Concert News

100-city tour brings Avatar: The Last Airbender concert to Houston

Avatar: The Last Airbender In Concert will hit 100 cities including Houston.

Photo courtesy of GEA Live Marketing (Quatro Entertainment)

Fans will get to experience the Nickelodeon animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender in a whole new way when the tour Avatar: The Last Airbender In Concert comes to Smart Financial Centre in Sugar Land on Wednesday, September 18.

This will be the first opportunity for fans to experience the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender in a live format.

The Houston-area concert is part of a massive 100-city worldwide tour set to begin in Düsseldorf, Germany on April 27 and lasting through May 2025.

The tour will spread its love around Texas, with the following stops:

Dallas on September 15
San Antonio on September 19
Austin on September 20
Fort Worth on September 21

In other words, all the five cities where CultureMap has news bureaus. Smart thinking, Avatar.

Presented by Nickelodeon, GEA Live, and Senbla Avatar: The Last Airbender In Concert will be an over two-hour show featuring a live orchestra playing the show’s iconic musical score alongside highlights and favorite moments from all three seasons of the series.

Emmy Award-winning composer and musician Jeremy Zuckerman has teamed up with show co-creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and editor Jeff Adams to expand the series original compositions for the concert series.

Tickets for the tour will go on sale on Friday, April 19at 10 am at Avatarinconcert.com.

NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES

SEP 7: Gammage Auditorium | Tempe, AZ
SEP 10: Buell Theatre | Denver, CO
SEP 11: Orpheum Theatre | Omaha, NE
SEP 12: The Fabulous Fox | St. Louis, MO
SEP 13: Des Moines Civic Center | Des Moines, IA
SEP 15: Majestic Theatre | Dallas, TX
SEP 17: Walton Arts Center | Fayetteville, AR
SEP 18: Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land | Sugar Land, TX
SEP 19: Majestic Theatre | San Antonio, TX
SEP 20: Bass Concert Hall | Austin, TX
SEP 21: Will Rogers Auditorium | Fort Worth, TX
SEP 27 & 28: National Theatre | Washington, D.C.
SEP 29: Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts | Greensboro, NC
OCT 1: Mahalia Jackson Theatre | New Orleans, LA
OCT 3: Straz Center | Tampa Bay, FL
OCT 4: West Palm Beach, FL
OCT 5: Walt Disney Theatre | Orlando, FL
OCT 6: Moran Theater | Jacksonville, FL
OCT 8: Kings Theatre | Brooklyn, NY
OCT 9: Met Opera House | Philadelphia, PA
OCT 10: Count Basie Theatre | Red Bank, NJ
OCT 11: Oakdale Theatre | Wallingford, CT
OCT 12: Emerson Colonial Theater | Boston, MA
OCT 13: New Jersey Performing Arts Center | Newark, NJ
OCT 15: Belk Theatre | Charlotte, NC
OCT 16: The Hippodome Theatre | Baltimore, MD
OCT 17: KeyBank State Theatre | Cleveland, OH
OCT 18: Miller High Life Theatre | Milwaukee, WI
OCT 19: Cadillac Palace Theatre | Chicago, IL
OCT 20: Fisher Theatre | Detroit, MI
OCT 24: Palace Theatre | Columbus, OH
OCT 25: Overture Center For The Arts | Madison, WI
OCT 26: Murat Theatre | Indianapolis, IN
OCT 27: Andrew Jackson Hall | Nashville, TN
OCT 29: The Kentucky Center | Louisville, KY
OCT 30: Procter and Gamble Hall | Cincinnati, OH
NOV 2: Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts | Kansas CIty, MO
NOV 3: Orpheum Theatre | Minneapolis, MN
NOV 6: First Interstate Center for the Arts | Spokane, WA
NOV 7: Hult Center | Eugene, OR
NOV 8: Keller Auditorium Hall | Portland, OR
NOV 9: Moore Theatre | Seattle, WA
NOV 11: Velma V. Morrison Center for the Performing Arts | Boise, ID
NOV 12: Eccles Theatre | Salt Lake City, UT
NOV 14: SAFE Credit Union Performing Arts Center | Sacramento, CA
NOV 15: Fox Theatre | Riverside, CA
NOV 16: Reynolds Hall | Las Vegas, NV
NOV 17: Segerstrom Center for the Arts | Costa Mesa, CA
NOV 19 & 20: San Jose Center for the Performing Arts | San Jose, CA
NOV 21: San Diego Civic Center | San Diego, CA
NOV 22 & 23: Los Angeles, CA
NOV 24: Centennial Hall | Tucson, AZ

Movie Review

Rachel McAdams goes feral in Sam Raimi's gory new comedy Send Help

Photo by Brook Rushton

Rachel McAdams in Send Help.

Director Sam Raimi has gone through different phases as a filmmaker, including leading the first Spider-Man trilogy and joining the MCU with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. But he first gained notice with the gory and funny Evil Dead movies, a sensibility he’s returning to with his latest film, Send Help.

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is a meek and eccentric middle manager at a financial firm that’s just named Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) as its new nepo CEO. Bradley’s dad had promised Linda a promotion to vice president, but she gets passed over in favor of one of Bradley’s frat buddies, sending her into a mild rage. Still, she gets invited along on a planned business trip to Thailand, during which she hopes to prove her worth.

Unfortunately for most of the passengers on the private plane, it crashes into the ocean, leaving only Linda and Bradley alive on a deserted island. Linda, who has privately developed survival skills, adapts quickly to the forbidding environment, while Bradley tries to revert to bossing her around. But Linda quickly understands the power dynamic has shifted, and she uses this knowledge to try to keep Bradley in line, turning their stranding into a battle of wills.

Directed by Raimi and written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, the film is the classic “so bad it’s good” kind of experience. McAdams, inarguably an attractive and charming person, is given stringy hair, an antisocial personality, and quirks like eating tuna fish at her desk to make her as off-putting as possible. Bradley, along with almost everyone else at her office, is stereotyped just as hard in order to set up the twist of fate.

When the action shifts to the island, things get even more over the top. The audience has already been primed for Linda to demonstrate her survival expertise, but the film does way more than just show her making fire. Whether it’s flawlessly building a shelter or hunting a wild boar, everything Linda does is portrayed in a slightly off-kilter manner. Then they turn everything up to 11, indulging in gore that is so unnecessary that you can’t help but laugh.

The filmmakers prove they’re in on the joke the rest of the way, including a variety of preposterous but hilarious scenarios that would cause massive eyerolls if they were actually trying to take the film seriously. While they do a great job of showing Linda’s ability to handle herself in the wild, they also show that she is somehow the only person in the world who could get a glow up after a plane crash and weeks living in nature.

McAdams, an Oscar-nominated actor for Spotlight, is way too high class for a movie like this, which makes her presence here all the more interesting. She is all-in on whatever Raimi wants her to do, and she’s at her most fun when she goes the animalistic route. O’Brien, who was great in the recent Twinless, doesn’t get as much of an opportunity to show his range, but he still proves to be an interesting foil for her.

Were it released in any other month, Send Help might be looked at as bottom of the barrel material. But with the movie year just getting started, it’s easier to forgive its outrageous plot twists and just have fun, especially since Raimi and his team put the rest of the film together so well.

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Send Help opens in theaters on January 30.

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