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Don’t Pretend Chrissie Hynde Doesn’t Deserve Her Number One Hit from a TV Series

By Jesse Sendejas Jr.

Jun 17, 2022

One of the most popular songs in the world this week is an oldie performed by the incomparable Kate Bush. It’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” originally released back in the summer of Live Aid. If you’re one of the song’s young fans, properly obsessed with it...

That interplanetary jazz ambassador, Sun Ra, from "A Joyful Noise."

MFAH's Jazz on Film Series Swings Back After Pandemic Absence

By Bob Ruggiero

May 31, 2022

You’ll have to forgive Peter Lucas if he—like so many of us—has sort of lost track of time a bit during the past 2 ½ years living under a pandemic. He’s trying to recall the last time the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston held its Jazz on Film series. “That...

Reviews For The Easily Distracted:
Top Gun: Maverick

By Pete Vonder Haar

May 27, 2022

Title: Top Gun: Maverick Describe This Movie In One Lethal Weapon Quote: ROGER MURTAUGH: I'm getting too old for this shit. Brief Plot Synopsis: Aging aviator assembles aces, aims at atomic area. Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 3.5 Jerry Hathaways out of 5. Tagline: "Feel the need." Better Tagline: "It's a small...

Shaun Cassidy's "The Magic of a Midnight Sky" show is part concert, part theater as he looks back on his life.

Shaun Cassidy: The Hardly Idle Idol

By Bob Ruggiero

May 25, 2022

Even though it was quite a while ago, Shaun Cassidy certainly remembers the last time he played Houston. It was in early 1980 at a now-defunct little venue called the Astrodome, as part of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. What he didn’t know at the time is that it...

The Beatles and their significant others (front row) with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (seated, top) in February, 1968, in Rishikesh, India.

New Doc Details the Beatles' Indian Connections

By Bob Ruggiero

May 10, 2022

In all the nooks and crannies of Beatles Scholarship, the Fabs’ relationship to and time spent in India is one of the most interesting. In fact, it could be argued that no group did more to open Western ears, eyes, and minds to Indian music, culture, and spirituality than the...

John Bernthal as Sgt. Wayne Jenkins in We Own This City.

HBO's We Own This City is Based on a True Life Story of a Police Department Gone Toxic

By Jamil David

May 9, 2022

We Own This City is HBO’s gripping crime drama — based on the book of the same name by Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton — follows the corruption and downfall of the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force. The Wire creator David Simon returns to the streets of Baltimore...

Top Chef has put Houston in the spotlight this season

A Behind the Scenes Look at How Top Chef is Spreading Good Houston Vibes

By Jesse Sendejas Jr.

Apr 26, 2022

Okay, I saw Padma Lakshmi’s scar up close. It’s real and it’s spectacular. Also, what is pani puri and how have I not eaten this before? How do I even eat this? It’s so pretty! Oh my god, it’s delicious. These are actual notes taken from my visit to the...

Tokyo Vice with Ken Watanabe and Ansel Elgort.

Review: Tokyo Vice and Slow Horses

By Jamil David

Apr 25, 2022

There are a ton of television shows that have been released over the month of April, with even more set for the coming weeks. Among them: Better Call Saul is returning, HBO’s Barry, a new Star Wars Show, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Two shows have come out the past couple of weeks...

All this so a few dudes could make more money selling bananas...

Opinion: Using Stranger Things to Teach a 12-Year-Old Why Ronald Reagan Sucked

By Jef Rouner

Apr 21, 2022

I recently decided that the Kid With One F was old enough to watch Netflix’s Stranger Things. This may or may not have been because I wanted to do a rewatch before the season premiere next month and it was a good way to claim the living room television without...

Former President Barack Obama says we can still save the natural world.

Obama’s National Parks Series is the Most Calming Thing on TV

By Jef Rouner

Apr 18, 2022

When Netflix announced that it had entered an agreement with former President Barack Obama to produce programming, I had no idea that the result would be the single most calming thing on television. Watch Our Great National Parks at your earliest convenience. Throughout the five episodes, Obama appears on screen...

Curtis Mayfield's classic album Super Fly

Jesus Christ Super Fly

By Jesse Sendejas Jr.

