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

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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