45 and countin

Ring that (Joshua) Bell and other highlights of SPA 2011-12 season

Eric Nipp and Amanda Green
Photo by Bruce Monk
Goran Bregovic & His Wedding and Funeral Orchestra
Photo by Stephanie Berger
TAO: The Art of the Drum

How much do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

And I count 45. That how many years Society for the Performing Arts (SPA), Houston's main cultural import organization, has been figuring out how to bring ensembles that add flavor to the city's already rich offerings from the major four (Alley Theatre, Houston Symphony, Houston Grand Opera and Houston Ballet) and friends.

SPA promises a big, bold new season beginning in October with Houston favorites, new artists and large events. Sounds like Texas.

Music Highlights

Joshua Bell, the cutie who never ages, returns to grace the Houston stage in a solo recital with his 300-year-old Gibson ex Huberman Strad. You should know him and if you don't, try his Sibelius Violin Concerto recording or the soundtrack to The Red Violin.

The St. Petersburg Symphony distinct slavic sound is rich. Led by Alexander Titov, Glinka's happy and joyous Ruslan and Ludmila Overture opens to Xiayin Wang Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2. Russian music played a Russian ensemble, all you need is a shot or Russian Standard Vodka and some rye bread to make the experience more authentic.

Experiencing Taiko drumming is exhilarating. The practice requires focus, strength, stamina and minute precise accuracy. TAO: The art of the Drum members train and live in the highlands of Japan and infuse their contemporary backgrounds into performances.

Dance Highlights

Since 1958, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has presented cutting-edge works defining modern dance from the African-American perspective. Today, the ensemble is led by artistic director Judith Jamison. Their aesthetic recalls past traditions while looking to the future, exploring and expanding the boundaries of contemporary dance.

There is something about Flamenco artists that scares me. Whether that is their passionate conviction or fiery disposition, Compañia Flamenca José Porcel specializes in the purest and oldest forms of the art form. Combining dance, voice and guitar, raw driving rhythms recall the culture of when the Gypsies commingled with the people of Andalucia.

For the Kids

IMAGO Theatre returns to Houston with ZooZoo, the troupe's latest production featuring human fire-fly bug eyes, anteaters, rabbits, frogs, polar bears, hippos and tricky penguins. A little comedy, some illusion and an entertaining musical score makes for an imaginative production.

Magik Theatre original musical adaption of If You Give A Moose a Muffin is the sequel to If You Give a Moose a Cookie. Rumor has it the Moose will want some jam, a sweater and a puppet show.

Notable Houston Debuts

Do not be fooled by the funeral in Goran Bregovic & His Wedding and Funeral Orchestra. This lively ensemble mixes a Serbian Gypsy band, classical string ensemble, Orthodox male choir and two Bulgarian female vocalists with a little rock n' roll.

The Bolshoi Ballet brings its stars for a performance of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, a work the ensemble premiered in 1877, among other notable Russian masterpieces. Originally choreographed by Julius Reisinger, this 1985 revival by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov is what typically is staged by contemporary ballet companies.

New Now Series

This series showcases work that somehow expands the art vocabulary of each ensemble's genres. Post-punk London's The Tiger Lillies turn to the dark side to find thematic inspiration for the group's new show, The Gutter and the Star Tour. Shifty characters, twisted and mischievous situations, the work is a bit about taken pleasure it other people's pain.

Combining text, song, dance and multimedia technologies, Dulcinea Langfelder brings Cervantes to life in Dulcinea's Lament. Based on the life of Don Quixote's most infamous muse, the work deals with feminist ideals, history and philosophy.

Meow Meow has been described as a "cabaret diva of the highest order" by the New York Post while being branded as a combination of kamikaze cabaret and art exotica. Confused? I am. But if it combines old Shanghai, pre-War Berlin and post-modern gay Paris, I am game, specially being named top "Best of Cabaret" by Time Out New York. The gays are never wrong.

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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.

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