Lainey Wilson review

Yellowstone star Lainey Wilson enthralls at sold-out RodeoHouston debut

Lainey Wilson delivered a standout performance

Photo courtesy of the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo

The current reigning ‘Hillbilly Hippie’ queen of modern country-rock Lainey Wilson landed at RodeoHouston for a verified sold-out Saturday matinee.

Wilson’s fashion influence was evident when you entered the rodeo grounds, with spangly jackets, glittered bell-bottoms, and turkey feather-festooned cowboy hats ruling the day. The heavens, thankfully, blessed us with a fashion-friendly cool front overnight. Much like Kacey Musgraves’ defining appearance in 2019, Wilson’s audience was a multi-generational affair with moms and daughters decked out just like the headliner. These kinds of crowds are always affirming because no doubt this is someone’s first rodeo concert.

Wilson and Carly Pearce were the only female artists on this year’s RodeoHouston bill, a fact that has not gone unnoticed especially during Women’s History Month. There seems to be an unofficial two-female limit each year, and you’d have to go back to the 2011 season for the high water mark with six female-fronted acts on the lineup. You can likely pencil in Megan Moroney for 2025, and hopefully she’ll be joined by more than just one other fellow female.

The assertive “Tanya Tucker fronting AC/DC” vibes make Wilson a compelling artist to watch, but she’s far from an overnight success story. By the time she charted in 2021 with “Things A Man Oughta Know” the 31-year-old Nashville veteran had already written songs picked up by Thompson Square, Luke Combs, Ashley Cooke, and Flatland Cavalry. She won Entertainer of the Year at the 2023 CMA Awards and earlier this year took home the Best Country Album honors at the Grammys. Later this month, Wilson heads off to Australia to continue her hippie-billy domination.

Wilson’s reinterpretations of the universal themes in the female experience are resonating with fans. NRG Stadium was packed to the gills before the first bull gave an unlucky cowboy a concussion. She has endeared herself to the Spotify generation’s ears for namechecking Tacomas and Tecovas like any great urban cowgirl.

Lainey Wilson RodeoHouston Almost 75,000 attended Wilson's rodeo debut.Photo courtesy of the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo

Saturday afternoon’s thunderous strutter of an opener “Hold My Halo” set the tone, incredibly more metallic than it is on record. During “Hillbilly Hippie” the denim-dripped Wilson attacked each corner of the revolving stage’s five points like Bruce Dickinson. “Smell Like Smoke” had Wilson slinging a guitar and taking the NRG crowd out of the stadium and into a smoky Louisiana roadhouse. Anyone who came into Saturday’s show thinking Wilson was a shrinking pop star was set straight.

“Country’s Cool Again” is a modern reworking of Barbara Mandrell’s 1981 single “I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool” which itself was a reaction to the early ‘80s fascination with twang in the wake of “Urban Cowboy”. Wilson closed “Watermelon Moonshine” with a few bars of “Strawberry Wine”, a winking homage to the last generation’s ode to underage drinking and memorable exploits. Country time is a flat circle, with artists reinterpreting the same feelings and experiences every few years.

“Y’all look more like Lainey Wilson than I look like Lainey Wilson,” an emotional Wilson said, recounting the last twelve months of her career. Playing the RodeoHouston stage is not a milestone that emerging artists take likely. On Thursday night Jelly Roll himself took a moment to soak in his own 70,000-plus crowd. It’s an affirmation of making it in an industry that only continues to grow colder and cutting.

On Saturday afternoon, a crowd of 74,940 people — this year’s biggest to date — were lucky enough to witness the birth of country music’s newest star. Naturally, she rode out of NRG Stadium on a horse, doing a victory lap around the stage.

Setlist

Hold My Halo
Hillbilly Hippie
Road Runner
Smell Like Smoke
Country’s Cool Again
Watermelon Moonshine > Strawberry Wine
Riders In the Sky > Wildflowers and Wild Horses
Attagirl
Things A Man Oughta Know
Wait In the Truck
Heart Like A Truck

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Movie Review

Avatar: Fire and Ash returns to Pandora with big action and bold visuals

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Oona Chaplin in Avatar: Fire and Ash.

For a series whose first two films made over $5 billion combined worldwide, Avatar has a curious lack of widespread cultural impact. The films seem to exist in a sort of vacuum, popping up for their run in theaters and then almost as quickly disappearing from the larger movie landscape. The third of five planned movies, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is finally being released three years after its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water.

The new film finds the main duo, human-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his native Na’vi wife, Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), still living with the water-loving Metkayina clan led by Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis). While Jake and Neytiri still play a big part, the focus shifts significantly to their two surviving children, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as two they’ve essentially adopted, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Spider (Jack Champion).

Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who lives on in a fabricated Na’vi body, is still looking for revenge on Jake, and he finds help in the form of the Mangkwan Clan (aka the Ash People), led by Varang (Oona Chaplin). Quaritch’s access to human weapons and the Mangkwan’s desire for more power on the moon known as Pandora make them a nice match, and they team up to try to dominate the other tribes.

Aside from the story, the main point of making the films for writer/director James Cameron is showing off his considerable technical filmmaking prowess, and that is on full display right from the start. The characters zoom around both the air and sea on various creatures with which they’ve bonded, providing Cameron and his team with plenty of opportunities to put the audience right there with them. Cameron’s preferred viewing method of 3D makes the experience even more immersive, even if the high frame rate he uses makes some scenes look too realistic for their own good.

The story, as it has been in the first two films, is a mixed bag. Cameron and co-writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver start off well, having Jake, Neytiri, and their kids continue mourning the death of Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in the previous film. The struggle for power provides an interesting setup, but Cameron and his team seem to drag out the conflict for much too long. This is the longest Avatar film yet, and you really start to feel it in the back half as the filmmakers add on a bunch of unnecessary elements.

Worse than the elongated story, though, is the hackneyed dialogue that Cameron, Jaffa, and Silver have come up with. Almost every main character is forced to spout lines that diminish the importance of the events around them. The writers seemingly couldn’t resist trying to throw in jokes despite them clashing with the tone of the scenes in which they’re said. Combined with the somewhat goofy nature of the Na’vi themselves (not to mention talking whales), the eye-rolling words detract from any excitement or emotion the story builds up.

A pre-movie behind-the-scenes short film shows how the actors act out every scene in performance capture suits, lending an authenticity to their performances. Still, some performers are better than others, with Saldaña, Worthington, and Lang standing out. It’s more than a little weird having Weaver play a 14-year-old girl, but it works relatively well. Those who actually get to show their real faces are collectively fine, but none of them elevate the film overall.

There are undoubtedly some Avatar superfans for which Fire and Ash will move the larger story forward in significant ways. For anyone else, though, the film is a demonstration of both the good and bad sides of Cameron. As he’s proven for 40 years, his visuals are (almost) beyond reproach, but the lack of a story that sticks with you long after you’ve left the theater keeps the film from being truly memorable.

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Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters on December 19.

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