Live Music Now

These are the 5 best shows to see in Houston this week

From steamy salsa, to cool electronica, it's another hot week of music in Houston. Here are the best shows coming up over the next seven days.

Best show that will bring a taste of Miami to H-Town
Riding the wave of mainstream Latin acts in the late-'90s that included Ricky Martin and Enrique Iglesias, the former Mr. Jennifer Lopez — also known as Marc Anthony — remains a huge draw on the Latin music circuit. Anthony boasts the most record sales by a tropical salsa artist, and this show will draw a lot of fans, despite having been rescheduled from an early October 2017 date postponed due to “scheduling and logistics issues.”

The multiple Grammy and Latin-Grammy award winner will bring the heat to Toyota Center this weekend. He hasn’t released anything but a children’s music album the last few years, so expect a mixture of his hits from over the years.

Marc Anthony stokes the heat at Toyota Center, located at 1510 Polk St., on Friday, February 16. Tickets start at $55. Tickets from his previously scheduled show will be accepted. Show starts at 8 pm.

Best chance at seeing indie-rock hero in an intimate space
Not since Cat Power has a female-fronted indie act offered such heartache — along with head-nodding tunes — like Waxahatchee. It’s no surprise that Katie Crutchfield started this project following the break-up of a relationship and band — it’s pure heart-on-sleeve, gut punch guitar music that sounds like the most confessional works of Liz Phair, and melodic sensibility of The Breeders.

Four albums in, she has yet to produce a dud, the latest being the fabulous 2017 set Out in the Storm, which chronicles a love gone sour. Following a great booking in Pedro the Lion, Rockefellers has struck programming gold with Waxahatchee, with the benefit of the more intimate space.

Waxahatchee brings the intimacy to Rockefellers, located at 3620 Washington Ave., on Friday, February 16. Night Shop will open. Tickets start at a reasonable $16 plus fees. Doors open at 7 pm.

Best electro-pop from north of the border
Valerie Anne Poxleitner, also known as Lights, has made a name for herself in her native land of Canada as a forward-thinking electro-pop star. She earned the Juno, the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy, for Best New Artist back in 2009, and later Best Pop Album in 2015 for her disc Little Machines. She’s appeared on tracks with emo-rock bands, rappers and some of the biggest EDM producers around.

Expect an epic light show and a lot of screaming fans dancing along to her high energy show. She’ll roll into town with a new single “We Were Here,” off her acclaimed 2017 album Skin & Earth, from which she wrote and drew her very own comic book series. Not too shabby.

Lights shines at White Oak Music Hall, located at 2915 N Main St., on Saturday, February 17. Chase Atlantic and DCF will open. Tickets start at $21 plus fees. Doors open at 7 pm.

Best show for beat-lovers
Toronto’s Keys N Krates keeps some exclusive company. The trio released music on DJ Steve Aoki’s Dim Mak label, as well as Diplo’s Mad Decent label, meaning their cred as electronic music artists is not to be questioned. Consisting of a drummer, keyboard and turntablist, Keys N Krates has been making waves on the festival circuit with their mix of trap, hip-hop and electronica and they are already booked for summer appearances at major musical gatherings.

Houston EDM fans will get a chance to see them in the cozier confines of Stereo Live as part of their Cura World Tour, promoting their first full-length album of the same name.

Keys N Krates plays at Stereo Live, located at 6400 Richmond Ave., on Saturday, February 17. Promnite and Jubilee open. Tickets are $12.50 in advance. Show starts at 9 pm.

Best show of the week
At the Day For Night Festival back in December, Annie Clark, also known as St. Vincent showcased herself as an artist at the height of her singular creative talent. Her tour for her latest album, Masseduction, one of the best of 2017, relies on a sparse stage set-up – a circular stage for her to stand on, a bank of video screens choreographed to her setlist, and one killer, fashion-forward performer shredding on guitar as good as any professional today. Clark returns to Houston after that triumphant December set, where she expressed her love for Texas audiences (she grew up in the Dallas area) and thrillingly ripped through her biggest alternative hits. Those who missed out will get a second chance to catch a must-see show.

St. Vincent will bring down the House of Blues, located at 1204 Caroline St., on Tuesday, February 20. Tuck & Patti open. Tickets start at $40. Doors open at 7 pm.

Waxahatchee brings her intimate folk songs to Rockefellers on Friday, February 16.

Photo by Daniel Cavazos

Waxahatchee brings her intimate folk songs to Rockefellers on Friday, February 16.

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Movie Review

Live action Lilo & Stitch remake offers up frenzied fun and nostalgia

Courtesy of Disney

Lilo & Stitch returns to theaters this weekend.

The project to turn every single Disney animated movie into a “live action” film has rarely seemed like anything but a money grab by the movie studio. Most of the films have failed to update the original in any meaningful way, and in many of the cases, they’re almost shot-for-shot remakes, making the reason for the new film’s existence even more confusing.

Having almost exhausted the supply of their 20th century movies, Disney has now remade 2002’s Lilo & Stitch. The film follows an alien experiment, originally known as 626 (voiced by Chris Sanders), created by Jumba ( Zach Galifianakis) for the benefit of an alien race led by the Grand Councilwoman (Hannah Waddingham). Unfortunately, 626 is too uncontrollable for them, and is banished to the faraway planet known as Earth.

Landing in Hawaii, the creature soon to be known as Stitch gloms on to a young girl named Lilo (Maia Kealoha), who mistakes it for a dog while looking for companionship following the death of her parents. Tracked by Jumba and fellow alien Pleakley (Billy Magnussen), now in human form, Stitch leaves a trail of destruction wherever he goes, much to the chagrin of Lilo’s older sister, Nani (Sydney Agudong).

Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp and written by Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Waes, the film will surely be a blast of nostalgia for anyone who was a kid when the original came out. The now-3D Stitch is just as chaotic as ever, and they even included cast members from the first film like Tia Carrere (now playing a social worker for the orphaned sisters) and Amy Hill as a kindly neighbor.

But for all of the frenzied fun that Stitch offers, there’s very little else that holds the story together. For one, the Lilo character as a real person doesn’t work as well as she does in animated form, as there’s something fluid that happens in animation that feels stilted when it’s an actual little girl. Perhaps sensing this fault, the film is loaded to the hilt with bite-sized moments that try to make the audience laugh, but do little to give the story any meaning.

The difference between animation and live action is never more evident than with Jumba, Pleakley, and CIA agent Cobra Bubbles (Courtney B. Vance). Characters that are goofy and enjoyable in animated form come off as weird and off-putting in human form. They’re supposed to bring a sense of fun and even suspense to the film, but instead they feel like characters who are getting in the way of a better story.

Kealoha, making her professional debut, is definitely cute and offers up some interesting moments opposite Stitch and Nani, but her lack of experience shows. Agudong turns in the best performance, giving a bit of emotional weight to a film that needed more. Galifianakis and Magnussen would have been better served as voice-only roles; neither comes off well when their characters turn into humans. Hill is like a warm hug every time she comes on screen, and the story could have used more of her.

The new Lilo & Stitch is not an abomination, but like most of the Disney live action remakes before it, it fails to stand on its own merits. Never given a chance to be its own thing and featuring storytelling too disjointed to be effective, the film is another so-so effort from a studio that knows how to make much better movies.

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Lilo & Stitch is now playing in theaters.

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