weekend event planner

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

Come on down for The Price is Right Live!

Photo courtesy of The Price is Right Live

This weekend brings some St. Patrick's Day fun in the form of a cool hunt, taco-loving, some cool art openings, and a staged Jane Austen classic. And for those who love game shows, America's favorite is coming to town.

Come on down, Houston! Here are your bests bets for the weekend.

Thursday, March 17

Main Street Theater presents Dragons Love Tacos
Dragons love tacos. They love chicken tacos, beef tacos, great big tacos, and teeny tiny tacos. Unfortunately, where there are tacos, there is also salsa. And if a dragon accidentally eats spicy salsa … well, watch out. The silly, dragon dancing journey about first impressions and trying new things (based on the bestselling children's book) is a recipe for laughs and fun. Recommended for Pre-K and older. 1:30 pm. (10:30 am and 1:30 pm Saturday).

Giant Texas Distillers presents St. Patrick's Day Scavenger Hunt
The Giant Texas Tasting Room will host a St. Patrick's Day celebration where guests will get to enjoy some green Tejas Beer and a four-leaf clover hunt. They will be hiding 10 four-leaf clovers in their Giant Texas Tasting Room. Patrons who will be lucky enough to find one will get to enjoy 20 percent off their bar tab for the day or night. There will be one clover leaf per person, per tab. 11 am.

Chameleon Street at the HMAAC
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival — yet criminally underseen for over three decades — this movie recounts the true story of Michigan con man Douglas Street (writer/director Wendell B. Harris, Jr.), who successfully impersonated his way up the socioeconomic ladder by posing as a magazine reporter, an Ivy League student, a respected surgeon, and a corporate lawyer. The film pins a lens on race, class and performance in American identity, which has lost none of its relevance. 7 pm.

Friday, March 18

Alley Theatre presents Sense and Sensibility
A playful new adaptation of Jane Austen’s beloved novel follows the fortunes (and misfortunes) of the Dashwood sisters — sensible Elinor and hypersensitive Marianne — after their father’s sudden death leaves them financially destitute and socially vulnerable. Set in gossipy, late 18th-century England, with a fresh female voice, the play is full of humor, emotional depth, and bold theatricality. Through Sunday, March 27. 8 pm (2:30 and 8 pm Saturday; 2:30 and 7:30 pm Sunday.)

Houston Symphony presents Andrés Conducts The Carnival of the Animals
Encounter kangaroos, elephants, lions, cuckoos, donkeys, swans, and more as Andrés Orozco-Estrada leads Saint-Saëns’s beloved musical menagerie. This presentation of Saint-Saëns’s original scoring for two pianos and orchestra highlights principal keyboardist Scott Holshouser, together with the illustrious Emanuel Ax. Each concert showcases a different lineup of solo performances by orchestra musicians. The Saturday performance will be available to livestream. 8 pm (2:30 pm Sunday).

The Price is Right Live
Everyone's favorite game show comes to town, along with the chance to win a share of more than $10 million in cash and fabulous prizes. Alongside a celebrity host, randomly selected contestants will play everyone’s favorite games like Plinko, Cliffhangers, The Big Wheel, and even the fabulous Showcase. Lucky audience members can even win prizes right from their seats. 8 pm.

ARTflix & Chill: The Harder They Fall
Mix up a good movie, a great vibe, and a little art and you have this interesting take on the traditional way we watch a movie. The feature presentation will be The Harder They Fall, the Black-and-proud Western blockbuster that Netflix dropped last year. Blanket seating only. (Bring your own blanket.) First come, first serve. BYOB. 21 and up only. Mixers available for purchase. Light concessions also available for purchase. 9:30 pm.

Saturday, March 19

Box 13 ArtSpace presents Peter Broz & Kevin Lopez: "Inward/Outward" opening reception
This exhibit explores the latent but meaningful interactions between humans, their worlds, and their own internal identities and sensibilities. Broz’s work looks at the relationship and significance between humans and nature, while Lopez’s work speaks to the internal and local interactions of human perceptions as well as the multiplicity and ambiguity within every individual through explorations of the human figure, from various positions and perspectives.Through Saturday, April 30. 1 pm.

Railway Heights Market presents Texas Holi Fest 2022
Railway Heights Market's inaugural event is all about Holi, an ancient celebration of the eternal and divine love of Radha Krishna. The festival is also referred to as the “Festival of Colors,” because of the tradition of “drenching” each other in colored water or powder. This celebration will include dancing, live music, and assortment of great Indo-Pak cuisine. There will also be some very special, surprise activities. 2 pm.

Gas Gods presents Texas Smoke Break Fest
Hip-hop and weed go together like peanut butter and jelly, arts and leisure, Kelly and Ryan. And this weekend, this music festival will be hitting you with those two things in massive quantities. 2 Chainz, Dom Kennedy and Atlanta mixtape legend DJ Drama will be the headliners. Local legends OG Ron C & the Chopstars (with Soul Control) will also be there to represent H-Town. Pro-weed comedian Slink Johnson will MC the festivities. 3 pm.

