weekend event planner

Here are the top 15 things to do in Houston this weekend

Gaslighters beware: The Chicks are coming.

Photo by Nadine Ljewere

This weekend features a flurry of festivals for nearly every taste, from art, to Black and Greek culture, to ye olde Renaissance Festival.

Meanwhile, a hot stage show comes to town, Texas' favorite grocery store hosts a wine walk for those who love to strip and stroll, and Texas' most unafraid country music ladies head to town.

Enjoy; here are your best bets for the weekend.

Thursday, October 6

18th Annual H-E-B Wine Walk

The 18th annual walk will shed light on great wines, culinary creations, and lifestyle enthusiasts. The event encourages attendees to put on their favorite bling, light-up attire and enjoy a night of illumination. Light sticks and glow necklaces will be randomly distributed. Three blocks of Market Street will also be jam-packed with culinary creations, wine displays, craft beers, live music, and wine experiences. More than 40 wine tasting tents, more than 40 craft beer selections and dozens of culinary offerings from area restaurants, chefs and caterers will be featured. There will also be tasting stations that will offer choices from more than 250 beverages. 6 pm.

Christopher Martin Gallery presents Christopher Martin: Centric opening reception

Christopher Martin is coming full circle with the first Houston exhibition dedicated solely to his coveted and collectible disc series. A self-taught artist, Christopher coaxes layers of sheer pigment and water to achieve his vision — harnessing brushes, wind, heat, and gravity. Since debuting his first discs in 2011, successive series have continued the evolution of iterations that play with rhythmic and eye-catching geometry. The exhibition will also offer a retrospective of pieces from earlier releases. Through Thursday, October 20. 6 pm.

Memorial Hermann Broadway at the Hobby Center: Hadestown

This eight-time Tony winner intertwines two mythic tales — that of young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice, and that of King Hades and his wife Persephone - as it invites the audience on a hell-raising journey to the underworld and back. Singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell’s beguiling melodies and director Rachel Chavkin’s poetic imagination pit industry against nature, doubt against faith, and fear against love. Performed by a vibrant ensemble of actors, dancers and singers, this haunting, hopeful, theatrical experience grabs you and never lets go. 7:30 pm (8 pm Friday, 2 and 8 pm Saturday and 2 and 7:30 pm Sunday).

Friday, October 7

Rockefellers Houston presents Tracy Anne Hart: "Past, Present, and Future"

Rockefellers Houston presents this exhibition of prints by photographer Tracy Anne Hart, in conjunction with FotoFest. This is the official release event for Hart's 2023 Stevie Ray Vaughan calendar. The show includes the calendar, live music, and prints of Hart's images of SRV, Gary Clark Jr, Billy Gibbons, Eric Tessmer, Sue Foley, Fantastic Negrito, Eric Gales, and other great past, present, and future artists. These images explore both culture and cultural appropriation, as well as amazing American music. The event includes a brief Q&A session, a cash bar and refreshments. 6 pm.

Theatre Under The Stars Lights Up Gala

Theatre Under The Stars' Lights Up Gala will feature a performance by Alex Newell, the renowned Grammy-nominated singer of Glee fame, along with the TUTS Pre-Professional Company and the Performance Troupe. The evening will begin with cocktails and a silent auction followed by a four-course dinner. Chaired by Patricia & Sig Cornelius and Dolores Cavatore & John Tobola, the annual event will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Humphreys School of Musical Theatre and raise funds for TUTS. 6:30 pm.

Moody Center for the Arts presents Elainie Lillios: Night Sky

Composer Elainie Lillios will present the debut of her newest sound and light composition at the James Turrell Twilight Epiphany Skyspace. Lillios presents a meditative sonic journey in response to the iconic Turrell work situated on Rice's campus. Her composition also incorporates the poem Night Sky by Don Bogen. Lillios integrates Bogen’s poem into her soundscape in a manner that reflects and enhances the text while simultaneously forming a connection between the twilight of life and the Twilight Epiphany Skyspace. Through Sunday, October 23. 7 pm.

Performing Arts Houston presents Tom Papa: Family Reunion Tour

With more than 20 years as a stand-up comedian, Tom Papa is one of the top comedic voices in the country. He’s found success in film, TV, books, radio, and podcasts, as well as on the live stage. Papa recently released his second book, You’re Doing Great! - And Other Reasons To Stay Alive, which was the follow-up to Your Dad Stole My Rake: And Other Family Dilemmas. He is also a contributing writer to the New Yorker magazine. Papa has four stand-up specials, including his latest Tom Papa: You’re Doing Great! on Netflix. His other specials include Human Mule, Freaked Out, and Tom Papa Live in New York City. 7:30 pm.

