It’s National Stay Out of the Sun Day, and it is good advice – especially as we head into Fourth of July weekend, which for many folks means outdoors activities like barbeques, pool parties, and lawn games. We’ve got a few outdoor activities for you on this week’s list of best bets, but we also got some airconditioned theaters, too. Keep reading for all of our picks below.
There’s lots to do this holiday weekend, but if you want a little more history woven into your fun, you’ll want to go to the Fourth of July Celebration at the house museum of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens on Friday, July 4, from 1 to 5 p.m. Specializing in American decorative arts and paintings, Bayou Bend will once again host their annual family-friendly Independence Day festival, featuring crafts, activities, refreshments, and performers, such as Brave Little Company, who will be on hand to read the Declaration of Independence as well as writings by people like abolitionist Frederick Douglass, suffragist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Abraham Lincoln, and more. As always, don’t forget to sign the giant Declaration of Independence while you are there. Admission to the festivities is free.
If you want to celebrate Independence Day with approximately 50,000 of your fellow Houstonians – and of course you do – make your way down to Eleanor Tinsley Park on Friday, July 4, from 4 to 10 p.m. for the Freedom Over Texas, the City’s annual Fourth of July celebration. Grammy winner Ashley McBryde will open for multi-platinum country artist Lee Brice, who will headline the party, which promises six hours of entertainment, a beach-themed beer garden, a kids’ zone with games and face painting, representatives from local sports teams, and more. The night will end with a “Texas-sized” fireworks display. Tickets to the festivities can be purchased here for $10 per person (children aged five and under get in free with a paid adult). Tickets will also be available at the gate.
‘Tis the season for the most patriotic of songs, like lawyer and poet Francis Scott Key’s “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which became the United States national anthem in 1931 under President Herbert Hoover. The Houston Symphony will perform the song, alongside other red, white, and blue-themed tunes like “American Salute” and “Midnight Train To Georgia,” on Friday, July 4, at 8:30 p.m. during Star Spangled Salute at Miller Outdoor Theatre. The concert, featuring vocalist Christina Wells, will culminate in a finale that includes a fireworks display. The performance is free, and you can reserve a ticket here starting at 10 a.m. today, Thursday, July 3, or you can plan to sit on the Hill, where no ticket is required. The concert will also be performed at 8 p.m. tonight, July 3, at The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion.
Head over to The DeLUXE Theatre on Saturday, July 5, at noon to join Houston Cinema Arts Society as they mark their return to the venue with food, Double Dutch, and a classic Spike Lee film during The Crooklyn Cookout. Lee’s 1994 film – written with his sister, Joie Susannah, and his brother, Cinque – is a semi-autobiographical “memory of growing up in Brooklyn in the early 1970s,” known for its “familial warmth, specificity of real-life events being transposed on screen,” and a “glorious soundtrack of mostly jazz and R&B.” Crooklyn will be at the center of the block party-like atmosphere with two screenings, at 12 and 7 p.m. Tickets to either screening can be purchased here for $5. The cookout is free, with food available to purchase from local food trucks.
Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 film Barry Lyndon, based on a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, was a flop on its release, leaving Kubrick “so stung by the experience that he signed on for The Shining, figuring that a horror flick based on a bestselling novel would at least make some money.” Today, the film is acknowledged as “a masterpiece—a sardonic, devastating portrait of a vanishing world whose opulence conceals the moral vacancy at its heart” – all “in picaresque detail.” The film celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, and you can see it on Saturday, July 5, at 5 p.m. at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The film will be screened a second time on Sunday, July 6, at 2 p.m. Tickets to either screening can be purchased here for $7 to $9.
In honor of the late Shelley Duvall’s 76th birthday, and in a coup, Houston Cinema Arts Society will present the world premiere of Dreams in the Attic, a never-before-aired, live-action television film starring Duvall on Monday, July 7, at 7 p.m. at River Oaks Theatre. The film, long considered a piece of lost media, stars Duvall as Aunt Nellie, the owner of a costume shop with a magical attic trunk that can bring dreams to life. Though Monday night’s screening, with includes a post-film conversation, is sold out, the film will be screened twice more, at 2:15 and 4:45 p.m. on Saturday, July 12. The film’s director, Bob Willems, will be present to provide an extended introduction to the film. Tickets for the screenings can be purchased here for $12.
Though it got bumped from its place as British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound magazine’s “Greatest Film of All Time” in 2022, let’s not forget that Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo is still the film that ended Citizen Kane’s 40-year reign at the top in 2012. On Wednesday, July 9, you can catch the film on the big screen as part of Brazos Bookstore’s Summer of Hitchcock at River Oaks Theatre. The film stars James Stewart as an agoraphobic detective who becomes obsessed with a woman, played by Kim Novak, who bears a striking resemblance to someone he loved. The book discussion is scheduled for 6:30 p.m., with the film screening at 3:15 and 7:15 p.m. You can join the discussion either after the first or before the second screening. Tickets are available here for $12.
News broke back in May that a new adaptation of Mark McShane’s 1961 novel Séance on a Wet Afternoon, written by Adolescence writer Jack Thorne, may be coming soon, but on Wednesday, July 9, at 7:30 p.m., you can catch Stephen Schwartz’s take on the psychodrama, a two-act opera – his first, after crafting hit Broadway musicals like Godspell, Pippin, and Wicked – when Lone Star Lyric opens the show at the Gordy. The story, which centers on a scheming psychic with a plan to kidnap the child of a wealthy family, will be performed in an intimate environment with local performers. Schwartz will be present on opening night. Performances will continue at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 10, and Friday, July 11, and 2:30 p.m. Saturday, July 12. Tickets are available here for $55 to $100.
