get your museum on

Your cheat sheet to Museum District Day: Tips for all types for the free cultureromp

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau
Holocaust Museum
The Menil Collection
Courtesy photo
Contemporary Arts Museum

Museum District Day beckons with free cultural offerings on Saturday, Sept. 25. The day-long event offers free admission to 17 Houston museums, providing a fleet of bus shuttles to take you to and from each cultural institution (Click here for free bus shuttle routes and stops).

"There's so much I'm excited about for this event," Susan Schmaeling, representing the Houston Museum District, tells Culturemap, explaining that this is the event's 14th anniversary.

Schmaeling's top underground tip of the day is the Buffalo Soldiers Museum. "From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. they do a live performance of a buffalo soldier every hour, on the hour. I think that's really cool — a lot of people don't know about this great museum," she says.

Count on CultureMap to guide you through the day, no matter your tastes. We've got a few prime picks for art lovers, in-the-know families, international tastemakers and soul-searching Houstonians.

The Art Ace

Start off with a new survey of Art 101 with the exhibition, Earth Paint Paper Wood at the Menil Collection. Featuring an array of new acquisitions, from 18th century French portraiture to 21st century watercolors and ceramics, this exhibition reveals gifts, purchases and bequests that have remained under the radar of many Menil enthusiasts.

Next, join docent-led tours of the exhibition Dance with Camera at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston to get an inside view on how art, dance and video can flow together. From noon to 3 p.m., dance instructors will be on hand to reveal their secrets and teach the tango and some ballroom boogie.

Hop back on the bus and check in at Rice Gallery to experience D-17, Sarah Oppenheimer's monumental installation that soars upward and out of the museum space. You can temper Oppenheimer's conceptual rigor with free ice cream beneath the campus' sprawling live oaks.

Get crafty as you interact with craft artists and watch demonstrations at the "Gathering of the Guilds" event at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, where the CraftTexas 2010 exhibition is also on view. Be sure to wander Convergence II to get a glimpse of currents in glass bead jewelry.

The Jet-Setting Staycationer

Just because you're staying inside the Loop doesn't mean Museum District Day can't resemble an international jaunt. See the world with Created and Found Maps - Exploration of Self and World at Houston Center for Photography. Stroll over to the Menil campus and listen in on a world music sensation, "Divine Rhythm & United Motion" of award-winning reggae band D.R.U.M.

"It's so nice to lay out on the lawn at the Menil and listen to music — usually there are little kids dancing around," Schmaeling says.

Next, take the bus to the MFAH and be whisked away to Africa with the latest exhibition, Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria, featuring artifacts that are taking a leave from their Lagos museum for the fist time. Pretend that you're galavanting through an authentic Kunsthalle at the museum's shows — German Impressionist Landscape Painting: Liebermann-Corinth-Slevogt and Drawing from Nature: Landscapes by Liebermann, Corinth, and Slevogt.

To top off your tour, delve further into Central European culture at the nearby Czech Center Museum.

The Soul Seeker

Remake your mantra during Museum District Day while contemplating the Menil exhibition, Objects of Devotion, showcasing treasures from the world's religions. Next, meditate in the recreated 13th-century sacred setting at the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum.

While in the area, learn about Mark Rothko's monumental murals at a panel discussion, "Transformative Encounters with the Rothko Chapel." Professor Helen Winkler Fosdick, art conservator Carol Mancusi-Ungaro and Christopher Rothko, Ph.D. (the artist's son) will weigh in on the chapel's spiritual potential.

Contemplate the past on Caroline Street as Houston-area Holocaust survivors will speak about their experiences in appearances at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Visitors to the Holocaust Museum will also have the opportunity to create their own "stained glass windows" using contact paper and tissue paper, in conjunction with the exhibit, Never Let it Rest!

