Weekend Event Planner

These are the 10 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

This weekend around Dallas will be heavy on events from local groups, with one big notable exception. There will be a national tour of a Broadway musical, a film festival, cirque performers, two symphony concerts, a local theater production, a preview of the new Texas Rangers team, a new art exhibition, a Japanese drumming group, and an opera concert featuring all female conductors.

Below are the best ways to spend your precious free time this weekend. Want more options? Lucky for you, we have a much longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, January 26

Denton Black Film Festival
The Denton Black Film Festival allows guests to immerse themselves in some of the best artistic showcases of Black cinema, music, spoken word, art, and more. The festival, running through Sunday, will take place at multiple venues around Denton, including Campus Theater, Alamo Drafthouse, Denton Civic Center, and more. They will also offer a virtual option from January 29 - February 5.

Broadway Dallas presents Pretty Woman: The Musical
Based on one of Hollywood’s most beloved romantic stories of all time, Pretty Woman: The Musical springs to life with a powerhouse creative team led by two-time Tony Award-winning director and choreographer Jerry Mitchell. The production, featuring an original score by Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance and a book by the movie’s director, Garry Marshall, and screenwriter, J. F. Lawton, the production runs through February 5 at the Music Hall at Fair Park.

Cirque Italia presents Water Circus
Cirque Italia presents Water Circus, featuring a stage that holds 35,000 gallons of water over which performers make dazzling moves, thrilling the audience with every feat. The event, taking place through Sunday, will be located in a tent in the parking lot of the Grand Prairie Premium Outlets.

Friday, January 27

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents "Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto"
Conductor Karina Canellakis returns to the Meyerson Symphony Center stage to present Dvořák’s orchestral poem, The Wood Dove, a dark work focused on a woman who poisoned her husband to marry another man. Also on the program will be rising violin star Randall Goosby, joining the Dallas Symphony to perform Tchaikovsky’s Concerto in D Major; and Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra. There will be three performances through Sunday.

The Core Theatre presents Every Livin' Soul
In Every Livin' Soul, a widowed farm woman struggles to fund her gifted son’s college education while simultaneously keeping the family farm afloat, a daunting task in depression-era America. A mysterious stranger comes begging for a meal, bringing hope, encouragement, and more than his fair share of danger. The production runs through February 26 at The Core Theatre in Richardson.

Saturday, January 28

Texas Rangers Fan Fest
With the Cowboys - boo hoo - now out of the playoffs, the revamped Texas Rangers can take centerstage in Arlington again. The annual Fan Fest at Globe Life Field will feature autograph sessions with current Rangers players and alumni; interactive Q&A sessions with Rangers executives, players, and announcers; on-field activities like running the bases, wiffle ball home run derby, bullpen fast pitch, and inflatables; and more.

Nasher Sculpture Center presents Mark di Suvero: "Steel Like Paper" opening day
Nasher Sculpture Center will present Mark di Suvero’s “Steel Like Paper,” a milestone exhibition of the sculptor’s more than six-decade career. The exhibition will survey di Suvero’s work, showing rarely-seen drawings and paintings along with small and moderately scaled sculptures, as well as some of the artist’s first forays into working at a large scale. The exhibition will remain on display through August 27.

Coppell Arts Center presents San Jose Taiko
Inspired by traditional Japanese drumming, San Jose Taiko performers express the beauty and harmony of the human spirit though the voice of taiko. All compositions performed by SJT are written or arranged by members of the group. They will also put on an interactive educational program at 1 pm, presenting the company's basic philosophical principles and engaging the students to actively participate in its high-action demonstration. Both events will be at Coppell Arts Center.

The Dallas Opera presents Hart Institute for Women Conductors Showcase Concert
Four of opera’s most brilliant young conductors - Celia Llácer Carbonell, Yuwon Kim, Blair Salter, and Anna Sułkowska-Migoń - are front and center for an evening of opera selections, sung by some of the country’s top singers and featuring The Dallas Opera Orchestra. Selections for the concert, taking place at Winspear Opera House, will include Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Bizet’s Carmen, Puccini’s Tosca, and Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking.