Apr 12, 2022

It’s Easter, so once again it’s time to ponder painted eggs, popcorn bunny rabbits and the 1970s Blaxploitation classic Super Fly. If you and your Peeps don’t celebrate the season by watching one of the 20th century’s most commercially successful Black American works of cinema – and, more pointedly, by...

Reviews For The Easily Distracted:
Everything Everywhere All At Once

By Pete Vonder Haar

Apr 8, 2022

Title: Everything Everywhere All at Once Describe This Movie In One It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown Quote: CHARLIE BROWN: I got a rock. Brief Plot Synopsis: Lots of stuff in many places occurs more or less simultaneously. Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 4.5 Menocus out of 5. Tagline: N/A Better...

Opinion: Morbius is an AIDS Revenge Story

By Jef Rouner

Mar 31, 2022

When I was a teenager in the ‘90s, I watched a man slowly die of AIDS. He was a friend of my theater teacher; someone she had worked with back when her focus was on acting instead of instruction. I don’t remember why she took me to see him one...

Bill Maher has a TV show, standup tour, podcast, and new HBO special coming out.

Bill Maher Has a Lot to Say about Trump, Ted Cruz, Wokeness, Millennials & More

By Bob Ruggiero

Mar 31, 2022

For one hour each week (and a little extra online), Bill Maher addresses, dissects, skewers, pontificates and debates with guests the social and political topics of the day on his long-running HBO series Real Time with Bill Maher. But given just how batshit crazy things are going these days in...

A great web series got killed for very mediocre Hollywood bunk.

Even With Christina Ricci, Wednesday Feels Like a Ripoff

By Jef Rouner

Mar 24, 2022

Earlier this week, Deadline announce that Christina Ricci would be joining the Netflix series Wednesday, a show about a high school age Wednesday Addams from the Addams Family cartoons being helmed by Tim Burton. Ricci played Wednesday in the 1991 film adaptation directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and its sequel. Though...

The Sixth Annual Houston Latino Film Festival

By Gladys Fuentes

Mar 23, 2022

Films, like literature, have a way of transporting the audience to places not always accessible in real life allowing the viewer to temporarily walk in the shoes of the characters depicted. “Coming to our festival, you get that badge and it's like a passport,” says Houston Latino Film Festival Director Dave Cebrero...

Track the Rise of the Lakers Dynasty With the New HBO Series

By Jamil David

Mar 21, 2022

Sports are our biggest form of entertainment, and sports figures are our most prominent celebrities. There is no league more dependent on the individual star power of its players than the NBA, which has been built on the backs of stars who brought the league into its current popularity and...

"Reality Bites"—filmed partially in Houston—was a pivotal movie for Gen X and 1990s culture.

The '90s — in All Their Glory and Infamy — Return in a New Book

By Bob Ruggiero

Mar 14, 2022

To his admirers, Chuck Klosterman is one of today’s most trenchant, incisive and often very funny pop culture critics and historians. Readers devour his books and essay collections like Fargo Rock City and Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. Others can find him too-hip-for-thou. Regardless, his newest effort—the straightforwardly-titled, The Nineties:...

The light sabers come back to Jones Hall for Return of the Jedi with the Houston Symphony.

Feel The Force With Houston Symphony's Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi

By Sam Byrd

Mar 3, 2022

The Houston Symphony presents Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - in concert this weekend. The orchestra will play the entire score while audiences watch the battle between good and evil rage on in the final chapter of the original Star Wars trilogy. The program runs Friday through Sunday at Jones Hall.

Jean Millington, Brie Darling, and June Millington of Fanny in 2018.

Rock Doc Showcases Fanny—The All-Female '70s Band You Haven't Heard

By Bob Ruggiero

Feb 28, 2022

In the last issue of Rolling Stone produced in the 20th century, a bevy of musicians were asked what musical issues they’d like to see remedied or addressed in the 21st. In a quote that was pulled out to feature, David Bowie was very much to the point. “One of...

Film and TV

Which Actors Have Completed the Disney Trifecta?

Review: Stranger Things and Obi-Wan Kenobi

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