Weekend event planner

These are the 11 best things to do in Dallas this New Year's weekend

The tail end of the holiday season is usually light on new events, but this year brings a bunch of different people to town. All of the area comedy clubs will be hopping with performers, and there will be a big comedy event at a larger venue. There will also be an electronic music festival, two new local theater productions, a couple of concerts, and the end of a long-running exhibition.

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. We also have lists for cool New Year's Eve celebrations happening around Dallas-Fort Worth and restaurants serving up special meals for New Year's Eve.

Thursday, December 29

Disco Donnie presents Lights All Night
Lights All Night is a two-day music festival that features prominent names across myriad genres. Performers will include Excision, John Summit, Porter Robinson (DJ Set), Svdden Death, Tchami, Zeds Dead, and more. The festival takes place at Dallas Market Hall.

Improv Arlington presents Faizon Love
Faizon Love is a plus-sized actor of Afro-Cuban descent whose killer smile and infectious laugh can liven up any comedy club. Love got his start as a stand-up comedian and has been seen on HBO’s Def Comedy Jam and BET’s Comic View. He has co-starred in movies like Couples Retreat, Fear of a Black Hat, Elf, and Friday. He'll perform at Improv Arlington through Saturday.

Improv Addison presents Jamie Kennedy
Jamie Kennedy, a multitalented comedian-actor-writer-producer, is a true hyphenate. He may be seen acting in a film one minute and on stage doing stand up the next. Kennedy skyrocketed to fame with scene-stealing rants in Wes Craven's Scream and Scream 2. He has gone on to work with some of Hollywood's biggest names, including George Clooney, Eddie Murphy, Steve Martin, and Will Smith. He'll perform at Improv Addison through Saturday.

Dallas Comedy Club presents Ralph Barbosa
Ralph Barbosa was named the Funniest Comic in Texas in 2019, was the winner of the New York Latino Film Festival Stand Up Comedy competition in 2021, and recently made his HBO debut on the HA Festival Comedy Special. Barbosa has also worked with comedians such as Dave Attell, JR De Guzman, Mark Normand, Adam Ferrara, Dusty Slay, Jesus Trejo, and Anjelah Johnson. He'll perform at Dallas Comedy Club through Saturday.

Pegasus Theatre presents The Dimension of Death
Pegasus Theatre will present the world premiere of the 22nd Harry Hunsacker adventure, The Dimension of Death. The year is 1955. Harry, Nigel, and Foster have been dispatched to a top secret Air Force base in Nevada where a matter of the highest level of national security awaits them. They’d heard rumors about Paradise Ranch, but the reality of what they saw exceeded their imagination. In no time, however, the bodies start piling up and our trio finds themselves trapped in The Dimension of Death. The production runs through January 22 at Eisemann Center for Performing Arts in Richardson.

Theatre Three presents I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change
As an homage to one of Theatre Too’s most popular productions, Theatre Three will present the return of Joe DiPietro and Jimmy Robert’s I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change to headline the grand opening of the intimate downstairs space that has been closed since 2020. The comedy takes on the truths and myths behind what it means to love, date, or lose someone. The production runs through February 18.

Friday, December 30

Gary Owen's DFW NYE Takeover VI
Gary Owen's DFW NYE Takeover VI will be two nights of comedy, featuring performances by Mike Epps, Luenell, DC Young Fly, and J.J. Williams on Friday, and Lil Duval, Earthquake, and Ryan Davis on Saturday. Both events will take place at Texas Trust CU Theatre in Grand Prairie.

Home Free in concert
Country a cappella group Home Free - featuring Texas Hill, Brooke Eden, Abby Anderson, Ernie Halter, and Caroline Jones - first came to prominence as the winners of the fourth season of The Sing-Off in 2013. They'll perform at Majestic Theatre on both Friday and Saturday as part of their Family Christmas tour, which comes soon after the release of their latest album, So Long Dixie.

Saturday, December 31

George W. Bush Presidential Center presents "Liberty & Laughter: The Lighter Side of the White House" closing day
Saturday will be the final day to view the special exhibit "Liberty and Laughter" at George W. Bush Presidential Center, which glimpses behind-the-scenes into the lighter side of life in the White House. Entertaining first family anecdotes, interactive multimedia, and amusing artifacts unveil presidential pranks, inside jokes, and more. Revealing how humor has evolved from our Founding Fathers to the present day makes one thing readily apparent – laughter remains vital to a thriving democracy.

Joshua Ray Walker and Grady Spencer in concert
Texas’ Joshua Ray Walker and Grady Spencer & The Work will ring in the new year by co-headlining this special New Year’s Eve concert at The Echo Lounge & Music Hall. Walker's most recent album was 2021's See You Next Time, while Spencer and his band, The Work, released Wait at the beginning of 2022.

Hyena's presents Joe Machi
Since taking 4th place on Last Comic Standing’s 8th season, Joe Machi has been busy touring the United States as a headlining stand-up comedian. He has performed on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and has become a regular on Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld on Fox News. He'll perform twice on Saturday at Hyena's Dallas.

Photo courtesy of Faizon Love

Faizon Love will perform at Improv Arlington through December 31.

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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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