feature performances from over 50 local singers/bands, including Becky Middleton, Kirk Thurmond and the Millenials, Paul Slavens, and Vanessa Peters. The performances will take place at multiple venue in Deep Ellum, including Club Dada Indoor & Outdoor Stage, Curtain Club, Off the Record, Reno’s Chop Shop, Three Links, and Trees.

Uptown Players presents A Very Judy Christmas
In this world premiere that pays tribute to the 1960s television specials, Judy Garland, played by Janelle Lutz, invites us into her home for a seasonal special. Share the holiday with Judy and a few surprise guests, including Ethel Merman and Liza Minnelli. This show, running through December 16 at Kalita Humphreys Theater, features some of Garland’s signature songs, along with many yuletide classics.

Sunday, December 2

CultureMap Holiday Pop-Up Shop presented by Verizon
CultureMap Holiday Pop-up Shop presented by Verizon is a holiday boutique showcasing 25 of our favorite local retailers for men, women, kids, pets, jewelry, gifts, home, and gourmet food and beverages. Taking place at Sixty Five Hundred, it also will include cocktails, festive food, carolers, crafting, and more while you shop.

Rocking Around the Christmas Tree with Darci Lynne & Friends
Darci Lynne is the youngest contestant to ever win America’s Got Talent. She is a young ventriloquist who is inspiring the next generation to keep the art form alive. She'll perform a holiday special at The Theatre at Grand Prairie with a variety of her puppet friends, including Petunia the rabbit, Oscar the mouse, naughty old lady Edna Doorknocker, and more.

Dallas Summer Musicals presents Elf the Musical at the Music Hall at Fair Park through December 2.

Matt Kopec and the cast of Elf The Musical national tour

Photo by Joan Marcus

Dallas Summer Musicals presents Elf the Musical at the Music Hall at Fair Park through December 2.

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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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