Sunday, January 29

Lone Star Wind Orchestra presents Rhapsodies in Blue
Shades of blue representing Earth and one of Gershwin’s most iconic works are celebrated as the Lone Star Wind Orchestra presents "Rhapsodies in Blue." Under the direction of LSWO Music Director Eugene Migliaro Corporon, the three-part concert will feature a new multimedia experience of Julie Giroux’s Symphony No. 6 The Blue Marble, George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue featuring pianist Aaron Kurz, and a performance of American composer Frank Ticheli’s work, Blue Shades. The concert will be at Eisemann Center for Performing Arts in Richardson.

Photo by Matthew Murphy

Pretty Woman: The Musical runs at the Music Hall at Fair Park through February 5.

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Movie Review

Film sequel Avatar: Fire and Ash is a technical and visual feast

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Oona Chaplin in Avatar: Fire and Ash.

For a series whose first two films made over $5 billion combined worldwide, Avatar has a curious lack of widespread cultural impact. The films seem to exist in a sort of vacuum, popping up for their run in theaters and then almost as quickly disappearing from the larger movie landscape. The third of five planned movies, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is finally being released three years after its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water.

The new film finds the main duo, human-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his native Na’vi wife, Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), still living with the water-loving Metkayina clan led by Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis). While Jake and Neytiri still play a big part, the focus shifts significantly to their two surviving children, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as two they’ve essentially adopted, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Spider (Jack Champion).

Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who lives on in a fabricated Na’vi body, is still looking for revenge on Jake, and he finds help in the form of the Mangkwan Clan (aka the Ash People), led by Varang (Oona Chaplin). Quaritch’s access to human weapons and the Mangkwan’s desire for more power on the moon known as Pandora make them a nice match, and they team up to try to dominate the other tribes.

Aside from the story, the main point of making the films for writer/director James Cameron is showing off his considerable technical filmmaking prowess, and that is on full display right from the start. The characters zoom around both the air and sea on various creatures with which they’ve bonded, providing Cameron and his team with plenty of opportunities to put the audience right there with them. Cameron’s preferred viewing method of 3D makes the experience even more immersive, even if the high frame rate he uses makes some scenes look too realistic for their own good.

The story, as it has been in the first two films, is a mixed bag. Cameron and co-writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver start off well, having Jake, Neytiri, and their kids continue mourning the death of Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in the previous film. The struggle for power provides an interesting setup, but Cameron and his team seem to drag out the conflict for much too long. This is the longest Avatar film yet, and you really start to feel it in the back half as the filmmakers add on a bunch of unnecessary elements.

Worse than the elongated story, though, is the hackneyed dialogue that Cameron, Jaffa, and Silver have come up with. Almost every main character is forced to spout lines that diminish the importance of the events around them. The writers seemingly couldn’t resist trying to throw in jokes despite them clashing with the tone of the scenes in which they’re said. Combined with the somewhat goofy nature of the Na’vi themselves (not to mention talking whales), the eye-rolling words detract from any excitement or emotion the story builds up.

A pre-movie behind-the-scenes short film shows how the actors act out every scene in performance capture suits, lending an authenticity to their performances. Still, some performers are better than others, with Saldaña, Worthington, and Lang standing out. It’s more than a little weird having Weaver play a 14-year-old girl, but it works relatively well. Those who actually get to show their real faces are collectively fine, but none of them elevate the film overall.

There are undoubtedly some Avatar superfans for which Fire and Ash will move the larger story forward in significant ways. For anyone else, though, the film is a demonstration of both the good and bad sides of Cameron. As he’s proven for 40 years, his visuals are (almost) beyond reproach, but the lack of a story that sticks with you long after you’ve left the theater keeps the film from being truly memorable.

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Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters on December 19.

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