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    weekend event planner

    Here are the top 14 things to do in Houston this weekend

    Craig Lindsey
    Jan 20, 2022 | 6:00 am
    Color Factory Houston
    Your date gets in free on Thursdays at Color Factory.
    Photo courtesy of Color Factory

    This weekend brings a host of artful events for those so inclined. Look for an exhibition opening centering on an epic war movie, a showcase of young artists, and a merging of wellness and art. Speaking of wellness, don't miss a wellness market.

    Meanwhile, Color Factory brings some pop to date night, classical music and dance offerings abound, and a renowned DJ hosts Sunday Funday

    Here are your best bets for the weekend.

    Thursday, January 20

    Thursday Date Nights at Color Factory
    Color Factory is a collaborative interactive exhibit that features participatory installations of colors, hues that invite curiosity, discovery, and play. It also has been welcoming couples on Thursdays this month. Visitors getting their date on will be able to purchase two tickets for the price of one. This month only, tickets are 50 percent off every Thursday. That means if you bring a date during these times, your date comes for free. 4 pm.

    Da Camera Young Artists | Concert Inspired by Calder-Picasso
    For the next two Thursdays, these free concerts will explore themes in the exhibition Calder-Picasso. Musicians from Da Camera Young Artists will perform two different programs inspired by the art and innovations of Alexander Calder and Pablo Picasso. The music for part one comes from such artists as Virgil Thomson, Francis Poulenc, Igor Stravinsky and the Velvet Underground's John Cage. 6:30 and 7:30 pm.

    MY Salon Suite East Heights Grand Re-Opening
    This weekend, MY SALON Suite is commemorating the grand opening of our newly expanded flagship location in Sawyer Yards. Home to 70-plus "Salontrepreneurs," the Sawyer Yards location is the largest MY SALON Suite in the nation, from the vaulted ceilings, abundant natural light and distinctive light well to the high-tech security system and curated collection of art. Join them for a night of "suite" beats by DJ Tony Styles, a champagne toast, and a celebration of entrepreneurship for these small business owners. 6 pm.

    Friday, January 21

    Healing Arts Houston Launch Event
    In lieu of the full “Healing Arts Houston: Innovations in Arts and Health” symposium (which has been postponed for the fall), there will be this free event, livestreamed (here) from the University of Houston, this event will feature selected panels and performances and mark the official launch of Healing Arts Houston. The free event will initiate the Healing Arts dialogue in Houston and offer a lively preview of what is to come in the September symposium. 1 pm.

    The Moody Center for the Arts presents "Soundwaves: Experimental Strategies in Art + Music" opening reception
    In honor of the "Twilight Epiphany" Skyspace’s decade-long history as a site for musical innovation, this exhibition celebrates experimentation across the disciplines of art and music and pays homage to visual and performing artists who have demonstrated a deep engagement with the field of music. New works by Jamal Cyrus, Spencer Finch, Jason Moran, and Jorinde Voigt will be shown for the first time. Through Saturday, May 14. 6 pm.

    NobleMotion Dance and Musiqa presents LiveWire
    NobleMotion Dance and Musiqa have been breaking artistic boundaries in Houston and winning national acclaim for their adventurous programming. At the same time, Jose Luis Contreras-Vidal, professor and director of the BRAIN Center at University of Houston, has been pioneering nonsurgical brain-machine interfaces to understand the brain in action in clinical, artistic and classroom settings. For the first time, the groups converge to present the world premiere of an innovative collaboration between scientists, musicians, and dancers. 7:30 pm.

    Houston Symphony presents Eschenbach Conducts Beethoven & Brahms 1
    Revered conductor and former Houston Symphony music director Christoph Eschenbach returns to Jones Hall. Young pianist Jan Lisiecki will tackle Beethoven’s poetic and powerful Piano Concerto No. 4, and Eschenbach, who was music director from 1988 to 1999, will lead Brahms’s monumental Symphony No. 1. The concerts open with Ibert’s dazzling Flute Concerto, performed by Greek virtuoso Stathis Karapanos. The Saturday performance will be available to livestream. 8 pm (2:30 pm Sunday).

