Weekend Event Planner

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

Music will showcased in a variety of forms this weekend around Fort Worth. There are four "traditional" concerts at different venues, but there will also be a cabaret-style show, not to mention Cabaret the musical, a concert of Disney princess songs, and a small scale symphony concert. There will also be screenings of an acclaimed film, a lunar new year celebration, and a funny comedian.

Below are more 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, February 8

Casa Mañana presents The Music of Linda Ronstadt
One of the most prolific artists of the 20th century, Grammy Award-winner Linda Ronstadt performed all genres, from folk to light opera and rock to the Great American Songbook. Casa Mañana will celebrate her life and her music in Reid Cabaret Theatre with songs such as “Blue Bayou,” “You’re No Good,” “Don’t Know Much,” and “When Will I Be Loved.” With performers including Jackie Burns, Dee Roscioli, and Braxton Johnson, the production runs through February 24.

Friday, February 9

Magnolia at the Modern: The Promised Land
In 1755, poor soldier Ludvig Kahlen (Mads Mikkelsen) arrives on the barren Jutland moors with a single goal: to follow the king’s call to cultivate the land and gain wealth and honor for himself. However, ruthless landowner Frederik De Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg) believes the moor belongs to him. The film will screen seven times through Sunday at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Kimbell Art Museum presents Lunar New Year Celebration
At Kimbell Art Museum's Lunar New Year Celebration, visitors can ring in the Year of the Dragon at the happy hour event co-hosted by the Kimbell and Fort Worth Sister Cities International. Highlights will include traditional Chinese music performed by the Dallas Guzheng Association, new year couplet artmaking, and an Asian art-themed scavenger hunt.

Theatre Arlington presents Cabaret
Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome. Audiences will experience the decadence and allure of 1929 Berlin in Cabaret, the Tony Award-winning musical that is a mesmerizing journey through a world of love, desire, and danger. The production runs through March 3 at Theatre Arlington.

Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra presents Disney Princess: The Concert
The beloved songs of Disney princesses come alive in Disney Princess: The Concert. The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and larger than life animation immerse the audience in Disney magic, while singers like Susan Egan, Arielle Jacobs, and Syndee Winters sing favorite princess, hero, and villain songs, and share behind-the-scenes stories from their time on stage and screen. Featuring songs like "How Far I'll Go," "A Whole New World," "Reflection," "Let It Go," and more, the production will have performances on both Friday and Saturday at Will Rogers Auditorium.

Hyena's presents Chris Porter
Best known for his 3rd place appearance on season 4 of NBC's Last Comic Standing and his one-hour special Ugly & Angry that was one of Netflix's top rated specials for three years, Chris Porter is also known for his Comedy Central Presents special, his comedy albums Lost & Alone and Screaming From the Cosmos, and more. He'll perform four times through Saturday at Hyena's Comedy Club in downtown Fort Worth.

The Mavericks in concert
The Mavericks come to Fort Worth to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their critically-acclaimed 2013 album, In Time. The albums received a deluxe reissue in 2023, which includes all 14 original tracks, plus the never-before-released single “Tonight Is The Night,” the group’s take on Glen Campbell’s “Gentle On My Mind,” and a rare conjunto version of “Ven Hacia Mi.” They'll play on both Friday and Saturday at Tannahill's Tavern & Music Hall.

Cody Canada and The Departed in concert
The music of Cody Canada & The Departed blurs the lines between hard-edged country, rock & roll, and all the gritty sounds in between. The band has released four albums in their career, most recently Soul Gravy 2022 in 2022. They'll play once again at Billy Bob's Texas.

Saturday, February 10

Enrique Iglesias, Ricky Martin, and Pitbull in concert
Enrique Iglesias, Ricky Martin, and Pitbull will share the stage for The Trilogy Tour, featuring three unique headlining sets from each artist. The megastars will deliver a mix of their biggest career-spanning hits with influences of reggaeton, salsa pop, dance, and electronic music. The concert takes place at Dickies Arena.

Wade Bowen in concert
Texas country/Red Dirt singer Wade Bowen has slowly but surely been making his way up in the industry, scoring three top 10 albums in recent years. He's recently collaborated with Randy Rogers on three separate albums, including 2020's Hold My Beer, Vol. 2. His most recent solo album was Somewhere Between the Secret and the Truthin 2022. He'll play at Billy Bob's Texas.

Sunday, February 11

Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra presents "Hidden Gems: Music by Mozart, Carter, Böhme, McKee, and Britten"
Mozart composed his opera The Magic Flute as an allegory for the Masonic initiation. In this Chamber Series program, the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra brass will deliver a bright arrangement of the opera’s Overture as well as offerings by composers Oskar Böhme and Kevin McKee. Also on the program are Elliot Carter’s grave Sonata for Piano and Cello as well as one of Britten’s first published works, the rarely heard Phantasy Oboe Quartet. The concert takes place at Kimbell Art Museum.

Photo via @LeandrovCo

Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias, and Pitbull will perform at Dickies Arena on February 10.

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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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