By: Meghan Hendley We like to shout about it and other cities around the nation are starting to take notice: Houston is a playground for the talented and Culture Pilot is sponsoring a month-long celebration highlighting our innovative city. The month-long celebration, entitled COHouston, focuses on a different theme each week including: maker/craft, film & multimedia, design & innovation, food & well-being, and, last but not least, arts & music.  Intellectual wonderment and creativity are encouraged through various events held in tandem throughout the city. This month’s focus isn’t just about celebration but it also aims to raise questions about ... Read More »

All in the Family: The Complete Series (Shout! Factory, 10/30) can easily be on your playlist for the next several months. That’s considering that the 28 disc box set features all 213 episodes (over nine seasons) and an extras disc with pilot episodes of the original show as well as subsequent spin-offs like Archie Bunker’s Place, Gloria (whoa, her character minus Meathead has moved in as an assistant to country vet Burgess Meredith), and a ‘90s oddity called 704 Hauser that lasted six eps. All in the Family was a landmark series from the 1970s that comically observed a big ... Read More »

By Will Guess Kingston, Pennsylvania’s Title Fight is doing things a little bit different than everyone else.  From bringing a ‘90s alternative sound back to popularity to recording all of their music videos to VHS, they’ve chosen a different path than their counterparts.  They bring their energetic live show to Walter’s on November 15 with Pianos Become The Teeth, Single Mothers and Power Trip. Shane Moran, one of two guitar players for the band, was nice enough to take some time to talk to FPH about being compared to Sonic Youth, what their writing and recording process is like and ... Read More »

"We don’t do genre. We’re not a psych band nor an industrial band nor what have you. Never were." - Tex Kerschen Read More »

Playwright Miki Johnson discusses Fleaven - a play that "sings and plays, rhymes and raps, dances and roller-skates its way through a Seussian disco dreamscape." Read More »

There is a sweet unassuming nature that runs across the music of MV & EE (Matt Valentine and Erika Elder).  It doesn’t jump up and down demanding your attention but swings softly like the leaves of a tree caught in a gentle breeze on a cool fall day .  Given the over-the-top acts coming through town this week – GWAR, Marilyn Manson,  Ron Zombie, and Valient Thorr – their Halloween night show almost feels like a bit of brilliant counter-programming for those folks that want to mark the end of the harvest festival with something a bit more organic and of the earth.  We reached out ... Read More »

It wouldn’t be a Halloween week without the reboot of Mondo Houston: Death Comes in Small Doses. Because if there’s one thing that’s constant it’s destiny. When your time has come, there’s nowhere you can run. Death will find all of us, hopefully when we least expect. The following are recollections of bizarre accidents and freak occurrences that took lives in Houston over the years. May 11, 1976: A truck carrying over 7000 gallons of anhydrous ammonia crashed on the 610 exit ramp to Highway 59. Subsequently the vehicle fell onto Highway 59 below and released a cloud of ammonia ... Read More »

Andrea Arnold brings new life to the classic tale of Wuthering Heights. A sense of neo-feminist reimagining dominates Arnold’s work best exemplified by Fish Tank (2009) but wholly evident throughout Wuthering Heights, playing exclusively at the downtown Sundance Cinemas Houston. Just look at the many film adaptations of WH and how they proceed from dark to even darker. You could hardly say light to dark since this classic novel by Emily Bronte, full of suffering and pain and unrequited love, could never be called light. Compare Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon in the 1939 version with their glossy good looks, ... Read More »

Cloud Atlas bewilders and casts a spell over audiences. You’ll probably want to see it a couple of times, not because it’ hard to understand, it’s not. The story hops time (several hundreds of years) and space (the droplets of an ocean) thus creating a luxurious pageant of human experience that demands attention. Actors play multiple roles, most recognizable yet some imperceptible. Cloud Atlas could be a litmus test of a person’s ability to accept change, or perhaps a guide to views on transmigration. For instance if a person believes in reincarnation does that also allow for a person to ... Read More »

Illustration by Blake Jones A look at how proposed voter ID legislation is attempting to silence the minority vote By Amanda Hart This past month a Federal District Court, along with a little help from the Voting Rights Act of 1965, thankfully struck down the recently passed Texas voter ID law, SB 14. The law would have required voters to show a government-issued identification to be able to cast a ballot this election cycle. A letter from the Justice Department to the state of Texas clearly outlines why Texas can’t have nice things, “We conclude that the total number of ... Read More »