Bastille Day Dance
Monday 14, Hancock Recreation Center Ballroom
A frequent editorial-meeting note from former Chron publisher, current Chron president Nick Barbaro is “So. What are we doing for Bastille Day?” While there’s not quite the outcrop of French revolution celebrations around town as there’s been in the past – although if you’ve got one, send the deets to jscott@austinchronicle.com – friendly neighborhood waltzers Austin English Country Dancers are throwing a franco-themed dance in honor of the occasion. Cover’s only $5 with a tip encouraged for the live band, and the organizers ask specifically that you wear no fragrances. – James Scott
Comic Book Creations Workshop/Taller de creación de cómics
Monday 14, Austin Creative Reuse
A collaborative effort from Latinx art nonprofit LUPE Arte and local secondhand craft supply ACR, this workshop runs through July with four days of classes for interested artists from 10-14 years old. Over the four-day class, tweens and teens will learn the basics of creating their own comic books with bilingual Spanish/English instruction. Could be a perfect summer project for all y’all kids to bring back and show your schoolmates after the break! – James Scott
Summer Wars
Monday 14, We Luv Video
When you’re right, you’re right, and director Mamoru Hosoda was right when he warned about the corrosive effect of ubiquitous technology on family and friends with Summer Wars. We Luv Video’s Animondays series continues with this winner of the 2010 Nippon Academy-sho Association award for best animated feature, a sweet yet action-packed story of a high school student who must balance his summer job as a sys admin in a massive virtual world (think a non-sucky Metaverse) with being invited to a friend’s family reunion and fighting off a rogue AI. Hilarious, touching, and timely: Watch it with someone you DM. – Richard Whittaker
High School Musical
Monday 14, Hyperreal Film Club
Wildcats, now’s your chance to be all in this together with the microcinema champs HFC. A true cultural time capsule, this hit Disney Channel original movie – or DCOM, as the nerds call ’em – solidifies into narrative art the swishy bowl cut all 2000s teen boys had, that lace spaghetti-strap undershirt that made every girl’s outfit school-appropriate, and heartthrobs of the collective millennial generation Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens. Will you bop bop bop to the top with a ticket, or will you fail to get your head in the game? – James Scott
Austin Cabaret Theatre FUNdraising Gala
Monday 14, Parker Jazz Club
Austin’s hottest club is Parker Jazz. On Monday, this place has everything: an anniversary, a birthday, Clint Holmes… Celebrate the 25th anniversary of Austin’s premier cabaret, and the 60th anniversary of founder/producer Stuart Moulton, with jazz vocalist (and The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers announcer) Holmes, taking a break from his decades-long tenure as a Vegas fixture to perform locally with Parker’s house band. This is a real-deal gala, so tiered tickets range from $99-$199, but it’s worth it to support the theatre, darling. – Carys Anderson
Barry Lyndon
Tuesday 15, Paramount Theatre
No more excuses: Barry Lyndon is not the stuffy snore film dilettantes have made it out to be. Despite being a period piece, Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon tells the timeless story of a f*ckboy. His failure upward charts over multiple eras, through loved children and scorned wives, through duels won and lost, and never once does dear Barry learn a god-damn thing – and ultimately lands back in the mud. While reality continues to torture us with oafs whose wealth protects them from consequence, this sly story reminds us that, for better or worse, everyone’s going out the same exit door. – James Scott
Play It as It Lays
Tuesday 15 & Saturday 19, AFS Cinema
Joan Didion’s classic tale of L.A. malaise gets a visual treatment in this 1972 adaptation. Starring Tuesday Weld as an existentially depressed former B-movie starlet, she now drifts through a string of empty interactions with strange Angelenos, as her absent director husband continues to chase fame and accolades. Her only friend is B.Z., a gay producer played by none other than Anthony Perkins of Psycho fame. Joan Didion and husband John Gregory Dunne co-wrote the screenplay, and it’s generally considered as faithful an adaptation as you can get, though die-hard book fans may never be satisfied. If your summer vibe is more LDR’s “Ride” than SC’s “Manchild,” this is the film for you. – Lina Fisher
Alligator
Tuesday 15, All Austin-area Alamo Drafthouses
Big jaws, green scales, and a ba-ad attitude: That’s what happens when you drop a baby Florida ’gator in the Chicago sewers. Another in the toothsome Texas Lottery-presented series Great Bites, which celebrates both king Bruce and the subsequent pretenders to his throne, this 1980 creature feature locks in Robert Forster as a cop looking to solve the case of the gator-shaped chomps being taken out of people all over the Windy City. Slosh through the sewage at any Austin-area Alamo to find a Jawsploitation gem. – James Scott
