Weekend Event Planner

These are the 8 best things to do in Fort Worth this weekend

There are relatively few new events happening in Fort Worth this weekend, but the options are all big. There will be a Veterans Day parade, the return of a hometown film festival, a music festival celebrating country and blues, a fall festival at one of the most beautiful places in town, monster trucks, country music awards, and more.

Below are the best ways to spend your precious free time this weekend.

Thursday, November 11

Tarrant County Veterans Council presents Tarrant County Veterans Day Parade
"Saluting our Veterans & First Responders" is the theme of this year’s Tarrant County Veterans Day Parade. Participants will form up in the Panther Island Pavilion parking lot, march down North Forest Park Blvd. along the Clear Fork of the Trinity River, and return. Before or after the event, veterans and active duty military can take advantage of the multitude of Veterans Day deals in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Lone Star Film Festival
The 2021 Lone Star Film Festival will feature 21 feature films and over 60 short films, screened over the course of four days at both the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and Downtown Cowtown at the Isis. Headlining feature films include opening night film The Humans, closing night film Jockey; The Marfa Tapes - Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert, Jon Randall; VI; and Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America. The festival will go on through Sunday.

Friday, November 12

River & Blues Festival
The second annual River & Blues Festival will take place on both Friday and Saturday at Panther Island Pavilion, featuring a variety of country and blues concerts. Performers will include Aaron Watson, Larkin Poe, American Aquarium, Dirty River Boys, Ana Popovic, King Solomon Hicks, Micky & the Motorcars, Jon Robert & The Wreck, Cody Hibbard, Summer Dean, Kirk House, Dustin Massey, and Squeezebox Bandits.

Jon Wolfe in concert
There are a lot of big-time stars who grace the stage at Billy Bob's Texas, but just as often they showcase talented and hard-working musicians with smaller but loyal fanbases. Jon Wolfe has five albums to his credit, most recently 2017's Any Night in Texas, and only one of them — 2015's Natural Man — made any kind of impact on the Billboard Country charts. But you can expect the venue to be packed once again for him, as he's a regular in Fort Worth.

Saturday, November 13

Fort Worth Botanic Garden presents Fall Japanese Festival
The Fort Worth Botanic Garden/Botanical Research Institute of Texas will celebrate the beauty of fall in the Japanese Garden while exploring the arts and culture of Japan during the Fall Japanese Festival. The festival, taking place on both Saturday and Sunday, will include traditional Japanese dance, taiko drummers, martial arts, sword demonstrations, raku pottery, food trucks, and more.

Hot Wheels Monster Trucks Live
At Hot Wheels Monster Trucks Live, fans can watch the famous Hot Wheels monster truck toys come to life in a full-size, kid-focused, immersive experience. Taking place at Dickies Arena, the event will include trucks like Bone Shaker, Tiger Shark, V8 Bomber, and Demo Derby, as well as the original monster truck, BigFoot, and a special appearance from the car-eating, fire-breathing transforming robot Megasaurus. There will be three shows through Sunday.

Lone Star Film Festival Gala
The most high-profile event of the Lone Star Film Festival will be their annual black-tie gala, at which they will present the Larry McMurtry Award to Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater. The actor and filmmaker have worked together on seven separate occasions, including the Before... trilogy and groundbreaking Boyhood. Other honorees will include Michael Martin Murphey and Channing Godfrey Peoples. The event will be at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Sunday, November 14

Texas Country Music Awards
It will be a busy weekend for Aaron Watson. After headlining the River & Blues Festival, he'll do the same at the Texas Country Music Awards at Billy Bob's Texas. Other performances will include Sundance Head, Curtis Grimes, Brandon Rhyder, and more. In addition to performing, Watson is up for four awards, including Entertainer of the Year, Male Artist of the Year, and Country Album of the Year.

Fort Worth Botanic Garden presents Fall Japanese Festival on November 13 and 14.

Photo courtesy of Fort Worth Botanic Garden

Fort Worth Botanic Garden presents Fall Japanese Festival on November 13 and 14.

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Movie Review

Oscar-worthy film A Complete Unknown digs deeply into Bob Dylan

Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

Timothée Chalamet in A Complete Unknown.

Music biopics never seem to go out of style, although they’re rarely very good because most of them tend to tell the same story. A musician/band gets discovered, rises to popularity, experiences trouble at their peak due to (insert sex/drugs/alcohol/ego), and either finds a measure of redemption once they’ve been sufficiently humbled or dies due to their lack of control.

Paradoxically, what few music biopics fail to do is properly showcase the music that made the person popular in the first place, a mistake that A Complete Unknown doesn’t repeat, becoming a smashing success in the process. The film follows Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) over a roughly four-year period from when he first arrived in New York City in 1961 to his then-revolutionary electric set at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.

Dylan seeks out well-known folk singers Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and an ailing Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) when he first arrives, with Seeger taking him under his wing. Dylan starts to establish himself in the local club scene with his unique songwriting voice, meeting fellow singer Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), with whom he starts an on-and-off relationship. As his popularity grows, his reaction is antithetical to what’s expected, as he rarely engages with fans and focuses on his next song(s) instead of the ones for which he became known.

Directed by James Mangold (Walk the Line) and written by Mangold and Jay Cocks, the film may not be much of a revelation for Dylan superfans, but for casual fans or those who know nothing about him, it is one of the most effective music biopics in recent memory, if not ever. Not only does Mangold track the musical evolution of Dylan, but he gives the full context of the people who influenced him most, including Guthrie, Seeger, Baez, and more.

The film is not a musical in the traditional sense, but the amount of music in it makes it the next best thing. Rarely does more than a few minutes go by before someone is singing, either on stage, for someone close to them, or as part of the songwriting process. Whether you’re a folk music fan or not, the way the genre is showcased in the film will make you believe in its power and why it was so popular at that particular point in time.

Dylan is famous for his enigmatic personality, and Mangold does a great job of maintaining that elusiveness while still exploring what drove Dylan early in his career. His relationships with Baez and the fictional Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) give him some dimension, but why he continually went back-and-forth between them (or why they put up with him) is only lightly explored. The film keeps most of the drama focused on the music, and it’s this decision that makes it as compelling as it is.

Chalamet has been “The Next Big Thing” since his Oscar nomination for Call Me By Your Name, but the combination of the Duneseries, Wonka, and now this has firmly established him as the star he is. His Dylan impersonation (including singing) is subtle-yet-clear, and he has the cool factor that makes him completely believable in the role. The supporting cast is also off-the-charts good, with Norton and Barbaro making the best cases for awards notice.

While 2024 has had its fair share of great movies, A Complete Unknown - in this critic’s opinion - should now be the favorite to win Best Picture at next year’s Oscars. It bucks the trend of mediocre music biopics by giving moviegoers the transporting feeling of what it was like to experience Dylan’s meteoric rise, and why his early songs remain so indelible.

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A Complete Unknown opens in theaters on December 25.

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Movie Review

Oscar-worthy film A Complete Unknown digs deeply into Bob Dylan