    Saturday, January 22

    The Alta Arts presents Matthew Modine: "Full Metal Jacket Diary" opening day
    The Alta Arts will host an exhibition of photographs by actor and filmmaker Matthew Modine. The exhibition features large-scale aluminum prints of photographs taken while on the set of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, in 1987. Modine’s photographs were shot with black-and-white film, and almost bend time by making use of the historic camera and a visual language which is immediately reminiscent of old war footage. Modine will give a talk and Q+A session about the exhibition. Through Saturday, March 5. 1 pm.

    Community Artists' Collective presents "Wisdom and Hope" opening reception
    The Community Artists’ Collective welcomes the new year with the creative offerings of local artists Hardy Allen, Daniel Tesfai, and Zymora Eikner. Many of Eikner’s paintings reflect her fond memories of spending time on her grandpa’s tobacco farm in Virginia, while Allen’s art recalls significant scenes from his boyhood and family and Tesfai's paintings speak to the gentrification of cultures that don’t easily survive our western civilization. Through February 26. 3 pm.

    Lunar New Year | Wellness Night Market
    Celebrate Lunar New Year and local AAPI owned businesses rooted in all things wellness at Montrose Collective. Join them for a thoughtfully curated evening market on the paseo with some of Houston's local AAPI owned businesses that support physical and mental wellness, as well as traditional LNY celebrations. For health & wellness, the vendors will include Revolve Physical Therapy, Lost Lotus Yoga, and Nobl Cushions, while food vendors will include Dumpling Haus and Sticky's Chicken. 5 pm.

    Houston Grand Opera presents Dialogues of the Carmelites
    Francis Poulenc’s tragedy in two parts takes place during the French Revolution and asks the question: who gets to be a martyr? Seeking to protect herself from the guillotine, young aristocrat Blanche (soprano and HGO Studio alumna Natalya Romaniw) leaves her family and trembles her way to the Carmelite convent. But as the bedridden prioress admonishes the fearful Blanche, it is nuns who protect the convent, not the other way around. 7:30 pm.

    Sunday, January 23

    Khoi Barbecue & Burger Bodega at Tenfold Coffee
    In one corner, we have a Vietnamese pop-up that specializes in "Viet-Tex" barbecue. In the other corner, you have a burger pop-up that specializes in crazy-tasting, smash burgers. And it looks like these vendors will be serving up food in a good ol' battle-to-the-death (okay, we don't think it'll be that extreme) over at Tenfold Coffee. There will also be delicious baked goods, courtesy of Pudgy's Fine Cookies. Noon.

    Main Street Theater presents The Watsons Go To Birmingham - 1963
    It’s 1963 and the Watsons, an African-American family, journey from Flint, Michigan to Birmingham, Alabama to take their troublesome son, Byron, to live with his grandmother. It's a trip that lands them in one of the darkest moments in America’s racial history. A fictionalization of the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, Christopher Paul Curtis’ novel won the Newbery Honor and the Coretta Scott King Awards. Recommended for 5th grade and older. 2:30 pm.

    Josh Wink @ Bauhaus Patio Sunday Funday
    Philadelphia DJ Josh Wink is a house/techno icon. Back in the day, he and fellow Philly legend King Britt played clubs, produced, and remixed tunes and even ran their own label, Ovum Recordings. (This was most likely inspired by their "Womb" parties they used to do together in Philly.) Wink went to become a international DJ superstar and, this weekend, he makes his return to Bauhaus for its Sunday patio bash. 4 pm.

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    Movie Review

    Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

    Alex Bentley
    Dec 26, 2025 | 2:30 pm
    Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda
    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.

    ---

    Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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