Cheapskate's Guide to the Finer Things in Life

Why leave town? Views of faraway places abound on Houston's Gallery Row

A recent Saturday night along Gallery Row evoked memories of the movie, "BeforeSunset."
Moody Gallery is one of the art galleries along the Colquitt corridor.
Chris Conyers
Works by artist Pauline Ziegen will be shown at Laura Rathe Fine Art galleryalong Gallery Row on July 10.

Are you dying to travel this summer, but reluctant to risk the expenditure in these increasingly unpredictable economic times?

Are you turning unattractively Shrek-green with envy as you listen to friends raving about how the plummeting euro is translating into far more fun for their dollars on their European trips?

Yes, friends, that would be me with the lime-tinted face, salivating like Pavlov’s dog at the thought of my favorite treat: Sliding into a seat on a plane whose engine and I are humming with gleeful anticipation, ready for takeoff en route to a major city in Europe. In contrast to past years, however, I’m not booking that seat any time in the near future. I come from a long line of fiscally conservative Germans who, faced with grave global uncertainties, choose to forego nonessential adventures while waiting for better times to shake out of the current kaleidoscopic turmoil.

The good news, my fellow travel-deprived sufferers, is that this frugal Fraulein has found a way to get that fundamental travel fix right here in Houston, for free. I figured it out on a singularly beautiful Saturday evening recently, when I found myself exchanging travel stories with other art lovers attending a festive reception at the Laura Rathe Fine Art gallery on Colquitt, in the Upper Kirby District.

At the time, I was laughing over a story a man was telling me about a hotelier’s comical miscommunication of a message, resulting in a series of missed connections with a friend at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. He related this story as we were discussing our mutual appreciation of the film, Before Sunset, which focuses on a romantic rendezvous that takes place in Paris years after a missed connection in Vienna. I don’t know how we arrived at that topic – possibly because the sun was setting, softly backlighting the architecturally elegant neighborhood.

Soon, a man with a charming Jamaican accent who was standing nearby, and his wife, who turned out to be a native of Vienna, joined our conversation, and new travel stories were shared and appreciated. Suddenly, it occurred to me that the monthly Gallery Row opening receptions, held in conjunction with new exhibitions at the galleries lining Colquitt and Lake, take Houston-anchored travelers and art lovers alike on a walking tour through beautiful new vistas.

People who are fond of art love to stroll through galleries and museum exhibitions, to look at the latest creative depictions of interesting vistas. People who love to travel feel compelled to see those vistas for themselves, and will blissfully walk for hours in search of them through the streets of cities in faraway places. Scratch an art lover and you’ll probably find a travel addict, and vice versa.

Art and travel addicts have the same basic nature. We’re compulsively curious, and we share the same constant yearning for a fresh perspective. What we love most is the journey — the search for information about how we can keep accessing new views and gain new understanding of this ever-more-intriguing world in all its beauty.

Happily out of context, travelers tend to exchange funny and informative stories with fellow travelers. We’re eager to tell one another about the wonderful things we’ve seen in a particular place, and help others get there to have the same joyous experience. We’re all enjoying a great big global conversation and adventure, filled with lovely scenarios, joie de vivre, and good will. What better way to feel so convivial, when you can’t leave home, than by taking the monthly Gallery Row walking tour?

Gallery Row opening receptions are held from 6 to 8 p.m. on the first Saturday of each new exhibition, with the next festive round slated for July 10. But you don’t have to wait until then to see the art at such fine galleries as Laura Rathe, Moody, John Cleary and Thornwood; You can set up your own “tour” in conjunction with each gallery’s regularly scheduled business day.

If you like fresh perspectives, I promise you’ll love this trip, regardless of whether you buy a souvenir, like a friend who views his recent art acquisition as not only pleasing to the eye, but a well-timed investment. Frugal as I am, I must say, I like his perspective!

unspecified

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.

---

Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

movies film