weekend event planner

Here are the top 9 things to do in Houston this weekend

Stranger Things are happening at Present Company.

This weekend finds myriad events celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. After celebrating history, celebrate some cute dogs.

The Houston World Series of Dog Shows has already began over at NRG Center. All this weekend, dog lovers can catch more than 30 independent breed specialty competitions, get hands-on experience with more than 110 breeds and discuss their advantages and disadvantages with breed experts. It's gonna be a shaggy good time.

And, of course, there are plenty of other fun events all over town:

Thursday, July 18

Celeste Barber at House of Blues
Australian comic actress Celeste Barber has gained a very massive Instagram following (we're talking 5.8 million followers here), thanks to her recreating sexy, usually scantily clad photos from such celebs as Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian, and Miley Cyrus. She's now built a one-woman show around being Instagram-famous, and she's touring it around the country. She talks about her most famous photos as well as the celebs, stalkers, and mean commenters she's had to deal with. 6:30 pm.

Stranger Things '80s and '90s Party at Present Company
There's no doubt in our minds that a lot of you have been at the house, binge-watching the latest season of Stranger Things. If you're a big fan of Eleven and all those other kids who stumble upon the weird goings-on in their Indiana hometown, RTB Event Group has a nice, little theme party for you. We're talking props and decorations, staff members dressing like the characters, and a giant Demogorgon that spits. DJs Dayta and FREDster will provide the synth-pop. 9 pm to 2 am.

Friday, July 19

Fresh Arts Summit at Silver Street Studios
Fresh Arts will host Houston’s first artist summit, which was created to provide artists with essential business skills in arts marketing and self-promotion, financial management and fundraising, copyrights & legal resources and other topics related to arts entrepreneurship. Highlights of the Summit include an attendee reception, networking opportunities, multimedia presentations, hands-on workshops and roundtable discussions. Noon.

Palais Royal presents Juice Box Drive with No Kid Hungry and Kids’ Meals
Are we the only ones who think back to our childhood whenever somebody brings up Palais Royal in Meyerland? Remember all those Saturday afternoons with your momma, trying to while away the hours as she tried on one outfit after another? Kids and their moms can take part in a juice box drive there, to help ensure a juice box is delivered with each nutritious meal Kids’ Meals Inc. provides to hungry children in Houston. Houston Texans Cheerleaders will be around to meet-and-greet. 10 am.

Saturday, July 20

Houston Brunch Festival at Isles Eatery and Rum Bar
There's a brunch festival happening this week — and it's the greatest news we've heard in a long time! C'mon, who doesn't love brunch? This fest will feature some of the best restaurants in the brunch game serving up tasting size portions of the brunch items they do best. They will also have the brunch beverages people love — Bloody Marys, Mimosas, beer, and wine. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Houston Museum of African American Culture. 11 am.

Long Day's Journey Into Night at MFAH
As far as trippy movie experiences go, this neo-noir from Chinese filmmaker Bi Gan is certainly one of the most surreal movies to come out this year. The first half tells the story of an embittered man trying to track down the manipulative woman he fell hard for through flashbacks and flash-forwards. The second half has the man experiencing the most accurate representation of a dream that’s ever been put on film. It's an amazing, mind-bending treat. 7 pm (2 pm Sunday).

Sunday, July 21

This is Spinal Tap at Alamo Drafthouse LaCenterra
"These go to 11." "Hello, Cleveland!" "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever." We could spend this whole blurb just mentioning all the quote-worthy lines from Rob Reiner's classic 1984 mockumentary, which follows the titular heavy-metal band, led by frontman David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), and bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer). And it's still as funny now as it was back then. 3:15 pm.

The Try Guys at Revention Music Center
This weekend is a big one for fans of YouTube stars. On Saturday, makeup-tutorial guru James Charles will be entertaining his "sisters" in Sugar Land on Saturday night. And, on Sunday, the quartet of ex-Buzzfeed employees known as The Try Guys — Keith Habersberger, Ned Fulmer, Zach Kornfeld, and the recently out-and-proud Eugene Lee Yang — will be doing a show full of the shenanigans they usually do on their YouTube channel. 7:30 pm.

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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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