weekend event planner

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

Yes indeedy, fireworks, patriotism and all that other good stuff will be popping off everywhere in Houston on Thursday. We already dropped a 4th of July roundup with all of the fireworks displays and other events that’ll be going on in and around the city. But there are a few shindigs that didn’t end up on the list, which we’ll present here, along with a bevy of live music events that will be happening all weekend long.

This weekend, get ready to have the music – and the Red, White and Blue – in you. Read on for this weekend’s best bets.

Thursday, July 4

The Savoy presents 4th of July Weekend Celebration
Historic Third Ward bar The Savoy is hosting a jam-packed 4th of July weekend party that runs daily through Sunday. On Thursday, they’ll throw a #Twins of Houston networking brunch and a special, Savoy-style celebration called Freedom on Emancipation. On Saturday, they’ll have a MILFs of Houston Brunch (Mothers I’d Like to Finance). The grand finale will be the Savoy Sundays All Day Brunch Party, featuring free mimosas with the purchase of a brunch entrée before 2 pm. 11 am.

Rooftop Cinema Club Uptown presents Independence Day 4th of July Party
Rooftop Cinema Club Uptown will have a screening of Independence Day following their 4th of July Party. Elevate your 4th of July experience by soaking up the skyline views, while enjoying a live acoustic performance of Americana music, along with lawn and table games. Purchasing a ticket to the party includes a plate of delicious BBQ and a soft drink. Following the party, Rooftop will show the classic sci-fi blockbuster, with Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, and more trying to save the day from a giant alien mothership invading the United States. 5:15 pm.

Bauhaus Houston presents B2B: July 4th Liberty Edition
Bauhaus will celebrate the 4th with their favorite locals going back-to-back, squaring off and playing their favorite tunes. Among the matchups on this evening, Casador will go head-to-head with Colorground, Doso and Mehrad will go at it, Xilla will do battle with Propertune, Ozzy will go face-to-face with Om Shiva, and Chava Monroy will get down-and-dirty with Anula. It’s free with an RSVP before 10 pm. 8 pm.

Friday, July 5

Josephine’s Gulf Coast Tradition One-Year Anniversary
Josephine’s Gulf Coast Tradition in Midtown is celebrating its one-year anniversary this weekend. Chef Lucas McKinney, who won this year’s CultureMap Tastemaker Award for Rising Star Chef of the Year, will be serving up beloved classics and menu favorites, such as barbecue shrimp, nuoc mam crab fingers, boudin melts, cracklins, debris fries, corn flan, and the Biloxi Vancleave Po' Boy. Guests will also enjoy all-day happy hour specials, including $1 oysters, $15 beer buckets, and $8 cocktails. 11 am.

The Ensemble Theatre presents Pullman Porter Blues
It’s 1937, and three generations of porters are hard at work on the luxurious Panama Limited train. Midwest blues songs flavor their journey from Chicago to New Orleans as the porters confront dark secrets from their past and tough truths about their future together. This captivating coming-of-age story is woven with iconic blues music. Pullman Porter Blues is making its regional premiere at The Ensemble Theatre. Through Saturday, July 28. 7:30 pm (2 & 7:30 pm Saturday; 3 pm Sunday).

Improv Houston presents Pete Holmes
Pete Holmes is the creator and star of HBO's Crashing and TBS' The Pete Holmes Show. He's also the star of CBS' How We Roll, two HBO stand-up comedy specials, the host of the You Made It Weird podcast, and the author of Comedy Sex God. But to us CollegeHumor fans, he’ll always be Badman, a self-centered, sex-crazed, highly incompetent version of the Caped Crusader. Anyway, you can catch this Not-So-Dark Knight doing standup this weekend. 7:30 & 9:45 pm (7 & 9:30 pm Saturday; 7:30 pm Sunday).

