weekend event planner

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

The Rodeo draws to a close this week. Thousands of Houstonians will head to NRG Park for one last turkey leg, funnel cake, or Western wear purchase.

For those who aren’t slipping on a Stetson, this weekend is loaded with options that include a celebration of humanity’s thirst for adventure, Houston Ballet’s new production, and a bonafide alt rock icon spinning tunes in Midtown. Or just eat a lot of pie. We’re not here to judge.

Regardless, enjoy the end of spring break. Here are this weekend’s best bets.

Thursday, March 14

Chef Jane Wild presents Pi Day Pop-Up
Join the CultureMap Tastemaker Awards nominee for a celebration of sweet and savory pies. The chef will have more than 10 varieties available for purchase by the slice or as whole pies, including salted caramel apple, rhubarb, banana cream, chicken pot pie, and Wild’s signature salted honey. Enhance them with Little Dreamer Coffee or a scoop from Honeychild’s Sweet Creams. 9 am

Space Center Houston presents Moon 2 Mars Festival
Space Center Houston presents the Moon 2 Mars Festival, an interstellar week of fun that combines all things space with the adventurous spirit of past, present, and future space explorers. The family-friendly event features space exploration activities like AI and virtual reality activations, human gyroscope, STEM conceptual kinetic dance floor, bungee jump, and more. There will also be live entertainment and food. 10 am.

Sasha Colby in concert
Fresh off her win and crowning as “America's Next Drag Superstar” from RuPaul’s Drag Race’s 15th season, Sasha Colby comes to Houston as part of her inaugural, solo headlining tour, "Sasha Colby: Stripped Tour." The tour will be a live music experience that will have her going through a bevy of tunes, including her debut single from last year “Feel the Power.” The tour will also reveal new dimensions of Colby’s talent and creativity. 8 pm.

Friday, March 15

POST Houston presents Country Music Showdown
With rodeo season being in full swing, get your boots on for a two-stepping good time at the Country Music Showdown at POST. The Showdown showcases four talented Houston artists showing out for your votes: Tiona Campbell, Nick Gaitan, Amber Digby & Midnight Flyer, and Sam Turner & the Cactus Cats. The artist receiving the highest number of votes will win a booking for a solo show at POST! This event will be held at Outpose, POST’s rooftop pavilion event space. 7 pm.

Houston Ballet presents Bespoke
Bespoke brings a fresh, mixed repertory program with three ballets never-before-seen on the Wortham Theater stage. Continuing the long-standing commitment to bringing Jiří Kylián's work to Houston, the program adds another of his works to the Company repertoire with the premiere of Kylián's Overgrown Path. Set to the deeply moving score from composer Leoš Janáček, the work was created in 1980 for Nederlands Dance Theater in dedication to the legendary choreographer Antony Tudor. 7:30 pm (2 pm Sunday).

Improv Houston presents Marcello Hernandez
Marcello Hernandez is a Cuban/Dominican stand-up comedian, writer, and actor who's been killing it lately as a featured player on Saturday Night Live. (We’ve definitely laughed at those “Protective Mom” skits he’s done with Pedro Pascal.) Doing stand-up since he was 18 years old in 2016, he has opened for headliners such as Tim Dillon, Jim Breuer, Mark Viera, Gilbert Gottfried, and more. 7:30 & 9:45 pm (7 & 9:30 pm Saturday).

Super Freak: The Rick James Story
Super Freak: The Rick James Story brings turbulent life of funk/rock god Rick James (aka that guy from Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories) to the stage, creating a musical extravaganza that immerses the audience in a showcase of his popular hits such as “Give It to Me Baby,” “Mary Jane,” and “Super Freak.” Beyond the glittering facade, the musical explores the layers of Rick’s internal struggles and insane lifestyle filled with sex, drugs, and music. 8 pm (3 & 8 pm Saturday; 3 & 7:30 pm Sunday).

Saturday, March 16

The Union Kitchen presents Rodeo Brunch
All five of The Union Kitchen’s Houston-area locations will celebrate the close of the Houston rodeo season with a decadent, barbecue-influenced brunch on Saturday and Sunday. Chef James Lundy and his culinary team have created several rodeo-ready dishes inspired by the Bayou City’s crown jewel event. Guests can sip on bourbon-inflected cocktails, including the tasty Bingham’s Bramble, made with country singer Ryan Bingham’s own Bingham’s Original Bourbon. 10 am.

McClain Gallery presents “Donald Sultan: NEW WORKS” opening reception

McClain Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of “Donald Sultan: NEW WORKS,” featuring a selection of paintings and drawings that are a continuation of Sultan’s ongoing investigation of abstraction using the aesthetic structure of the mimosa tree in bloom. Inspired by the plants found in the French Riviera, this body of work highlights the artist’s innovative use of materials. This is the first solo exhibition of Sultan’s works at McClain Gallery and comes after a ten year absence in Houston. Through Saturday, April 27. 2 pm.

Ars Lyrica Houston presents "Visions and Reveries"
"Visions and Reveries" showcases a select ensemble of period-instrument specialists and one of Ars Lyrica's favorite singers in an all-French program. Its delectable prix-fixe menu includes lyric cantatas on mythological themes by Elizabeth Claude Jacquet de la Guerre and Jean-Philippe Rameau, whose contributions to the genre elevate it to high art, and a sumptuous instrumental suite by François Couperin. The concert features soprano Lauren Snouffer, violinist Manami Mizumoto, and Eric Taeyang Mun on viola da gamba. 7:30 pm.

