Weekend Event Planner

These are the 12 best things to do in Fort Worth this weekend

It's best not to worry about the threat of rain on Saturday, as some of the best events of the weekend take place outside. There will be a celebration of Grapevine, a recycled material boat challenge, a home & garden show, a chance to explore some of the best houses in the area, and three unique filmgoing opportunities, among others.

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, May 16

Fort Worth Spring Fair
The Fort Worth Spring Fair will feature carnival rides, a petting zoo, the Fearless Flores Thrill Show, pig races, pony and camel rides, the All Things Wild Tiger Exhibition, the Banana Derby, and more. Attendees can also catch the twice-daily cattle drive in the Stockyards. It will take place through May 27 at Stockyards Station.

Gallery 440 presents "Self-Reflection" closing reception
Gallery 440 will close their current show, "Self-Reflection," a group exhibition including local and national artists from both past and present. Works focus on either their own awakening, the difference between identifying with the ego and identifying with the true Self. Featured artists include Gerald Bell, Doug Cason, Darya Farral, Aron Kapembeza, Dee Hill, Jennifer Henderson, Allie Regan, Julia Ross, Amy Schultz, and Kiki Winters.

Friday, May 17

City of Grapevine presents Main Street Fest
Grapevine’s 35th Annual Main Street Fest — A Craft Brew Experience, the largest celebration of its kind in Dallas-Fort Worth, will have the theme “Back to 1985,” featuring live ’80s new wave pop, country, rock and blues music; traditional and gourmet festival fare; old-school ’80s arcade games; an opportunity to take photos inside the DeLorean Time Machine; all three Back to the Future films; and more. The festival will go on through Sunday in Historic Downtown Grapevine.

Fort Worth Home & Garden Show
Guests at the Fort Worth Home & Garden Show can build a home from scratch or renovate the space they already have. The event, taking place at Will Rogers Memorial Center through Sunday, will feature vendors and experts on things like windows, doors, roofs, floors, and more, with tons of products and services on hand.

Magnolia at the Modern: Wild Nights with Emily
While seeking publication of some of the 1,775 poems written during her lifetime, Emily Dickinson (Molly Shannon) finds herself facing a troupe of male literary gatekeepers too confused by her genius to take her work seriously. Instead her work attracts the attention of an ambitious woman editor (Susan Ziegler), who also sees Emily as a convenient cover for her own role in buttoned-up Amherst's most bizarre love triangle. The film will screen seven times through Sunday at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Whatever Floats Your Boat Regatta
In the Whatever Floats Your Boat Regatta, teams of five build a boat made out of recycled material for one to captain the boat across the river and back. Taking place at Panther Island Pavilion, participants will compete for Fastest Boat, Titanic Award (most spectacular failure), Best USS Fort Worth Look-Alike, and Best Team Theme/Costume. Recyclers/ re-users will be on site to collect materials.

Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra presents Shostakovich 5
In the finale of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra's Symphonic season, they will present Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony and the return of guitarist Pablo Sáinz Villegas in Rodrigo’s zesty and dance-filled “Fantasía para un gentilhombre.” Miguel Harth-Bedoya will conduct this concert, which will play through Sunday at Bass Performance Hall.

Jonathan Tyler in concert
Jonathan Tyler brings his brand of hard rock/blues rock back to Billy Bob’s. The Dallas-based musician has received national attention, opening for major acts like Erykah Badu, Leon Russell, Deep Purple, The Black Crowes, Kool and the Gang, and more. Tyler has released three studio albums in his career, including 2015's Holy Smokes.

Saturday, May 18

Tarrant Regional Water District presents Spring Trash Bash
Tarrant Regional Water District will present Spring Trash Bash, at which groups, families, and individuals can volunteer to pick up trash along the Trinity River. When the trash is all bashed, participants can join the after party at Panther Island Pavilion, featuring food, entertainment, door prizes, and more. Participants can register to volunteer at www.trwdtrashbash.com.

AIA Fort Worth Homes Tour
The AIA Fort Worth Homes Tour is an annual showcase of outstanding residential architecture designed by local, licensed architects. The only city-wide, self-guided tour of elite homes in Fort Worth, it showcases a variety of home styles, types, and sizes. The tour’s mission is to celebrate the process of design and educate the community on the benefits of working with an architect. The tour will take place on both Saturday and Sunday.

