Seriously French
When I hear that an eating establishment is one of only four Relais Gourmand organization restaurants in North America, and that the seriously gourmet menu is in French, I expect to find a dining room that’s terribly formal and just a bit off-putting. Perhaps there’ll be a sneering maitre d’…
Star Turn
Hollywood routinely creates movies whose sole reason for existence is to provide a beloved celebrity a scenery-chewing star turn; occasionally, these films even win their lead performer an Oscar (recent example: Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman). But The Evening Star may be the first movie whose chief aim…
The Lady Vanishes
When an incredulous Jane Campion fan asked what I hated about her version of Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady, I immediately responded, “Everything.” Actually, I thought Barbara Hershey, as the subtle villainess, Madame Merle, made a good first impression: I laughed appreciatively when the heroine, Isabel Archer (Nicole…
Dumb and Dinky
In a time when programming choices at non-commercial galleries are often made by committee or viewed mainly as grant-getting opportunities, a strong personal vision can be difficult to find. What’s more, organizations such as the Contemporary Arts Museum and DiverseWorks have high stakes riding on each exhibit they do –…
Alison Cook looks back at 1996: Year of the Rat
According to the Chinese lunar calendar, it was 4694 — the Year of the Rat. Our own fair city’s rodents celebrated with inventively rattish behavior as we slouched toward the millennium: Between Thelma and Louise, Warren and Felicia, Bud and Drayton, Wayne and Sylvester, Betti ‘n’ Benny, there was entertainment…
Blowing Smoke
Item 54 on the City Council’s agenda was enacted into law last week the way councilmembers routinely take care of most business before them — with no public discussion and a unanimous vote. “I think this particular ordinance will give the community the protection it seeks right away,” proclaimed Councilman…
Unembraceable You
The news that there would be no money came early last week, a few hours after Audrey Gassama arrived in New York City to observe how the AIDS community up there takes care of its own. She had barely unpacked her bag when a phone call from Houston reminded her…
The Insider
The Gold-Plated Mouthpiece Here’s more proof that HISD Superintendent Rod Paige is hell-bent on proving the school district’s critics right. After voters rejected a $300 million bond issue for school construction and repairs last spring, Paige convened a powwow of HISD trustees and administrators and downtown business types who apparently…
Letters
Next Week They’ll Make Fun of Habitual Letter Writers Let’s see: You have one movie critic who makes fun of Sly Stallone’s speech impediment [“Tunnel Vision,” by Robert Abele, December 12] and another who defines wit as urinating on stroke victims [“Fighting Words,” by Andy Klein, December 12]. Well, they’re…
Press Picks
thursday december 26 Family Fun at the MFA At this familycentric event, you can not only see art, you can hear art, you can make art, heck, you can be art. In the same environs as Albert Einstein’s scratchings (“Masterpieces from the Pierpont Morgan Library”), 6,000-year-old antiquities (“Splendors of Ancient…
Dish
Talking Turkey (Sort Of) Take a chicken. Bone it. Stuff it with cornbread stuffing. Slather it with Cajun sausage, or maybe crawfish etouffee. Take a duck. Bone it. Stuff it with the chicken. Slather the duck with the sausage or the etouffee. Take a turkey. Bone it. Cram the duck…
Static
Reflections ’96… Of all the trends and tragedies that spun modern music into its cockeyed spiral in 1996, Houston can’t really claim direct involvement in any of them. Last year, we were the last stop on the party train for the late Shannon Hoon (bad drugs, now there’s something to…
Still Blue
In a pop world where female musicians are designed, micromanaged and as carefully positioned in the marketplace as a new brand of air freshener, how wonderfully earthy and real is the art of Joni Mitchell. It’s jolting to put on Mitchell’s new pair of collections, Hits and Misses, and be…
Sound Check
Imagine for a moment what it would be like if the record industry’s billion-dollar promotion budget was allocated on a musical, rather than a commercial, merit system. Jon Bon Jovi (a name that would cause people to scratch their heads and ask, “Who?”) might be playing for the door at…
Heavy, Man
Back before there were long-form videos and CD-ROMs for overweening artiste types to wallow in, musicians used the concept album to overextend their half-baked ideas. Not content with letting a single song do its job, groups charged an entire collection of tunes with the mission of delivering a single dunderheaded…
Phenomena
The Politically Undead Boy, what a little un-redistricting can dig up! Suddenly, the landscape was crawling with zombie-like forms we thought we’d laid to rest — Gene Fontenot, los Hotzes, Beverley Clark, Dolly McKenna. Even that not-so-grande dame of the Democratic Party, the gender-bending ex-con Leslie Perez, caught the spirit…