The Cultured Kiddo

The urbane adolescent comes with high entertainment expectations, and Museum District Day will not disappoint. On the top of the list is the Inventor's Workshop at the Children's Museum of Houston, where visitors can design a musical automation that will engineer tunes to be played by machines on-site (at 10:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 2:30 p.m. or 4:30 p.m.).

More music and family-fun arts and crafts stations await at The Health Museum, and the tykes can get in on hands-on climate creativity at The John C. Freeman Weather Museum.

Aspiring artists can create sock creatures inspired by Tobiah Mundt's felted work, BEING, and decorate the back patio with sidewalk chalk at Lawndale Art Center. The little prodigies can take a pitstop there with free lemonade.

Finally, children can chill out at the mini film fest, Kid Flix Mix 2010, featuring the best of the New York International Children's Film Festival, screened in the Brown Auditorium at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

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Movie Review

Feuding couple fights for survival in dark comedy Over Your Dead Body

Photo courtesy of IFC Films

Jason Segel and Samara Weaving on Over Your Dead Body.

When dysfunctional couples are depicted in movies, about the worst that typically happens is an acrimonious divorce. But in the new comedy/thriller Over Your Dead Body, the husband-and-wife have already gone way past that point by the time they’re introduced to the audience, with their plans leaning toward murder.

Dan (Jason Segel) is a low-level filmmaker relegated to directing pop-up ads, while Lisa (Samara Weaving) is an actor making do in small theater productions. The film finds them heading toward a rare getaway to a remote lake cabin, but it’s clear from the start that the married couple has been at odds for months, if not years. As the film begins, Dan clumsily drops hints at an alibi for his planned murder of Lisa to his ailing dad (Paul Guilfoyle) and others.

His shoddy planning was already sussed out by Lisa, who turns the tables on him when he tries to attack her, revealing a plan of her own. The situation naturally heightens their shared enmity of each other, but their blind hatred turns out to reveal the presence of Pete (Timothy Olyphant) and Todd (Keith Jardine), two escapees from a nearby prison who were helped by guard Allegra (Juliette Lewis). What was once a shared murder plan turns into a fight for survival, forcing Dan and Lisa to work together.

Directed by Jorma Taccone (The Lonely Island) and written by former SNL writers Nick Kocher and Briand McElhaney, the film aims to mine comedy out of darkness. Dan and Lisa’s ire for each other is palpable, and their interactions early in the film are uncomfortable. As the film turns increasingly violent with the introduction of other unsavory characters, most of the humor is derived from the creative ways people are attacked and the ultraviolence that results from them going after each other.

It’s a little tough to get fully invested in the story when the filmmakers throw the audience directly into the plot with almost zero setup. There’s not even a cursory montage of Dan and Lisa being in love, so it’s hard to care a lot about their current hate for each other. Likewise, the presence of the prison guard and escapees is completely random, and the three of them aren’t utilized well in the story despite having a couple of well-known actors portraying them.

The saving grace of the film, though, is the twists and turns it takes in the final act. Everyone on screen is put through the wringer, with each of them suffering multiple injuries or worse. The mayhem becomes so chaotic that it’s almost impossible to tell what’s going to happen next, which slightly makes up for the fact that the story as a whole is lackluster. Even though the audience knows they’re being manipulated, the sequences are entertaining enough to overcome that fact.

The cast as a whole is solid. Segel (How I Met Your Mother, Shrinking) uses his comic sensibility to keep the proceedings light. Weaving (Ready or Not) has done multiple movies in this vein, so she knows how to navigate the comedy/thriller waters. Olyphant feels a little out of place, but he has a presence that elevates his part. Lewis goes a little too manic in her part, and Jardine ably embodies the dumb brute.

The comedy history of Taccone, Segel, and Weaving keeps Over Your Dead Body as a positive experience even when the story doesn’t quite measure up. The film never becomes fully predictable, giving the audience a great dose of pandemonium that lifts it up despite its other faults.

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Over Your Dead Body is now playing in theaters.

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