The Ensemble Theatre presents Beatbox: A Raparetta
The Ensemble Theatre presents the regional premiere of Beatbox: A Raparetta, a modern dramatic musical production written and performed in rhythm and rhyme with vocal drumbeats (beatboxing), hip hop dance, and a live DJ. The play is soaked in the beat and the heat of hip-hop culture: the sense of desperation held at bay; the powerful rap rhymes built from equal parts of anger and hope; and the constant threat of violence. Through Sunday, April 14. 7:30 pm.

Sunday, March 17

Heights Grocer presents Sixth Anniversary Party
The Heights-area store will celebrate six years of selling its carefully curated selection of natural wine, gourmet food, and gifts with an afternoon bash. Not only will the shop be pouring free tastes from magnums, but shoppers will have the opportunity to purchase ceramics from local artist Lori Muñoz and a unique flavor from cult favorite Underground Creamery. Noon.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents Breaking the Code
Named “best historical film” by the Dallas County Historical Commission in 2023, Breaking the Code is an in-depth profile of Vernon Fisher (1943–2023), among Texas’s most influential artists. Director Michael Flanagan compiled interviews with Fisher, his contemporaries, and his students to offer unique insight into the witty conceptualism of Fisher’s practice and the striking independence of his career. After the free screening, the audience is invited to stay for a panel discussion with filmmaker Michael Flanagan and MFAH curator Alison de Lima Greene. 2 pm.

Houston Music City Forum 2024
Get ready for an exciting in-person gathering of music enthusiasts, industry professionals, and civic leaders presented by the Houston Music Advisory Board. Join us for informative panels, engaging discussions, live music, and networking opportunities. This talk can provide local music industry and city leaders practical ideas using music to grow our music ecosystem, enhance the economy and quality of life. Limited seats are available, so don't miss out on a chance to discover how music can impact Houston. 4 pm.

Sig’s Lagoon presents DJ Jello Biafra’s Incredibly Strange Dance Party
Sig's Lagoon, that beloved midtown record store, presents DJ Jello Biafra's Incredibly Strange Dance Party! Jello Biafra, the legendary, former frontman for the San Francisco punk band The Dead Kennedys, hits Houston for one night only, bringing his renowned vinyl DJ sets of garage, soul, dementia and a little bit of punk to Shoeshine Charley's Big Top Lounge. DJ Hot Rocks provides support. And the best part: there’s no cover! 8:30 pm.

Photo courtesy of Marcello Hernandez

Improv Houston presents Marcello Hernandez.

Movie Review

Spielberg-inspired movie The End of Oak Street is a dino-snore

Photo by Daniel McFadden

Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway in The End of Oak Street.

Steven Spielberg is the iconic director of the last 50 years, so it’s no surprise that many other filmmakers have borrowed from his classic films. But most of the time those come in the form of references or homages, not straight up theft, which is what it feels like watching The End of Oak Street play out in front of your eyes.

Set in the early 1980s in an idyllic suburban neighborhood of an unnamed city, Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) are parents to two teenagers, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery). They’re also possibly heading toward divorce, as Audrey is secretly writing a novel with a thinly-veiled plot about their life, and Brian is cagey about having to earn extra money with a pizza delivery job.

That all gets put on the backburner when a mysterious event takes their entire neighborhood back to the time of dinosaurs. Armed with little more than a shotgun and sledgehammer, Audrey and Brian do their best to keep the family safe in their house. But the longer the ordeal goes on, circumstances force them out onto the streets and into the increasing danger that’s all around them.

Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, the film tries immensely hard to be like the Spielberg movies its filmmaker clearly adores, but fails at almost every turn. It never earns the broken family in ‘80s suburbia vibes that were prevalent in E.T., going all in right away in the opening scene with a neighborhood block party that feels forced. Other elements like a bully who has it out for Brian, the family dog that disappears, and an angry neighbor come across as the tropes they are and not as organic parts of the plot.

When it finally gets to its dinosaur sequences, they pale in comparison to those found in Jurassic Park. The strange manner in which the dinosaurs appear is a big part of that, but the action involving them forgoes ominous moments that could build tension for those that play up gore in an unexpected way for a PG-13 movie. Many of the attacks have so little emotional meaning that they come off as comical, which is entertaining but in a hollow way.

As if those weren’t enough, Mitchell — perhaps at the behest of producer J.J. Abrams (who made his own Spielbergian film, Super 8) — tries to honor Spielberg in other ways. Just like in Jaws, he employs the use of a split diopter lens, which keeps characters in both the foreground and background in focus. But instead of using it judiciously, it’s brought out in three separate scenes, including a laughable one with the four family members where it turns into overkill.

Hathaway, coming off of a role in The Odyssey that could earn her an Oscar nomination, is the best part of this film. But even her evident skills are dragged down by the ridiculousness of the story, which requires hysterics that even she can’t sell. McGregor can normally be counted on for a good performance, but he gives several line readings with strange cadences that make his already-underwritten character come off worse. Stella and Convery are okay, but their roles are unmemorable overall.

Mitchell and his team can never settle on exactly what type of film they were trying to make, and so even though The End of Oak Street has a few moments that work, they’re surrounded by many others that don’t. In trying to emulate Spielberg — there’s even a blatant Back to the Future (produced by Spielberg) rip-off towards the end — all Mitchell has done is show how difficult it is to be the master.

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The End of Oak Street opens in theaters on August 14.