The Arthropologist

Dream on: My fantasy arts season includes James Franco, female choreographers &velvet martini lounges

No this is not Nancy on a bad day. It's the Doug Varone and Dancers in "Chaptersfrom a Broken Novel." They're a dance company on Nancy's fantasy arts season.
Photo by Bill Hebert
The Bad Plus
Photo by Cameron Wittig
Andrea Miller of Gallim Dance on the cover of Dance magazine
Photo by Matthew Karas
The New York Baroque Dance Company
Photo by Louis Forget
Zoe Scofield in Juniper’s performance of "A Crack in Everything"
Photo by Juniper Shuey
ABT's Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Beloserkovsky in "Giselle"
Photo by Gene Schiavone

It's summer, I'm on vacation and frankly, I just don't have time to visit all your websites or open all those attachments to see what you are actually doing next season. Plus, I have a whole last season of House on my DVR. If you all can be inventing your own special football teams, why can't I be making up stuff too?

Welcome to "The Arthropologist's fantasy arts season."

Due to the aging, diminishing attention span and hunger level of the audience (namely me), all shows start at 6 p.m., last under an hour, come with yummy snacks and free valet parking. All install press velvet martini lounges.

Snazzy, I know. Fantasy seasons rule.

Five things in this story are actually true. Name them and win an imaginary prize!

Houston Ballet plans a mixed rep of all women choreographers, and get this, my favorites, Crystal Pite, Martha Clarke, Aszure Barton, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and Julia Adam. James Franco decides he needs a building with his name on it, so welcome to the "James Franco Center for Dance." HB offers a class for cranky old modern dancers (me again), where we do a few plies and tendus, then gossip until margaritas are served. Occasionally, Franco pops in to read us his prose. Oh, groan, I wish it were better.

The contemporary dance tribe takes over Houston Ballet's old West Gray quarters, putting in a special vaulted ceiling for Vault, Amy Ell's aerial dance company. It's named for Roberta Stokes, an early pioneer in Houston's contemporary dance scene. Her daughter, Karen Stokes, gets to pick the color of the lobby, where you can also find a combo beer/smoothie/raw juice bar.

Society for the Performing Arts presents my A-list dance companies, such as Keigwin + Company, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Monica Bill Barnes & Company, Evidence A Dance Company, Doug Varone and Dancers, and a whole week of American Ballet Theatre. SPA felt so badly that I missed The Tiger Lillies last show they are bringing them back. Merce Cunningham Dance Company makes a last minute surprise visit on their final legacy tour.

After looking at numerous hot New York dance companies to headline The Jewish Community's annual Dance Month, Maxine Silberstein takes one look at Andrea Miller of Gallim Dance on the cover of Dance Magazine, gives her a call, and presto, they're coming.

DiverseWorks realizes it's way too soon to end the ancient Greek focus, so they are bringing in Zoe/Juniper's There's a Crack in Everything, a piece loosely tied to The Oresteia. A fantastic restaurant moves in right next door with a liquor license.

Cinema Arts Festival capitalizes on the ballet buzz generated from Black Swan with Win Wenders with his 3-D Pina Bausch movie, along with a whole dance film track. I don't spill champagne on any visiting directors.

Stages Repertory Theatre head Kenn McLaughlin drinks the Will Eno Kool-Aid again, bringing in his latest play, Middletown. In a weird twist of fate, Eno develops an unexplained fondness for speaking with the press. For the holiday's, McLaughlin directs a Panto version of Lord of the Rings with Rutherford Cravens looking smashing in drag as Lady Golum.

Alley Theatre continues their relationship with rising weirdo playwright Rajiv Joseph with The Bengal Tiger (recently closed on Broadway). The Tracy Letts fixation continues at Main Street Theater, this time with his Superior Donuts. Philip Lehl and Kim Tobin Lehl of Stark Naked Theatre Co. mount a new production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Edward Albee attends and is reported to have smiled.

Matthew Dirst of Ars Lyrica wins a Grammy. Dirst also gives in to my dance history fanaticism and brings in The New York Baroque Dance Company. Da Camera brings Grammy-winning Esperanza Spalding in again, and even Rosie O'Donnell knows who she is now, and the killer good jazz trio The Bad Plus too.

All arts organizations who are presently missing leaders get them. Houston Symphony hires that hot conductor. Oddly, every new chief already owns a pair of cowboy boots. The MFAH hires a woman. The Guerrilla Girls come to her welcome party finally revealing their identities.

Small theaters unite, forming a coalition offering all kinds of two heads are better than one perks, even a website and a "theater card." Houston outpaces Dallas in simply everything, including hats. H & M, Trader Joe's and In-N-Out Burger come to their senses opening stores here. From now on, it's considered bad form to snub Houston. We are offered a shuttle and turn it down, just because.

Oh, and UT gets their mojo back with an undefeated season. Last season was just a bad dream, like when Bobby on Dallas wasn't really shot. All is well with the world.

Author's confession: Bless you for still reading faithful fans. I adore you for indulging me. Five things in this story are actually true. Name them and win an imaginary prize!

Wouldn't it be amazing if Gallim Dance stopped in Houston?

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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.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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