Awe That’s Eel
In The Eel, which won the Palme D’Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, director Shohei Imamura once again demonstrates his empathy for the outsiders and aliens of Japanese society. In this case he muses on the tormented relationship between a paroled wife-murderer who’s struggling with his past after eight…
Jazz Piano Times Two
When young lions Jacky Terrasson and Danilo Perez take the stage Friday for an evening of piano duets, they have a formidable task ahead. Piano duets are a big challenge to jazz musicians. While Marian McPartland regularly accepts that challenge with various guests on her weekly National Public Radio program,…
Movie Starr?
Here we go again. Enemy of the State is Fascism in America 1998, Chapter Four … or Five … or whatever we’re up to. It readily invites comparison to The Siege, but for better or worse its goals are more mundane. While The Siege seems like an ideological agenda driving…
Rotation
Jewel Spirit Atlantic Reigning pop stars Jewel Kilcher and Alanis Morissette have a lot in common — both artists’ last albums kicked serious commercial ass; both broke ground in making mainstream radio safe for women in the mid ’90s; and both have recently taken up acting (Morissette will play God…
D.on’t
Pasadena Police Sergeant Loni Robinson shuffles through a stack of hair-raising photos — a truck with a c-clamp covering an air leak, another with frame cracked to the point of collapse — and pulls out a picture of a wheel coated with oil from a leaking brake cylinder. “This particular…
Breaking Through to the Mainstream
It’s always a bittersweet day for music fans when their cult favorite finally breaks through to the mainstream. On one hand, there’s happiness that the performer you may have championed to deaf ears for years is now garnering the attention you always knew they deserved — the “See, I told…
Semi-Safe
Driving home from work on Pasadena Boulevard, Judy Wren had no reason to be especially cautious as she approached the intersection with the Texas 225 frontage road, already bathed in the shadows of twilight. She had the green light. That didn’t matter, because the Freightliner truck bearing down the frontage…
Motley Fools
Motley Crue are certainly a band who are living up to the idea of rock and roll excesses, and then some. Drinking, debauchery and trashing hotel rooms is one thing, but insulting and assaulting people is another. The band publicly belittled the female head of their former label, Elektra, calling…
Daddy’s Money
By most appearances, when 90-year-old oil magnate Howard Marshall II passed away three years ago, he died a happy man. Marshall, a Houstonian whose net worth was estimated between $500 million and $1 billion, could afford to say and do what he damn well pleased, and he usually did. For…
Goat Man
Even though you might not be familiar with his name, you may have already heard the call of the Goat, particularly if you’re a fan of teen slasher movies or professional sports. In this case, we’re referring to the musician whose upbeat and catchy ode to existence, “Great Life,” has…
No’l Hell
The McCarley family gathered last year for an uncertain Christmas Eve. Betty McCarley said the group still grieved over the death of her mother, who had presided over the annual holiday reunions. She had been a nearly permanent part of their daily life, living only five minutes away from their…
Dish
The Swiss Connection Some Texans traveling in Switzerland last month were astonished to see a bold red sign announcing a steak house named Churrasco, as out of place on its bustling thoroughfare in Lucerne as a longhorn steer. Yep, there it was, in all its black-and-white cowhide glory, apparently the…
Grinding It Out
By her count, Belinda Crimmins called 34 different federal, state and city agencies in her attempt to find someone who could stop what she considered a dangerous lead-paint grinding project at the house next door to her Harvard Street home in the Heights [“Abatement by Any Other Name,” by Brad…
Shaping the Council to Come
While one holiday cycle is gathering momentum, the city’s currently officeless politicos are already thinking about the choice electoral presents they might be unwrapping a year hence. With five term-limited Houston City Councilmembers having to vacate their seats in 1999, and two others considered vulnerable among the 14 at-large and…
News of the Weird
Lead Stories *Recently dismissed San Jose, California, police officer Johnny Venson Jr., age 48, in jail facing 14 counts of on-duty burglary, was awarded a $27,000 annual pension in November by the city’s retirement board. The board agreed with Venson that he had a disability: an addiction to gambling, which…
Letters
Don’t Resurrect “Jesus” I must complement your paper on this new web page design — it is so … conservative. Thank goodness you got rid of the “Gilstrap — Jesus of the Week” articles which headlined your old web page. That column was one of the reasons that I quit…
Altered Statements
Annual financial disclosure statements required of city of Houston elected officials and some employees are hardly the most revealing public documents for sleuths trying to follow the money trail in city government. Other than standard personal information like addresses and members of households, the form deals with personal wealth, which…
NIGHT & DAY1998 DECEMBER 3-9
Thursday 3 The women-sucking-cigars fad still smolders in Houston, as evidenced by the Alfred Dunhill “Light My Fire” Ladies Smoker. For the price of a can of dog or cat food for a homeless pet, women can puff a stogie, munch hors d’oeuvres, shop for Christmas presents, and ogle beefy…
Holy Body Tattoo, Batman!
It may be that interesting choreography just doesn’t cut it in contemporary dance anymore. Culture critics say it’ll take that plus a whole lot more to get the MTV-watching, Internet-surfing “next” generation into theaters. And that’s exactly what The Holy Body Tattoo is doing. Vancouver-based dancer/choreographers Noam Gagnon and Dana…
Not-so Funny Girl
Reviving old musicals is hard work. Those antiquated Broadway warhorses are filled with outdated politics, sentimental songs and flat-out melodrama. It takes a good deal of vision to pull one of these “classics” from the shadows of theatrical purgatory, where nothing ever changes, into the uptown glow of “fresh,” “new”…
Absurd Plays for the Holidays
The lingering fragrance in the Houston air this holiday season isn’t roasted chestnuts, but something wicked and polluted. And apparently the noxious odeur has gone straight to the heads of three local theater groups. Like supervillains spawned from toxic waste, three new productions (all opening this weekend) offer debauchery and…
Shelf Life
Many artists have been interested in the objects they find in everyday life; as surrealist writer Andre Breton put it, objects contain “the principle factors of the mysteries of tomorrow.” Yet by now, found-object art has gone through many half-lives, transforming from rich reactor fuel into gelded isotopes with faltering…
Hot Plate
Sometimes I get a low-down and dirty craving for liver and onions, and nothing else will do. Since the aroma of frying liver offends the delicate sensibilities of my family, I sneak out alone to satisfy my shameful urge at the nearest Luby’s Cafeteria (5215 Buffalo Speedway, 664-4852, and other…
Singing Praises
British actress Jane Horrocks is thrice-gifted: She can act, she can sing, and she can sing like Judy Garland. And like Shirley Bassey, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, and a host of other legendary performers. Horrocks’s ability to mimic the singing and speaking voices of these artists lies at the heart…
Schmatz Move
Lately, a lot of good foods have appeared on the Houston restaurant scene in delectable little packages. It started with hand-rolled bouquets of sushi; then burritos blossomed into wraps; and now Spanish tapas are center stage in the eye-candy competition. The trend delights me; at heart I’m a nosher, a…