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    weekend event planner

    Here are the top 9 things to do in Houston this weekend

    Craig Lindsey
    Apr 18, 2018 | 2:45 pm
    Puppies for Breakfast 2 men and 2 dogs
    Two of America's loves — puppies and breakfast — combine this weekend.
    Courtesy photo

    This weekend will be packed with some special days.

    For starters, there’s 420 on Friday, where partakers all over the world will light up at 4:20 pm – and, then, probably forget what they’re celebrating. On Saturday, it’s Record Store Day, a chance for people to actually attend record stores and buy physical records, instead of streaming it all on Spotify. Finally, on Sunday, it’s Earth Day, where we’re all supposed to remember not to mess up the environment (any more than we already have).

    You can celebrate the events happening during those days, plus, check out these other events going on in the city.

    Thursday, April 19

    Salute Barbara Bush’s legacy at the Hobby Center
    Former first lady Barbara Bush lived an incredible 92 years, didn’t she? Along with being married to a president (and also being the mother to another one), she was a strong advocate for books and reading. If you would like to celebrate Mrs. Bush’s legacy, a good way to do it is to attend the Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation’s 24th annual A Celebration of Reading, hosted by Neil and Maria Bush. This charitable event will feature several bestselling authors, including Ohio governor John Kasich, famed adventure novelist Clive Cussler and comedian Jim Gaffigan. It starts at 6:30 pm.

    Friday, April 20

    Get ready to JAM at Discovery Green
    Are you ready for the jelly that is Da Camera JAM? This free, three-part concert series, a collabo between Discovery Green and jazz/chamber music enthusiasts Da Camera, celebrates Jazz Appreciation Month throughout April. For its second installment this evening, the JAM’s headliner will be Houston jazz singer Raquel Cepeda, not to be confused with the journalist and podcaster of the same name. Local jazz pianist (and associate professor in biostatistics at the Univ. of Texas Health Science Center in Houston) Jose-Miguel Yamal will serve as the opening act. It starts at 6:30 pm.

    Creepy Cronenberg flicks at Alamo Drafthouse
    When it comes to horror movies, is there a more underappreciated filmmaker than David Cronenberg? Sure, everybody knows about John Carpenter, George Romero, and Texas’s own Tobe Hooper, but the Canadian-born Cronenberg has given audiences some memorably terrifying work? Who can forget his breakout hit Scanners, where that dude’s head exploded, or The Fly, where Jeff Goldblum turned into a nasty insect? Two of his creepiest films, his 1979 divorce allegory The Brood and his 1983 media nightmare Videodrome, will play the Alamo Drafthouse. It starts at 9:15 pm.

    Saturday, April 21

    Puppies for Breakfast (!) at Market Square Park
    You take that your pup on walks and you two hang at the dog park and you try to make life fulfilling for your pet. But there aren’t that many places where you and your four-legged homie can have a fun, free time. It’s a good thing the Houston Downtown Management District (Downtown District) has partnered up with Neue Creative and Modular Dog to present the dog-centric outdoor festival Puppies for Breakfast. This event will have 50 dog industry vendors and artists, an area for dogs to play freely, music, etc. It starts at 10 am.

    KiKi Maroon’s Burly Q Lounge gets naughty at Warehouse Live
    Burlesque is definitely a lost art. Between gentlemen's clubs and online offerings, some might consider a show where ladies do a dance routine where they slowly, fancily remove clothing onstage to be an antiquated form of entertainment. But KiKi Maroon’s Burly Q Lounge ain’t trying to hear that. The monthly “Burlesque Varie-TEASE Show” returns with another lineup of exotic, shapely ladies doing erotic, striptease numbers, along with a motley crew of comics, circus performers, and other kitschy, entertaining folk. The show starts at 7 pm.

    The H-Town '90s Block Party gets into the (new-jack) swing
    Remember the '90s? Remember that era of flat-top haircuts, Cross Colours clothing, and dance crazes like The Humpty Dance? If you’re an old head who misses that era profusely, or you’re just a youngun who wants to get into the music that influenced Bruno Mars’s last, Grammy-winning album, some of era’s biggest R & B players will perform at the H-Town '90s Block Party. On the bill: New-jack swing architect Teddy Riley and his seminal band Guy, forever-studly crooner Keith Sweat, and soul-singing male groups 112 and Jagged Edge. The show starts at 7:30 pm.

    Sunday, April 22

    Dive into crawfish and brews at 8th Wonder Brewery
    Out of all the crawfish boils that have been going on throughout the city this season, 8th Wonder Brewery’s Crawfish & Brews is, um, the latest. This is also the fifth-annual Crawfish & Brews event, where the brewery has been serving up mudbugs with their original beer selections (shout-out to their Dome Faux’m throwback cream ale) on a yearly basis. This year, 8th Wonder has partnered with Dallas’s Community Beer Co. in putting on this event. There will also be live music and, as the event states on its Facebook page, good vibes. It starts at noon.

    Canned Acoustica opens up at Discovery Green
    In March, Discovery Green once again kicked off the free, monthly music series known as Canned Acoustica. A series that’s been around since 2010, this is where musical performers, both local and elsewhere, do their own unplugged sets over on the Green’s Transier Bandstand. For this month’s show, to coincide with the Green’s citywide Earth Day celebration, there will be an “Earth Day Edition,” featuring performances from Fat Tony, Hogan & Moss, Max Flinn, Arthur Yoria, The Broken Spokes, Heapin Helpin and Giant Kitty. The show starts at 1 pm.

    Todd Rundgren’s Utopia reunites at House of Blues
    While Todd Rundgren was making his career as a '70s pop star, churning out such adult-contemporary classics as “I Saw the Light,” “Can We Still Be Friends?” and, of course, “Hello It’s Me,” he also formed a progressive-rock/pop group known as Utopia, or Todd Rundgren’s Utopia. The band recorded and toured throughout the '70s and '80s, serving up 10 studio albums and four live ones. Now, Rundgren and his longtime lineup — Kasim Sulton on bass, Willie Wilcox on drums and Ralph Schuckett on keys — are touring for the first time in 32 years. The show starts at 6 pm.

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    Movie Review

    Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

    Alex Bentley
    Dec 26, 2025 | 2:30 pm
    Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda
    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.

    ---

    Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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