Do you even know this band?

Inside the 2024 Austin City Limits lineup: Blink-182, Dua Lipa, and more

The 2024 lineup is out, and people have feelings about how many names they recognize.

Photo by Jessica Pages

For the past few years, the Austin City Limits Music Festival lineup has been making people feel old. It doesn't look like that feeling is going away in 2024 — in fact, it may be intensifying, with an even more prominent platforming of new and young artists. The festival is returning October 4-6 and 11-13 with more than 100 acts on nine stages.

Starting with headliners, who usually include at least one legend from decades past, things are looking fairly youthful. Blink-182, the clear nostalgic pick, will definitely be taking attendees back to their Warped Tour days. That's not to say some of the other headlines haven't had long careers, but most are not catapulting attendees back into their memories the way George Strait did in 2021, or The Cure in 2019.

Also headlining are Dua Lipa, having reached new heights thanks to Barbie (get ready to see lots of pastel 'fits); Tyler, the Creator, the eclectic rapper who will likely have something political to say; Chris Stapleton, the velvet-voiced country crossover singer; Sturgill Simpson, another country singer more firmly in the outlaw camp; Pretty Lights, the EDM producer known for chill grooves and tasteful samples; Khruangbin, the psychedelic funk rock trio from Houston; and finally Leon Bridges, the soulful R&B singer from Fort Worth who brings the genre back to its roots, (and who appears on Khruangbin's "Texas Sun" — who will appear on whose stage this year?).

Much of today's lineup reveal won't be a surprise to Austinites, who lined up at Zilker Park on Saturday, May 4, to listen to spoken messages delivering hints via pay phone. Several commenters joked that Marcus Mumford, who has played ACL Fest four times, was on the other line.

Here's where you might start feeling your age — whether because you've fallen out of touch, or you remember when these bands were new. Outside of the headliners, folks on social media were especially excited about:

Foster the People, an eternally indie pop group that dominated the 2010s with buoyant hits
Chappell Roan, a queer, theatrical performer whose bimbofied and drag looks are frequently sweeping social media
Orville Peck, a dark country crooner who has subverted the genre with an always-masked face and overt gay sex appeal
Still Woozy, a very funky solo project with an aptly psychedelic name and lots of laid-back grooves
Catfish and the Bottlemen, a Welsh indie band from the aughts with slightly heavier instrumentation than many of 2024's indie picks
Jungle, so far a one-hit-wonder for the spectacularly choreographed "Back On 74" music video which inspired countless fan attempts
Something Corporate, a lightly emo pop-punk group featuring Andrew McMahon of Jack's Mannequin
Grand Funk Railroad, an arena rock group formed in 1969, singlehandedly upholding ACL's annual dabbling in classic rock

Fans were disappointed not to see Sabrina Carpenter, The Killers, or Deftones on the lineup. They aired general grievances about a lack of rock picks and not recognizing most of the lineup — complaints that come up increasingly often as ACL moves away from long-established classics in favor of what's getting streams nowadays. Some also pointed out a proliferation of acts only appearing on one weekend.

The full lineup is as follows:

If you know a majority of acts here, go brag about it on Reddit.Photo courtesy of Austin City Limits Music Festival

Three-day tickets (starting at $360) go on sale May 7 at noon via aclfestival.com. Among ACL Fest's usual offerings, including VIP passes and hotel discounts, are private "bungalows" near the Honda Stage — interestingly, not the main headliners' stage, but the secondary one that faces away from the city and shuts down slightly earlier.

acl fest austin city limits concerts festivals live music music

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.

---

Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

movies film