Houston NY Eve

Insider's Guide to big New Year's Eve celebration in downtown Houston: Fireworks and free performances

After a two-year hiatus, a big New Year's Eve celebration, complete with a midnight fireworks display and lots of entertainment, is headed back to downtown Houston — in a new location, with the B-52s and Houston-based Tontons as featured attractions.

Other events — all free — will take place inside the Alley and Wortham Center theaters throughout the evening, beginning at 7 pm. They range from a production of SantaLand Diaries to a Broadway Sing-A-Long, and performances by magician Curt Miller, percussionist and bandleader Pedrito Martinez and smooth jazz Bobby Lyle Trio. (See full schedule below.)

Also on tap is an early New Year’s kid-friendly celebration in the Family Zone on Jones Plaza filled with dancing, games, activities and costumed characters.

Grown-ups can toast the end of the year in the Bubbly Garden with room for dancing and a lounge area. The B-52s, affectionately known as the "world's greatest party band" with such dance hits as "Love Shack" and "Deadbeat Club," perform at 10:35 pm on a special outdoor stage constructed on Smith and Capitol streets in the Theatre District, leading to the midnight fireworks celebration from atop Jones Hall. The Tontons will perform from 9:15-10:15 pm.

Food and beverage booths will sell traditional "good luck" food and hot cocoa, coffee and cider, as well as beer, wine and champagne. Parking is available in garages underneath the Theater District buildings.

New tradition

The event revives a burgeoning New Year's Eve tradition that developed when Gloworama was launched at Discovery Green to welcome in 2010 with neon-decorated art cars and a spectacular light show. The event morphed into an event called New Year's Eve Live and organizers hoped to make it an annual family-style blowout as the Bayou City version of New York's big annual celebration in Times Square.

But in late 2013, the annual event was canceled due to a lack of sponsors. Insiders say that Mayor Annise Parker lobbied for the return of the signature downtown happening as one of her last achievements before leaving office. (Mayor-elect Sylvester Turner will be inaugurated on January 4 in Jones Hall). Houston First stepped in to sponsor the celebration.

Other sponsors include the city of Houston, the Houston Downtown Management District, the Houston Theater District and the Houston Chronicle. The event is produced by the Mayor’s Office of Special Events.

“Houston has lots to celebrate and what an extraordinary way to begin a new chapter for this tradition," Parker said in a statement.

Online contest

In conjuction with the big event, sponsors are conducting an online contest, with a chance to win a Theater District experience, which includes overnight accommodations at The Lancaster Hotel, a $100 gift card to the Hard Rock Cafe and four tickets to the Theater Under The Stars production of Mary Poppins.

Entries, which can be made online at www.houstontxgov.nye/contest.html, must be received by Wednesday (December 30) at 5 pm. The drawing will be held on Thursday (December 31) after the 7:45 pm performance of the Curt Miller Magic Show at Wortham Center. The winner must be present at the drawing.

Live options

Because there is so much construction work around Discovery Green, with a giant new Marriott Marquis hotel aiming to open before the 2017 Super Bowl, as well as renovations to the George R. Brown Convention Center, organizers decided to move the celebration to the Theater District and take advantage of the facilities to present live performances in some of the buildings throughout the evening. They include:

7 - 7:45 pm
Cullen Theater, Wortham Center
Curt Miller Magic Show

7 – 9 pm
Hard Rock Café
Kristal Cherelle & Will Makar
Strolling Entertainment
New Orleans Hustlers Brass Band & Glow Go Dancers

7 - 9 pm
Kids Plaza, Jones Plaza
DJ Johnny J, Arcade, Face Painters, Fortune Teller, Red Door Productions Dancers, LunchBox Dance Crew, Balloon Artist
*Special Kids Countdown – 9 p.m.

7:30 - 8:30 pm
Alley, Neuhaus Theatre
SantaLand Diaries (Mature Audiences Only)

Brown Theater, Wortham Center
Broadway Sing-A-Long I

8 - 9:30 pm
Alley, Hubbard Theatre
Pedrito Martinez

9 – 10:15 pm
Cullen Theater, Wortham Center
Bobby Lyle Trio

9:15 - 10:15 pm
Main Stage, corner of Smith and Texas
The Tontons

9:30 – 10:30 p.m.
Brown Theater, Wortham Center
Broadway Sing-A-Long II

10:35 - 11:58 pm
Main Stage, corner of Smith and Texas
The B-52s

The B-52s will take to the stage at 10:30 on New Year's Eve.

Photo courtesy of Houston First

The B-52s will take to the stage at 10:30 on New Year's Eve.

concerts festivals

Movie Review

Realism and strong performances power new war drama Warfare

Photo courtesy of A24

Cast of Warfare

At this point in movie history, there are precious few ways to make a war film feel original. Every major American war, including the most recent ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been covered, and the “war is hell” idea has been featured in too many films to count. So for a film like the new Warfare to stand out, it needs to do something that other war films have not.

To say that it accomplishes that goal is an understatement. Set in Iraq in 2006, it follows a platoon of soldiers tasked with helping to gain control of the city of Ramadi, a hotbed of activity in the war at that time. But this is not a story of good triumphing over evil, nor one that tries to examine exactly what the U.S. military was trying to accomplish in the war. Instead, it’s just a story of a group of young men trying to do the job they’re asked to do, and what happens to them during that mission.

It presents as fact, with no judgment either way, that one squad of the platoon overtakes the home of two Iraqi families as part of the mission. An ensuing firefight pins the soldiers down with almost no way to escape, and subsequent rescue attempts by other squads result in multiple casualties. The bulk of the film focuses on how the shell-shocked and injured soldiers react to the situation in which they find themselves.

Written and directed by Alex Garland (Civil War) and Ray Mendoza, the film is based on the memories of Mendoza and his fellow soldiers of this exact situation they experienced. As such, the film does not attempt to add extra drama or even emphasize one character over another. In fact, the first 30-40 minutes of the film are relatively boring, as the squad relays information about their position to other, unseen people.

The men in the platoon are not exactly interchangeable with each other, but the way the film is structured, they’re essentially equals. It’s easy to tell who the leaders are, but those giving orders are not treated as more important to the film than those carrying them out. This is especially true when things go to hell, as each person goes from trying to fight to trying to survive, with their training coming into play in different ways.

The situation depicted in the film is somewhat mundane - it’s not some big battle or a turning point in the war - but the intensity with which Garland and Mendoza stage it makes it enormously impactful. They put the audience right in the thick of the carnage, and the horrific injuries inflicted on some of the men, as well as the seemingly never-ending screams of pain emanating from them, can be difficult to take.

The cast features a few actors who are starting to make names for themselves (Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, Noah Centineo, Charles Melton Michael Gandolfini), others who’ve had smaller impacts (D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai, Cosmo Jarvis, Evan Holtzman), and plenty of others who have yet to get their big breaks. Each of them does their job extremely well, which in this case means that they complement each other’s performances, with none of them overshadowing the others.

Warfare is not an overtly political film, and yet the politics of war are inextricable from the story it tells. Neither anti-war nor pro-war, it simply lays out the facts of one individual mission in a larger conflict, and each viewer will likely take away something different from the experience of watching it.

---

Warfare is now playing in theaters.

movies film