Jackie Can
New Line’s release of Jackie Chan’s First Strike is salvo number three in Chan’s invasion of America. (Salvo number four, Miramax’s version of 1991’s Operation Condor, the last film on which the star also took a director’s credit, is due out in May.) Like its predecessors, Rumble in the Bronx…
Dealer of the Art
On the last night of October 1996, members of the Museum of Fine Arts attended a party. They frolicked in the crisp air of the Cullen Sculpture Garden, sipping drinks and downing canapes amongst the statuary, celebrating both Halloween and their connection to one of Houston’s major cultural entities. But…
Bloodletting?
If one of the reasons cited by the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office for its recent firing of Dr. Elizabeth Johnson is legitimate, other employees of the medical examiner should be forewarned: Don’t work too much. But if Johnson’s take on the reason she was fired is correct, then the…
The Insider
A Flight Too Far A flap over the upgrade of airline tickets has cost the jobs of a key deputy to Houston public works director Jimmie Schindewolf and an engineer for Montgomery Watson, the managing partner in the Greater Houston Wastewater Program. Another employee of the city’s Public Works and…
Letters
We’re Appauled, Too Have you ever heard the saying, “Don’t do anything to other’s [sic] that you wouldn’t want done to you?” Obviously not! I was totally appauled [sic] at the article about being a Power Dancer [“A Little Flesh, A Little Dance, Little Sequins on Your Pants,” by Megan…
Press Picks
thursday january 9 Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me An American doctor, an English academic and an Irish journalist find themselves cut off from the world — they’re hostages in Lebanon — and as dire as their circumstances sound, humor and imagination ride high; rather than bore one another with technical…
Miracle at the Mercado
There are few culinary pejoratives more damning than “mall food.” Food-court food is fast food in more sterile surroundings than usual, ethnic specialties assimilated until only the faintest traces of the culture of its origin linger like a ghost. It’s hot dogs that are no more than tubular bologna, pizza-by-the-slice…
End of the Road
It surprised no one who knew him, or even anyone who knew much of him, to learn that Townes Van Zandt — a man who by all accounts lived the Troubled Troubadour Genius myth to the verge of cliche — had died on New Year’s Day at age 52. As…
Jazz It Up
Ballroom jazz — now there’s a concept that only took 30 years to get down on tape. In 1966, Joe Henderson, already a veteran bandleader, composer and master blaster of the tenor saxophone, began gathering some of the cream of the New York jazz scene to experiment with jazz in…
Static
The King loses his touch… It’s time to celebrate a certain nightclub’s newfound freedom from corporate bullying. December 30, Houston’s Velvet Elvis and its sister bar in Dallas notched a victory for drinking establishments everywhere when a federal court issued a judgment forcing Elvis Presley Enterprises to take the nightclub…
The Good with the Badfinger
Badfinger could be the most star-crossed band in the history of rock and roll. During their time on the planet as the sometimes plastic, more often authentic, scions of the Beatles, misfortune smiled upon the British foursome all too often. For a group with connections that couldn’t have been more…
Rotation
The Red Krayola Hazel Drag City Avant-garde rockers have to be the most patient people in the world. They make a release, then wait a decade or more until someone notices. That’s what happened with the Red Krayola, whose current resurgence (two full-length CDs, an EP and two singles since…
Dish
Serious Sauce You can get into some intense arguments over the merits of barbecue joints in this town. There’s the Goode Company faction, and the Drexler’s faction; there are Otto’s aficionados and those who favor Luling City Market. There are even Luther’s partisans. But for old-fashioned, chow-down barbecue, I don’t…
Bye-Bye Bella
Choreographer Bella Lewitzky has built her career on bravery as much as she has on her talent to create dance. In 1966, when modern dance was in danger of disappearing from Los Angeles, not to mention being swallowed down and spit out in nearly unintelligible forms by earnest university departments,…
Porn Again
Milos Forman’s The People vs. Larry Flynt is a rags-to-riches success story with a twist: The recipient of the American Dream is a pornographer who admits to losing his virginity at age 11 to a chicken and is known for saying things such as, “A woman’s vagina has as much…
Death Becomes Her
Marvin’s Room, starring Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep as sisters who reunite uneasily for the first time in 20 years, is one of those movies about people who confront the choices they’ve made and become better for it. Adapted by the late Scott McPherson from his popular 1992 play and…