Our top DVD picks for the week of November 29
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Empire) Caterina in the Big City (Empire) CSI: Five-Season Pack (Paramount) Death to the Supermodels (Columbia/Tristar) Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (Columbia/Tristar) Empire (Buena Vista) Family Guy: Volume 3 (Fox) Formula 17 (Strand) The Frighteners: Director’s Cut (Universal) The Hives: Tussles in Brussels (Universal Music)…
Supersize Me
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment of America
Platform: PlayStation 2
Price: $39.99
ESRB Rating: T (for Teen)
Score: 9 (out of 10)
Wrestling with Gourmet Tex-Mex
The “enchiladas Anaya’s” at the new Cyclone Anaya’s on Durham come smothered in a fabulous sauce of ancho chiles, slow-cooked onions and sautéed mushrooms. I can’t say I’ve ever eaten mushroom enchilada sauce before, but the concept is brilliant — and so is the flavor. The two oversize enchiladas are…
Home Wreckers on DVD
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Fox) The pairing of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, both in real life and on celluloid, is so obvious as to be almost cartoonish. So even though both are better actors than they need to be, they perfectly belong in this goofy, explosiony world. Married assassins,…
Unexpected Treasure
The menu at Yia Yia Mary’s Greek Kitchen (4747 San Felipe, 713-840-8665) doesn’t even hint at all the joys in store for the customer who orders its pistachio ice cream ($3.25). It just says “pistachio ice cream.” Yes, you do get two huge scoops of pastel green goodness, each about…
Free Booze
Cheech Marin is in the room, but Steve is inching toward the drink table. It’s Thursday afternoon, happy hour, and Cheech is giving a speech about a touring exhibition of Chicano art he’s brought to Houston: These paintings are fantastic. It’s great I’m sharing them with you. I used to…
Tom Collins
It’s Monday night, and I stop off at Cecil’s (600 West Gray, 713-524-3691) to join the anti-Monday-night-football league for a drink. Cecil’s is a neighborhood pub that’s always jumping. Even during the week it’s full of people, and tonight’s crowd obviously isn’t interested in plasma TVs — there isn’t a…
One Man, Ten Days, 80 Free Drinks
This is a sidebar to this week’s feature, “Free Booze” Americans drop $166 billion a year on alcohol. I definitely do my part, tossing in at least 60 bucks a week. But sometimes I quit waiting for the gods to deliver and start planting seeds, looking for free drinks wherever…
Bathe in the Bubbly
Chambull? Dude, that’s so six months ago. Party people of the moment know that the bubbly drink to sip is a French 75. The cocktail is made with vodka, lemon juice, a sprinkle of sugar and champagne (note to home mixers: Grey Goose and Veuve Clicquot make it extra phat)…
Dana Cooper
Dana Cooper may live and work in Nashville these days, but to those of us who’ve been around here a while, he’ll always be a Montrose Houstonian, literally synonymous with the place. Mainstays of a rootsy folk scene percolating at Anderson Fair in the late ’70s — which also featured…
Care and Feeding
In a world filled with problems, the folks at Whole Foods Markets have found a cause to fight for: the comfort of lobsters. Soon-to-be-killed lobsters, to be exact. The chain has announced it is re-examining its “animal compassionate standards,” whatever the hell that means, in regards to how crowded its…
Junior Brown
Teetering between corny and classic, Junior Brown’s new Live at the Continental Club: The Austin Experience finds him banging out a set of Americana-tinged fare featuring his acclaimed double-necked plucking and baritone crooning. Bottling the essence of Tex-Mex, Western swing and even surf music (an instrumental jog through the Johnny…
Letters to the Editor
Cult Classic Defending the indefensible: It is not a simple task to encapsulate in 6,500 words the twisted and disturbing history of The Family International [“Family Ties,” November 17], yet Craig Malisow did so brilliantly in his well-researched article. I spent the first 24 years of my life in the…
Buddy Guy
Attempts to revive veteran artists’ careers via superstar duets are as predictable as claims that embattled bureaucrats resigned to spend more time with their families. Bring ‘Em In, the new Buddy Guy offering, certainly fits the pattern, and it’ll have plenty of competition. After all, Carlos Santana, among the bigger…
Basquiat, Beats and Beans
The last time I saw a crowd this big standing outside the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, it was for the opening of a Star Wars exhibit. But the crowd that’s packed in front of the Caroline Wiess Law Building this Saturday night is way hipper (there’s nobody dressed like…
Children of Bodom
Those who say metal is all screaming and no melody clearly have never heard Children of Bodom, the Finnish five-piece that just released its fifth full-length album, Are You Dead Yet?, on Spinefarm Records. The follow-up to 2003’s Hate Crew Deathroll is full of guitar sweeps, killer keys and growling…
Let It Blow
Friday, December 2. Pong and DJ Jester are also on the bill.
Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, with Drop Trio
Perhaps more than any other genre of music, jazz is celebrated for — and shackled by — its past. When your titans of yesteryear include Armstrong, Ellington and Parker, it’s hard to move one’s mind-set away from their epic contributions either artistically or journalistically (indeed, one of the most exciting…
Old Folks Rock
The Rolling Stones appear Thursday, December 1, at Toyota Center, 1510 Polk, 713-758-7200. The show is sold out.
Simply Galling
Deception, betrayal and revenge. In his film directorial debut, acclaimed playwright/screenwriter/theater director Craig Lucas is done in by his own script, which becomes so excessively icy and cruel that it breaks, rather than solidifies, any bond it could hope to establish with its audience. A modern-day Greek tragedy — complete…
Reach for the Stars
Two years ago, Astra Heights was just another band on the local pub circuit — a semi-regular name on the marquee at hip joints like Rudyard’s and also cover band hangs like Sherlock’s. Sure, they were a cut above most local bands — after all, Astra Heights had not two,…
Torah! Torah! Torah!
You’d think that anyone possessed of the notion that “the Jews” are one monolithic whole that thinks and acts alike need only take a look at, say, wrestler Bill Goldberg, Hollywood hottie Natalie Portman, shock jock Howard Stern and nebbishy right-wing scold Michael Medved to have that idea instantly dispelled…
Jada Rocks
They’re everywhere these days: Movie actors like Juliette Lewis, Jared Leto, Russell Crowe and even Jeff Goldblum all have one. No, we’re not talking about Laotian adoptees or fashionable drug habits. We’re talking celebrity rock projects, and actress/wife/mom Jada Pinkett-Smith has joined their ranks. When Wicked Wisdom, her spiritually minded…
Santana
I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank the Sony music group for its short-lived, ill-fated foray into digital copy protection. For yea, though public outcry and class action lawsuits have forced the Nipponese entertainment behemoth to discontinue discs preinfected with its heinous spyware, my review copy of…
Capsule Reviews
Align The holidays usually bring frothy good fun to the theater. But A.D. Players, Houston’s Christian theater group, have a whole new take on the season. Their Christmas production of Jeannette Clift George’s Align is a dour little show about a family of sad sacks who learn to be thankful…
Fatlip
Die-hard Fatlip fans have waited years for the ex-Pharcyde MC to drop a solo album. In the meantime, he’s blown money on cocaine and skanky hos, been jilted by his former bandmates, and (finally) crafted The Loneliest Punk, the most lyrically interesting hip-hop album to drop in a long time…
Universal Studio
“Tom Burckhardt: Full Stop,” in the DiverseWorks project space, is one of the city’s best shows in a long time. Burckhardt has crafted an entire artist’s studio out of cardboard, and it’s life-size. The installation is something of a surprise for anyone familiar with his previous work: paintings that blend…
Kate Bush
As though the Orion nebula shone from her hearth, Kate Bush has always bridged the cozy with the stratospheric. As the title of her first work in 12 years suggests, the two-disc set Aerial strays a little further into the ether than some of her previous work. While the sweepingly…
Capsule Reviews
removed Joy Episalla’s removed (2000-2002) is one of the worst examples of conceptual art in recent — and long-term — memory. I’m betting Episalla was one of those kids with overly supportive parents who convinced her that anything she did was fascinating to others. Using three separate videos, projected wall-size,…
Wilco
Wilco has become one of America’s most beloved (and most hotly debated) rock bands, its constantly evolving sound a seamless mix of country, folk and jolting blues that retains its urgency even during quieter moments. It’s not surprising, then, that the group has also grown into a potent live act,…