Saturday, October 8

Art Colony Association, Inc. presents Bayou City Art Festival

Bayou City Art Festival will return to downtown Houston to celebrate 50 years of providing unique art experiences and education in Houston, while supporting local organizations and promoting the impact that art has on the Houston community. Patrons will have the opportunity to meet artists, view original works, and purchase artwork from 19 art disciplines, including paintings, prints, jewelry, sculptures, and more. The two-day festival will feature live music, a food truck park, and beverage stations, along with two entertainment stages and art installations. 10 am.

Houston Black Heritage Fest

Check out this celebration of Black culture over at Emancipation Park. An extensive cultural experience that promotes diversity, cultural sensitivity and community social responsibility, this two-day festival honors local giants, features local artists, guest speakers, exhibits, poets, crafts people and culminates with legends of the music industry (Eric Benet will be the headliner), which draws thousands each year. Houstonians and visitors alike will have the opportunity to experience business, networking, and cultural programming throughout the weekend that highlights and celebrates Houston's vibrant, African-American community. 4 pm.

Houston Plant Market presents Plants in the Park After Dark

Enjoy a free sunset evening market at Historic Market Square Park lasting into the night with plants, crafts, art, food, music, and more. Bring your kids, dogs, in-laws, pet goldfish, emotional support plants-- you name it. Whether you're a new plant parent, or an importing dream queen, there's something for everyone. Philodendrons, hoyas, anthuriums, alocasias, pothos – they’re all there. And a pot for them to go into? They have that too! The wonderful community of vendors spend weeks propagating and growing their babies, crafting and creating their work for you. 5 pm.

Galveston Artist Residency presents J.R. Roykovich: Travel in Light Years (Part 2)

Conceptual & research based artist J.R. Roykovich will hit us this weekend with part two of his newest solo exhibition. The work explores locations to expose and document how the layers of history, mythology and psychic scars of a site can affect the phenomenological intersections of current physical, mental and emotional experiences within that place and time. These explorations result in large installations and mappings based on environmental recollection which serve as a nerve center to explore, document and connect various histories. Roykovich’s research explores the spatial exchanges between existing entities at those locations while documenting geo-spectral networked and system-based transferences. 6 pm.

The Chicks with Patty Griffin

Texas’ most controversial — and possibly most fearless — country music gals The Chicks (now performing under a new name) are back after a long 14-year hiatus. Fans can expect hits from 1999’s Fly and 2020’s Gaslighter, draws heavily on some old school country themes and no-holds-barred reflections on toxic relationships, politics, and more No doubt the phones will start waving when The Chicks perform "Wide Open Spaces." Noted singer-songwriter Patty Griffin joins the ladies; tickets start at $79.50 (plus fees). 6 pm.

Sunday, October 9

Afrikanah Book Club presents Lit In The 5th

Celebrate Black women in literature in Houston's historic Fifth Ward! Going down at the legendary DeLuxe Theater, this literary event was created to highlight the African-American literary tradition while also making literature more accessible to Houston’s historic Fifth Ward community. Focusing on the voices of African-American women in literature, the event will feature a full day of literary activities, including author talks and readings, workshops in creative writing and bookmaking, dramatic presentations, literary vendors, a book drive, and poetry performances. Noon.

Kinetic Ensemble presents The Wilderness Anthology

Houston’s artist-led, artist-curated Kinetic Ensemble opens its 2022-23 season with an evening of live music inspired by nature, including world premieres by composers Nicky Sohn and Patrick Harlin. This combines Kinetic’s live performance with pre-recorded soundscapes, captured in the Amazon Rainforest and in the Book Cliffs of the western U.S. The concert will be rounded out by the first Houston performance of Paul Novak’s “a string quartet is like a flock of birds,” which Kinetic commissioned in 2020. This season opener will be a fully immersive sound experience; a musical meditation on our natural world, which ever surrounds and inspires us. 6 pm.

Noah Cyrus in concert

Noah Cyrus has recently released her highly anticipated and critically acclaimed debut album The Hardest Part. Already, Cyrus has accumulated an impressive 3 billion combined streams to date, with songs from The Hardest Part already amassing more than 40 million combined streams and counting. In a whirlwind of loss, heartbreak, and chaos, Noah Cyrus grabbed the reins, took control of her life, and has been able to finally tell her story like never before. Noah and her band just started her North American tour, making 23 stops in total – including a stop this weekend in H-Town. 7 pm.

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.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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