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Bale and Exodus Tremble Before a Murdering God

Bale plays Moses as a Biblical middle manager.

By Amy Nicholson
Dec 9, 2014

Flip open your Bibles to Numbers 12:3 to find the first inaccuracy in Ridley Scott's Exodus: Gods and Kings. "Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth," sayeth the Good Book of our hero, played by Christian Bale, an...
ROCO Alive in Concert: Once Upon a Time

By Bob Ruggiero
Sep 25, 2014

The River Oaks Chamber Orchestra opens its tenth season with ROCO Alive in Concert: Once Upon a Time. The program includes the world premiere of Maria Newman’s Abilene Concerto, commissioned by ROCO. “Every concert this season will feature a ROCO-commissioned world premiere,” says founder and artistic director Alecia Lawyer via...
Manhattan Short Film Festival

By Bob Ruggiero
Sep 25, 2014

Film festivals aren’t usually thought of as examples of democracy in action, but the Manhattan Short Film Festival certainly qualifies. During the week of September 26, more than 100,000 moviegoers in 300 cities across six continents will gather to vote for the winner of the festival. The ten entries in...
Finding Fela

By Olivia Flores Alvarez
Aug 28, 2014

We like to “watch” movies rather than “listen” to them, but Finding Fela is an exception. We can close our eyes and “listen” to Finding Fela and get the documentary’s full message. Fela Kuti was the founder of the Afrobeat music genre and as such changed the face of music...
The Whipping Man

By Margaret Downing
May 22, 2014

The setting is a mansion that’s been abandoned and essentially destroyed in Richmond, Virginia, in the waning days of the U.S. Civil War. A wounded Confederate soldier, who is Jewish, returns to his family’s home to find only two people there, both former slaves. In the conversation that follows, buried...
The Meh Wayback: Mr. Peabody & Sherman

By Alan Scherstuhl
Mar 6, 2014

First, the pleasant surprises. In puffing up the slight, absurd Mr. Peabody and Sherman shorts from Jay Ward’s The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show into an 82-minute 3D save-the-timestream child-distractor, director Rob Minkoff and his many writers have preserved a few of the hallmarks distinguishing the Dada, deadpan, almost primitive original,...
Squeezing the Globe

Big Men reveals how the world of oil actually turns.

By Alan Scherstuhl
Mar 6, 2014

Here's the rare current-affairs documentary that doesn't just show us something gone wrong in some part of our world. Rachel Boynton's first-rate Big Men instead peels the skin off the world itself, revealing the gears as they grind away, casting familiar doc scenarios in shades of illuminating gray: The heroes...
Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Colum McCann

By Olivia Flores Alvarez
Nov 14, 2013

Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s new book, Americanah, is filled with lyrical phrases such as “I feel like I got off the plane in Lagos and stopped being black.” And “Maybe we should laugh less and solve our problems more.” Adichie, who is sharing the stage with Colum McCann during...
Aida Features A-List Talent Backed by B-Movie Sets and Costumes

Production is flat, lifeless and sadly unremarkable.

By D. L. Groover
Oct 23, 2013

In the 1860s, the Khedive of Egypt was spending his country's treasury like a drunken pharaoh. Heavily influenced by the West, he wanted to bring medieval Egypt up to speed, so he began an extensive — and expensive — public works overhaul, especially in Cairo. Swamps were drained, grand boulevards...
Capsule Art Reviews: "Gifts from the Past: The Isabel Brown Wilson Collection," "Kermit Oliver: Tracing Our Pilgrimage," "N U L <> 2 0 1 3::DOMOKOS," "Rachel Hecker: Group Show," "SPRAWL"

By Abby Koenig and Altamese Osborne
Oct 16, 2013

"Gifts from the Past: The Isabel Brown Wilson Collection" There sits in the Caroline Wiess Law Building at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston an exhibition that is equal parts art history and memoriam: "Gifts from the Past: The Isabel Brown Wilson Collection," is a connection between Wilson's love of art,...
Captain Phillips: Tom Hanks Goes Where Few Actors Have Dared

Hanks proves why moviegoers and directors love him.

