This Week In Music

Motorcycles and hip-hop: Lone Star Rally, Fall Out Boy, Jay-Z highlight championship week of concerts

The Black Album and black leather highlight the week ahead for music in and around Houston as the city celebrates a world championship with world-class talent and events. From hogs on the historic Strand in Galveston and Mr. Carter visiting the in-laws to a big Party on the Plaza, the stars have aligned for Astros fans to let loose as they are set to toast their team in style over the next week.

Best Show of the Week
At this point does Jay-Z, producer of said Black Album, have to tour anymore? The guy is closing in on billionaire status and he's achieved almost everything a musician and businessman can accomplish, so the only reasons for touring his latest album is either to maintain his profile as the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of the American dream or because he really loves his fans. No matter the reason, droves of hip-hop fans will be at his Toyota Center stop of the 4:44 Tour on Wednesday, November 8, because very few rapper/producers are making impactful music at this level, not to mention, he has a catalogue of hits dating back almost 20 years to pull from.

The biggest question is, will the Queen Bey herself, Beyonce Knowles, make an appearance in her hometown to perform a few songs alongside her world-beating partner? If there’s any stop on this tour where it would happen, this would have to be the one where we get a duet from the power couple who have done a tour together in the past. Fast-rising, 24-year-old Chicago rapper Vic Mensa and Jay-Z protege will open. Tickets start at $39.50, but checking the Toyota Center site, the only seats still available start at $199.50 plus service charges. Doors open at 7 pm.

Biggest Show of the Week
As a former Galveston resident, there are three type of island residents when nearly 600,000 visitors and nearly 300,000 motorcycles descend on the Island throughout the weekend as part of the immense Lone Star Rally. The first type of resident will get out of town, the constant roar too much for them to take; the second will live for three days with earplugs firmly implanted in their skulls; the third will bust out their leather and denim and embrace the sheer madness for what the Lone Star Rally is, which is a really great party with a couple of dozen of bands playing over the course of the weekend.

The Lone Star Rally is one of, if not the biggest (there’s always been arguments over whether the Sturgis, South Dakota rally is bigger), motorcycle enthusiast gatherings in the world. A surprisingly safe and fun event, bikers bust out their tricked out rides and showcase them along The Strand throughout the day, riders filling the bars and cheering on a strong line-up of bands that cater to this sort of crowd. It’s so huge, the City of Galveston commissioned its own economic impact study and the results are impressive.

Performers through Sunday, November 2 include Vanilla Ice, David Allen Coe, Shallow Side, the Zach Tate Band, Tom Keifer and many more. Admission is free.

Best Free Show of the Week
Respect has to be given to The Old 97’s for the sheer longevity of their career. Releasing their first album in 1994, the quartet that got its start in Dallas has produced one of the most respected catalogues of Americana-based rock music, making friends of Hollywood along the way, in no small part due to lead singer Rhett Miller’s good looks, charm and strong songwriting. The band continues to churn out new music, the latest being this year’s Graveyard Whistling.

The band is set to play the Party on the Plaza concert series on Wednesday, November 8, a great venue just outside the George R. Brown Convention Center for any Astros fans that can’t get the celebration out of their system. The best part? The show is free. The Seratones will open.

Other Shows of Note
Friday, November 3
Iron & Wine with John Moreland at the Heights Theater. Tickets are sold out. Doors open at 7 pm.

Sunday, November 5
The Guess Who at Dosey Doe, tickets start at $118 , doors open at 7:30 pm.

Monday, November 6
Toad the Wet Sprocket at the House of Blues, tickets start at $40, doors open at 7 p.m.

Tuesday, November 7
Fall Out Boy with blackbear and Jaden Smith at the Toyota Center, tickets start at $30.50, doors open at 6 p.m.

Wednesday, Nov. 8
The Jesus and Mary Chain at White Oak Music Hall, tickets are $30 in advance, doors open at 7 p.m.

The Last Bandoleros at the House of Blues Bronze Peacock Room, tickets start at $13, doors open at 7 p.m.

The Lone Star Rally in Galveston will feature many musical performers and hundreds of thousands of bikers.

music concerts

Movie Review

'I Know What You Did Last Summer' reboot lacks energy or thrills

Photo by Brook Rushton

Sarah Pidgeon, Madelyn Cline and Chase Sui Wonders in I Know What You Did Last Summer.

When the original I Know What You Did Last Summer came out in 1997, it was riding the coattails of Scream, which came out in 1996. Like that film, it featured hot young actors of the time, albeit with a story that was much more standard than the inventive Scream. Still, it made enough of an impact for some studio executive to think it was worth reviving nearly 30 years later with its own legacy-quel.

In the new I Know What You Did Last Summer, a group of five high school friends — Danica (Madelyn Cline), Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), Teddy (Tyriq Withers), and Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon) — have reunited at the engagement party for Danica and Teddy on the 4th of July. While on an impromptu trip to watch fireworks on a twisty road in the nearby hills, Teddy goofs off in the middle of the road, causing a truck to swerve and drive off the cliff.

A year later, having sworn to each other to not speak of the accident to anybody, they start getting stalked by a mysterious person in a fisherman’s slicker carrying a hook. With Teddy’s rich father, Grant (Billy Campbell), actively trying to cover up what his son did (as well as the fallout), it’s up to the group to figure out who is coming after them and how to stop that person.

Written and directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, and co-written by Sam Lansky, the film doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel; in fact, it barely builds something that can roll. It might just be the laziest and most incompetent attempt to capitalize on an existing piece of intellectual property. There is almost zero effort put into establishing a connection between the members of the friend group, making them feel like strangers for the entire film.

It doesn’t help that the young male actors in the film — which grows to include Wyatt (Joshua Orpin), a new fiance for Danica — serve no purpose other than to be generically good-looking. The most impactful of the men in the film is the returning Freddie Prinze, Jr., who — along with Jennifer Love Hewitt — has his old character from the first two films shoehorned into the new story. The filmmakers undercut any good feelings from their return by giving them hardly anything to do and then having Hewitt deliver the line, “Nostalgia is overrated.”

The film as a whole never has a sense of momentum. The inciting incident is so tame — they even attempt to save the driver before the truck goes off the cliff — that the guilt they feel and the anger of the person going after them doesn’t feel warranted. Once the attacks start, it is shocking at how low-energy the sequences are, providing no sense of suspense or thrills. The filmmakers resort to the lamest of horror movie tropes, turning the film into a paint-by-numbers affair.

Cline (one of the stars of Netflix’s Outer Banks) and Wonders (The Studio on Apple TV+, Bodies Bodies Bodies) are the clear stars of the film, but their characters are made into inert scream queens, negating any acting talent they possess. Hauer-King, Withers, and Pidgeon don’t bring anything interesting to their characters, existing merely to have someone else for the killer to go after.

Even the worst films can have some kind of redeeming value if you look hard enough, but the only thing I Know What You Did Last Summer has to offer is that it becomes so comically bad by the end that you can’t help but laugh at its ineptitude. Both fans of the original and fans of horror movies in general will feel cheated by the experience.

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I Know What You Did Last Summer opens in theaters on July 18.

movies film

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Movie Review

'I Know What You Did Last Summer' reboot lacks energy or thrills