Weekend Event Planner

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

With Thanksgiving out of the way, there are plenty of great events happening this weekend to continue enjoying your time with family and friends. These 9 events offer a great way to get out of the house and celebrate what Houston has to offer.

Whether catching local band Blue October in concert or taking in the new Nutcracker at the Houston Ballet, there's plenty to enjoy. For a full list of what's happening around the city, check out our CultureMap Events Calendar.

Friday, November 25

Holiday Fashion Truck Festival

Take in shopping, craft beers, live music, brunch, and cocktails as you enjoy 12 fashion trucks from across Texas at the two-day festival at Onion Creek in the Heights.

Houston Ballet The Nutcracker

A holiday favorite is getting a new look as Houston Ballet premieres its updated version of The Nutcracker. The classic story of a little girl, Clara, and her magical nutcracker doll has been reimagined by Houston Ballet artistic director Stanton Welch, with new sets and costumes. It continues through December 27.

The Catastrophic Theatre presents Songs About Himself

The latest offering from the cutting-edge Houston theater company examines the role of social media in our lives, with a corrupted/fragmented version of the internet now called "the weed" and a woman who unlocks its secrets after joining a rogue social media site.

Blue October

The Houston alt-rock band brings it back to where it all started with a concert at Revention Music Center to support their new album Home.

Saturday, November 26

Sing Saturday presented by Universal Pictures

Unwind with a movie after your busy Thanksgiving dinner and Black Friday-hopping with a free advance screening of the new animated film Sing at select AMC Theaters. Sing tells the story of a koala named Buster Moon who has one final chance to revive his theater by producing the worlds greatest singing competition. The voices of Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Seth MacFarlane, Scarlett Johansson, and John C. Reilly round out the cast for this new animated film.

Ice on Discovery Green

Discovery Green offers Houstonians a taste of winter by transforming the park's model boat basin into a outdoor ice rink, using renewable energy recycled water from Kinder Lake, all the while being kept at a frigid 22 degrees. The Houston skyline is the perfect backdrop for ice skating now through Super Bowl Sunday on February 5, 2017.

Carolyn Wonderland in Concert with John Egan

Carolyn Wonderland's soulful voice and instrumental talents are what her fans have come to love. This blues singer will be joined by John Egan, whose repertoire ranges from county blues to a more modern electric style. Wonderland's skillful, poetic approach to singing is often complemented by a whistling solo; it sounds like a must see show!

Sunday, November 27

Barbara Streisand in Concert

This will be the legendary singer's first-ever concert in Houston as she performs hits from each of the last six decades and other favorites, including songs from her latest number one album, ENCORE: Movie Partners Sing Broadway. The performance will be modeled after her first highly successful tour The Music...The Mem'ries...The Magic.

Sugar Land Holiday Lights

The Sugar Land Skeeters present the 3rd Annual Sugar Land Holiday Lights featuring the largest inflatable snow globe in Texas, 2.5 million lights, and over 100 walkthrough displays at Constellation Field. Holiday lights will continue through December 23 and includes children's activities, movie nights, shopping, food trucks, and Santa Claus each night.

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Houston Ballet premieres a new production of The Nutcracker.

The cast of The Nutcracker, Houston Ballet

Photo by Amitava Sarkar

Houston Ballet premieres a new production of The Nutcracker.

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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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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess