ACM News

ACM Awards reveals slate of VIP events leading up to big fest in Frisco

The awards show will be hosted by Garth Brooks and Dolly Parton.

Photo by Art Streiber

The Academy of Country Music (ACM) is plotting its takeover of The Star in Frisco with three days of live music, country music events, and celebrations leading up to the 58th ACM Awards, which will take place on Thursday, May 11.

Co-hosted by global superstars Dolly Parton and Garth Brooks, the ACM Awards show takes place at 7 pm at Ford Center at The Star and will also livestream on Prime Video.

Dubbed "Country Music’s Party of the Year," the 2023 edition will mark Parton’s second consecutive appearance as host, with Brooks taking the stage to host a major awards show for the first time.

The Awards will be preceded by "ACM Awards Week," an entire slate of prelude parties, as follows:

ACM Country Kickoff at The Star, a two-day music and entertainment festival which is open to the public, free to all fans, and does not require tickets
ACM Songs & Stories Powered by The Bluebird Cafe + NSAI, a private industry celebration of the top songwriters of the past year
Topgolf Tee-Off & Rock On presented by VGT by Aristocrat Gaming, followed by ACM Lifting Lives LIVE: Morgan Wallen & Friends, a live concert on the green at Topgolf The Colony, which is sold out

Limited tickets to the ACM Awards show are still available through SeatGeek.

Academy of Country Music CEO Damon Whiteside says in a statement that they're thrilled to partner with the Dallas Cowboys and the Jones family to bring the Awards back to Texas.

"This world-class venue, shopping and dining district, and luxury area hotels and resorts made the perfect canvas to build our ACM Awards week bigger and better than ever, on behalf of our artists and industry," Whiteside says. "Texas has some of the most passionate Country Music fans in the world, and we can’t wait to bring the party to Frisco!”

Tuesday, May 9-10: ACM Country Kickoff at The Star
The excitement begins on May 9, with the ACM Country Kickoff at Tostitos Championship Plaza at The Star. The complex will host a free two-day festival for fans to get up close and personal with country music stars. Up-and-coming country music artists will perform on the main stage, including several ACM Award nominees.

There'll be a beer garden presented by Coors Light as well as a VIP space presented by Lucas Oil with a prime view of the stage.

The ACM Country Kickoff will also feature food trucks, photo opportunities, ACM Awards show merchandise, and activations by a host of partners, including ACM Lifting Lives, Amazon Music, Ashley HomeStore, Kendra Scott, Lucchese, North Texas Ford, and Visit Frisco.

The ACM Kickoff at The Star will be held from 3-10 pm on both Tuesday, May 9 and Wednesday, May 10. A detailed performance schedule for the performance stage, as well as a map of the full festival footprint, is coming soon.

Wednesday May 10: ACM Songs & Stories Powered by The Bluebird Cafe + NSAI
The Academy will host a private industry celebration of this year's ACM Songwriter and Artist-Songwriter of the Year nominees and the larger country music songwriter community on Wednesday, May 10 at the new Omni PGA Frisco Resort, one week after its grand opening. The event is already sold out. It will be powered by the Bluebird Cafe listening room, and the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) nonprofit songwriters trade association.

Following brunch, country music acts will take the stage for intimate, acoustic performances of their biggest hits and share the stories behind their songs.

Wednesday May 10: Topgolf Tee-Off & Rock On presented by VGT by Aristocrat Gaming
On the eve of the 2023 ACM Awards, Topgolf in The Colony will host an evening with some of the biggest music stars. It'll begin at 4:15 pm with a tee-off skills tournament, followed by a concert at 7:30 pm presented VGT by Aristocrat Gaming, with proceeds benefiting ACM Lifting Lives, the Academy of Country Music’s philanthropic arm. Acts will include ACM Entertainer of the Year nominee Morgan Wallen; Hardy, the 2023 ACM Awards' most-nominated artist; Lainey Wilson, the 2023 ACM Awards' most-nominated female artist; New Male Artist of the Year nominees Ernest and Bailey Zimmerman, and DJ 13lackbeard. Both the golf tournament and concert on the golf green are sold out.

Thursday May 11: 58th Academy of Country Music Awards
Hosted by Dolly Parton and Garth Brooks, the 58th Academy of Country Music Awards at the Ford Center at the Star in Frisco is set to begin at 7 pm, and is back in Texas for the first time since the record-breaking 50th anniversary celebration in 2015. Dallasites are surely lucky to have the event nearby but it will also livestream in more than 240 countries and territories exclusively on Prime Video. Limited tickets remain available on SeatGeek, while the full rebroadcast will stream for free on Friday, May 12 on Freevee.

Founded in Southern California in 1964 as a regional trade organization, the Academy of Country Music (ACM) has grown in its almost 60 years into a leading association for the country music industry, and is now headquartered in Nashville.

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Movie Review

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first but not by much

Blumhouse

Five Nights at Freddy's 2

Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films likeM3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.

Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.

Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.

It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.

Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.

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Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.

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