Houston Grand Opera presents third Annual Giving Voice
Houston Grand Opera will stage this third-annual concert, a special celebration of opera’s diverse artists that has become a company tradition. This year, for the first time, the concert will showcase the talents of both Black and Asian opera artists, with celebrated soprano Nicole Heaston as host and vocal soloist, performing alongside baritone Blake Denson, mezzo-soprano Sun-Ly Pierce, bass William Guanbo Su, bass Peixin Chen, countertenor Key'mon W. Murrah, and bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green, with Kevin J. Miller and Bin Yu Sanford playing piano. 7 pm.

Sunday, March 20

Cette 3 presents Girls Who Glow
Houston teen sister trio Cette 3 will present the ultimate girl day for teens, in celebration for National Teen Day. Teens of all ages are encouraged to attend as this event will uplift, motivate and encourage teen girls to find their "glow." The event will include music, food, guest speakers, a meet & greet with Cette 3, and more. Teen suicide prevention foundation Society of Royals will be a guest speaker along with various others. All attendees will get a swag bag sponsored by én Love Beauty. 3 pm.

The Alta Arts presents What's in a Name? An Interactive Multidisciplinary Exploration of how Names Shape our Lives
Through spoken-word poetry, videography, dance, photography, and live music, writer/performer Banke Awopetu confronts the ways in which names shape how we see ourselves and each other. Awopetu majored in Drama and African/African-American studies at the University of Virginia, later returning to her hometown of Rochester, New York where she earned a Master’s Degree in Adolescent Education. She has also done commissioned work for the Houston Museum of African-American Culture and Houston African-American library. 6 pm.

On Deez Hoes Tour
Okay, there are these two comediennes of color named Precious Hall and Kamira White who host an uncouth, uninhibited, and downright unpredictable weekly podcast called On Deez Hoes. And, now, since they are a hundred episodes deep, the ladies are taking the show on the road, recording episodes in front of a live audience. This weekend, they’ll be hitting Houston, where it’s a strong possibility they’ll be making audience members pick their jaws up off the floor. 7 pm.

event-planner

Movie Review

Korean monster movie Hope starts strong, then chews too much scenery

Photo courtesy of Neon

Hwang Jung-Min and Hoyeon in Hope.

Monster movies can take on all sorts of different flavors, from all-out mayhem to quieter ones where the monster can sometimes be the protagonist. The new South Korean film Hope splits the difference to a degree, delivering action-packed sequences while also attempting to understand the non-humans in a way.

The story starts in medias res, with an unseen creature having already done great damage to a huge bull and laying waste to much of a small Korean town. The local sheriff, Beom Seok (Hwang Jung-Min), tries to take control of the situation in the town, while a group of hunters led by Sung Ki (Zo In-Sung) travel into the nearby woods to see what they can find there.

Thus starts a nearly nonstop, 160-minute epic of each side trying (and mostly failing) to defend themselves against gigantic creatures who seem hellbent on destroying everything in their path. It’s not until 40 minutes into the film that the audience is shown one of the monsters in detail, and the less said the better about what it actually looks like, as the mystery behind it keeps the intrigue going.

That initial section of the film is the best, as Beom Seok — eventually joined by deputy Sung Ae (Hoyeon) — goes on a frantic hunt around the town, always just far enough behind the monster to keep from seeing it. The utter destruction he witnesses and his interactions with various locals are intense and oddly funny, with the hectic conversations he has laced with fear and incredulity over how different people choose to act.

Writer-director Na Hong-jin bounces back and forth between the people in the town and the group in the forest, doing his best to maintain the momentum of the first section. This approach works for a while as each group makes their own discoveries about the creatures and has run-ins with them that more often than not are ill-fated. Using a mixture of relatively good CGI, great production design, and an abundance of gore, the filmmaker shows he knows how to make an effective blockbuster-style film.

The trouble is, he doesn’t know when to stop. Somewhere around the two-hour mark of the movie, the story starts to become repetitive and Hong-jin introduces elements that don’t mesh well with what has come before. For some reason, he decides that some of the creatures should speak, a move that is baffling on several fronts. The biggest one is that they are voiced by English-speaking actors like Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, and Taylor Russell, but each speaks a non-human language, rendering their performances moot.

Jung-min puts in a fantastic lead performance, one that requires him to vacillate between abject terror and in-control leadership. In-Sung is almost as good, although his character requires him to play one note over and over again. Hoyeon, who some may recognize from Squid Game, delivers an extra shot of energy when she enters the film, something she keeps going despite her character being forced to say some bad lines.

If Hong-jin had kept the focus Hope a little tighter, the sci-fi thriller might have ended up toward the top of this year’s films. But by choosing to extend the story into territories that don’t add much to the plot or make much sense, the filmmaker puts a damper on what was a fun and brutal monster movie.

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Hope is now playing in theaters.

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