Get Milk
In 1995, the Houston Grand Opera debuted Harvey Milk, based on the life of the celebrated former San Francisco city supervisor, gay-rights activist and martyr. The opera was recorded during the San Francisco Opera’s 1996 season. Released by the Teldec label, the disc includes revisions made under SFO music director…
Hooray for Old Hollywood
The exhibit “Who Framed Robin Hood?” is presented by Houston’s Hollywood Frame Gallery in conjunction with the Warner Bros. Festival of Classics — a weeklong smorgasbord of the studio’s finest movies that wraps today. “Robin Hood,” which continues through Tuesday, includes a wealth of movie memorabilia (stills, lobby cards, posters…
Leonard’s Canny Charmer
Too many post-Woody Allen movies have been made about “sex in the head.” The smart, engaging Out of Sight is an action comedy about love in the head. The real thing ignites between bank robber Jack Foley (George Clooney) and U.S. Marshal Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez) when she stumbles into…
User-Friendly Farce
Armed again with the comedy of despair, but with a far sight more focus than last time out, Kicking and Screaming director Noah Baumbach takes on one of the more coiled and resilient of the seven deadlies in this bright comedy of manners. Eric Stoltz romantic comedies were becoming forced…
Hankies Aweigh
There will always be a Britain; and that means there will always be movies about the pluck and sacrifice, during World War II, of the little people. Not Billy Barty little people — though surely a few of them must have been involved — but the simple salt of the…
Unsweet 16
The Opposite of Sex begins at the funeral of a man who deserved to die. We know this because his 16-year-old stepdaughter Dedee (Christina Ricci) tells us so in voice-over. Her observation is reinforced rather pointedly by the on-screen action: Instead of throwing a handful of dirt onto his lowered…
Punches, Passion in Tenure War
Late last month, a University of Houston senior stepped into the small office of an assistant professor to appeal the “D” given him in an anthropology course. Eric Springstun had completed an extra assignment in his effort to raise his grade, but Dr. Quetzil Castaneda remained unimpressed, berating the portfolio…
The Insider
Sanchez to the Rescue With Mayor Lee Brown on the verge of suffering his first defeat in a City Council vote last week, a strange political bedfellow provided some temporary relief. Much to the glee of Brown Council opponents Rob Todd and Joe Roach, the mayor’s hastily planned Summer Youth…
Obstacle Courses
It’s not often that a city employee admits to being physically ill at the sight of poor-quality work done by his department. So when public works department spokesman Wes Johnson says his look at the sidewalks in the Greenspoint area “made me sick,” you can bet his bosses will take…
1998 Houston Press Music Awards Winners
Submitted for your approval: 100-degree heat, ten venues, 55 bands and a handful of nightclub managers who responded to the record temperatures the only way they knew how — by chilling their interiors to meat-freezer comfort levels. But never mind the temperature: Enough of you showed up to make the…
Capital Irony
For much of the past year, attorney Barry Abrams didn’t laugh much. But last week, he read in the Houston Chronicle of Governor George W. Bush’s sudden concern whether accused mass murderer Henry Lee Lucas actually committed the killing for which he is set to be executed. Abrams chuckled –…
Night & Day
Thursday June 25 Jill Morley’s True Confessions of a Go-Go Girl was a long-running underground smash in New York — not least because Morley, a frustrated actress turned go-go dancer, bares (almost) all in the show, using her own boobs to lure hordes of the other sort. But True Confessions…
Letters
Games People Play How ironic that the caught-on-tape but innocent-until-proven-guilty Hotel Six remain on the job and city webmaster Michael Dean Goldsberry [“Insider,” by Tim Fleck, June 11] was arrested and locked out of his office pending trial on two felony counts of abuse of his official capacity as a…
Hot Plate
I was quite put off by the idea of eating oxtails. They seemed so unprepossessing. Until I remembered all the other unprepossessing things I’ve consumed: monkey, sheep’s eyes, brains, chicken feet, tongue, alligator…. After that, oxtails didn’t seem much of a stretch. And boy, am I glad I took the…
Rhythm Methodist
If you caught last fall’s season premiere of Melrose Place, you’ve already seen and heard Sebastian “Bash” Whittaker. The show’s producers attended a concert by the talented jazz drummer and asked him to do a cameo as … a drummer in a jazz club. Yes, he met Heather Locklear; sorry,…
Dish
Guard Optimism Former Houston Rockets guard Clyde Drexler hit the national airwaves June 8, but not broadcasting from the basketball court: He’s starring in a new commercial for Denny’s restaurants. Plugging Denny’s plans to sell really big burgers this summer, the six-foot seven-inch, ten-time NBA All-Star complains he feels small…
Blaffer’s Cups Runneth Over
The lady in heels knitted her brow, bent her knees and took a mighty swing, as if she were gunning for the 18th green at Augusta. There was a loud crack of coated plastic meeting painted wood as her ball caromed off the gaping maw of Elvis and ricocheted around…
Ten Years of Provence
When’s the last time you were greeted in Italian when you visited an Italian restaurant? Can’t remember, right? Another question: Have you ever gone to a Chinese restaurant and been welcomed in Cantonese? Of course, you haven’t. It simply doesn’t happen. But drop by Chez Georges, and you’ll most certainly…
Good Shepard
Sam Shepard fans have one last weekend to check out Simpatico, currently running at Actors Theatre of Houston. The play is typical Shepard: Lights come up on two men. One lies drunk or hungover in his shorts, on a single twin-bed mattress. The other is dressed in a suit and…
Flash and the Phantom
It’s true. There’s about a gajillion Phantom of the Opera fans in this world. And pretty close to half of them must live right here in the Bayou City. Just hang out in the lobby of Houston’s Jones Hall during the show’s intermission and you’ll spot ’em — or hear…