Coldplay Concert Review

Coldplay takes over Texas with a burst of confetti, fireworks and spectacular music

Coldplay and its 'Head Full of Dreams Tour', the highest grossing concert tour of the year ($144 million so far), burst into Arlington's AT&T Stadium Saturday night with lights, love, lasers and good vibes. The U.S portion, with 22 concerts — sadly none in Houston, will wrap on September 3 in San Francisco before continuing on to Australia and New Zealand.

Entering the stage to a stadium packed with mostly 30-to-50 year olds, the band launched into title track "A Head Full of Dreams" in a jaw-dropping display of color, confetti, fireworks and a light show generated by lasers as the audience waved LED wrist bands that changed colors depending on the song. Without pausing for the crowd to catch its breath, lead singer Chris Martin quickly moved into "Yellow," its first U.S. hit, accompanied by hundreds of yellow balloons dropping from the ceiling.

Over the next two hours, the band performed 23 songs, eight of which were from the most recent album, A Head Full of Dreams. In addition to the main stage and a 50-yard runway which Martin dashed up and down throughout the night with a Texas flag flapping off his pants, the band performed three quieter songs on the end of the runway, including a moving version of "Magic," the best selling single of their 2014 Ghost Stories album.

As a surprise the band moved to an even smaller stage in the back of the stadium that barely had enough room for all four to sing three more songs, including "In My Place" (from the band's second album Rush of Blood to the Head) that was chosen by the band's Instagram followers. As Martin launched into a stripped-down, hauntingly beautiful version of "Everglow" from the recent album, he asked that everyone in the audience send good vibes to those in other parts of the world who need it.

Speaking of Martin, how can you not love a guy who thanks everyone for braving the traffic to come spend the evening with them and proclaims, "We are going to try and make this the best concert of the tour?" As is his trademark, he twirled, jumped, danced, laid on the stage and endearingly started Viva la Vida over, saying "This is not right, not up to standards" and ran to the end of the runway to restart the song.

And he had everyone laughing and agreeing when he said, "If I lived in Texas I would just spend part of the summer in my refrigerator." Finally, he asked a favor of the audience, inquiring if they would help him surprise fifth band member, manager Phil Harvey, for his 40th birthday with a sing-a-long and an imitation of his smoothing his hair. Somehow that added to the good vibe feeling of the concert.

All was not perfect however. While Coldplay's songs seemingly have been written for stadium-size audiences, I miss the days of smaller venues. Despite a world of talent and special effects, it is hard to connect with a band in a football stadium.

There were so many fireworks that the stadium quickly became smoky. I wondered why the roof wasn't open — at least a little. And those who didn't love the new album Head Full of Dreams, which includes me, would have found themselves longing for the old days of tracks from albums X&Y and Viva la Vida.

But these are tiny quibbles.The entire show was one high after another, with barely a moment to catch your breath before the next round of confetti, fireworks or lasers ensued along with spectacular music. And the band seems in a solid groove that reflects their two decades of playing together. I actually believe Chris Martin when he said they would try to make the Dallas show their best one. For this audience they did.

Over the next two hours, the band performed 23 songs, eight of which were from the most recent album, A Head Full of Dreams.

Coldplay performed several acoustic numbers on a small stage

Photo by Jane Howze

Over the next two hours, the band performed 23 songs, eight of which were from the most recent album, A Head Full of Dreams.

concerts music

Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

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.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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