After a brief battle with pancreatic cancer, Houston art legend Bert Long, Jr. died Friday at the age of 72.
"Bert was this quintessential burst of energy and creativity," Houston Museum of African American Culture (HMAAC) CEO John Guess, Jr. tells CultureMap. "The man was unstoppable and never missed a beat. He was always a wonderful, supportive friend."
"Bert was this quintessential burst of energy and creativity. He was always a wonderful, supportive friend."
A celebrated painter and sculptor — with both an NEA fellowship and Rome Prize to his name — Long was an iconic figure not only in Texas, but throughout the national and international art worlds. His work is found in public collections across the country, from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Dallas Museum of Art to New York's Metropolitan Museum.
After breaking his arm this past fall, Long was forced to postpone Everything Bert, HMAAC show of new work that was set to feature his trademark ice sculptures as well as a film about his life and career.
The artist has created a number of public installations in Houston through the years, including his iconic Field of Vision projects in the Third and Fifth Wards.
Bert — a documentary directed by John Guess on Long's life and career — will be screened at the Menil Collection at 7 p.m. on Feb. 14. Further memorial plans will be announced in the days and weeks to come.
Bert Long with his Gates to Opportunity (2002), a permanent installation at E.O. Smith Education Center located in Fifth Ward
BertLong.com
Bert Long with his Gates to Opportunity (2002), a permanent installation at E.O. Smith Education Center located in Fifth Ward
In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.
The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.
Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.
Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.
The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.
It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.
Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.
Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.
