Keeping Our Eye on the Week’s Recommended Arts Events

Taylor Swift Muzingo

Monday 9, Upstairs at Caroline

Get down to “this sick beat” at Taylor Swift Muzingo. Never heard of Muzingo? It’s basically bingo mixed with a dance party, where instead of marking off numbers, you mark off the songs that are played. “The time will come for us to finally win” because if you get five in a row, you can get a prize. The night will be sparkling; don’t you let it go.   – Blake Leschber

Everybody Scream! Ravencraft’s Vault of Horror

Monday 9, Mister Tramps Sport Pub

Prepare to get your Ph.D. in horror from Professor Saul Ravencraft, as the master of the occult and expert in all matters esoteric and uncanny takes you, reel by reel, through a mystery horror movie. In between reels he’ll regale you with anecdotes, information, and maybe even pull back the veil between worlds just a little bit. Prepare to get scared onscreen and from the great beyond!   – Richard Whittaker

Bottoms

Monday 9, Hyperreal Film Club

Film critic and senior Chronicle staff writer Richard Whittaker once came into my under-the-stairs office, pointed at my Bottoms movie poster, and said “Oh, Bottoms. I wish you were funny.” Little did he know that such a huge wish had already been granted, as Emma Seligman’s sophomore directorial effort is filled with gut-busters in more ways than one. Specifically, two ways: One, in how your gut will bust from laughing at Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri as they create a high school fight club in order to score with hot girls; and two, in that this fight club actually busts a lotta guts through punching, kicking, and biting themselves and others. Wish Bottoms were funny? Wish granted, dude!   – James Scott

Mo Willems Party

Monday 9, Southeast Branch Library

Author and animator Mo Willems gets his flowers – or should we say feathers – at this Austin Public Library summer party. Kids from 6 to 10 are invited to celebrate the many picture books penned by Willems, including the Caldecott Honor winning Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! – which also hit the Zach stage last year as an interactive play. Attendees can do crafts, play games like Pin the Nose on Piggie, and even get a pigeon-perfect picture in a photo booth.   – James Scott

Species II

Tuesday 10, Alamo South Lamar

1995’s Species is a psychosexual classic of intergalactic carnal terror, emphasizing the erotic elements of H.R. Giger’s biomechanical designs that Alien had turned into subtext. 1999’s Species II is a lascivious slice of B-movie ham, barely coherent and absolutely unhinged. Somehow the producers lured the stars of the original back for this “more, but dumber” sequel and half the fun is watching Michael Madsen and Marg Helgenberger give each other out-of-character “WTF???” side-eye.   – Richard Whittaker

You’ve Got Mail

Tuesday 10, Alamo South Lamar

Past Lives director Celine Song is bringing romance back to theatres this summer with her eagerly awaited second film, Materialists. As part of the Alamo’s Guest Selects series, she’ll be warming your heart with this screening of Nora Ephron’s remake of the 1940 rom-com classic The Shop Around the Corner. Updated in 1998 with some now very outdated references (AOL, anyone?), it still shines with the charm of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, reunited after Joe Versus the Volcano and Sleepless in Seattle as rival bookstore owners who find love in spite of themselves.   – Richard Whittaker

Just for Teens: Captive Creatures

Tuesday 10, Terrazas Branch Library

What’s up teens? It’s me, your friendly neighborhood alt-weekly writer, telling you that there’s more fun to be had outside your phone than inside. After all, being addicted to social media is kinda cringe. And what’s not cringe, you ask? The real skibidi rizz is in arts & crafts. Yeah, that’s right: You wanna be cool? You gotta go make cute clay creatures at your local library! They even provide you with the clay and a glass bottle terrarium home for your creation. Who knows? Creating instead of consuming might just be your new favorite way to earn aura points.   – James Scott

The Night of the Hunter

Tuesday 10, Paramount Theatre

At some point close to the end of this picture, Robert Mitchum utters a scream so piercingly animalistic it’ll turn your blood cold. That’s the chilling power of Charles Laughton’s only directorial effort: a no-frills tale of love, hate, and the true soul-deep evil man is capable of when money is his only god. Paramount screens the classic in black & white for its 70th anniversary, though I can assure any doubters that time has not made this tale any less relevant.   – James Scott

Blue

Tuesday 10, Hyperreal Film Club

Derek Jarman died in 1994 at age 52 from AIDS-related complications. Jarman was a pioneer of queer cinema, with Blue being his final work. A split movie, Blue is half a heart-wrenching autobiography which shows the impacts of the AIDS crisis, and half a story about the character of Blue, the color. According to the director, the title came from the blue shades Jarman experienced while going partially blind.   – Blake Leschber

