Austen, Done Admirably
Perhaps it’s just something in the air, but for reasons uncertain, Jane Austen, dead lo these 179 years, has suddenly become the author of the moment. Two major movies based on her novels — Roger Mitchell’s Persuasion and Emma Thompson’s Sense and Sensibility — have been in theaters recently, and…
Stage Play
Why, indeed, must the show go on? This question is of more than academic interest to Joe Harper (Michael Maloney), a high-strung, chronically unemployed British actor who desperately wants to stage a showcase production of Hamlet — with, of course, himself in the title role. Unfortunately, Harper can afford only…
Family Troubles
At the beginning of Barbet Schroeder’s new Before and After, we’re shown a winter landscape of steel blue skies and crisp snow; as the camera moves through a frozen waterway, we see the motion of fish and a waterfall. Then, scanning a still field, the camera finds blood, and a…
Escargot A Go-Go
They say Gene Weaver could sell you the hair on your head. He says he’s already done that. He’s sold Taiwanese wigs, peddled cashew trees in Belize, even pushed cactuses in the Mexican desert. He was in his early fifties when he began working on his latest big idea. That’s…
End Times
Before you build a stairway to Heaven, you might want make sure it’s okay with your neighborhood civic association. Take it from members of the Tien Tao Association of Houston. Tien Tao is a universalist religion founded in China at the end of World War II. In English, “Tien Tao”…
Shutterbug
The guy in the blue Volvo had one of those rubbery, expressive faces. “You gonna take my picture?” he hollered, sounding a De Niro-ish mixture of invitation and threat as he leaned through the open window on the passenger side. It was a moot question. Karen Kay Kristopher, who was…
The Insider
The Enemy of My Enemy Is … Go Figure When it comes to the Republican primary contest for county attorney nominee, the key to figuring out the support for hopefuls Mickey Lawrence and Michael Fleming lies in some political subtleties that the candidates themselves aren’t addressing directly. Lawrence, a senior…
Letters
Come Off of It Judge Jim Barr does not deserve the jabs [The Insider, “Try Another Come-On,” February 8]. Jim Barr is fair, knowledgeable and conscientious. He has the best staff in the courthouse, prosecutors notwithstanding. There are many things going on in the judicial system that need to be…
Press Picks
thursday february 29 Jack Daniel’s at the rodeo Today at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, Jimmy Bedford, master distiller, will be in the Jack Daniel booth to talk about his life’s work. Bedford is one of the six master distillers in the 129-year history of the Jack Daniel Distillery…
Sweet Home Italian
The soul of a foodie who’s jaded from too much exposure to all that’s hipper-than-thou in today’s restaurant scene might well find respite in the welcome presented by the two live oak trees flanking the dirt driveway into Tutto Bene’s parking lot, and in the lonely card table stationed at…
Whats in a Name?
If Bob Dole ever decides to change his image, he might consider enlisting a little help from Seattle’s The Presidents of the United States of America. These post-grunge front-runners never take themselves too seriously; wouldn’t it be nice if Dole followed their lead and stopped looking so dour? He’d better…
Sound Check
When the task at hand is spitting out product for listeners, Houston’s music community is nothing if not prolific. Tiny local record labels have multiplied in the last few years, selling their smart-looking wares at live performances, through the mail and in record stores all over the city. Reasonable to…
Master of the Universe
Given that complex people are often best described with a few short words, “universal appeal” seems the most fitting tag for Merle Haggard. Over the years, Haggard’s fans have included everyone from Richard Nixon, who once told Haggard that singing tunes such as “Working Man Blues” was a good way…
Picture This
This week, as Foto Fest ’96 begins, a Colombian photographer named Oscar Muoz will place a piece of photo emulsion paper in a four-foot-by-four-foot Plexiglas box sitting on the floor of the Kennedy/Foley building at 218 Travis. The paper will float on a pool of water that partially fills the…
Static
Reggae revival… After a so-so debut in 1995, Velvet Park will try its hand again this year at the festival game. Saturday and Sunday, the choice plot of cement and grass along Richmond Avenue just behind the Velvet Elvis will play host to the 1996 Bob Marley Festival Tour. Given…
A Dream Garden
In 1936, when Spain’s Francisco Franco invaded his own country “to save it from itself,” one of the pollutant forces he saw fit to extinguish was the poet Federico Garca Lorca. “He was killed because he was a Red queer,” one of the drivers who, in August 1936, took Lorca…
Rim Shots
The monthly meetings of the Bellaire Parks and Recreation Advisory Board are not known for their controversies. Normally, they proceed with the sort of quiet, orderly efficiency that characterizes much of Bellaire life. But that changed this month when the board held a public hearing, and a few Bellaireans opened…
Choice Chan
There are two scenes in Rumble in the Bronx that go a long way toward explaining why, in Asia, Jackie Chan is a movie star who eclipses the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis or Sylvester Stallone. The first comes relatively early on, when Chan has been chased into an…
Safe Move
Though I’ve always been fond of the food at Churrascos, what I’ve been even more fond of at Michael and Glenn Cordua’s South Ameri-can restaurants is the service: unfailingly smooth, unruffled, efficient, polite. A friend says that the best waiter he’s ever had, bar none, was at the original Churrascos…