Subject: Pearl Harbor

• The Houston Aeros, Penalty Killers

  October 29, 2007

• The Top Five Ballsiest Actors From Texas

  August 27, 2008

• Bora! Bora! Bora!

  Pearl Harbor's sound and fury signify nothing

  May 24, 2001

• No Moor

  Tim Blake Nelson's ill-conceived O reimages Othello as a basketball star

  August 30, 2001

• Hell and Back

  Scott's Black Hawk Down pays grim, gritty homage to real-life warriors

  January 17, 2002

• World of Film

  April 11, 1996

• Say Hello to EaDo

  We once described the area immediately to the east of the George R. Brown Convention Center as a "silent, godforsaken stretch of no-man's-land" that is neither the Warehouse District, nor the Third Ward, nor the East End. We employed that bulky definition because by 2000, its 1980s and '90s name - Chinatown - was no longer apt. Area boosters agree, and now the area has a new name and flashy Web site. Those of you who have been witness to the genius on display in the re-branding of Houston ne

  February 3, 2009

• The Nickel: A Musical History of the Fifth Ward, Part 1

  Back in its heyday, the corner of Jensen Drive and Lyons Avenue was known as "Pearl Harbor, the Times Square of the Bloody Fifth." You wouldn't know it today - the entire area is a vast wasteland of tired and abandoned lots and boarded-up shacks, but for much of the 20th Century this area was the nexus of one of America's most musical neighborhoods. It was Harlem in Heavenly Houston: Club Matinee - "the Cotton Club of the South" - was right around the corner, and right down the street from

  February 17, 2009

• Hankies Aweigh

  June 25, 1998

• Letters

  March 4, 1999

• Twinkies, Racial Profiling and EaDo

  It was a long time ago

  February 12, 2009

• Gate of Heaven is a Gift for All

  For Any Season

  December 18, 2008

• Send In the Clones

  Michael Bay's up to his old tricks -- now older than ever

  July 21, 2005

• Bland Ambition

  Motion to dismiss: Legally Blonde doesn't even have a case

  July 12, 2001

• Houston Has a Bad Reputation with Touring Indie Bands

  July 10, 2008

• War Is Hell

  But it's funny, too, in Barrymore

  January 19, 2006

• Origin of Innocence

  The New World boldly reclaims the Pocahontas tale from Disney

  January 19, 2006

• Get Inside. It's Summertime!

  Your guide to the season's hottest films (and the other ones, too)

  June 14, 2007

• Unknown Soldiers

  The Great Raid's compelling story never comes to life

  August 11, 2005

• Talking Turkey

  Time again to honor the best in Houston

  November 25, 2004

• Cage Death Match

  National Treasure makes one long for good Nic Cage movies -- like Con Air

  November 18, 2004

• USA-holes

  Team America takes no prisoners and spares no swear words

  October 14, 2004

• Cold Play

  Catch some future Stars at the Houston Aeros game

  October 14, 2004

• This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

  October 14, 2004

• Brothers in Arms

  Two Koreans go to war in the masterful epic Tae Guk Gi

  September 23, 2004

• Big Fat Greek Bloodletting

  Brad's ripped and The Iliad's shredded in the scintillating spectacle Troy

  May 13, 2004

• Crash Course

  A stuntman is mightily impressed by Houston's rail crashes

  January 1, 2004

• You Better Watch Out

  These Saint Nicks can be real pricks

  December 18, 2003

• My Life in Oils

  David McGee gives good autobiography at DiverseWorks

  December 4, 2003

• Best Weekend Getaway

  Hangar Hotel

  September 25, 2003

• This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

  September 11, 2003

• War on War Songs

  Iraq and roll don't go together well when rockers protest

  March 27, 2003

• Best Movie Shot on Location

  Going Independent

  September 26, 2002

• Small Wonder

  The Hyde Park Miniature Museum has been dredged out of mothballs, but will it find a permanent home before time runs out?

