Godunov for You
If opera seems a bit too schmaltzy for you, consider this plot line: Fifteen years after the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the Russian czar Boris Godunov uses treachery and corruption to come to power. Once he’s claimed the throne, though, enemies use — you guessed it — treachery and…
South Austin Jug Band, with the Ringers
With its clean, earnest, New Age bluegrass sound, the South Austin Jug Band seems more suited to the Sugar Hill label than to Houston-based Blue Corn, which nevertheless has just released Dark and Weary World. The SAJB comes from that jam-grass niche populated by the likes of Sugar Hill acts…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, October 20 Artist Fran Padgett was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001. Now a survivor, she’s putting out the coffee table book Breast Cancer Recovery: No One Wrote a Manual, a collection of the paintings she created after learning she had the disease. She’ll be signing the book at…
The Mae Shi
On the recent Heartbeeps EP, screech-singer Ezra Buchla sounds a bit like the Arab on Radar guy approximating Craig “Hold Steady” Finn’s phrasing. Meanwhile, the music is closer to U.S. Maple, with some pretty convincing Trout Mask Beefheartisms sprinkled here ‘n’ there. Ten songs in 15 minutes places the disc…
Festival Crashers
Like South By Southwest, the Austin Film Festival is a stargazer’s dream. The annual, weeklong event in A-town features 80 advance screenings and film premieres, as well as exclusive conferences and parties chock-full of industry professionals and major celebs. The screenings open Thursday, October 20, with Shopgirl, a romantic tale…
John Vanderslice, with Portastatic, Spain Colored Orange
Maybe it’s a trend. Musicians whose day jobs are helping other musicians ply their trades seems to be de rigueur. John Vanderslice runs Tiny Telephone, a studio he uses to help other indie musicians hone their craft, but if you think Vanderslice has embraced the digital age, think again. This…
The Princess Diaries
FRI 10/21 Almost a decade ago, Princess Diana’s death triggered an overwhelming outpouring of emotion from the public. Since then, her own son Harry has soiled her memory (love the swastika, dude), and the ex-hubby has moved on. So alas, it’s time to dig her up again and throw her…
Why?, with Aqueduct
Strange wordplay has long been a requisite for bands to get the attention of eccentric Bay Area label Anticon. Hell, even the label name has two variations (Anti-con or Ant-Icon, whichever way you see it). So it’s fitting that Why? calls Anticon home, despite the fact that they’re the only…
Off the Hookom
SUN 10/23 Would you ever guess that a blazing city like Houston could be the home of one of the greatest snowboarders in the country? No? Then you haven’t heard about snowboarder Stacia Hookom, who calls the Bayou City home. This weekend, there’s a party for the six-time national champion…
Exhuming McCarthy
Good Night, and Good Luck, a riveting movie that’s as entertaining as it is socially and politically important, could not have come at a more propitious time. But more than just the right film at the right moment, George Clooney’s sophomore directorial effort is dynamic filmmaking: brilliantly conceived, visually arresting,…
Capsule Reviews
All in the Timing If, in showbiz, timing is everything, then Country Playhouse’s production of these six David Ives comedies is as accurate as an atomic clock. Prolific young Ives has a wonderfully goofy voice and a most particular way of speaking that channels both Monty Python’s whacked-out humor and…
C’mon, Get Happy!
SUN 10/23 Freezepop may take its name from a novelty ice treat band members once found in a freezer after a party, but the electropop trio from Boston doesn’t want to be just a novelty band. “We try to strike a balance between cheesy and interesting,” says vocalist Liz Enthusiasm…
Truth Syrup
It’s the cover-up, stupid! It doomed Nixon during Watergate, got Clinton impeached, inspired outrage against the Catholic Church, and apparently it’s just part of the day-to-day operations at places like Enron and Tyco. The initial crime is bad enough, but the conspiracy to hide it always ends up hurting more…
The American Way
If you’ve ever built a tree house, tried to exist in a dorm room, gone camping, rearranged your home, attempted to organize your office or intently read a fashion magazine article about things like easy-travel wardrobes, you’ll relate to the work of artist Andrea Zittel. “Andrea Zittel: Critical Space” at…
Trouble at Home
THU 10/20 Aaron Landsman’s site-specific play, What You’ve Done, is the sometimes mysterious, sometimes hilarious, always intimate tale of Rain, a young woman who vanishes and leaves only confusion for her sister Kat and roommate Chip. A collaboration between Project Row Houses, DiverseWorks and Infernal Bridegroom Productions, the show is…
Requiem for a Dreamer
DreamWorks is so eager to have you believe in its latest family movie that the words “inspired by a true story” are actually part of the title. Yep, Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story is the proper name, and publicists have been well coached to say and write out the…
Capsule Reviews
“Chris Sauter: Museum” In the past, Chris Sauter has made art using materials such as old recliners and ancient coffee tables. In his current show, the focus is Sheetrock, Sheetrock and more Sheetrock. Sauter constructed a gallery within the DiverseWorks main gallery, erecting Sheetrock walls and then cutting geometric shapes…
Banana Hammock
The camarones Hennessy en hamaca ($11.50) at Beso (2300 Westheimer, 713-523-2376) are a perfect example of chef Arturo Boada’s fusion cuisine, which blends South American, Asian and European influences. Four giant shrimp are sautéed with hearts of palm, tomatoes and basil in a soy-ginger cream sauce, to which a goodly…
