Good Trouble
Director John Frankenheimer has been putting bad guys on the street since Luca Brazzi slept with a teddy bear, and he shows no sign of letting up at age 70. In Reindeer Games, a relentless (and relentlessly witty) crime thriller set in the frozen wastes of northern Michigan, a sleazy…
Dish
Industry watchers are speculating as to the real reasons why Glenn Cordóa has left the restaurant business, selling the one and only Churrascos he owned, the Clear Lake location [1320 West Bay Area Boulevard, (281)461-4100]. He and his brother, Michael Cordóa, have offered several plausible explanations: It was a need…
Awakening Giant
José Perez envisions his debts every time he hoists a 75-pound roll of fiberglass, wraps it like a giant taco around a flexible polyester tube and feeds the materials into a machine that converts them into heating and air-conditioning ducts. For the last 15 years Perez has been making hundreds…
Hot Plate
Sweet Hereafter: With its Rat Pack tunes and Little Italy ambience, Auntie Pasto’s [5101 Bellaire Boulevard, (713)669-8658] would seem a throwback to thick red sauces and even thicker accents, if not for its Southwestern spin on traditional pasta dishes or its luscious dessert, appropriately named To Die For. Constructed like…
Kicking A
In 1993, if you were young and cool, you hung out at Catal Hüyük a punk-rock club on the northeastern edge of downtown. That’s where you’d find Jason Nodler and Tamarie Cooper; she tended bar, and Nodler drank beer — if he wasn’t judging some poetry slam in the front…
Real Life
The ordained afternoon had weighed heavily on their minds, and finally it arrived. More than 70 girls, freshmen and sophomores at brand-spanking-new Cinco Ranch High School, arrived fresh-faced and nervous to try out for drill team. The girls, most of whom were enrolled in a PE class specifically dedicated to…
Boots and Hoots
A dipping roof, weathered plywood and clouded windowpanes make the small building at Ella and West 34th seem almost abandoned, like a ghost-town saloon right out of a low-budget western. That corner of Oak Forest is at least a world away from the global centers of power and prestige, places…
The Insider
What could be more innocuous than a prayer luncheon in downtown Houston? One billed as a nonpartisan gathering of ministers and politicos with Texas Senator Phil Gramm as keynoter? When the organizer is Dr. Steven Hotze, the westside religious conservative who recently targeted two incumbent GOP female jurists for defeat,…
The Once and Future King
Throughout history, kings have come to power through a variety of means, from parliamentary decree and birthright to assassination and political upheaval. But when it comes to the ruling heads of Mardi Gras, it’s a somewhat sweeter path to the throne. Take the case of Don McClure, a semiretired Houston…
Cinema of Insiders
Labels are misleading. This is as true in the world of film as it is in the grocery store. “Avant-garde cinema,” for instance, is used to describe a now-classic — and not very experimental — 60-plus-year-old movement. And “independent cinema” is supposed to refer to films that are made by,…
Step Up to the Plate
The intriguing Habanero Blue rests in a gritty part of downtown, just north of the Astros’ new ballpark, where blue-collar sweat still hangs in the air. The owners have set up shop on a rough block of warehouses, some abandoned and some sparsely colonized by artists. The street is rutted…
Siren Songs
Lords of Acid is into whips. And chains. And leather. And European hotties who whisper naughty come-hithers in English. And sex with multiple ambiguously oriented partners while feeling the effects of various illegal substances or using a marital aid or two. Ya know, the usual. Yet without sex or lyrics…
Big Beat
As is the case with many innovators, Genaside II is popular but unknown. In its more than ten years together, the British band has been credited with both helping invent jungle and, under the pseudonym G-Double E, launching big beat, which is essentially rock tempos with electronic hooks. Most have…
Amplified
Walking out of the 528 Club, Heath Spencer Philip knew he’d never sing there again. Before he and his backup band, comprising some of Guy Schwartz’s New Jack Hippies, had arrived at the club on this November night, expectations were high. Philip, a young, tremendous blues singer with a voice…
Playbill
With his custom-built Ovation, a swamp ash body fitted with Keith banjo pegs, Adrian Legg is an acoustic fingerpicking wiz. Named “Guitarist of the Decade” by Britain’s Guitarist Magazine and “Best Acoustic Guitarist” four years in a row by Guitar Player’s readers, Legg is the guy about whom stylist extraordinaire…
V&E Gets a Dressing-down
Good-bye, suit and tie. After 83 years of being a poster boy for fashion conservatism, the Houston-based legal giant of Vinson & Elkins will be packing away the pinstripes. Late last week the old-line law firm shed its stodgy, formal dress code in exchange for a more casual approach. V&E…
Women Behaving Badly
There’s something so utterly ’70s about Jane Chambers’s Eye of the Gull. Maybe it’s all the bed-hopping that goes on between characters; or maybe it’s just the brown braided rug and shaggy Afghan in the middle of the set. Whatever it is, this script about a series of lesbian couples…
News Hostage
Viewers of KPRC may fondly remember Rob Johnson, the former anchor who made a name for himself here through such death-defying news pieces as How to Escape from a Submerged Car and How to Fend Off a Dog Attack. (Hey, we didn’t say he made a good name for himself.)…
News of the Weird
Lead StoriesIn January government troops in Ratchaburi, Thailand, quashed a hospital takeover by members of the Burmese rebel gang “God’s Army,” largely ending the three-year victory run by the 200-strong Baptist fundamentalist insurgents headed by charismatic twins Johnny and Luther Htoo, now believed to be age 12. The Htoos inspired…
Writer’s Blah
Wonder Boys. Directed by
Curtis Hanson. With Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Frances McDormand and Robert Downey Jr. Rated R.
Letters
Momma Knows Best, er, Goode I have been Mrs. Jim Goode for the last 20 years [“The Goode Son,” by Lisa Gray, January 6]. I have loved and supported my husband, tried to help raise Levi and Jana, and been instrumental in the growth and operation of the Goode Company…