weekend event planner

Here are the top 8 things to do in Houston this weekend

Jay Leno brings the laughs to Houston.

Photo courtesy of Society for the Performing Arts

Don't look now, but it's December. Christmas. Hanukkah. Kwanzaa. Festivus. A month of nothing but holidays. Tinsel. Peppermint lattes. Frenzied shopping inquiries for "Baby Yoda."

What's a Houstonian to do? Relax and enjoy these calming weekend events.

Thursday, December 5

Cocktails & Conversations Series: Wines From Around the World - Sake: A Culturation Exploration at The Health Museum
To all the wine connoisseurs, cowboys, and novices out there, celebrate the history and health benefits of wine at this lovely, little mixer. Thanks to the Japan America Society of Houston, guests will be able to taste sake, explore Japanese culture, sample Japanese snacks and enjoy Passing the Baton, a documentary on sake brewing that has been selected for Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia 2019. 4 pm.

Aaron Sanchez at 40 Below
Aaron Sanchez is an award-winning celebrity chef (you might've seen him on Chopped or Chopped Jr.) and Texas native who'll be in town promoting his new memoir Where I Come From: Life Lessons from a Latino Chef. This event will feature Sánchez and good friend Shakey Graves (who will perform afterwards) as they share stories, answer culinary quandaries and basically talk about being two proud Mexicans from Texas. All guests will receive an autographed copy of the memoir and tasty bites. 6 pm.

Friday, December 6

Mozart and Aucoin at Hobby Center for the Performing Arts
Da Camera of Houston's 2019–20 season continues with Mozart and Aucoin, a compelling performance by the world-renowned Brentano Quartet. The ensemble returns to Da Camera for the premiere of a new work by composer Matthew Aucoin, for Da Camera and Carnegie Hall. The ensemble will also perform Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s String Quintet No. 2 in C Minor, K. 406/516. So, you're definitely in for an evening of sophisticated strings. 7:30 pm.

Jay Leno at Jones Hall
Jay Leno hasn't had a good couple of weeks. While he was a guest judge on America's Got Talent awhile back, he allegedly told an offensive joke (it didn't make air) that judge Gabrielle Union complained about. Unfortunately, she ended up getting fired, which Variety claimed was because of her speaking up about the toxic working environment. Do you think he'll talk about it during his Society for the Performing Arts show? Not likely. You think he'll do jokes about stupid people and airplane food? Hmmm. 8 pm.

Saturday, December 7

Segments & Spaces at Archway Gallery
Venezuelan artist Veronica Dyer will be showing off her latest paintings and sculptures at this new exhibit. Dyer creates dynamic paintings and sculptures in a style that she refers to as “abstract, with an industrial tendency.” In both her paintings and sculptures, areas of the composition are defined with geometric forms. The paintings incorporate the additional element of bold — and sometimes unconventional — color palettes. On view through Thursday, January 2, 2020. 5-8 pm.

Pride & Joy at Resurrection Metropolitan Community Church
The Gay Men's Chorus of Houston and the Bayou City Women's Chorus, collectively known as the Bayou City Performing Arts, will present this concert, which echoes the tolerance, social justice, and inclusiveness this organization promotes. This event, which will have unique arrangements of well-known Christmas carols, mixes the comical with the serious, the beautiful with the meaningful and weaves together the pride and joy of the season with threads of hope for a bright future ahead. 7 pm.

Sunday, December 8

Silent Santa at Santa's Workshop at Rice Village
For the next two Sundays, Rice Village will begin a new tradition this holiday season by giving children with autism the opportunity to visit Santa in a calm and comfortable environment. This will be hosted prior to Santa’s workshop opening, in which the lights will be dimmed, music turned off and stimulus turned down. The Village is introducing this initiative to make the experience of visiting Saint Nick inclusive and accessible to children who may become anxious around excessive noise and crowds. 9 am-noon.

Brazil at Alamo Drafthouse LaCenterra
This weekend will be a good one for fans of filmmaker and Monty Python alumni Terry Gilliam. His 1998 adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, starring Johnny Depp as Thompson himself, will be this weekend's midnight movie at Landmark River Oaks. And, on Sunday afternoon, Alamo Drafthouse LaCenterra will screen his futuristic, Orwellian satire from 1985, with Jonathan Pryce as a daydreaming bureaucrat who unfortunately becomes an enemy of the state. 3 pm.

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Movie Review

Star TV producer James L. Brooks stumbles with meandering movie Ella McCay

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Emma Mackey in Ella McCay.

The impact that writer/director/producer James L. Brooks has made on Hollywood cannot be understated. The 85-year-old created The Mary Tyler Moore Show, personally won three Oscars for Terms of Endearment, and was one of the driving forces behind The Simpsons, among many other credits. Now, 15 years after his last movie, he’s back in the directing chair with Ella McCay.

The similarly-named Emma Mackey plays Ella, a 34-year-old lieutenant governor of an unnamed state in 2008 who’s on the verge of becoming governor when Governor Bill (Albert Brooks) gets picked to be a member of the president’s Cabinet. What should be a happy time is sullied by her needy husband, Ryan (Jack Lowden), her agoraphobic brother, Casey (Spike Fearn), and her perpetually-cheating father, Eddie (Woody Harrelson).

Despite the trio of men competing to bring her down, Ella remains an unapologetic optimist, an attitude bolstered by her aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), her assistant Estelle (Julie Kavner), and her police escort, Trooper Nash (Kumail Nanjiani). The film follows her over a few days as she navigates the perils of governing, the distractions her family brings, and the expectations being thrust upon her by many different people.

Brooks, who wrote and directed the film, is all over the place with his storytelling. What at first seems to be a straightforward story about Ella and her various issues soon starts meandering into areas that, while related to Ella, don’t make the film better. Prime among them are her brother and father, who are given a relatively small amount of screentime in comparison to the importance they have in her life. This is compounded by a confounding subplot in which Casey tries to win back his girlfriend, Susan (Ayo Edebiri).

Then there’s the whole political side of the story, which never finds its focus and is stuck in the past. Though it’s never stated explicitly, Ella and Governor Bill appear to be Democrats, especially given a signature program Ella pushes to help mothers in need. But if Brooks was trying to provide an antidote to the current real world politics, he doesn’t succeed, as Ella’s full goals are never clear. He also inexplicably shows her boring her fellow lawmakers to tears, a strange trait to give the person for whom the audience is supposed to be rooting.

What saves the movie from being an all-out train wreck is the performances of Mackey and Curtis. Mackey, best known for the Netflix show Sex Education, has an assured confidence to her that keeps the character interesting and likable even when the story goes downhill. Curtis, who has tended to go over-the-top with her roles in recent years, tones it down, offering a warm place of comfort for Ella to turn to when she needs it. The two complement each other very well and are the best parts of the movie by far.

Brooks puts much more effort into his female actors, including Kavner, who, even though she serves as an unnecessary narrator, gets most of the best laugh lines in the film. Harrelson is capable of playing a great cad, but his character here isn’t fleshed out enough. Fearn is super annoying in his role, and Lowden isn’t much better, although that could be mostly due to what his character is called to do. Were it not for the always-great Brooks and Nanjiani, the movie might be devoid of good male performances.

Brooks has made many great TV shows and movies in his 60+ year career, but Ella McCay is a far cry from his best. The only positive that comes out of it is the boosting of Mackey, who proves herself capable of not only leading a film, but also elevating one that would otherwise be a slog to get through.

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Ella McCay opens in theaters on December 12.

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Movie Review

Star TV producer James L. Brooks stumbles with meandering movie Ella McCay