Gallery Gallop

Galveston conquistadors and Guns 'N Roses allusions: Your cheat sheet toArtHouston 2011

The work of Adela Andea, on view at Anya Tish Gallery
On view at Wade Wilson Art: Barbara Van Cleve, "Jan, Champion Bareback Rider"
On view at Bryan Miller Gallery: Paintings in progress in Dan Kopp's studio(Brooklyn, June 2011)

Art dilettantes and savants alike are cordially invited to enter the lairs of the city's scores of galleries this weekend as part of ArtHouston. Receptions abound, but this is more about getting a glimpse of our contemporary art offerings than cocktail dresses and complimentary Pinot.

Open your eyes at Anya Tish Gallery at 6 p.m. Friday for the opening of platform 2011. Consider this group exhibition a yearbook of Tish's cadre of contemporary talent. Missed the January 2010 exhibition on Adela Andea? Then don't dare skip the artist's new light installation at Anya's.

Receptions abound, but this is more about getting a glimpse of our contemporary art offerings than cocktail dresses and complimentary Pinot.

Downstairs, Photographs of the American West at Wade Wilson Art spotlights the work of Barbara Van Cleve. Everyday characters from the artist's Montana dude ranch have been captured in brilliant black and white silver gelatin prints and digital photographs. A reception for the artist goes down from 6 to 8 p.m. on Friday.

Graffiti giant GONZO247 will showcase his Aerosol Warfare wares at Philomena Gabriel Contemporary alongside the John Stuart Berger Street Science exhibition. Berger blends zoology with his fascination with high- and low-brow art. Fans of the Menil Collection's Max Ernst holdings won't be disappointed. The opening is at 6 p.m. on Friday.

More double trouble is to be had at Bryan Miller Gallery (née CTRL Gallery). In TIMEAWAY, Dan Kopp splatters acid neons and muted metallic milk-tones upon medium-density fiberboard. It's a visual feast, but even more intriguing is the accompanying exhibition, Josh Bernstein: Galveston. Here, Bernstein investigates the maligned adventures of Spanish explorer Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, whose travels the artist (vaguely) replicated along the Texas Gulf coast — and lived to tell the tail through his mythic photographs. An opening reception is happening from 6 to 8 p.m. (recognize a pattern?).

A few doors down at Isabella Courts is Inman Gallery, which is inaugurating two new exhibitions: Angela Fraleigh: by the time i tell you it will all be forgotten and Marc Swanson: Midnight Sun. The opening is 6 to 8 p.m., and on Saturday at noon, Inman Gallery is joining forces with the neighboring Art Palace to present two programs with Austin-based art historian Katie Geha. Find out more here.

Also at high noon on Saturday is an open house for the Koelsch Gallery show, Kana Harada: Tears of Light. Airy, organic sculptures made from hand-cut foam sheets define the exhibition in a Tokyo-meets-Texas mixed media delight. The artist will be present from 5 to 8 p.m.

While you're north of Buffalo Bayou, drop by Darke Gallery for a 4 p.m. screening of the shockumentary exploring the enormity or the quilting world, Sitched. The film provides a perfect counterpoint to the current gallery show of work by Steven and Wendy Hook, Intersections: Quilts and Mixed Media Paintings.

Activism meets art during ArtHouston at Archway Gallery, which hosts a 5 p.m. Saturday opening of the Third Annual Juried Exhibition, benefiting the Houston Area Women's Center. Juried by internationally recognized artist Bert L. Long, Jr., the exhibition also celebrates the gallery's 35th anniversary.

Slide down Shepherd Drive for the group exhibition at Colton & Farb, Use Your Illusion. Curated by Paul Horn, the show derives its theme from a late 1980s Guns 'N Roses album. On display are gallery stalwarts like Angelbert Metoyer, Trey Speegle and Lawndale Big Show star, Matt Messinger.

Still have some remaining stamina? Rest your eyes on the meditative abstract paintings of Mel DeWees at Laura Rathe Fine Art before making your way to Moody Gallery for the opening of Lawrence Lee's Beautiful Son. In the artist's series, gouache and ink merge on tea-stained paper to tell the story of a kidnapped prince made into a slave of a wealthy family. Arresting, indeed.

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Movie Review

Live action Lilo & Stitch remake offers up frenzied fun and nostalgia

Courtesy of Disney

Lilo & Stitch returns to theaters this weekend.

The project to turn every single Disney animated movie into a “live action” film has rarely seemed like anything but a money grab by the movie studio. Most of the films have failed to update the original in any meaningful way, and in many of the cases, they’re almost shot-for-shot remakes, making the reason for the new film’s existence even more confusing.

Having almost exhausted the supply of their 20th century movies, Disney has now remade 2002’s Lilo & Stitch. The film follows an alien experiment, originally known as 626 (voiced by Chris Sanders), created by Jumba ( Zach Galifianakis) for the benefit of an alien race led by the Grand Councilwoman (Hannah Waddingham). Unfortunately, 626 is too uncontrollable for them, and is banished to the faraway planet known as Earth.

Landing in Hawaii, the creature soon to be known as Stitch gloms on to a young girl named Lilo (Maia Kealoha), who mistakes it for a dog while looking for companionship following the death of her parents. Tracked by Jumba and fellow alien Pleakley (Billy Magnussen), now in human form, Stitch leaves a trail of destruction wherever he goes, much to the chagrin of Lilo’s older sister, Nani (Sydney Agudong).

Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp and written by Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Waes, the film will surely be a blast of nostalgia for anyone who was a kid when the original came out. The now-3D Stitch is just as chaotic as ever, and they even included cast members from the first film like Tia Carrere (now playing a social worker for the orphaned sisters) and Amy Hill as a kindly neighbor.

But for all of the frenzied fun that Stitch offers, there’s very little else that holds the story together. For one, the Lilo character as a real person doesn’t work as well as she does in animated form, as there’s something fluid that happens in animation that feels stilted when it’s an actual little girl. Perhaps sensing this fault, the film is loaded to the hilt with bite-sized moments that try to make the audience laugh, but do little to give the story any meaning.

The difference between animation and live action is never more evident than with Jumba, Pleakley, and CIA agent Cobra Bubbles (Courtney B. Vance). Characters that are goofy and enjoyable in animated form come off as weird and off-putting in human form. They’re supposed to bring a sense of fun and even suspense to the film, but instead they feel like characters who are getting in the way of a better story.

Kealoha, making her professional debut, is definitely cute and offers up some interesting moments opposite Stitch and Nani, but her lack of experience shows. Agudong turns in the best performance, giving a bit of emotional weight to a film that needed more. Galifianakis and Magnussen would have been better served as voice-only roles; neither comes off well when their characters turn into humans. Hill is like a warm hug every time she comes on screen, and the story could have used more of her.

The new Lilo & Stitch is not an abomination, but like most of the Disney live action remakes before it, it fails to stand on its own merits. Never given a chance to be its own thing and featuring storytelling too disjointed to be effective, the film is another so-so effort from a studio that knows how to make much better movies.

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Lilo & Stitch is now playing in theaters.

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