British India
It was inevitable, I suppose, that India’s frenzied level of movie-making would begin to follow Indian immigration to the U.S. and the U.K. Here, we had Mira Nair’s fine Mississippi Masala, which blended a typically Hollywood love story with sharp observations on multi-racial life, American-style. The current British film, Bhaji…
Impeaching South Houston
With his thinning gray hair, metal-rimmed glasses, boot-cut Levis, red suspenders and striped, short-sleeved Western shirt, Dennis Cordray doesn’t look exactly mayoral. Cordray more resembles someone you’d find working in the lumberyard of a hardware store — which is exactly what he did before being elected mayor of South Houston…
Hotze In the Media Fun House
Dr. Steve Hotze probably wouldn’t protest too vigorously if you called him a homophobe. In the decade he’s been at the forefront of the church-based forces of the far right in Harris County, Hotze’s never disguised his abiding enmity for homosexuals and the gay rights movement. Quite the contrary. The…
Rudy T’s Spin Move
If videotapes can reveal whether or not a person is intoxicated, then Rudy Tomjanovich may well have been as sober as a Baptist minister on Sunday morning when he was arrested for drunk driving in West University Place last month. That certainly was the impression Rusty Hardin, Tomjanovich’s attorney, wanted…
Letters
Bonded for battle Having read “Battle of the Bonds” [News, by Steve McVicker, July 7], and having previously been exposed to the rantings of local bondsman Gerald Monks on more than one occasion, we were hardly surprised to find that his typewriter was seen wandering aimlessly in the Letters to…
Press Picks
thursday august 4 Shake Lassie’s paw America’s most famous collie “will be on hand to promote his new movie.” We always thought Lassie was a woman dog. Oh well. In any case, the canine star with a predilection for abandoned mine shafts and orphaned baby ducks will be in the…
Lounging Around
In Austin, The Naughty Ones’ weekly gig at the Continental Club has become a semi-legendary outpost of loungy sleaze, circa 1959, in a town otherwise far removed from the sort of Vegas bowling alley/cocktail bar The Naughty Ones’ music conjures. Here in Houston, the group’s following has yet to congeal,…
Crit Picks
G. Love and Special Sauce — You find funk in the damnedest places. Like in the guts of 21-year-old former Philadelphia street musician Garrett Dutton III, a.k.a. G. Love. Love lets his funk spill into the light with his own scat-rap vocals and vintage dobro pluck, backed by rudimentary drums…
Big Mike Attack
In person, Big Mike isn’t quite as menacing as his publicity shots would have you think. In the photos, the 22-year-old rapper is usually shot from below, adding the illusion of towering stature to his already beefy frame. He wears a thin line of beard tracing his jaw line –…
The Same Old Ting
It is my pleasant duty to announce that Dong Ting is back on track. During the ’80s, the imaginative Hunan menu and elegant quarters of this midtown establishment made it a benchmark for Chinese food in Houston. But in the ’90s, Dong Ting wandered off course: owner San Huang turned…
A Gay Old Time at Fuzzy’s
Rick Hurt would have been the envy of many a New Orleans belle. Wearing a blond wig, red dress with black polka dots, black pumps and a black, French Quarter-style straw hat with a large, black feather, Hurt hiked up his skirt to show off his pink bloomers while explaining…
It’s a Wonderful Lottery
Judging by the films he’s made — most particularly his latest, It Could Happen To You — Andrew Bergman is no relation whatsoever to the great and dour Swede, Ingmar. Ingmar’s works often show that the bad things that happen to people lead to little more than a bad end…
Out of Africa
In Guelwaar, a Senegalese film director raised a Muslim takes on the Christian-Muslim conflict in Africa by focusing on a tiny Senegalese village in an unexpected way: a Christian family grieves, their Muslim neighbors behave unreasonably toward them and a coalition of Christians, Muslims, agnostics and local government officials smooth…
Hot Plate
Prix Fixe-er Upper Ah, the magic of August. When restaurants that could scarcely deign to book you a table back in the spring are eager for your business. When fashion-plate hostesses and gimlet-eyed matre d’s suddenly seem less inclined to look down their noses at your scuffed shoes. When the…