Paying the Piper
With 1994’s Exotica, Egyptian-born Atom Egoyan clinched his claim to being Canada’s leading director. His new film, The Sweet Hereafter, should solidify his hold on that problematic title. Egoyan’s work, in general, is small-scale enough to seem arty and plain enough to be accessible. The Sweet Hereafter doesn’t break out…
Return to Sender
It’s been just two years since the Academy nominated the Italian film Il Postino (a.k.a. The Postman) for multiple Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor. The arrival of Kevin Costner’s epic The Postman raises the possibility of confusion in the Oscar history books — a very slim…
The TAAS Buster
Harriett Ball is in full flight, and the entire fourth grade of Charles B. Scott Elementary in Galveston is caught up in her swing and sway. Wearing a tawny, Tina Turner-like wig, she throws every bit of her six-foot one-inch, 258-pound frame into her “Rap, Rhythm and Rhyme” routine for…
Changing the Channel
Thirty years ago, the Army Corps of Engineers drafted a plan to solve flooding problems along Clear Creek. About 500 homes in the fledgling communities of Friendswood and Pearland had been built directly in the creek’s floodplain, and those homes had suffered damage after especially heavy rains. With the area…
The Insider
Redistributing His Wealth The Harris County Tax Appraisal District had a surprise Christmas present for outgoing Mayor Bob Lanier and wife Elyse, but it’s not the sort of gift they’ll treasure forever: Last week, HCAD doubled the tax bite on the couple’s penthouse for the current year. For that, taxpayers…
Letters
Seen Enough My job as a homeless project coordinator has put me on the campus of the Barbara Jordan Recovery Center many times in the past three years. There are some important programs there, and I have watched them improve over time, with the exception of the Golden Eagle Leadership…
Press Picks
thursday december 25 Christmas Day brunch Bits of shredded wrapping paper glitter across the floor. Ribbons and bows hang on the furniture. Some daytime talk-show ninny drones relentless Christmas glee on the TV. And those sweet little angels whose eyes were all aglow, just last night, are hungry and cranky…
Dish
Breakfast of Champs Harried Houston hostesses already know all about the Ferrari Fresh Pasta outlets on West Gray, Rice and South Voss; they sneak out of them with steaming containers of lasagna, ravioli or orzo that they can empty into heirloom serving dishes and thus cleverly disguise as their own…
Roll Out the Barrel
I’ve harbored a weird fondness for small-town German restaurants ever since one in Marble Falls turned out the best Wienerschnitzel I’ve had outside Austria or Germany. So when I came across a billboard for Hackemack’s Hofbrauhaus in New Ulm (that’s Uh-lum, in local parlance), I had to investigate. It’s popular…
Canadian Born, but Texas Proud
Fred Eaglesmith may hail from Ontario, Canada, but he’s constantly compared to a class of Texas singer/songwriters that includes Steve Earle, Guy Clark and the late Townes Van Zandt. Not that that bothers Eaglesmith any. His new CD, Lipstick, Lies and Gasoline, is a masterpiece of edgy folk and rocked-up…
Last Man Standing
Consider it a minor miracle of happenstance. Kim Wilson sure does. Wilson, the grizzled 46-year-old leader of what is still one of Austin’s best-known exports, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, had been chilling in a New York recording studio with a couple of his pals, laying down bare-bones demos for an upcoming…
Static
Almost tickled pink… As aging rock icons go, the guys from Aerosmith don’t look half-bad — a little weathered, maybe, but they’re hardly the waxy, embalmed superstars one might expect, given the band’s history. Last Thursday, as four members of the group sauntered into a private party to the screams…
Celtic Boom
The avalanche of excellent roots-music releases over the last 12 months has been but one facet of a banner year for Celtic culture on this side of the Atlantic. The phenomenal success of the Riverdance road show starring enigmatic master stepper Michael Flatley and the blooming of Celtic music and…
Dinner and a Movie
You knew it had to happen: When the Tinseltown and AMC 30 movie megaplexes sprang up complete with in-house coffee bars and pizza joints, it couldn’t be long before someone thought to house film and restaurant-quality food under one roof. In fact, someone already had, with New York City’s art-house…
Post-Pulp
If Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown didn’t arrive weighted with post-Pulp Fiction expectations, it might be easier to see it for what it is: an overlong, occasionally funky caper movie directed with some feeling. It’s derived from Elmore Leonard’s 1992 bestseller Rum Punch, with the location shifted from Palm Beach, Florida,…
The Devil and Woody Allen
Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry is a film made by a free man — free, certainly, in a good way, and perhaps also in a not-so-good way. Liberated, for whatever reason, from the need to play a nice guy, playing the bad man he does here frees Allen of the optimistic…