Sentiment and Sneering
Reality Bites is promoted, in print and electronic ads, as a comedy about love in the ’90s. It’s not about love in the ’90s; it’s about love, period. The film makes its point with wit, verisimilitude and a healthy mix of sentiment and sneering. This fine romance is set in…
Dying for Dollars
Robert L. Waltrip, founder and chief executive officer of Service Corporation International, recently told The New York Times that people who don’t buy his company’s stock “just don’t like money.” He’s right: Waltrip’s company is not a cash cow. It’s a cash herd. And it looks to remain perpetually profitable…
Dying on the Cheap
Dying costs more than living — that is, if you pay the going rate to the undertaker. According to the National Funeral Directors Association, the average cost of a casket and funeral last year was $4,207 — not counting the grave, vault and marker. Add another $1,500 for those fun…
The Last Word
Last week’s decision by state District Judge Bill Harmon to allow a murdered child’s father to verbally lash out at his daughter’s killer after he was sentenced to death is not the first time the judge has been accused of a bonehead move by prosecutors, defense attorneys and fellow jurists…
Letters
Lip-Sync Reporting I’ve found the source of my problem with Alex Hecht’s report on the possibilities for a new domed stadium [“Wanna Buy a RoboDome?,” January 27]. To wit: “…other sources say…” “…says a source close to the dome negotiations…” “…says a local NFL writer…” “…says a current Rockets employee…”…
Press Picks
thursday february 17 Black History in the Making Proper educational programs emphasize the blues, jazz and gospel — which are all well and good, and important aspects of African-American culture, but not by any means the be-all end-all of African-American self-expression. Throughout Black History Month and the rest of the…
Fast French
Add these to the depressingly short list of things you’d like to find in your freezer: chef Georges Guy’s soulful onion and snapper soups. They’re just two of the frozen French dishes in a new product line from the proprietor of the popular far-west-Houston bistro Chez Georges. The rich duck…
Rainbow Rebirth?
“Swell,” I thought to myself when I began reading in sundry publications that the Rainbow Lodge had gotten itself an interesting new chef. “Now I can go back.” It had been at least a decade since I’d been there, but I harbored a residual soft spot for this quirky mock-hunting…
The King’s English And River Oaks’ too.
As events (as opposed to just plain shows) go, the well-heeled soiree surrounding local keyboardist Paul English’s Stude Hall release party for his debut CD Beauty was a gem. The lobby of Rice U’s Alice Pratt Brown music building is appropriately pale, grand, and shorn of all ornamental interest, allowing…
Black on Black
On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C. to hear Dr. Martin Luther King present his dream of freedom, desegregation and economic opportunity for all people in the United States. At Blaffer Gallery, “I Remember: Images of the Civil Rights Movement, 1963-1993” commemorates the 30th anniversary…
The Mausoleum Museum
North of Houston, sprawled on the sort of land that looks like it ought to be an industrial park but isn’t yet, across the street from a plot of anonymous and lonely-looking apartments and a Stop N Go, and just a quick drive down I-45 from the mammoth Resthaven Memorial…
Mortician to the Masses
Local followers of the macabre will appreciate the recent resurfacing of Richard Luciano, the original King of Caskets, who has been kind enough to keep the Press posted on the gangrenous fruits of his imagination. You probably remember Luciano as Richard J. Herrin Jr., the pinched-face mortician accused in 1990…
Wordy Jukebox
This is a corner of the paper I usually try to reserve for notable touring acts, but as luck would have it, all the best noise this week is homegrown, so local boys get the nod. This time around I’m recommending Woody’s Jukebox. I caught most of the three-piece band’s…
Returning to Her True Colors
The night I saw For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, as it happened the playwright and director, Ntozake Shange, sat immediately in front of me, her red hair braided in tiny rivulets and twined in coarser dreadlocks nearly touching the program in my lap…
The Most Happy Loesser
Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella is an operatic tragedy magically transformed into a musical comedy. Much of its affecting intensity, as well as its odd moments of awkwardness, are a result of this curious juxtaposition. Its plot rests upon mistaken identity, deception, despair and adultery — not the sort…
The Celluloid of the President
What’s remarkable about The War Room, D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’ Oscar-nominated, behind-the-scenes documentary on the Clinton campaign’s inner circle, isn’t only that the documentarians were given what seems to be unlimited access to James Carville, Clinton’s campaign manager, and George Stephanopoulos, his communications director. Surprising pleasure also comes from…
Juliet Done It
It took me a while to make up my mind about Romeo Is Bleeding. It has quite a chestnut of an opening: a wasted-looking Gary Oldman stands behind the bar in a desolate desert saloon and tells us about Jack, a guy he once knew whose life had taken a…
Nevermore
As the MFA’s French film noir series winds down, we get The Raven, an interesting, if genre-fuzzy entry from Henri-Georges Clouzot. This isn’t one of Clouzot’s best-remembered films — The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques will have to fight it out for that honor — and in its best…