Weekend Event Planner

These are the 8 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

As we inch closer to the big holiday of the season, there are plenty of events taking place, but fewer and fewer new ones. This weekend around Dallas will feature a trio of concerts, a national tour of Broadway musical, a holiday festival, versions of both A Christmas Carol and The Nutcracker, and a visit from a Food Network star.

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. Looking for the best Christmas lights in town? That list is here.

Thursday, December 8

Punch Brothers and Béla Fleck: My Bluegrass Heart
Two mainstays in the bluegrass music genre, the Punch Brothers and Béla Fleck, will team up for this special concert. Punch Brothers have been at the top of the bluegrass charts since their debut in 2008, which each of their eight albums or EPs landing at No. 1 or 2. Fleck has boldly gone where no banjo player has gone before, a musical journey that has earned him 15 Grammys in nine different genres. My Bluegrass Heart is his first bluegrass tour in 24 years. They'll play at Majestic Theatre.

Broadway Dallas presents Six
Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. From Tudor Queens to Pop Princesses, the six wives of Henry VIII take the mic to remix 50 years of historical heartbreak into an exuberant celebration of 21st century girl power. The national tour of the Broadway musicalSix runs through December 25 at Winspear Opera House.

Friday, December 9

Old City Park presents 50th Annual Candlelight
Old City Park will present its 50th Candlelight, the longest running holiday event in Texas. There will be over 13 acres of decorated buildings, strolling carolers, craft vendors, food trucks, and crafts for kids on Saturday and Sunday. The weekend kicks off with Cocktails by Candlelight on Friday. At the 21+ event, guests can enjoy drinks at the park while they see a sneak peek of Candlelight. There will be vendors, Victorian Carolers, drinks, snacks, music, and more.

Company of Rowlett Performers presents A Christmas Carol
Company of Rowlett Performers will present their version of A Christmas Carol, which recounts the story of Ebeneezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. The production runs through December 17 at Plaza Theater in Garland.

Avant Chamber Ballet presents The Nutcracker
Avant Chamber Ballet will present its production of Paul Mejia’s The Nutcracker with live orchestra. The production features Tchaikovsky’s timeless score conducted by Brad Cawyer, ACB’s professional dancers, bright young stars chosen from schools across Dallas, unique sets and costumes, and the Arts District decked out with the season’s best. There will be five performances through Sunday at Moody Performance Hall.

Zoé in concert
Mexican rock band Zoé has made waves in both their native country and the United States over the past 20 years. Since 2001, they've released seven albums - most recently 2021's Sonidos de Karmática Resonancia - with three of them being nominated for Best Latin Rock Album at the Grammys, nabbing one award. They'll play at the Music Hall at Fair Park.

Saturday, December 10

Alton Brown Live: Beyond The Eats – The Holiday Variant
Television personality, author, and Food Network and Netflix star Alton Brown comes to Dallas as part of his Alton Brown Live: Beyond The Eats – The Holiday Variant tour. His latest production mixes together science, music, food, and festive fun into two hours of pure entertainment. The event will be at the Music Hall at Fair Park.

Kings Return in concert
Kings Return is a vocal band of brothers made up of Gabe Kunda, Vaughn Faison, J.E. McKissic, and Jamall Williams. At this concert at Lewisville Grand Theater, they'll perform fan favorites, alongside tracks from their Merry Little Christmas EP and their debut album, Rove. They will also be sharing stories behind their favorite Christmas songs.

Photo courtesy of Old City Park

The 50th Annual Candlelight takes place at Old City Park, December 9-11.

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Movie Review

Animated Disney film Elio is fun but falls short of Pixar top tier

Photo courtesy of Pixar

Elio (Yonas Kibreab) and Glordon (Remy Edgerly) in Elio.

Pixar has done a ton of different things in the 28 feature films they’ve released over the past 30 years, but the one they’d never done is deal with aliens (and, no, the alien toys in Toy Story don’t count). Now they’re going where many storytellers have gone before, but in their own unique way, in the new film Elio.

Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) is a space fanatic who has recently lost both of his parents in an unnamed event. His Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña) is now his guardian, and because she happens to be a member of the U.S. Space Force, Elio finds himself tantalizingly close to communications from space. With a desire to be abducted by aliens for both curiosity and sentimental reasons, Elio sends a message into space, hoping for some kind of response.

He gets that and more when a ship full of multiple types of beings takes him into space, believing him to be a leader instead of a child. An encounter with a hostile force led by Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett) gives Elio both a new friend, Grigon’s son Glordon (Remy Edgerly), and responsibility for maintaining peace during an unexpected galactic crisis.

Pixar has not typically followed the route of many Disney movies of giving their child protagonist the trauma of dead parents, and doing so here is the first of a few minor missteps. Having Olga be his mom instead of his aunt would have altered their dynamic, but only slightly. While Elio is shown to miss his parents, his major focus is on making contact with aliens. Since the film only briefly deals with his grief, it would have been better served by excising it altogether.

For the most part, the film is goofy, with Elio’s enthusiasm for aliens matched by the oddness of the creatures he meets in space. The filmmakers - there are three credited directors and three credited writers - seem to have taken inspiration from sea creatures and Pixar’s own history, as the main bad guy emulates Mike and Sully’s boss from Monsters, Inc. Almost every character in the film is heightened to a degree that makes for funny situations, but not as much sentimentality as other Pixar offerings.

Surprisingly, especially since the film ends with a voiceover from notable astronomer Carl Sagan, the filmmakers play fast and loose with real-life science. Elio’s journeys to and from the alien spaceship are treated as close-to-instantaneous trips, even involving portals directly to Earth. The idea of the story doesn’t allow them to delve into things like relativistic time dilation, but there still could have been other scientific references to keep the story aboveboard.

There are very few stars to be found among the film’s voice cast other than Saldaña and Garrett, who are each fine if unmemorable. Kibreab and Edgerly are given many more scenes than anyone else, and they each do a great job of bringing out both the joy and naivete of their characters. Some lesser-known actors like Jameela Jamil, Atsuko Okatsuka, and Brendan Hunt show up in minor roles, but they don’t stand out in any way.

The story and characters in Elio are sweet and fun, but the film as a whole falls well short of the top tier Pixar movies. The filmmakers could have gone many different directions with a story about a boy who wants to be abducted by aliens, and the way they chose ended up being innocuous and less than compelling.

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Elio opens in theaters on June 20.

movies film

Weekend Event Planner

These are the 8 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

Movie Review

Animated Disney film Elio is fun but falls short of Pixar top tier

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