Racy Roxie
Roxie Hart, the gorgeous killer whose wiggling hips all but set Chicago on fire, is one of musical comedy’s most wonderfully wicked femmes fatales. She gets away with murder and gets fabulously famous doing so. Still, for all her floozy charms, Roxie’s just one reason why this sleek little musical,…
Cape of Good Hope
Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989-1997 (Warner Home Video) There’s good reason to be skeptical of an eight-disc Batman set that forces you to buy the campy Joel Schumacher movies (Batman Forever, its title a veiled threat, and Batman & Robin) when all you need are the dark Tim Burton…
Underwater Dance Club, For Reals
When George Bush claimed something to the effect of “there was no way we could have known that the levees would break,” my first thought was to compile a mixtape for our impotent leader of the literally hundreds of songs detailing New Orleans’s eventual watery demise in just that manner…
Spy vs. Spy
Scott Tycer, the chef and owner of Gravitas, the hip new bistro on Taft, was standing at the end of the stone counter in the kitchen looking out over the sleekly modern dining room. The restaurant’s new construction is intriguingly fashioned from the distressed concrete and vintage bricks of an…
Puppy Love
It’s ugly to watch a grown man gush over a puppy. The kissing. The cooing. The “widdle-doggie” talk. Embarrassing stuff. So it was with trepidation that I approached Nintendogs, the cuddly dog-rearing sim for Nintendo DS. A million and a half people have already adopted virtual pooches, making the game…
Best Beats from the Bayou
As we approach the end of the fattest, dopest, flyest, funky-freshest year in H-town hip-hop history, it would behoove us to take a brief look back at the city’s rap history. And so we’ve come up with this: the top ten Houston hip-hop jams of all time. 10. “Still Tippin,”…
Our top DVD picks for the week of October 18
The Adventures of Superman: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros.) American Movie Musicals Collection (Columbia/Tristar) Batman Begins (Warner Bros.) Bruce Lee: Ultimate Collection (Fox) The Care Bears: Big Wish Movie (Lions Gate) The Coen Brothers Collection (Universal) CSI New York: The Complete First Season (Paramount) Dark Shadows: The Complete Revival…
Ain’t Saying He’s a Gold Digger
Like a lot of us in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Micah Nickerson and Damien Randle of local hip-hop duo the Legendary K.O. (formerly K-Otix) were consumed with horror and full of compassion for the tens of thousands of displaced New Orleanians in our midst. Both Nickerson and Randle…
Speed Racers
Princeton Watson had only four blocks to go. If his stepmother got home from her teaching job before he did, she’d know for sure that something was missing from the garage. That something was his dad’s Suzuki GSXR 1000 sport bike, specially tuned and modified to do one thing well…
Seat Belts and Eye Shadow
No decade churned out more memorable traffic-themed one-hit wonders than the ’80s. Gary Numan’s “Cars,” Kane Gang’s “Motortown” and Elmo and Patsy’s “Grandma Got Ran Over by a Reindeer” all spring immediately to mind. Perhaps that’s why the Texas Department of Transportation enlisted Houston-based ’80s dance cover band the Lost…
Toy Story
Jose Escalante is a free man. And for that, dildo lovers all across Houston should celebrate. Escalante is a clerk at Adult Video Megaplex in north Houston, and he faced a year in jail and a $4,000 fine for selling obscene devices. Specifically, according to the arrest report, such novelties…
The Dandy Warhols
The Dandy Warhols’ last album, Welcome to the Monkey House, came on like the drunken friend who yanks you a little too hard onto the dance floor. All you had to do was loosen up a little to realize that the joyously retro ’80s-pop bounce was good for you. This…
Letters to the Editor
The Lost World The ride of her life: I lost my virginity in the park (June 19, 1989 — during the fireworks show) in an abandoned concession stand [“RIP, AstroWorld,” Hair Balls, by Richard Connelly, October 6]. Now there isn’t much left to do but find a frame for the…
Freakwater
Catherine Ann Irwin and Janet Beveridge Bean have been at this Freakwater thing since about 1988, which is pretty impressive when you stop to realize that Gram Parsons died after recording a total of two LPs with Emmylou Harris; George Jones and Tammy Wynette were together for only about six…
Awards Time
Staff writers Josh Harkinson and Craig Malisow have been named finalists in the five-state Katie Awards competition sponsored by the Press Club of Dallas. The Houston Press is also a finalist in the Best Special Interest Paper/Major Markets category. Harkinson was recognized in the Government/Political Story category for “HCCS’s Gift…
Rev Run
Are you in touch with your inner 12-year-old? Rev Run sure is, and if you are too, you’ll love Distortion. Virtually all the lines he hollers sound like they’re punctuated with multiple exclamation points, and the Hasidic vampire look he’s sporting seems like something a seventh-grader would think was really…
Back to Busch
The Houston Astros have rarely made things easy in their 43 years of trying in vain to reach the World Series, so it’s no surprise they didn’t wrap things up against the St. Louis Cardinals in Game Five. Instead they headed back to St. Louis with a 3-2 game lead…
Miss Leslie & Her Juke-Jointers
Wailing pedal steel, crying fiddles, alternately growling and keening Telecasters, plunking upright piano figures and songs about the trouble women and men get into when they spend too much time in barrooms: In Texas, that was what the best country was all about in the ’50s and ’60s, and that’s…