By Stephanie Zacharek
Oct 9, 2013

Tom Hanks has built a career out of playing aggressively noble roles, so it's only natural to want to see him taken down a peg. But it's no fun to watch him suffer at the hands of Somali pirates in Paul Greengrass's true-life adventure Captain Phillips. Hanks plays the commander...
"Nice. Luc Tuymans"

By Nancy Ford
Sep 26, 2013

If visual arts were songs, the "Nice. Luc Tuymans" exhibition at The Menil Collection could be considered a series of duets. The Belgian artist handpicked some 30 of his paintings to hang in tandem with works from the Menil's permanent collection. Using mostly photographs and film stills as sources for...
Capsule Art Reviews: "The Big Show" "Gifts from the Past: The Isabel Brown Wilson Collection" "Ideas Are Free" "Late Surrealism" "PRINTTX" "Some Tree Rings, a Vision, and the Third of May" "Water's Edge (Mizugiwa)"

By Meredith Deliso and Altamese Osborne
Jul 31, 2013

"The Big Show" "The Big Show" is Lawndale Art Center's annual juried exhibition. The gallery drip-drops with life this year; though there is no set theme to Lawndale's "Big Show" exhibitions, many of the works are figurative pieces. Bryan Forrester's photograph Imogene C-Print shows a naked man and woman in...
The New Black and Other Docs Ask, “Why Has Black Been Made the Face of Homophobia?”

By Ernest Hardy
Jul 18, 2013

There’s a gorgeous moment in Yoruba Richen’s documentary The New Black, currently playing the film festival circuit, in which two young black lesbian activists canvass an inner-city black neighborhood to drum up support for the gay marriage initiative that was on the ballot in Maryland’s 2012 statewide election. The women...
Eternal Egypt Lives on in the Hall of Ancient Egypt

A close look at the new permanent hall at the Houston Museumof Natural Science displays ancient mysteries and magic

By D. L. Groover
Jun 19, 2013

'Mommy, look, that lady is naked." The little girl, standing no higher than the bottom of the black Plexiglas case into which she peered, saw her immediately. In the gloom that surrounds the brand-new permanent Hall of Ancient Egypt at the Houston Museum of Natural Science — known for its...
The 10 Best Downtown Restaurants

More than tunnels and tourist traps.

By Katharine Shilcutt
May 22, 2013

Top 10 New restaurants and bars are opening in downtown Houston faster than we can keep up, thanks to a renaissance around the Market Square Park area that's bringing new life to downtown's north side. But that's not the only part of downtown that's blossoming — nor are those new...
Oscar's Feast of Appetizers

Gorge on this year's Oscar-nominated short films.

By Nick Schager
Jan 30, 2013

There's scant dialogue but plenty of eloquent storytelling in the five animated short films up for a 2013 Oscar, all of which — along with their live-action and documentary counterparts — will get a pre-award show release at the IFC Center beginning February 1. Save for a five-minute Simpsons segment...
Park City's Breakouts

The movies to know from Sundance - and the year ahead.

By Scott Foundas
Jan 16, 2013

For the next ten days, all Hollywood eyes — and those of many a filmgoer — will turn toward the frigid wilds of Park City, Utah, reportedly experiencing its chilliest winter in a decade. Their collective hope: to discover at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival (January 17 through 26) the...
Discovering Lucy

More surprises from Ethiopia - restaurant with generous portions, good food and a place to dance away the calories after dinner.

By Katharine Shilcutt
Jan 2, 2013

See more colorful photos from Lucy's dining room and kitchen in this week's slideshow. It's not often you find yourself getting bottle service at a mesob, the woven round table that functions as the traditional serving structure at Ethiopian restaurants. It's short, small and close to the ground. You don't...
Tabu

Miguel Gomes offers more.

By Eric Hynes
Dec 26, 2012

Perhaps in response to bombastic mainstream Hollywood, international auteurs often veer toward minimalism — quieter emotions, slower tempos, a tightly defined era and setting. Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes is clearly a man of the art house — his new film, Tabu, which opens this week, was shot on 16mm black-and-white...
Bayou City Art Festival

By Olivia Flores Alvarez
Jun 14, 2012

The Bayou City Art Festival takes over a big chunk of downtown real estate this weekend, and Charlie Hardwick's Pop Art paintings take over the festival. Hardwick, known to many of his fans as ''Uncle Charlie,'' has built a career creating colorful concert posters for such groups as The Who,...
The Italian Girl in Algiers

By Margaret Downing
Jun 14, 2012

Italian mezzo-soprano Daniela Barcellona checks in at about five-foot-ten, and in Houston Grand Opera’s second offering of the season — The Italian Girl in Algiers — she is taller than Lawrence Brownlee, who plays her lover, Lindoro. Rather than being a drawback, this plays to her advantage as she makes...

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