weekend event planner

Here are the top 8 things to do in Houston this weekend

Brandi Redmond and Stephanie Hollman of Real Housewives of Dallas hit Houston.

The 37th Houston Auto Show has already started over at NRG Center, and will continue until Sunday. So, gearheads and auto junkies can spend the whole weekend going all up and down the place, looking at the exciting vehicles, getting behind the wheel, pretending to be in a Fast & Furious movie and maybe take a photo or two with some cars. Plus, you never know: You could be inspired to go out and purchase that electric car or sporty dream-mobile.

And, as always, there is this:

Thursday, January 23

Oh, I have to wash my hair at Midtown Arts and Theatre Center Houston (MATCH)
This seems interesting and peculiar. Frame Dance Productions explores real stories, feelings and battles of social anxiety in their latest creation, a two-night, evening-length performance for 10 women. This new work, a collaboration with singer/songwriter Alli Villines, cellist Patrick Moore and designer Ashley Horn, features new music by Frame Dance composers, including an electronic piece by Jake Sandridge, a piano piece by Paul Kerekes and a piece for cello and playback by Hannah Selin. 8 pm.

Weekly Dose of B.S. Live Tour at Wortham Theater Center
Stars of Real Housewives of Dallas, Brandi Redmond and Stephanie Hollman, will be in town doing a live recording of their podcast, Weekly Dose of B.S. (Their first-name initials are B and S — get it?) They will be joined by Trey Stewart, DJ Nixx, and other special guests as they intimately take their fans behind the scenes of the show and their crazy lives. 8 pm.

Friday, January 24

"Radical Revisionists: Contemporary African Artists Confronting Past and Present" opening reception at Moody Center for the Arts
This weekend, the Moody will present an exhibition that addresses the violent erasure of marginalized histories and the ways in which artists reinterpret familiar themes through contemporary, Afrocentric lenses. Featured artists include Sammy Baloji, Serge Attukwei Clottey, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Omar Victor Diop, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Zanele Muholi, Robin Rhode, Yinka Shonibare CBE, Mary Sibande, and Pascale Marthine Tayou. Runs through May 16. 6 pm.

Jim Jefferies at Wortham Theater Center
Australian-born, American-based comic Jim Jefferies has just got through three seasons of his Comedy Cental show The Jim Jefferies Show, a weekly, news-satire program which practically also served as an audition reel for Jefferies just in case Trevor Noah decided to leave The Daily Show and the network needed another foreign comedian to step in. But Jefferies is back on tour, doing what he does best: hilariously offending audiences with his proudly off-color, incessantly button-pushing brand of stand-up comedy. 7:30 pm.

Saturday, January 25

Houston Audubon Owl Prowl at Houston Audubon Raptor and Education Center
Do you give a hoot about owls? Did you ever go in the woods as a kid, hoping to find an owl and feed it some Tootsie Roll pops? Well, take in this fun event going on at Houston Audubon. The education staff will present a fun and educational presentation about local owls. Guests can meet three live rehabilitated owls in the Bayou Barn and take a hike through the woods in search of wild owls. And remember, as a wise, ol' owl used to say: give a hoot, don't pollute! 6 pm.

The Farewell at 14 Pews
Are we the only ones that are upset that Lulu Wang's wonderful family dramedy didn't get nominated for anything for this year's Oscars? It got nothing: no Best Picture, no Best Adapted Screenplay, not even a Best Actress nomination for Awkwafina, who won the Golden Globe for Best Actress (Musical or Comedy) for her lead performance. Well, whatever. It's still one of the best movies that came out last year, and 14 Pews will give you two chances to watch it on the big screen this weekend. 7 pm (5 pm Sunday).

Sunday, January 26

Alley All New Festival at Alley Theatre
The Alley Theatre's Alley All New Festival 2020 will be closing things out on Sunday with several must-sees. It all starts with an early-draft preview of a new play by Houston playwright Arthur M. Jolly (you gotta call for standby tickets), followed by a morning reading of Pictures from Home, the new play by Sharr White. The final workshop performance of Theresa Rebeck's Enlightened goes down at 2:30, and Katie Bender's Survivors, An Alamo Play does its last workshop performance at 7:30. 10 am.

Film Club: Mulholland Drive at Alamo Drafthouse LaCenterra
David Lynch celebrated his 74th birthday on Monday the only way he knew how: by dropping a short film he made years ago, where Lynch interrogates a talking monkey suspected of murder, on Netflix. Alamo Drafthouse LaCenterra will be paying tribute to the man and his weird, cinematic legacy by screening his acclaimed, 2001 mystery, with Naomi Watts in her breakthrough role as an actress who gets in a whole lot of drama when she falls for a mysterious dame (Laura Elena Harring). 3 pm.

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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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