Dance Storytime With Pratham USA
Tuesday 15, BookPeople
Before there were books, stories were kept alive through oral storytelling, music, and dance. The classical Indian dance form Bharatanatyam has been practiced for two millennia and uses movement and rhythm to convey the emotions of the story being told. Kids can learn more about it at an interactive storytime with nonprofit Pratham USA, which is also putting on a readathon through August 9 with a goal to get kids reading to raise awareness and funds for the org’s mission to support education initiatives for kids in India. – Kat McNevins
Io Island
Wednesday 16, Alamo South Lamar
For those of you that think Korean cinema began with Bong Joon-ho, director Kim Ki-young’s 1977 bleak maritime thriller Iodo may help open the door to a new volume of cinematic history. Contemporary capitalism clashes with small island mythology in this stylized and chilling story of a hotel executive caught in an all-female fishing community that believes it is haunted by a water spirit that dwells on a cursed island and drags all the menfolk under the waters of the Yellow Sea. Restored by Severin Films as part of the second volume of former Alamo booker Kier-La Janisse’s epic All The Haunts Be Ours project, this mixture of Wild Strawberries, Ringu, and The Wicker Man glimpses folk horror through the lens of ecological collapse, rural isolation, and blue-collar desperation. – Richard Whittaker
DAC Nights: Summer’s Em-Bracelet
Wednesday 16, Dougherty Arts Center
The Eras Tour may be over, but the Tay-Tay-spearheaded resurgence of crafty bracelets continues. The beads will be supplied at this free event, but bring your creativity to thread into a necklace, keychain, or bracelet. Creative juices not flowing? They’ll have templates to ensure you leave with something worth wearing. It’ll be like you’re at summer camp but without all the outdoor nonsense. – James Renovitch
The Muppet Movie
Wednesday 16, Violet Crown Cinema
Before they were being bulldozed by Disney to make more Pixar theme park fodder, these felt fellas starred in their own theatrical films – dropped in actual theatres and created merely to make everyone aware that the Muppets rule. The debut feature has Kermit and co. taking a cross-country road trip to Hollywood in hopes of securing a big movie-star career. Along the way they meet obstacles, oddballs, and Steve Martin, who’s a little of both. Violet Crown screens the Henson magic this Wednesday, making for a great midweek pick-me-mup. James Scott
Family Discount
Wednesday 16, Fallout Theater
Before she flies off to better things in Berlin, comedian Ivy Le tapes her first-ever hour right on Lavaca. The special covers her relationship to the American Dream as the child of Vietnamese refugees, which is as complicated as her upcoming exit from the country implies. Le asks for “all the best, loudest, can’t-stay-in-your-seat laughers at this one” and promises a memorable set-piece involving a Brazilian wax, Le, and her aunt’s nail salon. Can’t miss that! – James Scott
Snakes
Wednesday 16, Alamo South Lamar
Legend has it that the Alamo Drafthouse’s long-running Weird Wednesday series was named after one of the more bizarre plot points of this 1976 hicksploitation classic. The legend is not true, but boy would it make sense. Snakes aka Fangs aka Holy Wednesdays is as sleazy and skeezy as they come, and unhinged as a python’s jaw. Venomous killers hunt in a town where everyone – and we mean everyone – is a massive pervert, and death comes to the sound of a John Philip Sousa march. As loony old lizard wrangler Snakey (the inimitable Les Tremayne) warns, “You better pray to God that nothing happens to my Wednesdays!” – Richard Whittaker
Plant Pop-Up and Q&A With Tillery Street Plant Co. & East Austin Succulents
Thursday 17, Austin Beerworks
Are you ready to let some new greenery into your life, but are a bit trepidatious to start out? Come out to this open house of sorts for plant parents who want to view a curated selection of tropicals and succulents and get questions answered on the spot. Eastside experts Tillery Street Plant Co. and East Austin Succulents will bring some of their most fabulous photosynthesizers to peruse, along with local art. ABW offers world-class brews, including some limited releases, at its expansive taproom. – Kat McNevins
Future Front Y’all Dinner
Thursday 17 – Saturday 19, Future Front House
Award-winning arts and culture nonprofit Future Front fetes four years with fabulous food and fundraising, helmed by all-star chef Deepa Shridhar. A South Indian-Texan menu combines inspirations from Shridhar and Future Front Director Jane Hervey, with offerings ranging from crab sukka-stuffed Gulf shrimp to smoked pistachio podi short rib to icebox Texas fig and peach cake. Along with the marvelous meal, get a tour of the FF House, mix and mingle, and raise some dollars to help offset the org’s recent NEA grant loss. – Kat McNevins
Want to see all of our listings broken down by day? Go to austinchronicle.com/calendar and see what’s happening now or in the coming week.
This article appears in July 11 • 2025.
