Dance into 2013

Lights All Night on New Year's Eve is just the ticket for electronic music fans

Lights All Night runs December 29-31 at Fair Park.
Lights All Night
More than 50,000 fans are expected during the three-day electronic musicfestival.
Lights All Night

Dallas-area fans of electronic dance music get a post-Christmas present with Lights All Night 2012, a three-day music festival converging on Fair Park December 29 through New Year's Eve. The event features performances by more than 75 DJs and musical artists, headlined by Tiesto, Avicci, Calvin Harris and Axwell.

Electronic dance music (EDM) events are a popular format for New Year's Eve, but Lights All Night (LAN) is unique in that it extends for three days. The only other similar New Year's Eve festival is the SnowGlobe Music Festival in Lake Tahoe, which also runs December 29-31.

LAN started out in 2010 as a single-night New Year's Eve event with a crowd of 6,000; this year the festival moves to Fair Park and should draw 50,000.

LAN started out in 2010 as a single-night New Year's Eve event on the ice rink at the Plaza of the Americas in downtown Dallas, where it drew a crowd of 6,000 — respectable for an inaugural event but no match for this year, which is expected to attract an estimated 50,000 attendees.

2012 also marks a move to the more pedestrian-friendly Fair Park, where parking and staging options are more plentiful. Fair Park is no stranger to EDM: It was the site for the Electric Daisy Carnival in 2010 and 2011, which ended after a fatality.

Dallas has a well-established reputation as a dance-music center; in the past year, we've seen a series of highly visible EDM events, including the Meltdown Music Festival in June, the national Identify Festival tour in August, and not one but two dates on the global Day Glow “Life in Color” tour in September.

Lights All Night comes from Scott Osburn and Hank Keller, two thirtysomething entrepreneurs who cut their teeth in the business back in college by promoting acts such as the Indigo Girls. They partnered with MCP Presents in Denver to produce the 2011 festival. That partnership continues in 2012.

Stage setup
There are four stages: Main, Hangar, Fountain and Club Lights All Night. Major mainstream and commercial acts perform on the Main stage during "prime time" hours, including Tiesto, Avicci, Calvin Harris and Axwell.

See top trance, dubstep and electro house talent like Gareth Emery, Markus Schulz, 12th Planet, Alesso and Flux Pavilion at the Hanger stage.

Club Lights All Night showcases a variety of big room, dance floor sounds ranging from hip hop, dubstep, progressive house and funk from artists like Archnemesis, Tritonal, White Panda and Mord Fustang.

The Fountain is for local acts such as Billy the Kid, Joe Vega, Wish FM, Redeye and Exceed.

Must-see acts
With more than 75 DJs and musical artists, there's a lot to see. And with the event's earlier hours — starting at 4 pm and ending at midnight daily — you'll have to plan accordingly. If you're like me, you're used to headliners performing at 12:30 am.

Saturday's top picks include electro house DJ Zedd, trance artist Markus Schulz and dubstep DJ Flux Pavilion. If you prefer a more commercial EDM sound, then Avicci and Tiesto are your best bets.

On Sunday, there are two DJ duos worth seeing: the electro house Bingo Players and Zed’s Dead, who play a mix of bass, electro and dubstep. Also performing on Saturday is my favorite trance artist Gareth Emery and freestyler Bassnectar. If you’re a fan of the Rihanna hit “We Found Love,” then you need to add Calvin Harris to your artist list for Sunday.

Monday is heaven for those who love dubstep and drum n bass, with appearances by Krewella, 12th Planet, 3LAU and Archnemesis. If dubstep/drum n bass is not your thing, seek out progressive house DJs Sander van Doorn and Axwell of Swedish House Mafia fame. And if you haven’t carved out any time for local DJs, Sunday has two of Dallas’ best: Redeye and Wish FM.

No matter your favorite flavor of EDM, Lights All Night has it. Get ready to dance your way into the New Year, but remember to pace yourself. It is three days, after all.

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Movie Review

Lord of the Rings animated sequel is competent but not Oscar material

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Hèra (Gaia Wise) in The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.

The Peter Jackson-led Lord of the Rings movie trilogy in the early 21st century was such a smashing success that people have been trying to recreate that magic for a long time. First came the ill-conceived The Hobbittrilogy, which made lots of money despite mostly poor reviews. The recent Amazon TV series, The Rings of Power, has gotten generally good reviews, but doesn’t seem to hold a place in the wider pop culture consciousness.

And now comes The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, an anime-style film that seems like an attempt at both reclaiming the world in animated form from the weird 1978 film, and a nostalgia play for fans of the original series. Set 200 years before the events in J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, it nonetheless takes place in two very familiar locations that are recreated to appear exactly like they looked in Jackson’s films.

The story centers around Hèra (voiced by Gaia Wise), the only daughter of King Helm (Brian Cox) of Rohan. An early conflict with Lord Freca (Shaun Dooley) leads Freca’s son, Wulf (Luca Pasqualino), to develop a deep grudge against Helm and his family. Wulf pursues that ill will for years, eventually driving his foes into a fortress in a valley to make a final stand against his aggression.

Based on information found in the appendices of Tolkien’s novels, this is the rare instance when choosing to use animation holds back the creativity of a film. Typically, animation allows filmmakers to do things that wouldn’t be possible in the real world, but director Kenji Kamiyama and his team seem beholden to the look of Jackson’s films. While the animation itself is great, it doesn’t offer the fluidity of live action, and so the action scenes are often stilted and flat.

The story itself is not very compelling, as a quartet of screenwriters have concocted a plot that relies on revenge and heroism tropes that allow the audience to predict almost everything that happens. There are a few surprises to be had, but as the conflict revolves around a strong-willed female and her unwillingness to be told whom to marry, it’s generally clear how the story will be resolved, with only the specific details left to be discovered.

It also would have been great if the film weren’t so dependent on nostalgia for the original films. The two main locations are ones that played a big part in set pieces from those films, and their usage here doesn’t measure up favorably. Eowyn (Miranda Otto) serves as narrator, and other characters/actors from the original trilogy also make appearances, leaving little room for this film to establish itself on its own terms.

The majesty of the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, with its New Zealand vistas and incomparable visuals created by Wētā Workshop, set a high bar that none of the subsequent projects have been able to meet. The War of the Rohirrim is a competently-made film, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny with the Oscar-quality work of 20+ years prior.

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The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim opens in theaters on December 13.

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Movie Review

Lord of the Rings animated sequel is competent but not Oscar material