weekend event planner

These are the 14 best things to do in Houston this weekend

This weekend, a lot of art will be hanging in the city – and available for purchase.

The inaugural season of Houston Art Weeks starts on Friday, celebrating Houston's vibrant visual arts scene and local artists while also raising funds to provide care and treatment for those suffering from mental health issues. Bayou City Art Festival (which we’ll get into below) and Sawyer Yards’ Second Saturday are just a couple events that’ll be spotlighted.

Houstonians can get their art on this weekend, or they can check out the myriad happenings we’ve got lined up for you. BTW, if you see this guy, let him know we’ve all been there.

Thursday, October 9

Wet Leg and Japanese Breakfast in concert
Three-time GRAMMY-winning indie rock band Wet Leg are currently on the road for their North American moistourizer tour and will be performing in Houston this weekend at the White Oak Music Hall Lawn. Their first proper North American tour since 2022, they’re supporting their critically acclaimed sophomore album moisturizer. Also on the bill is indie-pop band Japanese Breakfast (fronted by musician/bestselling author Michelle Zauner), who dropped their latest album For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women) earlier this year. 4 pm.

Fever presents DroneArt Show
After mesmerizing audiences in cities across the globe, Houston is the latest city to receive the DroneArt Show. The sensorial experience is coming for a three-night limited engagement at Lagoonfest Texas, promising to transport audiences to a world of musical and visual wonders in a stunning open-air spectacle. In a presentation that fuses classical music with the most avant-garde technology, the sky becomes a moving canvas where live music comes to life like never before. 7:45 pm (7:45 pm Friday and Saturday).

GEA Live presents Twilight in Concert: 15th Anniversary Celebration
Audiences can experience the 2008 vampire romance saga Twilight with this film-to-concert event, featuring the original movie accompanied by a live band on stage and a candlelit atmosphere. Twilight in Concert offers a unique opportunity for fans to relive the story that started it all in a cinematic live experience. A 12-piece ensemble of rock and orchestral musicians will take the stage to perform the film score in synchronization with the original movie, presented in its entirety on a full-size screen. 8 pm.

Friday, October 10

Garden Club of Houston presents Bulb & Plant Mart
The Garden Club of Houston's Bulb & Plant Mart offers top-quality bulbs from the best growers around the United States and abroad. Experienced and beginning gardeners alike will find an expanded collection of hard-to-find and unusual Crinums, Daylilies, Gingers, perennials, shrubs, vines, herbs, and citrus plants. Proceeds from the three-day market are used for the purposes of stimulating the interest in and knowledge of gardening, enhancing the beauty of the community, and protecting & restoring the fragile ecosystem. 9 am (5 pm Thursday; 9 am Saturday).

Brazos Bookstore presents Beyond the Covers Book Fair *for Adults: Vol. 2
Remember the pure joy of flipping through those Scholastic Book Fair catalogs, circling everything you wanted, and begging your parents for just one more book? Now imagine that — with cocktails. Head over to Social Beer Garden this weekend for a night of nostalgic, bookish fun and socializing for adults over 21. It’s free to attend, and a portion of the night’s proceeds will be donated to the Houston Public Library Foundation. 6 pm

Houston Symphony presents "Jean-Yves Thibaudet + The Three-Cornered Hat"
Composed during a vacation in Cairo, Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 5, Egyptian — played by pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet — runs the gamut from delicate grace to powerhouse virtuosity. Castanets click, fiery flamenco rhythms blaze, and sensuous sonic colors saturate the stage in a rare complete performance of Manuel de Falla’s The Three-Cornered Hat. Get ready for an evening of showstopping piano fireworks and irresistible, Spanish dance music. 7:30 pm (7:30 pm Saturday; 2 pm Sunday).

The Lumineers in concert
Although you may know them for sounding similarly like another popular, alt-folk band, New Jersey’s The Lumineers are still out there doing stuff. They’ll be at The Woodlands this weekend in support of Automatic, their sixth studio album. Recorded in less than a month at Utopia Studios in Woodstock, the album explores some of the absurdities of the modern world. So, if you’re thinking times have gotten too absurd, these guys will be here to give you musical therapy. 7:30 pm.

Saturday, October 11

Bayou City Art Festival
Bayou City Art Festival will showcase the works of more than 250 artists in 19 different categories. For three days, patrons can take a walk through the park and personally meet the artists, view original works, and purchase one-of-a-kind art, prints, jewelry, sculptures, functional art and more at all price levels. There will also be live entertainment stages, food trucks, a craft beer and wine garden, a VIP Hospitality Lounge, and entertainment throughout Memorial Park. 10 am (10 am Friday and Sunday).

Korean-American Society of Houston presents Korean Festival Houston
The 16th annual Korean Festival returns to downtown, featuring the Korean heritage through music, dance, food, fashion, and family-friendly fun. This two-day fest raises cultural awareness by sharing the joys and delights of Korean culture with fellow Houstonians, and promotes community growth by encouraging community involvement and fostering leadership development for the next generation of our youth, and bridges the Korean community and the Houston community at-large. 10 am (11 am Sunday).

