Weighting…
For those of us who dug Rob McKittrick’s recent comedy Waiting…, Just Friends offers up some good news: Ryan Reynolds and Anna Faris are together again as a dysfunctional couple. Reynolds plays a slick music executive named Chris Brander, still traumatized at having gotten the “Let’s just be friends” speech…
All Yours
Most movies intend to entertain or inform us, or maybe momentarily take our minds off personal problems — that bullet-riddled body in the trunk, say, or Aunt Edna’s arrest for shoplifting doughnuts. Presumably, no picture really means to make an airtight case against children. But after sitting through the witless,…
Circling Chaos
Charles Mee’s Full Circle is a wild, rangy ride of a play stuffed full of smart ideas and strange images. Of course, strange and smart is what the folks at Infernal Bridegroom Productions do so well — and when that strangeness involves the politics of capitalism along with women baring…
Capsule Reviews
Align The holidays usually bring frothy good fun to the theater. But A.D. Players, Houston’s Christian theater group, have a whole new take on the season. Their Christmas production of Jeannette Clift George’s Align is a dour little show about a family of sad sacks who learn to be thankful…
Capsule Reviews
“John Hartley and Ernesto Marenco” John Hartley takes tiny figurines — of soldiers, sailors, nurses, bakers, Batman, Aunt Jemima, the Boy Wonder — and paints large oil portraits of them. His models are made from plastic, tin or ceramic and are in various states of decay. A soldier’s paint-chipped face…
Gone in 60 Seconds
It’s quiet on this end of downtown, just east of Minute Maid Park. So quiet that I’m sure I’m lost. But as my date and I hear the desperate honks of what sounds like a goose being violently raped, I’m sure we’re in the right place. Turns out the violated…
Your Government at Work
Punishment Park (New Yorker Video) This 1971 movie from director Peter Watkins could have been made yesterday, which is no doubt why it finally sees video release long after accruing cult status. Born of the filmmaker’s outrage over the Kent State killings, the war in Vietnam, and other abominations of…
Reform School
Chicago State University Admissions Office 9501 South King Drive Chicago, IL 60628 August 22, 2010 Dear Sir or Madam, My name is Kanye West. I am writing to inform you of my plans to matriculate at the illustrious Chicago State University. Again. Yes, I’m that guy. The one who talked…
For Those About to Rock
Publisher: Red Octane
Platform: PlayStation 2
Price: $69.99
ESRB Rating: E (for Everyone)
Score: 7 (out of 10)
Paranoia Self Destroyer
Even as the freakishly named Tropical Storm Gamma lumbered through the Caribbean far to the south, the arrival of our first proper norther last week finally put Houston’s long, unnatural Indian summer to an end. Things have been downright surreal in this city ever since September 1. First we watched…
Our top DVD picks for the week of November 22
AVP: Alien Vs. Predator — Unrated Collector’s Edition (Fox) Cheaper by the Dozen: Baker’s Dozen Edition (Fox) 8MM 2 (Columbia/Tristar) Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (Buena Vista) The Honeymooners (Paramount) Keane: Strangers (Interscope) King Kong (1976) (Paramount) King Kong: Collector’s Edition (1933) (Warner Bros.) King of the Hill: Season 5 (Fox)…
I’d Much Rather Be with the Girls
Earlier this year, Rolling Stone reviewed Fantasia Barrino’s Free Yourself, writing, “Like all other American Idol albums, the debut from Season Three winner Fantasia Barrino leaves too much room for the pyrotechnics that constitute vocal talent on the show. But Barrino has gotten crucial help from a cavalcade of top…
Turkeys of the Year
If ever there was a good-news/bad-news year for Houston, it was 2005. Good news: The Astros made it to the World Series. Bad news: Not so’s you’d notice, as they got swept in four nerve-racking, frustrating games. Good news: The city opened its arms, welcoming evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. Bad…
The Shout Out Louds
When this Swedish band brought its impressive mix of retro synthpop, new-wave cool and modern indie rock to town back in March, it was relegated to opening for a little-known act at a little-used venue. At the time, the Shout Out Louds’ CD wasn’t even available in the States, and…
Winning Ugly
It’s probably not a great idea for a city government to do business with a developer of low-income housing if that developer is the subject of an FBI probe that may bring down Dallas’s mayor pro tem. So it’s likely a good thing that Houston didn’t lend developer Brian Potashnik…
Dwele
Some Kinda…, the new album from Detroit neo-soulster Dwele, gives listeners more of the same, which is actually more positive than it sounds. Fans of his 2003 major-label debut, Subject (or even his much-admired, much-out-of-print indie debut Rize), will be glad to hear that Dwele is still in the mellow…
Letters to the Editor
Family Matters Remembering the victims: I just wanted to write you a short note to thank you for this article [“Family Ties,” by Craig Malisow, November 17]. I was born in the Children of God in the early 1970s and left around six years ago. Your article was very well…
DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid
Though he’s known mostly for his work as a turntablist, New York-born-and-bred Spooky (a.k.a. Paul D. Miller) isn’t afraid to step out of his niche. He’s a well-rounded, eclectic artist who has collaborated with hip-hoppers (Kool Keith and Organized Konfusion), free jazz players (Matthew Shipp and William Parker), dub legends…
Staind, P.O.D., Taproot
Music as a profession is different. Accounting, doctoring, lawyering — you have to be qualified to do those jobs. Meanwhile, any yahoo with stars in his eyes or a bootmark across his broken heart can pick up a guitar and start practicing chords, pose in the mirror and begin fancying…
All You Need Is Larb
Domestic beers for $1 and imports for $2 — that was enough to get me to visit Sabai Thai, a new restaurant in the Metropole Center on Bellaire. They were running the beer special Mondays through Thursdays for happy hour. When we got there on a Monday night in early…
The Briefs
Their name implies an obvious preference for tighty-whities, and when the Briefs are stripped down, it’s evident why their choice in drawers fits so snugly. The quartet may hail from the boxers-favoring grunge band capital Seattle, but it holds itself up with a tight, simplistic style — one that relives…
Manhattan Luna
After meeting at my place for cocktails before a show, my friends and I decide to soak up some of the booze with a big bowl of pasta (and more Jack Daniel’s, of course), so we head for Buca di Beppo (5192 Buffalo Speedway, 713-665-2822). We sit in our favorite…
Spent
Ever since its Broadway debut in 1996, Rent has generated a loyal, almost cultlike following. Showered with praise, the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical touched a nerve among the young, artistic, gay, urban and alternatively dressed people who identified as outsiders and wondered how they would make their way in the world…
It’s All in the Packaging
The mango cake ($10, or two for $15) at Jungle Cafe (9110-A Bellaire Boulevard, 713-272-6633) is more than an unbelievably delicious cake — it’s a visual masterpiece, packaged for gift-giving and lots of “oohs” and “aahs.” The Taiwanese husband-and-wife team Jesse and Angela Wu, who trained in Japan and Paris,…
Common Cold
A few weeks ago, Harold Ramis was sitting in a hotel conference room discussing the subtext of The Ice Harvest, his new film based on the novel by Scott Phillips and adapted by Robert Benton and Richard Russo. Ramis explained he took the project, which Benton (Nobody’s Fool, The Human…