Cougar Concern

Former Rocket Kenny Smith wonders where's the Houston in Tom Penders' program

Former Houston Rockets guard Kenny Smith still loves Houston — and he’d like to love the University of Houston’s basketball team. He just doesn’t see a lot of the Bayou City in the Tom Penders’ program to embrace.

Which is one of the reasons why Smith expects Maryland to beat the Cougars rather easily in tomorrow night's 4 vs. 13 game in Spokane, Washington.

"No, Houston gets no upset love from me," Smith told CultureMap in an exclusive phone interview. "I don't have any ties to the program anymore, so no love."

Smith isn't just talking about the fact that Clyde Drexler, his former Rockets teammate, found himself pushed out after two largely disastrous seasons as the Cougars head coach in the late 90s. Instead, it's more of a lament of what Smith sees as a lack of Houston in UH basketball.

"I wish U of H well. It's to good to see them back in the tournament," Smith said. "I'm just not sure that program's connected to the city though ... I don't think people realize what a draw the city of Houston is for basketball players. Houston is really a basketball mecca that people don't talk about. High school, college, NBA guys, (Houston) draws them all in. It's one of the top spots in the country where guys get together and play over the summertime.

"You have pro and college guys coming in from all over the country to train in Houston."

While Smith only spends a few weeks a year in Houston these days, he's still connected to the city's basketball pulse through his ties to the Fonde Rec Center, the legendary, old historic gym in the shadow of I-45 in the city's Sixth Ward. A plaque on Fonde's wall reads, "To play here, your game has got to be established, your desire must be proven and your love for the game had better be pure."

Whenever Smith is in town, this is where you can find the former New York City school boy star with the Jet nickname. These days in his role as a TNT analyst and Charles Barkley sparring buddy, Smith is probably best known by those in the know for the incredible parties he hosts (Smith's annual NBA All-Star Weekend bash is one of the hottest events, and hardest tickets, of the NBA's showcase).

But when the Jet comes to Houston, he comes to work.

"Houston is one of the best places in the country for a basketball player to be," Smith said, as he worked this interview in-between takes of some TV spots. "The training and innovations that guys have come up with here ... You have some of the best trainers in the country in Houston. The top basketball guys.

"You're fortunate if you're a basketball player in Houston."

Yet, Penders continues to be hounded by the perception that he doesn't recruit Houston high school players well — or put all that much effort into it. This current NCAA Tournament Cougars team has three players from Houston on its 14-man roster. That includes the nation's leading scorer, Aubrey Coleman. All three city Cougars (Coleman, Sean Coleman and Jamon Wilson) went to a junior college before coming to UH though.

Penders told the New York Times this week that he plans to continue to lean on JC players.

And even with the Cougars having made the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 18 years, the joke about UH not even being the best basketball team in the city continues — with undefeated state champion Yates High School drawing mention as a superior.

"There is definitely better basketball in Houston," Smith said.

Not that the guy who helped make Clutch City is dwelling on it. Smith's already penned in a first-round knockout of the Cougars on his bracket.

"I don't think Houston will be around that long at all in the tournament," Smith said. "What else do you want to talk about?"

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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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