Art Factory presents Sunday in the Park with George
Art Factory continues their tradition of producing Stephen Sondheim in their 2024 season with Sunday in the Park with George. The Pulitzer Prize-winning musical tells the story of the struggles of being an artist, a canvas where the genius of the conflicted artist George Seurat unfolds, creating a visual masterpiece inspired by the pointillist painter’s famous painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The production features music and lyrics by Sondheim, and a book by James Lapine. Through Sunday, July 21. 8 pm (5 pm Sunday).

Saturday, July 6

POST Houston presents Coffee & Cars
Coffee & Cars, where car hobby enthusiasts meet once a month and share the same passion for motorsports, returns to POST Houston for a unique, special-edition gathering. It’ll be a combination of new machines and special icons you don’t want to miss. We’re talking hypercars, exotics, JDM, classics, tuners, and more. This is still a normal gathering, but with a curated section for special machines. All other brands are welcome with first come, first serve parking. 8 am.

City Place presents Hot Nights, Cool Grooves
At this new summer concert experience, guests will enjoy a picturesque setting overlooking waterfront City Place Park and a showcase of regional musical artists from a variety of genres. The evenings, each featuring back-to-back sets, will include an assortment of pop-ups like food trucks with items for purchase, fruit samples from The Peach Truck, beer giveaways from Saint Arnold Brewing Company, free candy from Sour Strips (July 6 iteration only), photo opportunities, event swag giveaways, and more. 6 pm.

Sarah McLachlan in concert
Most of you probably know Sarah McLachlan as that lady who comes on TV late at night and guilt-trips you about rescuing dogs. But we shouldn’t forget that she was a trailblazer back in the day, launching the influential, all-female Lilith Fair fest. She comes to Sugar Land as part of a tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of her 1993 breakout album, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. McLachlan has released nine albums in her career, most recently Wonderland in 2016. 7:30 pm.

Splice 10-Year Anniversary
Houston record label Splice Records will celebrate a decade of supporting local and regional bands from Houston, Galveston, New Orleans and Austin, their four favorite music markets. Splice is known for throwing incredible concerts, parties and festivals. Recently, they have taken over operations at Dan Electro’s and the anniversary will also celebrate their six-month marker there. Come celebrate with them with a mashup of Vodi, Ancient Cat Society and Dollie Barnes, followed by feature band Tomar and the FCs. 9 pm.

Sunday, July 7

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents "Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan" opening day
"Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan" offers a look at Japan’s Meiji era (1868-1912), when the country emerged from near-total isolation to enter a modern, global period. Over these pivotal decades, Japan experienced radical social and political shifts. The exhibition brings together nearly 200 works of Meiji art from more than 70 public and private collections. Through the objects on view, "Meiji Modern" reveals the profound cross-cultural impact of Japan’s developing relationships with the wider world. Through Sunday, September 15. 12:30 pm.

Be More Pacific x 4th Annual Lumpia Eating Contest
Get ready to cheer, eat, and celebrate as Be More Pacific announces the return of its highly anticipated Annual Lumpia Eating Contest. The event was born out of a desire to bring people together and promote local small businesses in the Houston area. Inspired by Nathan's July 4th Hot Dog Eating Contest, this event substitutes hot dogs with delicious Filipino egg rolls, or lumpia. This year's event promises to be bigger and better, with the introduction of official Lumpia Eating Contest T-shirts. 3 pm.

House of Blues presents Sir Mix-A-Lot
Okay, we all know Sir Mix-A-Lot made an iconic, chart-topping rap song about big booties called “Baby Got Back” in 1992, inspiring legions of MCs to wax poetically about gargantuan female posteriors. (If you really wanna get nitpicky about it, LL Cool J hit the charts with “Big Ole Butt” three years earlier.) But don’t act like that was the Seattle MCs only banger. The real hip-hop heads remember when he came with club classics like “Beepers” and “Posse on Broadway.” Let’s hope he drops those old-school bops when he plays Houston this weekend. 7 pm.

Photo by Noah Dawlearn

Raise a glass at The Savoy.

event-planner

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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