Weekend Event Planner

These are the 11 best things to do in Fort Worth this weekend

Flatland Cavalry performs live in support of their album Homeland Insecurity at Gruene Hall Thursday night.

Koe Wetzel/Facebook

For the second weekend in a row, the big event in town will the one featuring a group of immensely talented classical pianists. But you can also enjoy a quintet of concerts, including a rising country rocker, a new local theater production, a fitness festival, an acclaimed documentary, the opening of two new art exhibitions, and the closing of another exhibition celebrating big bugs.

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.

Thursday, June 9

Sixteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition
After winnowing the field down from 30 pianists to 12, the Sixteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition now moves on to the semifinal rounds. There's a strong East Asian group of contenders, including four from South Korea, one from China, and one from Japan, with another who claims both France and Japan. There is one American left in the group, and two Russians, but the sentimental favorite might be Dmytro Choni, who hails from Ukraine. Multiple semifinal sessions, including Mozart concerto performances with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, will take place daily through Sunday at Bass Performance Hall.

Lorena Leigh in concert
Texas is strong with country musicians, but as far as we can tell, there's only one person claiming to play "Cowgirl-Mermaid" music, and that's Lorena Leigh. Using her signature ukulele, Leigh plays jaunty tunes that definitely give off a summer type of vibe. Leigh released her debut album, Water Theory, in 2019. She'll play at Downtown Cowtown at the Isis.

Stage West Theatre presents Into the Breeches!
It’s 1942, and there’s a problem at the Oberon Playhouse. With the director and leading men all off at war, it looks like the season will be cancelled. That is, until a determined group of ladies rally the troops at home to mount an all-female production. The hilariously unexpected team comes together, united by their determination that the show must go on. The comedy, making its regional premiere at Stage West Theatre, will run through July 3.

Friday, June 10

TRWD presents FitCon
FitCon is a fitness expo that features exhibitors, celebrity guests, live music, competitions, and more. Taking place at Panther Island Pavilion, the event's goal is to showcase a variety of sports and fitness, all in one venue. There will be a host of fitness gurus/influencers on site at the daylong event, including Dana Linn Bailey, Kai Greene, Rob Bailey, Meg Squate, Anton Antipov, and more.

Magnolia at the Modern: Hello, Bookstore
In the shadow of the pandemic, a small town rallies to protect a beloved local bookstore. A landmark in Lenox, Massachusetts, The Bookstore is a magical, beatnik gem thanks to its owner, Matt Tannenbaum, whose passion for stories runs deep. This intimate portrait of The Bookstore and the family at its heart offers a journey through good times, hard times, and the stories hidden on the shelves. The film will screen seven times through Sunday at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Downtown Cowtown at the Isis presents Lisa Irion as Cher
Lisa Irion will present her acclaimed audience interactive "Tribute to Cher Show," backed by the Edge of Reality Band. Irion performs Cher's hits from the 1960s through the 1990s in dazzling costume replicas from Cher's concert tours. The one-night-only performance takes place at Downtown Cowtown at the Isis.

Koe Wetzel in concert
There aren't a ton of well-known people to come out of the East Texas small town of Pittsburg, but singer Koe Wetzel is one of them. With a blend of music that mixes together country and rock, he's experienced a leap in popularity the last few years, with 2019's Harold Saul High and 2020's Sellout making a dent on the Billboard 200. He'll play at Dickies Arena.

Lupe Fiasco in concert
Rapper Lupe Fiasco was on fire in the early 2000s, using a bump from Jay-Z to nab a record deal that soon led to a quintet of top-selling albums. 2007's The Cool had his first real hit, "Superstar," and this concert will celebrate the 15th anniversary of that album, with him performing the entire album along with his greatest hits. He'll perform at Wild Acre Live.

Gary Allan in concert
Country singer Gary Allan may not have the same cachet as many of the top tier genre musicians, but he's had a big impact nonetheless, scoring 11 top 10 singles and six top 5 albums, including 2013's No. 1 album, Set You Free. He'll play at Billy Bob's Texas on Friday and Saturday in support of his latest album, 2021's Ruthless.

Saturday, June 11

Amon Carter Museum of American Art exhibition openings
The Amon Carter Museum of American Art will open two new exhibitions. "Black Every Day: Photographs from the Carter Collection" explores more than 100 years of photographic representations of Black American experiences, featuring over 50 historical and contemporary art photographs and over 100 vernacular images. It will be on display through September 11. Justin Ginsberg: "Shaking the Shadow" will feature a glass sculptural work created by the Texas-based artist over the course of the summer, inspired in part by the "Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass" exhibition starting on June 26. Ginsberg will work with a glass kiln set up on the museum’s lawn each weekend, pulling glass threads measuring up to 30 feet in length. The exhibition goes on through September 25.

Sunday, June 12

Fort Worth Botanic Garden presents David Rogers: "Big Bugs" closing day
Sunday will be the final day to view David Rogers’ "Big Bugs," an exhibit of insect sculptures on a gigantic scale, at Fort Worth Botanic Garden. The sculptures were created using various combinations of whole trees, cut green saplings, dry branches, and other forest materials. Audiences will marvel or stand bug-eyed before the larger-than-life insect sculptures and gain an appreciation for these invaluable members of the animal kingdom.

Koe Wetzel will play at Dickies Arena on June 10.

Koe Wetzel/Facebook

Koe Wetzel will play at Dickies Arena on June 10.

concerts event-planner symphony museums theater fitness

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.

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

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