Baryshnikov’s Baby
Perhaps the most impressive example of the impact that Mikhail Baryshnikov has had on dance — not just in America, but in the world — is that when he brings his White Oak Dance Project to Jones Hall next Tuesday and Wednesday, what he’s doing won’t seem all that unusual…
Rotation
Various Artists For the Love of Harry: Everybody Sings Nilsson MusicMasters Harry Nilsson was a performer who never toured, and even if he firmly established himself behind the scenes as a left-of-the-Atlantic songwriting soul mate to the Beatles, he never built a presence in the public eye to match his…
Cat Man Dues
For nearly three decades, some of Hollywood’s most powerful African-American players have labored unsuccessfully to bring the story of the Black Panther Party to the big screen. The father/son filmmaking duo of Melvin and Mario Van Peebles have managed to make the dream come true, and “dreamlike” is certainly the…
Lounge Act
A funny song that will make you laugh in a bar every six months or so isn’t necessarily something you’d want to hear every day. Having forgotten this basic truth, I noticed that the longer the Austin Lounge Lizards latest, Small Minds, stayed in my disc player, the more I…
The Time of Their Lives
When director Bob Balaban read Richard Bausch’s award-winning novel about a trio of senior citizens, he knew immediately that he wanted to make The Last Good Time into a movie — a movie with old people “who were just people who were old, not cute, sentimental or sweet.” In other…
The Song Remains the Same
Newspaper and magazine profiles are supposed to be written around what we in the trade call an angle, which is to say a method of approaching the subject that ties it to current events, granting the subject status as news, and so justifying the space it hogs in a news…
America, America
The Perez Family and My Family (Mi Familia) don’t glance off of you the way most movies do. Full of hardship, deprivation, bitterness and death — yet maintaining an ultimate optimism — they stick with you, even haunt you. The two films share a basic narrative of outsiders trying to…
Born to Win … or Lose?
The Astrodome is almost empty on this weekday morning, save for a few members of the grounds crew working to get the playing field in shape for the Astros’ 1995 home opener. The electric lighting inside is at a minimum on this off day; outside, a blanket of low-lying clouds…
Lanier Village
Perhaps it was just a coincidence that real estate agent Sharon Katz and developer Wayne Duddlesten sat together at the head table with Bob Lanier at the mayor’s gala fundraiser two weeks ago. But Katz and Duddlesten do have at least one current common interest: both stand to benefit handsomely…
Cook Gets Two Beards
Houston Press staff writer Alison Cook won two honors last weekend in the James Beard Journalism Awards for excellence in food and beverage journalism. Cook, who began working full-time for the Press in March 1994, took first place in the newspaper restaurant reviewing category over entries from the New York…
Biked Out
Dan Murphy seemed stunned. He and other members of the Houston Area Mountain Bike Riders Association (HAMBRA) had met last week with the board of the Memorial Park Oversight Committee in hopes of resolving a long-standing dispute over the continued existence of the bike trail that wends its way through…
Debt Collection
A collection agency hired to track down ticket scofflaws is suing the city of Houston, claiming that the chief administrator of the municipal courts reneged on an agreement to renew the company’s contract after he induced it to spend more than $200,000 to upgrade its operation. The company, West Capital…
Dear Landlord
It may be the most unusual cast of characters in a landlord-tenant dispute in Houston in years. The tenant is the Quaker-sponsored American Friends Service Committee, in the person of Maria Jimenez, who runs a Committee project that monitors abuses of immigrants in Texas border communities. The landlord is the…
The Great Smokeout
By mid-afternoon on April 19, law enforcement agencies across the country were on the lookout for suspects in the bombing of the federal office building in Oklahoma City that had occurred earlier that day. But while the nation’s attention was focused on that heinous crime, those police officers who weren’t…
Press Picks
thursday may 11 Marriage licenses available at nine locations Harris County Clerk Beverly B. Kaufman has urged us to remind June brides that, in efforts to improve and increase services at the eight branch offices, the county workers are gearing up for an onslaught of marriage license applications. Licenses are…
What’s In a Name?
“Uh-oh,” was my first thought upon hearing that John Puente’s Restaurant had revamped its menu and rechristened itself the Woodway Grill. Would chef Brent Trudeau’s provocative New American cuisine be dumbed down to match the bland new name? Would his fiercely modern version of turkey pot pie be lost to…
Letters
Memories of Deano Dean Singleton denied selling the Post up until its dying day. Never mind the new chairs, fresh paint, new carpet (in some departments), parking lot reconstruction, whitewashing and the ironic “For Sale” sign that went up on the southwest corner of the lot recently, which was dismissed…
Surprised, but Cool
Surprise is not something I normally associate with La Madeleine, the ubiquitous chain of bakery/cafes. Convenience, yes: the reassuring certitude of knowing I can dash in for a reliable onion soup or a Caesar salad, un-classic but always sprightly tasting, even when its romaine goes a bit limp (as it…
Lives in Song
There’s so much to like in And the World Goes ‘Round that I don’t know where to begin. A nearly all-musical revue celebrating John Kander and Fred Ebb — the award-winning songwriters of the scores to such musicals as Cabaret and Chicago and such movies as New York, New York…
In Their Own Time
“The Bee Gees were possibly the greatest pop songwriters of all time.” If Dennis Davison intends ironic effect, he doesn’t betray it in his voice. Speaking over the phone from Los Angeles, the singer/ songwriter/guitarist for that city’s pop-psychedelic band the Jigsaw Seen sounds serious. No, earnest. “I obviously prefer…
Dream On
Playing the character of Holling Vincoeur on Northern Exposure, John Cullum is one terrific in-joke. Cullum, a dashing leading man of Broadway, a two-time Tony Award-winning actor of Shenandoah and On the Twentieth Century, as a rugged outdoorsman in Alaska! That the charm he showed on stage still shines through…
Royal and Righteous
One evening this March, Killian Sweeney and Noah SkYess were discussing future projects for Willis, the glam rock band they were then both part of. Eventually, as their whiskey-soaked conversation continued, the notion of staging a tribute to proto-glam rockers Queen issued out of the haze. The tribute, they thought,…