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

Steven Spielberg captivates with new aliens drama Disclosure Day

Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment

Tommy Martinez, Emily Blunt, and Josh O'Connor in Disclosure Day.

With the release of Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg has now directed 17 feature films over 26 years in the 21st century, the exact same number over the exact same period of time he did in the 20th century. The first half of his career was mostly defined by his blockbuster films, while the second half has seen him exploring a lot more serious material. Disclosure Day marries the two for an experience only he could deliver.

The film starts in medias res, as Dr. Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) is being pursued by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) and a team of henchmen for stealing intellectual property from Wardex, a government contractor for which he works. As the audience gradually discovers, Daniel is a cyber-security programmer who has discovered evidence of alien life in the company’s servers. He and others within the company, including Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), are determined to release the information to the public.

Concurrently, television meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) starts experiencing weird things, including the ability to speak multiple languages and read people’s minds. Without either of them actively trying to seek each other out, Daniel and Margaret are set on a path to meet, with Scanlon (with the help of a mysterious alien device) trying to track their every move.

Directed by Spielberg and written by David Koepp, the film is an almost even mix between classic Spielberg wonder and a deep story about what it is to be human. By starting the film in the middle of the story, Spielberg immediately ramps up the excitement level. While the movie has relatively little action, that sequence and a few others deliver the type of propulsiveness for which Spielberg is revered, keeping the 145-minute film moving at a brisk pace.

Of the different types of alien movies Spielberg has made over the years, this one is closer to Close Encounters of the Third Kind than E.T. The story ponders the ethical, religious, political, and sociological effects that revealing the existence of aliens could have on the world. The debates had by various characters purposefully take the film out of being a sheer popcorn flick, forcing the audience to grapple with issues that they may have never considered before.

Unlike some other Spielberg films, he and Koepp don’t hold the audience’s collective hand throughout the story. There are a lot of times when viewers have to use context clues to understand exactly what is happening. That especially goes for an extremely important aspect of the world in which the story takes place that could pass you by if you’re only paying attention to the main characters’ dialogue. Spielberg’s using only subtle allusions for an element which would be the main focus of most other films is a fascinating choice.

O’Connor (Wake Up Dead Man, Challengers) has that everyman quality that a story like this needs. It always feels like it's him against the world, and does a terrific job of exuding both confidence and fear. Blunt delivers a fantastic performance, switching between confusion and composure with ease. Firth makes for a solid villain, and the story is helped by great turns from Domingo and Eve Hewson.

The idea that the nearly 80-year-old Steven Spielberg is still making blockbuster-style movies over 50 years after he made Jaws is astonishing, and the fact that he still knows how to make them work is even more impressive. Disclosure Day may not be the type of alien movie many were expecting, but it’s another high water mark in a career that has been full of them.

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Disclosure Day opens in theaters on June 12.

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