Life in Black & White
Terry Moore doesn’t look like what most people would consider to be the stereotypic comic-book artist. At 39, that age of receding dreams, he’s soft-spoken and possessed of a mild countenance and modest stature that he himself says makes him look like an accountant. He lives in an upscale house…
Seeds of Trouble, Part II
When the New York-based Hearst Corp. mobilized its various newspapers, including the Houston Chronicle, to form “diversity committees” last spring and send representatives to a “Total Community Coverage” conference, little did it know that the most conspicuous result in Houston would be an embittered staff and the resignation of one…
Press Picks
thursday september 15 Rock Bottom Brewery Chapter Two, in which Houston gets another brewpub. This time from a Colorado company that has been in the brewing and pub-grubbing business for a while. Tasty ales and fine-ish dining are offered. They’ve stolen a chef, Michael Rakes, from Landry’s. Learn all about…
Touring Little Persia
Connect the dots along a certain 12-block stretch of Hillcroft and you’ll come up with Little Persia: Houston’s latest ethnic commercial hub, a scattering of shops and restaurants serving the 50,000-plus Iranians who call this city home. These establishments run, in more or less ascending order of grandeur, from just…
Pure Heart, Pure Voice
Iris DeMent favors short, uncomplicated words; you canread the lyric sheet to her recent second album, My Life, and rarely run across anything syllabically bulkier than “celebration” or “reminisce.” You’re more likely to find yourself drawn to the simple profusion of “sorry” and “still” and “daddy” and “battled” and “weary”…
Big Band, Big Press Kit
Two years into this job now, and I finally went to my first honest-to-God press conference, at the Hard Rock Cafe, to find that, yes, the Rolling Stones (they’re really big, maybe you’ve heard of them) will indeed perform at 7 p.m. Sunday, November 13 at the Astrodome. Tickets cost…
Letters
Tell the Truth I was not surprised that there were some angry responses to your piece on Steve Hotze [News, “Hotze in the Media Fun House,” by Jim Simmon, August 4]. However, I think the article deserves defending, which is why I am writing. First of all, I, like the…
Live Shots
The Hightailers Spin and Marty’s Annual Mobile Party Sunday, September 4 The vanload of missing musicians finally checked in at around 10:30 the next morning, from somewhere in Louisiana. Things like this happen during Spin and Marty’s Annual Mobile Party featuring the Hightailers. The tradition began several years ago when…
Big Sandy and his Boys
Even dilettantes know to trot out a name like Dave Alvin when the discussion turns to American roots music, but anyone caring to dig a bit deeper into the subject would do well to follow Alvin’s sharp eye as it roams across the musical landscape. That or just follow the…
Rotation
Liz Phair Whip-Smart Matador Anybody who thought Phair’s out-of-nowhere Exile in Guyville debut of last year was a fluke — either in its unexpected sexual frankness, or in its almost instant perch atop most critics’ year-end polls — had better prepare for a happy rebuff. Whip-Smart is irrefutably listenable proof…
Conversation Piece
“Da rrrroongplatz? Oop da-doll! Du doppa da rektplatz! Dameetcha playzeer. Comintern. Police. Plop da chah.” Believe it or not, you’ve just been welcomed. Or “velcroed,” as playwright David Ives would have it in The Universal Language, an uproarious one-act comedy about a language lesson in which the bulk of the…
Thoughts in Motion
It was a guy thing. Standing amid the loaded iconography — axes, broken beer bottles, real dogs in a cell-like cage — that comprise their collaborative effort “Poison Amor,” Lubbock-raised artists Terry Allen and James Drake spoke to an opening-night crowd about “doin’ pieces and drinkin’ beer.” Cute. But what…
Questions and Answers
Quiz Show opens with a series of scenes so precisely and artfully realized that you think you’re in for a masterpiece. During the credit sequence, a character we don’t yet know, but who will turn out to be Richard Goodwin (Rob Morrow), a government investigator, falls head over heels for…
Sins of the Brother
Current-events inspired movies usually fail to live up to the drama that provoked them. In part, that’s because they usually appear on television, and they’re usually hackwork. The Boys of St. Vincent is a glorious, albeit horrifying, exception to this rule, even though it, too, first appeared on the small…
Lost in Africa
What’s Bruce Beresford, acclaimed director of Driving Miss Daisy, doing making a film in which an aged duchess is shown naked from behind as she gets surprised in the shower by a bumbling young diplomat? Why would Sean Connery, dust still not settled on his Oscar-winning performance in The Untouchables,…