AUSTIN

Rock On
The tenth-anniversary screening of School Of Rock, starring Jack Black as the head-banging substitute teacher Dewey Finn, is another high point in a banner year for the Austin filmmaker Richard Linklater.

In March, Linklater  celebrated the two-hundreth anniversary of his cult stoner film Dazed and Confused. In June, he released Before Midnight, the last  in a trilogy that mined the evolving relationship between the characters played by Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke. And in July, the Austin Film Society, which Linklater founded in 1985 and continues to lead today, announced it had raised money to renovate the Marchesa Hall and Theater into what the organization likes to call the Best Little Art House in Texas.

Attending the School of Rock screening and a question-and-answer session with the cast is a great way to honor Linklater, who says he has progressed from “punk outsider,” and to celebrate the evolution of Austin into a renowned film town.

Like any good leader, Linklater redirects praise to his team. “While I would never watch one of my films again, just out of the blue for no reason, the reunion aspect is kind of fun in that my special relation with these films is usually the casts,” Linklater said. That is reason to upgrade to a V.I.P. ticket, which includes the after-party, where Black and the student band will perform.
Paramount Theater, August 29, 7 p.m., austinfilm.org

HOUSTON

Colors and Lines
Rob Reasoner has studied piano and theory for twelve years and still doesn’t consider himself a musician. But Reasoner, a Houston artist and 2008 Hunting Prize finalist, applies his music lessons to his paintings. In his new “Chromaticism” exhibition, which runs through Saturday, the pieces play off the chromatic scale and  are influenced by Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony and Wagner’s “Ring Cycle,” he said.

The thin horizontal or vertical lines of dozens of colors neatly stacked next to one another on the canvas are a visualized representation of musical composition. For example, “Untitled, 2.013” is twelve feet long and has four parts consisting of 63 lines, with 59 colors, each repeating one time in each quadrant, similar to movements in a symphony. So what may look simply like stimulating interplay between colors to some viewers could also be a song playing out in the minds of the most attuned.
McClain Gallery, August 23-24, mcclaingallery.com

WACO

Party Starters
Sometimes when your food arrives at your favorite Mexican restaurant, you’re already full on chips and salsa, and perhaps even a margarita or two. That should not be a problem at the eighteenth annual Margarita and Salsa Festival, where those starters are the main event.

Restaurants and individual contestants will vie for the top honors to see which salsa reigns supreme, which margarita is the most magnificent, and which queso is the creamiest, in both a traditional judged competition and a People’s Choice award.

All of this will be fuel for visitors to get down to the sounds of Texas country musicians including Kevin Fowler, whose song “Borderline Crazy” includes this relevant lyric: “Got these blue-collar blues and I can’t sleep/Been counting margaritas instead of sheep.”
Extraco Events Center, August 24, 6 p.m., extracoeventscenter.com

DALLAS

Be All That You Can Be
Empowerment comes in all forms at MegaFest, the Dallas minister T. .D. Jakes’s four-in-one religious conference catering to men (ManPower), women (Woman Thou Art Loosed), young people (Mega-Youth), and children (MegaKidz).

Jakes will open the weekend with a keynote conversation with Oprah Winfrey on the topic of family. “She and I are going to tackle a problem that is eating the underbelly of so many communities, and that is fatherlessness,” Jakes told the Christian Post.

While the adult programs are mostly segregated by sex, the Houston pastors Joel and Victoria Osteen’s  joint session will no doubt underscore the power of matrimonial teamwork.
American Airlines Center and Dallas Convention Center, August 29-31, mega-fest.com

AUSTIN

Sketch Artist
The comeback of Dave Chappelle—the slacker comedian who in 2005, at the height of his fame, abruptly left his Comedy Central series, Chappelle’s Show, and went to Africa—is expected at the Oddball Comedy & Curiosity Festival, a fifteen-city Lollapalooza-style laugh-in that kicks off in Austin before hitting Houston and Dallas.
Austin 360 Amphitheater, August 23, 5 p.m., oddballfest.com

LUBBOCK

The Maines Attraction
The Maines family embodies Texas music—starting with Wayne Maines, who played guitar with a young Buddy Holly; to Lloyd Maines, the producer; to Natalie Maines, the Dixie Chicks singer—and when the Maines Brothers Band plays, four members of the clan will be onstage at once.
Lubbock Memorial Civic Center Theater, August 24, 7 p.m., mylubbock.us