Let's Fest

Art, music, and family fun await at 2 treasured Richardson festivals

Add two festivals to the list of things blooming in Richardson each spring: Cottonwood Art Festival and Wildflower! Arts & Music Festival.

It’s the 55th year for Cottonwood Art Festival (May 4-5) and the 32nd for Wildflower! Arts & Music Festival (May 17-19). Here’s what you need to know about both:

Cottonwood Art Festival

What to expect: No matter your art personality type, you’ll find something to love amid more than 200 global artists’ juried work, spanning paintings and sculpture to ceramics, jewelry, fiber art, fine glass, woodwork, mixed media, and photography.

Make sure to look for this year's featured artist, ceramicist Gregory Story. The South Texas native now works out of his Chicago studio, Modern Clay, but studied at both Texas Christian University and the University of Texas at Arlington. He's known for his signature smiley sculptures, which were created as a welcome back post-COVID, and has added onto them with baseball caps in orange, blue, black, and red.

There’s also live music across two stages along with an arts-and-crafts area for the kiddos and plenty of food and drink for all on tap.

Where: Cottonwood Park, 1321 W. Belt Line Rd.

When: Saturday, May 4, 10 am-7 pm; Sunday, May 5, 10 am-5 pm.

Tickets: Admission and parking are both free, with shuttles running continuously between the park and the Richardson High School football stadium lot.

History lesson: Celebrating 55 years, the award-winning Cottonwood Art Festival is a twice-yearly juried show that has become a signature art event in the community and beyond. The festival also provides innovative outreach programs for students, with the goal of broadening interest in visual arts and bringing the art world into classrooms.

More details: CottonwoodArtFestival.com

Wildflower! Arts & Music Festival

What to expect: With six stages and 100-plus performers, including Nile Rodgers & CHIC, Randy Rogers Band, KC & The Sunshine Band, The Struts, Sister Sledge, Monica Saldivar, and more, your listening schedule will be packed at this fest.

Beyond the stages, the Prosperity Bank Marketplace is a one-stop-shop for local and regional accessories, art, home decor, apparel, and more.

There’s also The Zoo art guitar auction, songwriter competition, and Patterson & Associates Performance Row that features street performers, acrobats, and magicians. Plus, look for Wildflower! Kids, a family-fun zone with art, games, informative activities, and kid-friendly tunes.

Wildflower! in Richardson is always a can't-miss event.

Photo courtesy of Wildflower! Festival

Wildflower! in Richardson is always a can't-miss event.

Where: Galatyn Park Urban Center, located at Galatyn Parkway and U.S. 75.

When: Friday, May 17, 6 pm-midnight; Saturday, May 18, 11 am-midnight; Sunday, May 19, 11 am-6 pm.

Tickets: Friday and Saturday are $30 online ($45 at the gate), Sunday is $15 online ($25 at the gate), and kids 12 and under are free. Richardson residents can score tickets for only $15.

A three-day pass is $65, and the popular Friends of the Festival VIP package is $400. It includes 2 VIP wristbands for the weekend, access to preferred VIP seating at Methodist Richardson Medical Center Stage, complimentary food and beverages (including beer and wine), shade and relaxed seating in the VIP Hospitality Lounge, and 1 VIP parking pass valid for the entire weekend.

Parking: Complimentary parking will be available within the nearby surrounding area. Festival-goers are encouraged to take advantage of the DART Red Line light rail, which stops at the Galatyn Park Station, located immediately adjacent to the west side of the festival grounds.

History lesson: Wildflower! began as a small community gathering in 1993 and has since become one of the most popular cultural events in North Texas, with tens of thousands of fans showing up for their favorite artists.

More details: WildflowerFestival.com

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Movie Review

Rachel McAdams must survive a plane crash and bad boss in Send Help

Photo by Brook Rushton

Rachel McAdams in Send Help.

Director Sam Raimi has gone through different phases as a filmmaker, including leading the first Spider-Man trilogy and joining the MCU with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. But he first gained notice with the gory and funny Evil Dead movies, a sensibility he’s returning to with his latest film, Send Help.

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is a meek and eccentric middle manager at a financial firm that’s just named Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) as its new nepo CEO. Bradley’s dad had promised Linda a promotion to vice president, but she gets passed over in favor of one of Bradley’s frat buddies, sending her into a mild rage. Still, she gets invited along on a planned business trip to Thailand, during which she hopes to prove her worth.

Unfortunately for most of the passengers on the private plane, it crashes into the ocean, leaving only Linda and Bradley alive on a deserted island. Linda, who has privately developed survival skills, adapts quickly to the forbidding environment, while Bradley tries to revert to bossing her around. But Linda quickly understands the power dynamic has shifted, and she uses this knowledge to try to keep Bradley in line, turning their stranding into a battle of wills.

Directed by Raimi and written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, the film is the classic “so bad it’s good” kind of experience. McAdams, inarguably an attractive and charming person, is given stringy hair, an antisocial personality, and quirks like eating tuna fish at her desk to make her as off-putting as possible. Bradley, along with almost everyone else at her office, is stereotyped just as hard in order to set up the twist of fate.

When the action shifts to the island, things get even more over the top. The audience has already been primed for Linda to demonstrate her survival expertise, but the film does way more than just show her making fire. Whether it’s flawlessly building a shelter or hunting a wild boar, everything Linda does is portrayed in a slightly off-kilter manner. Then they turn everything up to 11, indulging in gore that is so unnecessary that you can’t help but laugh.

The filmmakers prove they’re in on the joke the rest of the way, including a variety of preposterous but hilarious scenarios that would cause massive eyerolls if they were actually trying to take the film seriously. While they do a great job of showing Linda’s ability to handle herself in the wild, they also show that she is somehow the only person in the world who could get a glow up after a plane crash and weeks living in nature.

McAdams, an Oscar-nominated actor for Spotlight, is way too high class for a movie like this, which makes her presence here all the more interesting. She is all-in on whatever Raimi wants her to do, and she’s at her most fun when she goes the animalistic route. O’Brien, who was great in the recent Twinless, doesn’t get as much of an opportunity to show his range, but he still proves to be an interesting foil for her.

Were it released in any other month, Send Help might be looked at as bottom of the barrel material. But with the movie year just getting started, it’s easier to forgive its outrageous plot twists and just have fun, especially since Raimi and his team put the rest of the film together so well.

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Send Help opens in theaters on January 30.

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Movie Review

Rachel McAdams must survive a plane crash and bad boss in Send Help