Jordan Klepper: Suffering Fools
Last weekend, Daily Show vets Ronny Chieng and Hasan Minhaj were in town making people laugh. Now, it’s MAGA correspondent Jordan Klepper’s turn. In Suffering Fools, Klepper shares personal stories about his time on the road, including interactions with politicians, entertainment industry experiences, and encounters with colorful characters. The show combines humor and candor, offering commentary on contemporary society and "our collective idiocies." 7 pm.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents The Holy Mountain
The 1973 follow-up to his pioneering 1970 midnight movie El Topo, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain is a surreal, visually-arresting film that defies conventional storytelling. It follows a Christ-like figure who embarks on a journey of spiritual enlightenment alongside a group of eccentric, symbolic characters. Rich in esoteric imagery, it explores themes of transcendence, mysticism, and the search for truth, all while challenging the audience with its provocative, often unsettling visuals. MFAH projectionist Joel Reed Parker will introduce the film. 7 pm.

Sunday, October 12

City Place presents Texas Bubblers Master Wrangler Station
These Master Bubble Wranglers make giant bubbles for small and large crowds using bubble wands that are between 4-12 ft. long. Everyone can make their own giant bubbles using hand-crafted, tri-string bubble wands and specially formulated bubble juice. And the kid-in-a-bubble wand (which is 3 ft. in diameter) can also put your kiddo or even you inside a bubble. 10 am.

Cultural Center "Our Texas" presents A Weekend of Culture
Cultural Center “Our Texas” will celebrate art and imagination with two musical events: a concert for children and a romantic evening of songs for adults. First, Galina and Boris Vaykhansky will perform the songs by Boris Vaykhansky, Sergey Nikitin, Alexandr Sukhanov, and Grigory Gladkov. That same evening, the Vaykhanskys will present a program featuring their best theatrical songs, humorous ballads in translation from Yiddish, Hebrew, French, and German, and of course, Boris Vaykhansky’s most well-known songs set to his own poetry. 3 pm.

Alamo Drafthouse LaCenterra presents Killer Cuts: Night of the Living Dead and Lifeforce
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema’s Katy location is offering up a terrifying, just-in-time-for-Halloween double feature, as part of its Killer Cuts series. First up is special-effects legend Tom Savini’s uncut, uncensored 1990 version of George A. Romero’s 1968 zombie groundbreaker, Night of the Living Dead. Then, we get the international cut of the sexy, sci-fi, space-vampire flick from 1985, directed by the late Austinite Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). 4 and 7:15 pm.

Photo courtesy of The Bayou City Art Festival

The Bayou City Art Festival returns to Memorial Park this weekend.

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Movie Review

Cookie Queens goes behind the scenes of Girl Scout Cookie season

Photo courtesy of Roadside Attractions

Girl Scouts in Cookie Queens.

Few people are strong enough to resist the lure of Girl Scout cookie season every year, with the cookies’ limited availability and unique flavors a strong incentive to indulge. But only the girls and their families who have sold the cookies know the joys and stresses of trying to get people to buy them, a process that is detailed in the new documentary, Cookie Queens.

The film by documentarian Alysa Nahmias uses the stories of four different girls to represent the nationwide ritual for the Girl Scouts. They include 12-year-old Olive in Charlotte, North Carolina, a longtime top seller; 8-year-old Shannon Elizabeth in El Paso, Texas, who wants to earn the reward of going to camp; 5-year-old Ara in San Diego, California, whose goal is modest compared to most other girls; and 9-year-old Nikki in Chino, California, who has to compete with her older sisters in the cookie-selling bonanza.

The girls represent a cross-section of both ages and backgrounds, with some girls coming from wealthy families and some girls dealing with more limited means. And how much money your family has makes a big difference, as not only does someone richer have more freedom with their time and supplies, but all scouts are required to reimburse the organization for every box they take in, regardless of whether they’re able to sell it or not.

That caveat makes the journeys of the four featured girls feel wildly different. It’s clear from the start that Olive and Nikki’s families don’t give a second thought to the personal economics of selling cookies, with each girl taking in thousands of boxes at the beginning of the six-week selling season. With both Olive and Nikki rightfully confident that they’ll have no problem offloading their supply, their stories turn to how selling is personally affecting them, with each trying to reconcile the fun of doing it with the pressure they feel from their family members.

Shannon Elizabeth’s story is more harrowing, as her parents feel a strong desire to help her accomplish her lofty goal, but worry that the cost might literally be too high for the family as a whole. More than once, the parents are shown fretting that they won’t have the money to pay back what they owe should they fall significantly short in their sales. Their selling approach, which includes walking through an empty swap meet and standing outside a chain restaurant at night, only adds to their stress.

The most fun story to watch is that of Ara, whose innocence is matched by her confidence. Her parents teach her how much money they’ll owe with her small goal of 55 boxes, but right away she takes on more responsibility than expected. She’s shown making sales pitches and tallying the total number of boxes she’s sold with little-to-no help from either her mom or dad. With her high voice, glasses, and a monitor on her arm to manage her diabetes, she becomes the cute and sympathetic part of the film.

There are times that the film starts to feel more than a little manipulative, however. While many of the moments documented come off as organic, some of them seem like Nahmias is actively guiding the participants in order to get a better story. This is especially evident with Shannon Elizabeth and her family, whose early struggles turn into a miraculous feel-good story by the end, a turnaround that seems implausible at best. Everything with them might have been aboveboard, but Nahmias and her team edit the family’s journey in a way that pushes a bit too hard for emotion.

Cookie Queens, which was produced by a company owned by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, helps to give insight into the business of selling Girl Scout cookies for those who’ve only been on the purchasing end of the transaction. The dedication of each girl toward selling their allotted supply proves fun and interesting, even if the filmmaker tries to gild the lily on occasion.

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Cookie Queens is now playing in theaters,

movies girl scout cookie film