Weekend Event Planner

Here are the top 11 things to do in Houston this weekend

It's the week post-Super Bowl LI and Houston is showing no signs in slowing down with activities. There's plenty for everyone in the family to get into this weekend. Sesame Street Live, Monster Jam, and a premiere performance of To Kill a Mockingbird are just a few of the events on tap.

Here's are our picks for the top 11 events happening in Houston this weekend, but you can always see a full list on our CultureMap Events Calendar.

Thursday, February 9

Sesame Street Live: Elmo Makes Music

Elmo, Abby, Cadabby, Big Bird, and other iconic characters learn to make beautiful music together after they search for their new teacher's missing instruments and discover new ones in this fun children's show. Multiple performances through Sunday at NRG Park.

The 25th Annual Great Grown Up Spelling Bee

Multiple teams of two adults compete against each other in this fun and competitive spelling bee until one emerges victorious — and the Houston Center for Literacy benefits. The night features cocktails, light bites, a dj, and desserts.

Friday, February 10

GoGames360 Houston

Game lovers will flock to The Woodlands all weekend to play hundreds of video games, board games, and physical games from around the world, laser and archery tag, an obstacle course, Lego gallery, dance-a-thon, ping pong, and Hamsterball Soccer. A dance and cheer showcase adds to the fun.

Tapas on the Trails

In advance of Valentine's Day, the popular Tapas on the Trails offers a romantic evening getaway at the Houston Arboretum & Nature Center. Enjoy a softly-lit walk through the Arboretum’s nature sanctuary, pausing along the way to indulge in five delicious courses paired perfectly with carefully selected beers and wines. Guests receive a commemorative glass to take home. The evening ends at the Meadow Deck overlooking our one acre pond and meadow where guests will enjoy sparkling wine, handcrafted desserts, coffee, and the company of an owl. The event takes place Friday and Saturday night.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents Oscar Nominees: Animated Short Films

See all of this year's Oscar nominees in the Animated Short Films category, including Borrowed Time, Pearl, Piper, Blind Vaysha, and Pear Cider and Cigarettes, and you'll be ahead of the game when it comes to predicting the winner. On Saturday, the MFAH will present the nominees in the Documentary Short Subject category; a repeat of the Antimated Short Films will take place on Sunday.

STOMP

The Society for the Performing Arts presents the return of this inventive and invigorating stage show that’s part dance, part concert, part theatrical performance, all blended together in one electrifying rhythm that features matchboxes, brooms, garbage cans, Zippo lighters, and more filling the stage. Performances continue all weekend.

Saturday, February 11

Monster Jam

Adults and children alike will have an exciting time watching custom-designed trucks, approximately 12 feet tall and about 12 feet wide, sitting atop 66-inch-tall tires and weighing a minimum of 10,000 pounds, fly up to 130 feet in the distance and up to 35 feet in the air while reaching speeds as high as 100 miles per hour.

Houston Symphony presents Celebrate Asia

Led by Taiwanese-American guest conductor Mei-Ann Chen, the hour-long concert at Houston Baptist University features east Asian folk songs interwoven with popular Western classical music. Select works on the program include Bèo Dạt Mây Trôi, a lush orchestration of a traditional Vietnamese song arranged for orchestra by leading Vietnamese cellist Ngo Hoang Quan; Yuzo Toyama’s Rhapsody for Orchestra, a folk-music travelogue of Japan; and a set of variations on “Arirang,” a folk song often referred to as Korea’s unofficial national anthem. Mongolian violinist Angelo Xiang Yu also joins in the celebration of the musical traditions of Houston's Asian communities.

Beats+BBQ+Brews

Happening the second Saturday of every month at Axelrad Beer Garden from noon until 5 pm, this weekend's edition include beats from DJ Seek, barbecue from Blood Bros. BBQ, including 44 Farms chuck ribs and beef brisket, pork ribs, smoked boudain, and more. And, of course, lots of brews.

Sunday, February 12

To Kill a Mockingbird

A.D. Players kicks off its 50th anniversary season in its brand new theater with Christopher Sergel’s dramatization of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Harper Lee novel. Film and television actor Jason Douglas stars as Atticus Finch with Jemma Kosanke as Scout.

Dashboard Confessional

The rock band will perform hits from their various albums, including The Swiss Army Romance, After the Ending, and The Shade of Poison Trees at House of Blues. Vinyl Theater is the opening act.

We'd love to hear how you enjoyed these events and others happening around the city. Be sure to connect with us on social media.

Dashboard Confessional rocks the House of Blues.

Dashboard Confessional/Facebook

Dashboard Confessional rocks the House of Blues.

event-planner

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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