  May 16, 2002

• Revolting

  Meet The New Guy, same as the old guy

  May 9, 2002

• Solid Soldiers

  Vietnam's first battle delivers a real dread of war so lacking in Black Hawk Down

  February 28, 2002

• Devil's Advocate

  Audiences love Jerry Bruckheimer. Critics don't. Like he cares.

  January 17, 2002

• War on War Books

  Donald Miller has (re)written one of the best books on World War II, but will anyone care?

  November 22, 2001

• Arabian Knight

  Jack Shaheen crusades against cinema's depiction of Reel Bad Arabs

  October 11, 2001

• Law & Disorder

  As one of TV's best and best-loved series launches a new spin-off, its creator grapples with the aftershocks of terror

  September 27, 2001

• Way Out There

  A new TV news operation is coming to Houston. More or less.

  August 9, 2001

• Letters

  Art Car Bawl, A Vanishing Past, Oinked Out

  June 7, 2001

• Skip It

  Why the best teen movie of the year, based on a beloved novel, won't be in theaters

  May 31, 2001

• In Cold Blood

  Novelist James Ellroy reshapes America's ugly history in his own image

  May 17, 2001

• Plugged In

  Like little Energizer bunnies, electric-car proponents keep going and going and going

  January 4, 2001

• For Memorial Day, Part 2: One Vet's Journey Back To Pearl Harbor

  The Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor, and Nicolas Maershbecker's ship was stuck. Maershbecker was an engineer on the USS Perry, a high-speed minesweeper, and responsible for starting the boilers in the engine room. He couldn't, though, because the ship's smokestacks were still blocked by their canvas covers. "I could not comprehend what was happening at first," Maershbecker said in a 1959 article in the Galveston Daily News. "Then I saw the Japanese insignia on the wings of the p

  May 22, 2009

• Don't Start The Long Weekend Too Early

  Yeah, we know tomorrow is the Friday before a three-day weekend. You'll hardly have finished your granola bar and first coffee before you begin making plans on an early cubicle exit. If you make it until noon without coming up with some decent excuse for "needing to work outside the office," you're either a stronger or less imaginative person than most. But don't completely ditch the routine. Hair Balls will begin marking the Memorial Day weekend with such things as the five best war-movie

  May 21, 2009

• For the Fourth Of July: Worst Cinematic Attempts At Patriotism

  This weekend, as we come together to celebrate Independence Day, let's do our best to remember what this holiday is all about. It's more than merely dodging DWI checkpoints on your way home from backyard barbecues and trying to decide between the Jon & Kate 8 or Deadliest Catch marathons on TV; it's also about embarrassingly overwrought displays of jingoism. Here are but a few cinematic examples.5. Rocky IV (1985) The Cold War saw many proxy battlefields: Jadotville, Congo; the Bay of Pig

  July 2, 2009

• The Week in TV: "I'll Have...A Birthday Cake!"

  ​It was a pretty fun week in TV Land: Most of the fall programs are beginning to settle in, the CW continued its inexplicable existence, and David Letterman hit it with some employees. Insert your Worldwide Pants jokes here, and let's get to it! • I won't go into much here about FlashForward, since I've started blogging it all official-like for the HP. But this show has the potential to be the most epic cheeseball sci-fi show on the air right now. Like when one guy said to another of t

  October 5, 2009

• Houston 101: Sig Byrd, Houston's King of True-Life Noir

  ​Of all the columnists in the history of Houston journalism, Sigman Byrd was easily the darkest and the most literary. From the late 1940s to the early '60s, Byrd wrote a column called The Stroller for the old daily Houston Press and later, briefly for the Chronicle. He always much favored the city's dark shadows, scruffy neighborhoods, and forgotten, often wrecked people over the big affairs of the day and Houston's high and mighty.As David Theis put it in his 1994 remembrance : Byrd ranged

  November 20, 2009