Newly minted Houstonian Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson has been stepping out to countless social events, launching a pilot Houston entrepreneurship program, and bidding on pricey rodeo wines. Now, the Grammy Award-winning musician, New York Times best-selling author, actor, executive producer, director, philanthropist, and entrepreneur, is taking a turn as festival organizer.
Dubbed the Tycoon Comedy Music Festival, Fiddy’s new funny fest takes place Thursday, August 25 at Toyota Center and boasts a lineup of nationally familiar comedians, including B-Simone, Karlous Miller, Michael Blackson, Bill Bellamy, DC Young Fly, Gary Owen, Lil Duval, and D’Lai.
Fans can also expect surprise musical acts between each comic’s set, including a special must-see performance by 50 Cent himself.
Tickets for the fest go on sale at 10 am Friday, June 10 at ToyotaCenter.com. All proceeds from the event benefit Jackson’s aforementioned G-Unity Foundation and the G-Unity Business Lab, which he launched last year with HISD.
Jackson hasn’t slowed bursting on the rap scene with red-hot singles such as 2003’s “In da Club.” Two years after his breakout, in 2005, he founded G-Unit Film & Television, Inc.; the company is behind series such as Power and MBF — in which he directed an episode guest starring Eminem last season.
He released his second New York Times best-selling book, Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter, which outlines ways for his life experience as a road map for success.
The rap star-tycoon made headlines here when he relocated to Houston last year. He quickly became a fixture around town, popping up at events and rodeo auctions, where he joined big-spending Houstonians in bidding on big bottles.
One of the oddest things about the blockbuster era we live in is that while Disney owns the rights to the majority of Marvel comic book characters, Sony Pictures owns the rights to Spider-Man and any affiliated characters. Since they’re sharing Spider-Man himself with Disney, Sony has been trying to capitalize on those rights by making stand-alone films using niche characters that only comic book fanatics would know.
Having exhausted Venom and whiffed on attempts with Morbius and Madame Web, they’re trying again with Kraven the Hunter. Also known as Sergei Kravinoff, Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is a self-styled vigilante who, as the film tells it, travels the world exacting vengeance on the truly bad people of the world. He’s the son of Nikolai (Russell Crowe), a hard-edged Russian oligarch, and brother to Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), who is relatively weak compared to the rest of his family.
The origin story has Kraven gaining his animal-like powers - including super-strength, speed, and jumping abilities - as a teenager from a mysterious serum given to him by a girl named Calypso (played as an adult by Ariana DeBose) after he was mauled by a lion. The two maintain a tenuous partnership as adults, with Calypso helping him hunt down other villains like Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola) and The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott).
Directed by J.C. Chandor and written by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway, the film looks and feels enormously lazy, something made merely to hold on to potentially valuable intellectual property. Other than the tense family dynamic between the Kravinovs, little makes sense in the story. Kraven has an indecipherable moral code that has him going after poachers - because he’s part lion? - in addition to other high-powered criminals, with no clear goal except to … get back at his father?
The laziness extends to the action scenes, which feature Kraven being mostly impervious to any damage, whether it’s hand-to-hand combat, knives, or guns. The CGI-heavy scenes don’t even allow moviegoers to enjoy an R-rated bloody free-for-all, as all of the blood splatter is computer-generated, too. Since apparently one Spider-Man villain is not enough, three others make appearances with abilities that are under-explained and CGI that is poorly done.
That’s not even counting Calypso, another Spider-Man villain whose purpose in this film is nebulous at best. Her early connection with Kraven is so coincidental as to be laughable, and her continued reasons for helping him as an adult strain credulity as well. The only saving grace of her presence is that the filmmakers don’t try to shoehorn romance into the plot; perhaps they’re saving that for the (inevitable?) sequel.
Taylor-Johnson has had one of the most prolific-yet-anonymous careers in modern Hollywood, with appearances in big films like The Fall Guy, Bullet Train, and Tenet that have made very little impact. Even as the star here, he fails to hold your attention, with the story and visuals doing him no favors. DeBose has followed up her Oscar win for West Side Story with schlock like I.S.S., Argylle, and this, which doesn’t bode well for her career. At least Crowe gets to chew the scenery.
With a contractual inability to mention the name “Spider-Man,” movies like Kraven the Hunter exist in a weird area that forces filmmakers to make up stories for characters to which most people have no attachment. And just like Sony’s previous efforts, it is a very poor way to spend two hours in a movie theater; avoid at all costs.
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Kraven the Hunter opens in theaters on December 13.
