Everyday Ravishments
From its very first frame, Neil Jordan’s The Butcher Boy whooshes us inside the rollicking, deranged world of 12-year-old Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens). Francie is a redheaded roustabout who lives with his alcoholic “Da” (Stephen Rea) and screw-loose mother (Aisling O’Sullivan) in a small town in northern Ireland in the…
Colonialism and Its Discontents
Chinese Box arrives with one of the weirdest hybrid pedigrees in living memory. The writing credits include — in addition to the film’s director, Wayne Wang — Jean-Claude Carriere, who worked on most of the best films of Luis Bunuel’s late period (Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Phantom of Liberty,…
Fouling Out
In the production notes for Spike Lee’s new movie, He Got Game, the filmmaker is quoted as saying, “I don’t think I’ve ever done a film that is just about one thing….” That’s true; usually he’s able to cram in two or three things. In his new He Got Game,…
Ill Treatment
When Moises Garcia got his first doses of radiation late in 1995, he felt immediate relief from the wrenching pain in his shoulder. Diagnosed with prostate cancer two years earlier, Garcia had endured surgery and chemotherapy, but the cancer had already taken hold and spread. Eventually the pain, which throbbed…
The Mean Spirit of Texas?
Angular, bespectacled feature reporter Norm Uhl, 44, familiar to Houston viewers for his “Norm at Work” video columns profiling folks with unusual vocations, picked up the first hints he might be looking for a new job himself late last fall. KHOU Channel 11 station manager Peter Diaz began dropping hints…
Shtick Figure
In Barbara Kopple’s new documentary, Wild Man Blues, we follow Woody Allen around Europe on a whirlwind concert tour with his New Orleans jazz band. He’s kvetching from the get-go. “I would rather be bitten by a dog than fly to Paris,” he announces midair, then mellows on the Champs-Elysees…
Letters
Wall Street Radio Congratulations. Mr. Rowland got it [“Played Out,” April 23]. Good story. Reasonable length. Since deregulation, the radio industry genuflects to the Wall Street totem, St. Profits-At-Any-Price. I suggest radio’s tithe will be the loss of its once impregnable difference … a distinctively local voice. Americans are happy…
Three from Texas
Texas has long held a special place in the movies, serving as a backdrop for everything from B-movie westerns to cinematic events as varied as The Alamo, Giant, The Last Picture Show, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Terms of Endearment and Tender Mercies. This week marks the opening of two new…
The President’s Analyst
In these placid times filled with pseudo-scandals, the political era of Lyndon Johnson seems like another world: thousands of kids dying each year in a divisive war; race riots exploding in Watts, Newark, Detroit and Washington, D.C.; the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King; the avalanche of federal…
Status Report
KTRK investigative reporter Wayne Dolcefino’s status with Channel 13 was in question at press time after a story he prepared as part of an investigative series on the City Parks and Recreation Department was spiked last Friday by management. The report, according to a Channel 13 employee, dealt with Houston…
Another Roadside Attraction
There once was a vendor at the State Fair of Texas named Bob’s Big Pencil. It was in a pavilion sandwiched between Miracle Mop and a guy giving Flobee demos. The product was this really big pencil. That’s it. A really big pencil, about four or five feet long, with…
Frontier Fiesta
Every April, the University of Houston hosts a large western party lasting four days, known as Frontier Fiesta. “Old West” buildings, like an old Bonanza movie set, are erected across the street from the university’s entrance one at Calhoun. Every April, UH sorority and fraternity members haul the “buildings” –…
Bad-News Bistro
Is it just me, or do some waiters take the cake? Along with a male colleague, I had lunch at Bistro 224 recently and, a day later, lunched there again — this time with a woman friend. The waiter looked reproving. “I see,” he said, arching an eyebrow. “You play…
Insider
The Rodney and Lenoria Show Affirmative action director Lenoria Walker’s sarcastic comments about midgets, women and Hispanics during a recent meeting of the National Conference of Black Mayors in New Orleans provoked a City Council tempest last week. The $76,000-a-year department head’s verbal indiscretions earned her a hand slap from…
Static
Release activity… “People who’ve known us for years have associated us with salsa and merengue, [and] we wanted to be able to expand our market beyond this city” says Walter Suhr, referring to Pop/Rock, his new CD with Mango Punch!. “We wanted people to know that we’re taking an entirely…
A Cocktail of Two Cities
Dave Hickey loves Houston, and Houstonians in the know love him back. He’s a cult figure here, and his (loving) take on living in our city-state is that “you’ve got to be a Marxist and you’ve got to drive a Lexus.” The Fort Worth native, 58, lives contentedly in a…
Clubland
Assuming the risk and hoping others will follow, the Outback Pub has instituted a weekly original music policy in an effort to liven up the dreary, human-jukebox ritual along the almighty Richmond Strip. For the time being, Thursdays will be set aside to showcase Texas talent in an assortment of…
Night & Day
Thursday April 30 The late Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev is best known for his children’s suite Peter and the Wolf — and that’s the part of the program being plugged most heavily for the Houston Symphony’s outdoor-season premiere. But Prokofiev’s finest hour was his swelling Symphony no. 1, op. 25…
Dream So Real
No doubt about it, Todd Snider is — to quote the title of one of his tunes — an “All Right Guy.” As a friend of mine once observed, “He’s a stoner goof-bag, but a really cool one.” In other words, he’s that air guitarist in the audience whose fantasies…
Dish
Shepherd Plaza Scuttlebutt Trammell Crow property managers are grinning ear to ear at the prospect of filling a couple of cavities in the Shepherd Plaza center near the intersection of Shepherd and Richmond. An ambitious theme park/club/restaurant is slated to open May 1 in the space abandoned by 8.0. Called…
Bad Religion
Granted, his congregation may be more prone to sin than salvation. But when Reverend Horton Heat is preaching at the hollow-bodied pulpit, the faithful are guaranteed one hell of a service. These days, Heat and his Texas-bred trio are spreading the good word about their new CD, Space Heater. While…
Rotation
Tori Amos From the Choirgirl Hotel Atlantic There’s no give or take with Tori Amos. Sure, you can tolerate her — like one tolerates the poetry of Sylvia Plath or the music of Enya or the pain of a hot poker in the eye. You either feel Amos’s pain, or…
No Looking Back
For much of 1996 and ’97, Green Day — the band that drop-kicked punk rock into the post-grunge mainstream — was conspicuously out of the public eye. It was quite a switch from two years prior, when the California trio seemed to be everywhere you looked. Back then, Green Day’s…
No Laughing Matter
Theater LaB Houston is located at the end of Alamo Street, just off Houston Avenue close to downtown, on the edge of a mostly Hispanic neighborhood. At 7:30 on a Friday evening, in the middle of April, when most of the theatergoers are driving into the well-secured parking lot (a…
Hot Plate
I don’t know what you do when you’re depressed. Me? I head for Goode Company Bar-B-Que (5109 Kirby Drive, 522-2530). Have you noticed how happy everyone is in that place? I tell you: Barbecue is the best blues buster around. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it produces endorphins or something…
Hit-and-Mis
Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel Les Miserables, which he began in 1845, runs in most editions to around 1,500 pages. The latest film version — there have been five other adaptations for movies or television — runs a bit under two and a half hours. It’s an expert piece of pruning;…