weekend event planner

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

Celebrate the music of Star Wars and more with the Houston Symphony.

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox

This weekend offers plenty of opportunities to get your drink on, with a cocktail showdown, wine event at the Post Oak Hotel, and a non-alcoholic wine dinner. Work out a brewery, catch the symphony playing greatest movie hits, visit an Asian fest, dive into a Sunday Funday pool party, and pay homage to the great DJ Screw.

Enjoy—here are your best bets for the weekend.

Thursday, May 26

Hotel ZaZa Memorial City presents Cocktail Showdown: Battle of the Brands
Top bartenders from an array of beloved, local hospitality concepts are working to claim the title for best summer cocktail creation, incorporating a curated selection of Beam Suntory products into their recipes. The winning summer cocktail will be determined by event guests, as well as a panel of Houston experts. Tickets are $25 with all proceeds benefiting Candlelighters Childhood Cancer Family Alliance. Attendees must be 21 years or older. 6 pm.

The Post Oak Hotel presents Wines of Rioja
The Post Oak Hotel at Uptown Houston will present a world-class wine experience, featuring live music, curated Spanish cuisine, and over 100 wines to taste from Spain's most iconic region. Attendees will be transported to the sophisticated wine region of northern Spain, with live music and Spanish culinary delights masterfully crafted by the hotel’s esteemed, executive chef Jean-Luc Royere. 6 pm.

Roots x SIPPLE Non-Alcoholic Wine Dinner
Roots Wine Bar will be hosting a one-of-a-kind, six-course dinner with a non-alcoholic wine pairing by Danny Frounfelkner, owner and sommelier of SIPPLE, the only non-alcoholic bottle shop in Texas. This exclusive dinner will feature dishes (like Kosho-cured salmon tiradito and roast squab) from Roots executive chef André Garza, and each of the six courses will feature a non-alcoholic wine pairing from such winemakers as Italy's Prima Pavé and California’s Surely Wines. 7 pm.

Friday, May 27

Houston Center for Contemporary Craft presents Summer Exhibitions opening reception
Houston Center for Contemporary Craft will celebrate the opening of their summer exhibitions: Made to Last: The Legacy of the Jubilee Quilt Circle, a selection of quilts made by current participants and founding members; and A Dressing the Future: The Ecofiction of Nicole Dextras, which explores the craftsmanship of artist Nicole Dextras's set and costume designs from her dystopian film trilogy, A Dressing the Future. The evening will also feature open studios by the current resident artists. 5:30 pm.

Vitacca Dance, Houston presents Soiree 10-Year Anniversary
Vitacca Dance, Houston will celebrate 10 years of strength and beauty through dance. This season's Soirée is a mixed bill of works choreographed and coached by Vitacca faculty and guest artists. The formation of Vitacca Ballet, a creation-based repertoire company based in Houston and The Woodlands, has allowed them to keep talented, home-grown Houston artists employed in the city they love as professional artists. 7 pm (6 pm Saturday).

The Catastrophic Theatre presents Innominate
Dually inspired by Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica and Iran’s Green Revolution, Afsaneh Aayani's dance-theatre piece combines puppetry, live original music, mixed media, and movement to create a surreal journey through Aayani’s personal experience as an immigrant from war-torn Iran. Caught between a perpetual limbo on her twisted path to American citizenship and unable to return to Iran, she remains a woman without a country. Through Sunday, June 19. 8 pm (2:30 pm Sunday).

Houston Symphony presents The Best of John Williams: Star Wars & More with Chorus
This weekend, audiences will enjoy themes from all their blockbuster favorites — Superman, Star Wars, Harry Potter, nearly every Steven Spielberg movie, and more — as the Houston Symphony and Chorus celebrate the master of film scores, John Williams. We would really like to see the Symphony do selections from 1941 (our favorite Spielberg movie), but that's just us. The Saturday performance will be available to livestream. 8 pm (2:30 pm Sunday).

Saturday, May 28

Dreamland presents DreamFest
Dreamland will host the inaugural DreamFest music and arts festival. Performances will include Bob Schneider, Carolyn Wonderland, Del Castillo, Sir Woman, Gina Chavez, and much more. In addition to the musical performances, DreamFest will host an artisan market,offering a curated selection from dozens of artists of various mediums showcasing their work and offering it for sale. There will also be a beer garden, miniature golf courses, disc golf, pickleball, and more. 11 am.

Asian Night Market
Asian Night Market, where you can sample international street food made by local Houstonians, is coming back to Railway Heights Market. This two-day event will have over 50 vendors, outdoor and indoor. Join them for some great Asian street food, desserts, drinks from two different bars, local retail pop up shops, live music, a lion dance performance, kids entertainment, and so much more. So, head over to Washington Ave. and dive headfirst into the exotic, hipstery fun of it all. 2 pm.

14 Pews presents Bicycle Thieves
Vittorio De Sica's Oscar-winning 1948 film defined an era in cinema. In poverty-stricken postwar Rome, a man, on the first day of a new job that offers hope of salvation for his desperate family, gets his bicycle — which he needs for work — is stolen. With his young son in tow, he sets off to track down the thief. This film embodies the greatest strengths of the Italian neorealist movement: emotional clarity, social rectitude, and brutal honesty. 7 pm.

