Weekend Event Planner

These are the 9 best things to do in Dallas on New Year's weekend

You might think that with New Year's Eve falling on a weekend this year, events celebrating the new year would push everything else aside. While there are plenty of options on that end, there are a lot of other events as well, including concerts, national and local theater productions, comedy, a huge college football bowl game, and more.

Still looking for New Year's Eve dinner plans? That list is here. Want one more weekend of Christmas light-viewing before they go dark for another year? That list is here.

Thursday, December 30

Last call for holiday events
If you somehow haven't made it out to one of the many holiday events in the area, this weekend is your last chance to do so. Among the events taking their final bow for the season are The Trains at NorthPark, Dallas Arboretum's Holiday at the Arboretum, The Elf On the Shelf Magical Holiday Journey, Dallas Zoo Lights, Enchant Christmas presents The Great Search, Grand Prairie Parks, Arts and Recreation presents Prairie Lights, and Radiance! featuring Frozen in Frisco.

Lights All Night
Electronic dance music fans have a great way to bring in the new year with Lights All Night, a two-day music festival at Dallas Market Hall celebrating the end of 2021 featuring some of the biggest names in the genre. There will be performances by Deadmau5, Malaa, Illenium, 1788-L, Above & Beyond, Black Tiger Sex Machine, Cheyenne Giles, DJ Snake, Madeon, Subtronics, and more.

AT&T Performing Arts Center presents Mannheim Steamroller
Mannheim Steamroller will bring their annual holiday tour to Dallas. While 2020 was the first year the group was unable to tour in 35 years, 2021 will reunite the No. 1 Christmas music artist in history with its legion of long-time fans. Guests can experience the music that has become the hallmark of the holidays and a tradition for multi-generational families. The concert will be at Winspear Opera House.

Dallas Summer Musicals presents Jersey Boys
Jersey Boys goes behind the music and inside the story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, telling the story of four guys who went from the streets of New Jersey to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The production, playing at the Music Hall at Fair Park through January 9, features hits like “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like A Man,” “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” and “December, 1963 (Oh What A Night).”

Pegasus Theatre presents Prime Time for Murder!
Pegasus Theatre will present the world premiere of the 21st Harry Hunsacker adventure, Prime Time for Murder! The play, running through January 16 at Eisemann Center for the Performing Arts in Richardson, takes place in a television studio where the program Mystery Theater is broadcast live. Harry, Nigel, and Lt. Foster have been invited to the studio to be consultants on the show. But when bodies start turning up, the trio will have to defend one of their own and find the real killer before it’s too late.

Gary Owen's DFW NYE Takeover V
Comedian Gary Owen will preside over a two-night comedy event celebrating the end of 2021. Night one on December 30 will feature performances by Owen, Kountry Wayne, and Lavell Crawford. Night two on December 31 will feature performances by Owen, Cedric "The Entertainer," J.J. Williamson, and Malik S. The event takes place at Texas Trust CU Theatre at Grand Prairie.

Friday, December 31

Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic: Alabama vs. Cincinnati
This year's Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic will be extra special as it serves as a semifinal game in the College Football Playoff. As long as COVID doesn't interfere, it will feature a matchup between the No. 1 (and perennial favorite) Alabama Crimson Tide and the upstart No. 4 Cincinnati Bearcats, the first team outside of the Power 5 conferences (and the independent Notre Dame) that has made the playoffs. The game will be at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.

Saturday, January 1

Vogel Alcove presents Day 1 DFW
Day 1 DFW is being hosted by Main Event at all seven Dallas-Fort Worth locations. Tickets grant all-access to Main Event activities from 9 am to 2 am on New Year’s Day, plus bowling shoe rental and a $10 fun card for games. Each location also features its own extra activities like magic shows, balloon artists, animal shows, and more. Participants can end the evening at 7 pm at one of two fireworks shows set to children's music at Toyota Stadium in Frisco or Dickies Arena in Fort Worth. Proceeds benefit Vogel Alcove, a nonprofit serving homeless families.

Sunday, January 2

Dallas Arts District exhibition closings
Each of the three big art museums in the Dallas Arts Districts will close exhibitions on Sunday. The Crow Museum of Asian Art's "Carolyn Brown and Palmyra: An Ancient City Through the Lens" showcases 12 of Brown's large-scale photographs documenting Palmyra (located in present-day Syria) from her travels 32 years ago. Nasher Sculpture Center's Betye Saar: "Call and Response" is the first exhibition to examine the relationship between Saar’s sketchbooks, which she has kept since the late 1960s, and her finished works. And the Dallas Museum of Art has two exhibitions closing: "Devoted: Art and Spirituality in Mexico and New Mexico" features devotional works drawn from the DMA’s Latin American collection, and "Focus on: Henry Ossawa Tanner" pairs two works by the acclaimed painter that underwent a comprehensive conservation treatment and technical study by the DMA.

Dallas Summer Musicals presents Jersey Boys at the Music Hall at Fair Park through January 9.

Photo by Joan Marcus

Dallas Summer Musicals presents Jersey Boys at the Music Hall at Fair Park through January 9.

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Movie Review

Faces of Death returns with modern twist on cult horror film

Photo courtesy of of IFC Films

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death.

True horror fans will likely be familiar with the 1978 cult film Faces of Death, which purported to be a documentary showing real-life killings in gory detail. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop rumors from continuing to spread for decades. Now, almost 50 years and multiple sequels later, comes a new version of Faces of Death, an actual movie that pays homage to the original in interesting ways.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a YouTube-like company called Kino as a content moderator, flagging videos that violate the company’s policies. This means her job often involves seeing some truly despicable things from all manner of depraved people. One day, though, she comes across a video that seems a little too real, and after seeing more similar videos, she starts to believe they’re genuine murders.

Going against her company NDA, she starts to investigate the videos on her own, which puts her on the radar of Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is actually kidnapping people and killing them on camera through methods seen in the original Faces of Death film. It’s not long before Arthur tracks her down, with a plan to make her one of his next victims.

Written and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-written by Isa Mazzei, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, with the occasional gross-out sequence. The idea of having someone emulate the killings in the cult film is a good idea, and pairing it with the modern-day attention economy - in which content creators go to increasing lengths for clicks - is a clever twist on a concept that other films have done.

The film as a whole is a commentary on how social media and video sharing sites have often decided to prioritize profits over the well-being of their users. Margot is shown allowing videos involving violence and sexual assault to stay on the site while nixing ones depicting how to use Narcan or demonstrating putting on a condom on a banana. Josh (Jermaine Fowler), Margot’s boss, is even explicit in the company mandate that outrageous videos drive views.

While Arthur has the makings of a good villain, there are few attempts to make him seem truly diabolical. His kidnappings often seem more spur-of-the-moment than calculated, and even though he has a well thought-out dungeon at home, the house’s location in the suburbs seems to make him vulnerable to easy discovery. Goldhaber and Mazzei leave more than a few unanswered questions along the way that take away from the intensity of the story.

Ferreira is yet another actor from Euphoria who’s capitalizing on her exposure from that show. She plays Margot’s increasing anxiety well, and when the action ratchets up in the final act, she meets the moment in a satisfying way. Montgomery returns to the vibe he had while playing the evil Billy on Stranger Things, and even though his character doesn’t fully live up to his potential, Montgomery sells his evil for all it’s worth.

The new Faces of Death may not be what some are expecting given the reputation of the previous films, but it’s a solid horror/thriller that uses the brand as a launching pad into something different. It doesn’t make much of a dent in the scare department, but it does give its violence and gore a degree of relevance in today’s often desensitized world.

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Faces of Death is now playing in theaters.

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