Rotation
Goldie Saturnz Return London/FFRR Imagine you’re at a rave. All the components are there: the guys wearing fluorescent colors and hopping clueless in place; the girls exposing their midriffs and holding hands, forming a daisy chain of faux lesbianism; the large, alien ice sculpture in the middle of the dance…
Press Picks
thursday february 19 The Skatalites The stellar Jamaican group not only invented ska (and, by extension, reggae), but the ‘lites also embodied and perfected the musical mating of Afro-Caribbean rhythms, American big-band jazz and stateside R&B. In recent years, we’ve encountered any number of the band’s musical progeny, members of…
Hot Plate
Moo shu may sound like a dairy product. Actually, it’s something altogether more delectable: a thin Chinese pancake — known in some quarters as a Beijing doily — filled with meat, shredded Chinese cabbage and bean sprouts. At Auntie Chang’s Dumpling House (2621 S. Shepherd, 524-8410), moo shu cost $6.95…
Dish
Burns, Baby, Burns I learned something of great importance the other night: Scots are not the Other. They put their kilts on one leg at a time like the rest of us. The occasion of this epiphany was a dinner in the Westin Galleria to honor the Scottish bard Robbie…
Twice Removed
Palmetto is a film noir set in a torpid seaside Florida town. It’s based on the James Hadley Chase novel Just Another Sucker, and when we first see Harry Barber (Woody Harrelson), he fits that moniker exactly. He looks dazed and confused — a sucker incarnate. Suckers are, of course,…
Unconventional Wisdom
Despite the tides of government repression and suspected U.S. chicanery that have afflicted his country for the last 35 years, Brazilian filmmaker Bruno Barreto claims he’s not much of a political animal. As if to underscore that, his only global success was 1978’s spirited erotic farce Dona Flor and Her…
Life During Noir-Time
Love Walked In, despite the Gershwin in the title, is less champagne fizz than bottom-shelf rotgut rye, drained from a dirty glass. Argentine director Juan Jose Campanella follows up the relative indie hit, 1991’s The Boy Who Cried Bitch, with this would-be indie knockoff. (He’s also turned out a whole…
All Wet
When and if we humans make first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence, the experience may have this much in common with Sphere: It could be confusing and unsatisfying. But if it’s anywhere near so cliched, it will be a crushing disappointment. That Sphere is based on a Michael Crichton novel is…
Smells Like Holy Spirit
It’s 7:15 on a weeknight, and the auditorium at Houston’s First Baptist Church is rocking to high heaven; God’s children are whipping up a polite frenzy. On stage, a band is laying down a perky, harmony-laden folk-rock groove. Most of its seven members are clad in oversized T-shirts and worn…
The Insider
Lee P. Makes Like Bill C. What do the administrations of President Bill Clinton and Mayor Lee P. Brown have in common, other than the fact that Brown was once Clinton’s drug czar? Both, in their first 60 days in office, decided to address issues involving sexual orientation: Clinton, the…
This week signals a change in leadership at the Houston Press.
The new editor is Margaret Downing, 45, who returns to Houston after an absence of four and a half years, during which time she was managing editor of the Clarion-Ledger, the statewide daily newspaper based in Jackson, Mississippi. Downing replaces Jim Simmon, who has resigned as editor to pursue other…
Letters
A Question of Lawyers Brian Wallstin’s reporting of this tragic story [“A Question of Life,” February 5] is prompting me to write you. We moved from Long Island, New York, to Houston in 1993 while my wife was pregnant with our first child. At the time, a normal delivery on…
Jah’s Will Be Done
I’m trying to decide which of the virtues I like the best. Loyalty is a great favorite of mine. And I’m very fond of compassion. Courage is up there, too. And honesty, of course. I’ve nothing but praise for honesty. As for integrity…. Well! What’s there to say? I’m all…
Been There. Done That. Doing It Again.
In a city like Austin, it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle. There are hundreds of clubs, twice as many bands, and every week it seems like a new act is the darling of the scene. So it’s no surprise that Cotton Mather, led by singer/guitarist Robert Harrison, hasn’t…
Well-Raised and Confused
For Justin Furstenfeld, getting away was the only solution. Plummeting into drug addiction and other varieties of self-destruction, the singer/guitarist had seen his options evaporate in the waning months of 1996. Barely out of high school, Furstenfeld had abandoned Last Wish, the band he’d helped bring to local prominence, because…
Well Aware
Think of Aware Records as the little label that could. For better or for worse, the Chicago-based imprint — with brief histories in Boston, Vail, Colorado, and Dallas — is partly responsible for launching the careers of several of modern rock’s most profitable players. Perhaps most impressive is the way…
Static
The other brother… Performing is in the blood. That would explain why Baytown’s Philip Rodriguez started playing piano and violin at a young age, and why his aunt has such a long, deep history in the music industry in Mexico. There’s also Philip’s older brother, David, the most well-known Rodriguez,…