Rivkah French Choreography presents From the Ground Up: A Visual Wonderland
Produced by Rivkah French Choreography and their team, this event will raise awareness and funds for a new performance space being built in the Fifth Ward: the future Q’astle Theater. The event will feature the talents of Rivkah French and dance collaborators, alternative drag artist Dyna with a D, an immersive projection installation by Jeremy Keas, as well as visual art and a live water feature. Attendees will have the option to bid on auction items. Drinks and light bites will be included. 8 pm.

Sunday, May 29

POUND and Pour at Ingenious Brewing Company
Come join Ingenious Brewing for its first POUND and Pour, hosted by instructor Jenny. This workout is inspired by drumming where you will become the music. It combines cardio, conditioning, and yoga inspired movements to make a lot of noise. $15 includes a one-hour class and one free beer after class. Just make sure to bring your yoga mat and a towel if needed. (Jenny will provide the lightly weighted drumsticks.) 10:30 am.

Memorial Weekend | Sunday Funday | Pool Party Edition
Space Cowboy will be having a Memorial Day pool party edition of its weekly Sunday Funday. Festivities include bottle service, games, live music and a brunch menu that features chicken fried steak and eggs; Bananas Foster French toast; a breakfast burger with chorizo and ground beef patty, cheese, bacon and valentina aioli on a sesame seed bun; and breakfast tacos on flour tortillas with eggs and cheese and a choice of chorizo, bacon, migas or potatoes. Noon.

Lance Scott Walker DJ Screw A Life in Slow Revolution Author Event & Book Signing
This weekend, journalist/author Lance Scott Walker will be all over the Houston-Galveston area promoting his latest book, an oral history of the life and times of DJ Screw, the late, local rap icon. He'll be speaking at Screwed Up Records and Tapes (the record store Screw started) on Friday night. On Saturday night, he'll be at the Galveston Bookshop and the Proletariat Gallery's anniversary party. His final, H-Town stop will be over at Cactus Music. 2 pm.

event-planner

Movie Review

Star TV producer James L. Brooks stumbles with meandering movie Ella McCay

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Emma Mackey in Ella McCay.

The impact that writer/director/producer James L. Brooks has made on Hollywood cannot be understated. The 85-year-old created The Mary Tyler Moore Show, personally won three Oscars for Terms of Endearment, and was one of the driving forces behind The Simpsons, among many other credits. Now, 15 years after his last movie, he’s back in the directing chair with Ella McCay.

The similarly-named Emma Mackey plays Ella, a 34-year-old lieutenant governor of an unnamed state in 2008 who’s on the verge of becoming governor when Governor Bill (Albert Brooks) gets picked to be a member of the president’s Cabinet. What should be a happy time is sullied by her needy husband, Ryan (Jack Lowden), her agoraphobic brother, Casey (Spike Fearn), and her perpetually-cheating father, Eddie (Woody Harrelson).

Despite the trio of men competing to bring her down, Ella remains an unapologetic optimist, an attitude bolstered by her aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), her assistant Estelle (Julie Kavner), and her police escort, Trooper Nash (Kumail Nanjiani). The film follows her over a few days as she navigates the perils of governing, the distractions her family brings, and the expectations being thrust upon her by many different people.

Brooks, who wrote and directed the film, is all over the place with his storytelling. What at first seems to be a straightforward story about Ella and her various issues soon starts meandering into areas that, while related to Ella, don’t make the film better. Prime among them are her brother and father, who are given a relatively small amount of screentime in comparison to the importance they have in her life. This is compounded by a confounding subplot in which Casey tries to win back his girlfriend, Susan (Ayo Edebiri).

Then there’s the whole political side of the story, which never finds its focus and is stuck in the past. Though it’s never stated explicitly, Ella and Governor Bill appear to be Democrats, especially given a signature program Ella pushes to help mothers in need. But if Brooks was trying to provide an antidote to the current real world politics, he doesn’t succeed, as Ella’s full goals are never clear. He also inexplicably shows her boring her fellow lawmakers to tears, a strange trait to give the person for whom the audience is supposed to be rooting.

What saves the movie from being an all-out train wreck is the performances of Mackey and Curtis. Mackey, best known for the Netflix show Sex Education, has an assured confidence to her that keeps the character interesting and likable even when the story goes downhill. Curtis, who has tended to go over-the-top with her roles in recent years, tones it down, offering a warm place of comfort for Ella to turn to when she needs it. The two complement each other very well and are the best parts of the movie by far.

Brooks puts much more effort into his female actors, including Kavner, who, even though she serves as an unnecessary narrator, gets most of the best laugh lines in the film. Harrelson is capable of playing a great cad, but his character here isn’t fleshed out enough. Fearn is super annoying in his role, and Lowden isn’t much better, although that could be mostly due to what his character is called to do. Were it not for the always-great Brooks and Nanjiani, the movie might be devoid of good male performances.

Brooks has made many great TV shows and movies in his 60+ year career, but Ella McCay is a far cry from his best. The only positive that comes out of it is the boosting of Mackey, who proves herself capable of not only leading a film, but also elevating one that would otherwise be a slog to get through.

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Ella McCay opens in theaters on December 12.

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