Weekend Event Planner

Here are the top 11 things to do in Houston this weekend

It's the week post-Super Bowl LI and Houston is showing no signs in slowing down with activities. There's plenty for everyone in the family to get into this weekend. Sesame Street Live, Monster Jam, and a premiere performance of To Kill a Mockingbird are just a few of the events on tap.

Here's are our picks for the top 11 events happening in Houston this weekend, but you can always see a full list on our CultureMap Events Calendar.

Thursday, February 9

Sesame Street Live: Elmo Makes Music

Elmo, Abby, Cadabby, Big Bird, and other iconic characters learn to make beautiful music together after they search for their new teacher's missing instruments and discover new ones in this fun children's show. Multiple performances through Sunday at NRG Park.

The 25th Annual Great Grown Up Spelling Bee

Multiple teams of two adults compete against each other in this fun and competitive spelling bee until one emerges victorious — and the Houston Center for Literacy benefits. The night features cocktails, light bites, a dj, and desserts.

Friday, February 10

GoGames360 Houston

Game lovers will flock to The Woodlands all weekend to play hundreds of video games, board games, and physical games from around the world, laser and archery tag, an obstacle course, Lego gallery, dance-a-thon, ping pong, and Hamsterball Soccer. A dance and cheer showcase adds to the fun.

Tapas on the Trails

In advance of Valentine's Day, the popular Tapas on the Trails offers a romantic evening getaway at the Houston Arboretum & Nature Center. Enjoy a softly-lit walk through the Arboretum’s nature sanctuary, pausing along the way to indulge in five delicious courses paired perfectly with carefully selected beers and wines. Guests receive a commemorative glass to take home. The evening ends at the Meadow Deck overlooking our one acre pond and meadow where guests will enjoy sparkling wine, handcrafted desserts, coffee, and the company of an owl. The event takes place Friday and Saturday night.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents Oscar Nominees: Animated Short Films

See all of this year's Oscar nominees in the Animated Short Films category, including Borrowed Time, Pearl, Piper, Blind Vaysha, and Pear Cider and Cigarettes, and you'll be ahead of the game when it comes to predicting the winner. On Saturday, the MFAH will present the nominees in the Documentary Short Subject category; a repeat of the Antimated Short Films will take place on Sunday.

STOMP

The Society for the Performing Arts presents the return of this inventive and invigorating stage show that’s part dance, part concert, part theatrical performance, all blended together in one electrifying rhythm that features matchboxes, brooms, garbage cans, Zippo lighters, and more filling the stage. Performances continue all weekend.

Saturday, February 11

Monster Jam

Adults and children alike will have an exciting time watching custom-designed trucks, approximately 12 feet tall and about 12 feet wide, sitting atop 66-inch-tall tires and weighing a minimum of 10,000 pounds, fly up to 130 feet in the distance and up to 35 feet in the air while reaching speeds as high as 100 miles per hour.

Houston Symphony presents Celebrate Asia

Led by Taiwanese-American guest conductor Mei-Ann Chen, the hour-long concert at Houston Baptist University features east Asian folk songs interwoven with popular Western classical music. Select works on the program include Bèo Dạt Mây Trôi, a lush orchestration of a traditional Vietnamese song arranged for orchestra by leading Vietnamese cellist Ngo Hoang Quan; Yuzo Toyama’s Rhapsody for Orchestra, a folk-music travelogue of Japan; and a set of variations on “Arirang,” a folk song often referred to as Korea’s unofficial national anthem. Mongolian violinist Angelo Xiang Yu also joins in the celebration of the musical traditions of Houston's Asian communities.

Beats+BBQ+Brews

Happening the second Saturday of every month at Axelrad Beer Garden from noon until 5 pm, this weekend's edition include beats from DJ Seek, barbecue from Blood Bros. BBQ, including 44 Farms chuck ribs and beef brisket, pork ribs, smoked boudain, and more. And, of course, lots of brews.

Sunday, February 12

To Kill a Mockingbird

A.D. Players kicks off its 50th anniversary season in its brand new theater with Christopher Sergel’s dramatization of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Harper Lee novel. Film and television actor Jason Douglas stars as Atticus Finch with Jemma Kosanke as Scout.

Dashboard Confessional

The rock band will perform hits from their various albums, including The Swiss Army Romance, After the Ending, and The Shade of Poison Trees at House of Blues. Vinyl Theater is the opening act.

We'd love to hear how you enjoyed these events and others happening around the city. Be sure to connect with us on social media.

STOMP delivers a thrilling performance featuring everyday objects.

Photo by Steve McNicholas

STOMP delivers a thrilling performance featuring everyday objects.

event-planner

Movie Review

Camp Miasma puts a comedic twist on the classic slasher movie

Photo courtesy of MUBI

Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

The horror genre really ramped up in the 1970s and ‘80s, bringing the slasher subgenre that gave audiences new visuals of gore, but also a reliance on sexism and homophobia that would come to define the era. The new film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma wrestles with that legacy in ways that are funny, thought-provoking, and downright strange.

Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is a queer filmmaker who has been hired to reboot the moldy IP that is the Camp Miasma franchise, one that was fresh in the 1970s but which numerous shlocky sequels have rendered irrelevant. In an attempt to get to know the property better, Kris has scored a meeting with the reclusive Billy (Gillian Anderson), the star of the original film who has shunned the public eye for decades.

Turns out that Billy lives deep in the woods at Camp Rivoli, which served as the location for the first film. As Kris tries to get to know Billy and convince her to be a part of the new film, she starts to fall under Billy’s spell and the lore of the franchise as a whole. That includes believing that the movie’s villain, Little Death — a transgender person who has an air conditioning vent as a head/mask — may not just be a character created for the movies.

Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow), the film at first feels like it’s going to go the straight-up comedy route, with comic explosions of blood, a strange fascination with candy brands, and a production design that does nothing to hide that the two main actors are on a movie set with painted backdrops. This is backed up by Kris’ phone conversations with her girlfriend, Mari (Jasmine Savoy Brown) and her agent (Sarah Sherman), as well as numerous other details.

But the film starts to go down the surreal route the longer Kris stays at the camp with Billy, especially when they sit down to watch the original Camp Miasma. An extended sequence shows a good amount of that film-within-the-film, demonstrating why Kris and Billy have a love/hate relationship with the property. For Kris, though, the lines between the film and the real world start to blur, and Schoenbrun uses a variety of out-there elements to drive the point home.

The final act of the film can barely be described as Kris goes deeper down the rabbit hole, with Schoenbrun using her film to comment on the horror genre as a whole, its treatment of women and LGBT people, the movie industry, and more. All the while the “camp” of Camp Miasma maintains a presence, with candy wrappers showing up everywhere and the tongue-in-cheek references to Little Death (the French term La petite mort, which means “the little death,” is a euphemism for orgasm).

Einbinder, an Emmy winner for Hacks, is the perfect person to inhabit her role. Her established real-life and fictional personas color everything she does in the film, with her enthusiasm and curiosity shining through. Anderson leans heavily into another reference — Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard — to create a character that is as mysterious as she is alluring. Supporting actors like Brown, Sherman, Patrick Fischler, Dylan Baker, and Eva Victor keep the movie at the right pitch all the way through.

While other films have made fun of horror movie tropes before, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma finds a wholly unique way of doing so. It’s a funny and daring trip into the psyches of two women who may be victims of their own obsessions, and of the movies that made them that way.

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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is now playing in select theaters

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