Waitress

Through July 13, ZACH Theatre

Ever been to a musical and got a little peckish before intermission? Well, Waitress has a solution: Onstage seats in this ZACH360 production get served real slices of pie during the show. For everyone else, there’s still the heart-touching drama of this adaptation of the 2007 film of the same name, complete with the Tony- and Grammy-nominated score from Sara Bareilles. Leslie McDonel, who recently scored an Austin Theatre Critics Award nomination for breathing life into the story of Carole King in Zach’s 2024 production of Beautiful, steps into the role of Jenna, a waitress and baker in a town that may be too small for her big dreams.   – Richard Whittaker

Past Lives

Wednesday 11, Hyperreal Film Club

Is there anything more romantic than feeling truly seen by someone? Two someones, in the case of East Village playwright Nora Moon (Greta Lee, exquisite). In another life, back when she was still Na Young and lived in Korea with her family, there was her childhood sweetheart Hae Sung (Teo Yoo). Now in her 30s, there is husband Arthur (John Magaro), another writer. Celine Song’s Oscar-nominated debut film skims 20 years in their lives, surveying different legs of the triangle. It’s fireworks-free – Past Lives is so measured, so hushed – but not without drama. It’s simply, perfectly human-scaled.   – Kimberley Jones

Adaptations Book Club: Orlando/Freak Orlando

Wednesday 11, We Luv Video

Why talk about one tale of gender fuckery when you could talk about two? We Luv’s literati settle in this hump day to chat Virginia Woolf’s original transition novel Orlando, where a young aristocrat travels through time and gender to fully discover themselves. Their screen companion comes from German filmmaker and proud lesbian Ulrike Ottinger, whose experimental five-episode film follows no linear structure but rather a series of vignettes all featuring that titular time-traveling bisexual.   – James Scott

Rear Window

Wednesday 11, Friday 13 - Sunday 15, AFS Cinema

Look, Vertigo and Rear Window are two queens who shouldn’t be pitted against each other, but if I’m forced to choose a movie to watch where Jimmy Stewart ignores the advances of a beautiful woman who wants nothing more than to wed his disagreeable ass – well, let’s just say I’m looking out the dang window! A classic of the voyeurism-gone-wild genre that Alfred Hitchcock practically created, this thriller sits Stewart in a wheelchair with only his long-lens camera, through which he witnesses a murder in the apartment across the street. Its tale of madness brewed in isolation might truly ring clearer today than it did in its initial run.   – James Scott

Rom-Com Night With Katherine Center, Jared & Gen Padalecki

Wednesday 11, Paramount Theatre

Ask a modern romance novel fan their top five current authors, and odds are good Katherine Center is somewhere in that list. Her latest tome, The Love Haters, has video producer Katie begrudgingly working on the profile of a ridiculously good-looking Coast Guard rescue swimmer. The twist? Her boss is the swimmer’s brother. Who better to moderate a panel about the book than one half of TV’s hottest brother duo, Supernatural’s Jared Padalecki? He’s joined by wife Gen in conversation with Center, before a screening of the ultimate friends-to-lovers film: When Harry Met Sally...   – Cat McCarrey

Craft at the Umlauf: Paper Filigree With Michael Velliquette

Thursday 12, Umlauf

Michael Velliquette’s intricate paper reliefs and sculptures manage to feel futuristic and deeply historical, the perfect mix of anthropological symbology with mechanical visuals. The delicate details seem far too complex to be merely paper, but that’s part of the beauty of Velliquette’s work. Celebrate the opening of his exhibit at the Umlauf with a lesson from the paper art master himself. Velliquette will guide participants through the process of paper manipulation, leaving them to take home a creative mandala of their very own. Get those creative juices flowing, fueled by craft cocktails, mocktails, and exploration through layers of paper filigree.   – Cat McCarrey

Killer of Sheep

Thursday 12, Saturday 14 & Monday 16, AFS Cinema

With the recent release of his missing romance, The Annihilation of Fish, and two films in pre-production, veteran filmmaker Charles Burnett is undergoing something of a revival. A major element of that newfound popularity is the recent restoration by Criterion of his debut, 1978’s Killer of Sheep. Restored, and finally with the tangle of music rights cleared, catch this masterpiece of 1970s Black cinema as it brings Italian Neorealist techniques to the streets of Burnett’s adopted home of Watts.   – Richard Whittaker