Graham Coxon
Five records into a solo career, and at last Graham Coxon’s willing to admit, or remember, that he used to be in Blur — y’know, a pop band. Up till now his output’s been so impenetrably artsy-fartsy, full of slack-ass no-fi indie rawk and mopey country-blues — what the kids…
Letters
A Hard Blow The Tilman takeover: Two Novembers ago, I took my mother-in-law to Galveston for the day and had planned to take her to lunch at Pier 21 near the Elissa. I was horrified and embarrassed when I discovered that Tilman Fertitta [“Pier Pressure,” by Greg Barr, July 15]…
Los Mocosos
San Francisco’s Mission District is a diverse-ass place — Mexican taquerias sit cheek-by-jowl with Senegalese restaurants; indie rock bars abut Guatemalan Pentecostal churches, revolutionary socialist bookstores, falafel counters, and pho shacks; every race and color of face can be found walking amid the two-story storefronts. It’s like the whole multiethnic…
Slingin’ Sauce
In 1988, the movie Cocktail did for bartenders what the two previous Tom Cruise vehicles did for fighter pilots and pool sharks. It fetishized flair over skill, turning mere mixology into a song-and-dance sideshow — juggling, with a license to serve alcohol. Nick Arenas, who heads up the Sherlock’s Quest…
Thievery Corporation
You can tell that the Thievery Corporation has a colorful musical palette by listening to its original compositions. But this new mix collection shows just how far the duo’s tastes go. The album features three previously released tracks by the group itself, as well as selections by such recognizable names…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, July 29 Socialites, scenesters and the hip crowd know that Thursdays are perfect for dressy soirees. If you’re up for rubbing elbows with H-town’s elite, stop by the Bullock Mansion for “Forever Diamond…A Preview Party.” The Young Texans Against Cancer are teaming up with the Stehlin Foundation for this…
Playbill
The Strhess Tour, with Himsa, Shadows Fall, As I Lay Dying and Remembering Never In 1999, Himsa’s eponymous debut EP hit an unsuspecting hardcore underground via Revelation Records. As bassist Derek Harn said back then, “Let’s just think of [Himsa] as it pertains to me: ‘core,’ which means the central…
Sticking With It
Thomas appears at 8 p.m. Friday, July 30. Red Cat Jazz Café, 924 Congress. For information, call 713-922-0104 or visit www.jazzeducat ion.org. Free.
Summer Camp
Jonathan Demme’s gutsy Manchurian Candidate, which dares to rear its head just as the Democratic National Convention convenes in Boston, is the anti-Bush-administration movie for those who refuse to see Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 or Robert Greenwald’s Outfoxed because, well, those films just ain’t Right. It’s less a remake of…
Globe Theater
FRI 7/30 Leave it to old Bill Shakespeare to bring you deep despair and bloody daggers one night, and slapstick chauvinism and cross-dressing the next. The Bard’s Macbeth and The Taming of the Shrew are hitting the stage this summer for the 30th annual Houston Shakespeare Festival in Hermann Park…
Head Trip
Perhaps the most unlikely thing to capture on film is the creative process: the spinning of gears, the tripping of wires, the breaking of hearts and the snapping of tempers that goes into the making of art. Movies about writers and painters and musicians seldom collapse the barrier between inspiration…
Wheels of Fortune
You gotta hand it to some of these “extreme” athletes. One minute they’re breaking their teeth skating down office-park stairs. Next thing you know, they’re superstars, with huge endorsement deals, eponymous video games and even insurance benefits. Say what you want about professional athletes being role models — these guys…
Missing Member
You may have already heard the stories about A Home at the End of the World. In what many viewers have deemed a big loss, Colin Farrell’s penis no longer appears in the film. The official line is that test audiences found it too distracting, though that seems unlikely, given…
Wax Fantastic
SAT 7/31 DJ Keoki is perhaps most notorious for his proximity to the late-’80s NYC dance-scene murder chronicled in the book Disco Bloodbath, which in turn inspired the flamboyantly grotesque Macaulay Culkin not-quite-comeback movie Party Monster (now available at a video store near you). Keoki provided the soundtrack to the…
Gag Order
Winner of the Dramatic Audience Award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, Maria Full of Grace is an uncomfortably realistic look at a 17-year-old Colombian woman who, desperate for a job, agrees to swallow capsules of heroin and transport them to New York. Although a work of fiction, the film…
Brutal Bronx
FRI 7/30 “Hey, pussyface!” That was the jarring catchphrase spouted by a young Al Pacino as Murph in The Indian Wants the Bronx more than 35 years ago. The performance cemented the actor’s spot on the New York theatrical map and landed Obie Awards for both Pacino and writer Israel…
