Weekend Event Planner

These are the 9 best things to do in Fort Worth this weekend

If you're into local arts, this is the weekend for you, as almost all of the featured events focus on Fort Worth-based arts organizations. There will be new three new theater productions, classical music in three different forms, and an artist showing off her unusual skills. You can also catch screenings of an Oscar-nominated documentary that will take your breath away.

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

Thursday, January 31

The Cliburn presents Leonidas Kavakos and Enrico Pace
Leonidas Kavakos, recognized around the world as a violinist and artist of rare quality, and pianist Enrico Pace will present a concert featuring Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 4 in A Minor, Op. 23; Prokofiev's Violin Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 80; Bartok's Violin Rhapsody No. 1; and Enescu's Violin Sonata No. 3 in A Minor, Op. 25. The concert will take place at the Kimbell Art Museum.

Circle Theatre presents Our Town
Thornton Wilder's iconic drama makes a rare not-to-be-missed visit to the Circle Theatre stage. The moving story follows the small town of Grover's Corners through three acts: "Daily Life," "Love and Marriage," and "Death and Eternity." Wilder's classic play, which reminds us of the importance of love, loss, and living in the moment, will run through March 9.

Friday, February 1

Magnolia at the Modern: Free Solo
Free Solo, one of the five films nominated for Best Documentary at the 2019 Academy Awards, is a stunning, intimate and unflinching portrait of the free soloist climber Alex Honnold as he prepares to achieve his lifelong dream: climbing the face of the world’s most famous rock — the 3,000 foot El Capitan in Yosemite National Park — without a rope. There will be six screenings through Sunday at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Casa Mañana presents The Emperor's New Clothes
A crazy quilt of mixed-up psychedelic fashion trends is the setting for this tongue-in-cheek retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, set to a fun and sprightly score. The country is ruled by a foppish fashionista of an Emperor, and 10-year-old Kid is determined to change everyone’s materialistic views. The children's production will run through February 17 at Casa Mañana Theatre.

Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra presents Brahms and Bruch
Andrew Grams, who last conducted the FWSO in March 2017 to rave reviews, returns to Fort Worth to conduct Brahms’ Second Symphony and Schumann’s "Overture to Hermann und Dorothea." Plus, Simone Porter returns to the FWSO for a performance of Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1. The concert will play three times through Sunday at Bass Performance Hall.

Amphibian Stage Productions presents The Lonely Planet
The Lonely Planet by playwright Steven Dietz is a story about the strengthening force of friendship. Set in a small map store on the oldest street in an American city, the play is an intimate portrait of two friends navigating loss and an uncertain world. Shop owner Jody buries his head in the sand by refusing to leave his shop. Meanwhile, Carl begins filling the store with a variety of mysterious chairs. The production will run at Amphibian Stage Productions through February 24.

Saturday, February 2

Amon Carter Museum of American Art presents "With the Help of Friends"
"With the Help of Friends" celebrates 15 dynamic photographs ranging from the 1930s to the present day that were selected and purchased over the recent years by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. These photographs tell vivid stories about life and how we think about our world, and the exhibition proclaims the vibrancy of the museum’s ongoing relationship with its members, and the key help that members provide in keeping the collection one of the world’s leading repositories of photography. The exhibition will be on display through June 2.

Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra presents Jurassic Parts
This kid-friendly concert has nothing to do with a certain dinosaur movie (although, coincidentally, the FWSO will present that movie in March). Instead, it's an event filled with laughs, surprises, multi-media projection, and on-stage action as the symphony presents an introduction to the exciting sounds, people, and experience of a symphony orchestra concert. The performance will take place at Bass Performance Hall.

Fort Worth Community Arts Center presents Marsha Wilson Pyrography Demonstration
Pyrography, from the Latin fire and writing, is the technique of making art on a surface with heated metal. Marsha Wilson uses mainly photographs to create her art on wood, paper, and leather. The self-taught artist whose show, "Western Roots," is on display during the Cultura del Vaquero program at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, will be demonstrating her pyrography on birch wood, paper, and vegetable tanned leather.

Amphibian Stage Productions presents The Lonely Planet, February 1-24.

Photo by Evan Michael Woods

Amphibian Stage Productions presents The Lonely Planet, February 1-24.

event-planner

Movie Review

Steven Soderbergh lets you be the ghost in quirky horror film Presence

Photo courtesy of Neon

Callina Liang in Presence.

There are few directors more adept at moving between genres than Steven Soderbergh. Throughout his career, he has made dramas and comedies, heist films and thrillers, films with serious topics like drug trafficking and films with frivolous subjects like male dancers. He’s also dipped his toe into horror on occasion, something he does again with Presence.

However, typical of the hard-to-pin-down filmmaker, this film is not your typical ghost story, as its plot is told from the perspective of the presence itself. With the camera as its “eyes,” the audience sees a family of four move into an older-but-updated home: Mother Rebekah (Lucy Liu), father Chris (Chris Sullivan), son Tyler (Eddy Maday), and daughter Chloe (Callina Liang). The family dynamics are established early, as Rebekah favors Tyler and pins her hopes and dreams on him, while Chris has a strained relationship with Rebekah and tries to protect Chloe from stress, who has recently gone through a trauma.

The family’s various issues keep the atmosphere tense, and for the most part the presence is merely an observer to their conversations and activities. But Chloe can sense it whenever it’s close to her, and this connection leads it to sometimes announce itself via physical interactions with objects in different rooms. As the other family members gradually become aware of it as well, the story’s supernatural aura starts to increase.

Working from a screenplay by David Koepp, Soderbergh does a kind of switcheroo on audience expectations. In your typical haunted house story, the mystery of the ghost(s) is what drives the plot and keeps things scary. But since the audience, in essence, is the ghost, we know everything it is doing at all times. Instead, the suspense comes from the family itself, who have backstories that make the whole clan dysfunctional, at best.

Story elements are brought in through different ways than your typical film, with little hints being dropped along the way about various things that have happened in the family’s recent past. Why Tyler seems to be angry with Chloe all the time, or why Rebekah and Chris never seem to be on the same page with anything the family is dealing with are equally as interesting as anything the presence is doing.

The first-person perspective (used in a much different way than in the recent - and now Oscar-nominated - Nickel Boys) gives an intimacy to the film that is sometimes invasive, sometimes disorienting, but always engrossing. Soderbergh, who acted as the cameraman himself, takes the camera to almost every nook and cranny of the house, often getting so close to the actors that it’s uncomfortable. The constant, silent movement of the presence/camera makes for great viewing, lending the audience a knowledge they rarely have.

Liu is given a meatier part than she’s had in recent years, and she plays the complicated role for all it’s worth. Sullivan, best known for his role on the NBC TV drama This is Us, is equally good, with a demeanor that’s slightly at odds with his stature, but in a good way. Both Liang and Maday have light resumes (this is Maday’s first credit of any kind), but their performances are what make the film as effective as it is. With the presence more interested in her character than anyone else, Liang is asked to do a lot, and she is especially memorable.

While more of a family drama than a true horror film, the paranormal aspect of Presence gives enough of a spooky vibe for it to qualify. The highly successful film demonstrates that, 36 years after his breakthrough, Soderbergh remains one of the more fascinating directors out there, willing to try different projects instead of doing the same thing over and over again.

---

Presence opens in theaters on January 24.

movies film