Q Cinema presents I Stand Corrected
I Stand Corrected charts Jennifer Leitham's rise as a virtuoso of the upright bass and reveals how she risked everything with her decision to undergo sexual reassignment surgery. An intimate study of Leitham's life, the film explores the fears she wrestled with as she rose through the ranks of the jazz world, and celebrates the joy she discovered after embracing her female identity. Leitham and director Andrea Meyerson will both be in attendance at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and Leitham will perform live after the film.

Sunday, May 19

Lone Star Film Festival presents Sunday Cinema Series: The Verdict
Directed by Sidney Lumet, co-written by David Mamet, and starring Paul Newman, The Verdict remains one of the best films in movie history. Newman plays a lawyer who sees the chance to salvage his career and self-respect by taking a medical malpractice case to trial rather than settling. Part of Lone Star Film Festival's Sunday Cinema Series, the film will screen at Four Day Weekend Theater.

Grapevine's Main Street Fest will take place in Historic Downtown Grapevine, May 17-19.

Photo courtesy of Grapevine Main Street Fest

Grapevine's Main Street Fest will take place in Historic Downtown Grapevine, May 17-19.

concerts festivals tours event-planner movies music

Movie Review

Music and Lady Gaga make for unusual Joker: Folie à Deux film sequel

Photo by Niko Tavernise

Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga in Joker: Folie à Deux.

For a movie that was more about one man’s mental health condition than anything related to comic books, 2019’s Joker was shockingly successful, making over $1 billion worldwide and nabbing a Best Actor Oscar for Joaquin Phoenix. Phoenix and writer/director Todd Phillips are back with Joker: Folie à Deux(literally meaning "a madness of two"), a film that has some of the same themes but a story that could not feel more different.

After his murder spree in the first film, Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) now calls Arkham Asylum home, where he is alternately tortured and favored by the guards, and revered by his fellow patients. Arthur plays nice for the most part, which leads one of the guards, Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson), to allow him to attend a music class in the minimum security ward of the facility, where he meets Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga).

The immediate connection between Arthur and Lee allows Arthur to indulge in more than a few fantasies, ones that manifest themselves in the film as musical sequences involving the two of them. As his fortunes change and he is forced to stand trial for his crimes, Arthur returns to the fantasies repeatedly, with Lee giving him a sense of hope and security that has been missing from his life.

The film, co-written by Scott Silver, features songs so often that the boundary between reality and fiction within the story is completely blurred. Some of the songs show Arthur, Lee, or both singing at Arkham, while others emulate old musicals by creating numbers on a set meant to look like the Murray Franklin talk show from the first film. It’s fair to wonder how much, if any, of it is real or just things that Arthur has conjured to comfort himself.

Most of the songs - “Good Morning,” “Get Happy,” and “That’s Entertainment,” among others - are cribbed from the classic movie musical era of the 1930s-1960s. Their titles and lyrics have surface-level relevance to the story being told, but it’s hard to say their meaning goes deeper than that. They are also so chopped up and delivered so often that it’s difficult to tell what kind of importance Phillips was trying to put on any one individual song.

While the music is the obvious big change, the more significant one is the film’s almost total lack of action. The focus on Arthur and Lee’s possible relationship and Arthur spending most of the film at Arkham leads to very few scenes of mayhem. In fact, hardly anything of substance happens until the film’s final act, and what does happen is less impactful than what fans of the first film may want.

Phoenix, just as he did in Joker, commits fully to the role, appearing to become gaunt once again and making sure the character is sufficiently disturbing. The arc makes him quieter and less annoying this time around, which may or may not disappoint some viewers. Lady Gaga is fine as the character otherwise known as Harley Quinn, although it’s interesting that she was likely hired for her singing ability and the film rarely lets her truly let loose.

If the nihilistic tones of Joker made it a surprise billion-dollar movie, it would be even more of a shocker if Joker: Folie à Deux made anywhere near that type of money. The Joker character has been approached in many different ways, but this is one of the oddest yet.

---

Joker: Folie à Deux opens in theaters on October 4.

movies film