When it comes to the State Fair of Texas, most people's excitement starts with fried food, moves on to the Midway, and then ends with fried food again. The free concerts the fair hosts often get lost in the shuffle, even though organizers generally attract some big names.
The initial batch of bands playing at the month-long event at Fair Park this year have been announced, and it may be hard to ignore the lineup this time around.
Blondie, the late ’70s band fronted by singer Debbie Harry, is arguably the boldest name among the first wave. The rock group, rumored to be putting out a new album soon, will perform Saturday, September 28.
Another '80s icon, Molly Ringwald, will take the stage Friday, October 4. No, she won't be doing a one-woman play or hosting a double feature of The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles. Instead, she will be singing songs from her debut jazz album, Except Sometimes, which came out earlier this year.
Other groups performing include Asleep at the Wheel (Friday, September 27), Cory Morrow and The Turnpike Troubadours (Saturday, October 12), Kacey Musgraves (Friday, October 18) and Casting Crowns (Saturday, October 19). More bands will be added in the coming months; last year's fair featured at least one concert a day.
All concerts are free with your admission to the State Fair of Texas, meaning the only thing you need to worry about is how early you camp out at the Main Stage to get up close and personal with your favorite band.
Blondie plays at the State Fair of Texas on September 28.
Photo courtesy of Live Nation
Blondie plays at the State Fair of Texas on September 28.
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.