I’ll Sleep When I’m Bored
It would be nice to declare, “Fans of Mike Hodges, rejoice!” or some such thing at the arrival of the veteran director’s latest film — but alas, not this time. I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead shares elements with some of Hodges’s previous work, including a familial revenge theme (from his…
Wild or Mild
The luminous orange grease tints the white bowl above the dark red broth. I unwrap the aluminum foil that contains the warm corn tortillas and fish some of the soft stewed meat out of the liquid with a fork. As I arrange the meat on the tortilla, the pungent aroma…
Thunder Rolls
If you’re, oh, 11 years old, and you’ve had it up to here with Spider-Man’s current case of existential angst, it’s time to blow your weekly allowance on Thunderbirds. This special-effects-crammed action blockbuster aims a bit lower, age-wise, which is to say its hyperactive young hero wears a retainer on…
Paradise Found
The Velvet Teen practices in a shack. The shack, which sits in the shade of a large leafy tree, is made of long white planks covered in fuzzy sea-green moss. Located in Petaluma, California, a couple of dozen feet off the highway, next to the home of bassist Joshua Staples’s…
One Screwy Family
Nicky Silver’s Free Will and Wanton Lust is one black comedy. And Unhinged Productions’ masterful rendition of the work, which won the 1990 Helen Hayes Award for best new play, does it justice in all its dysfunctional glory. As the show starts, Claire (Cheryl Tanner), the matriarch of the family…
The Killer Next Door
For eight years, whenever Danny Billingsley saw a cream-colored van, he’d think of Dana Sanchez. Then he’d run the license plates, each time hoping the driver would turn out to be her killer. Her murder in 1995 was the type of case that haunted even a seasoned homicide investigator like…
Capsule Reviews
Chess With music by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus (the two male B’s from the Swedish pop sensation ABBA) and lyrics by Tim Rice (Evita, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast), this cold war-inspired musical about a world chess championship match has gone down in Broadway annals as one…
Take Me Home
Before eatZi’s and Central Market, there was Yapa Kitchen Fresh Take Away (3173 West Holcombe, 713-664-9272). Yapa was the first place in Houston to offer what the food industry has so clumsily dubbed “home meal replacements.” The brown-sugar maple-glazed salmon ($14.95 per pound) simply jumps out of the display case,…
Attention, Please
In 1974, the Venezuelan artist Jesús Raphael Soto had a retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Nobody wrote a thing about it. “Not one article in New York or in any newspaper,” says María Inés Sicardi, director of Sicardi Gallery. Soto was frustrated, to say the least…
Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment
Mention the name Static-X to metal freaks, and invariably they position their hands about 18 inches over the top of their heads and blurt out, “Yeah, the dude with the hair.” Not since four musicians with dodgy abilities slapped on some whiteface makeup and named themselves KISS has a band…
Capsule Reviews
“Diane Arbus: Revelations” Diane Arbus photographed midgets, giants, transvestites and circus freaks. She also photographed suburban families in their backyards. In her photographs, strangeness is the great equalizer, and she exposes it in seemingly “normal” subjects. “Diane Arbus: Revelations” is a retrospective of her work, with photographs from the 1940s…
Pride of Place
For me, the Houston Press Music Awards Showcase opened and closed with odd juxtapositions of cultures. It began with the Lady D firing up her zydeco machine as I watched Argentina piss away a 2-1 advantage in the last seconds of the final of the Copa America tournament, and then…
Pretty Please, Tilman
Houston city officials, apparently outraged at how they had fallen behind Galveston and Kemah in the heated race to service every little whim of restaurant-and-real-estate mogul Tilman Fertitta, took bold action a few years ago. They gave Fertitta a sweetheart lease to the old downtown fire station and central waterworks…
The Fall
Mark E. Smith: What a grouch. The grizzled limey bastard has already laid off two of the four musicians responsible for the creation of The Real New Fall LP and is no doubt throwing the stink-eye at the remaining pair. Historically, the dismissal is barely even a footnote. Smith loses…
Catch of the Day
In 2002, Yvette Palomo and Mari Kaye Lasewicz took their big entrepreneurial leap, pooling their life savings into the start-up of their own cafe. Lasewicz’s black Labrador became the namesake of Annabelle’s Diner, her mug dominating the interior motif. Palomo was the veteran of the team, having worked her way…