Ann Lemons Pollack
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An Unfortunate Episode
Watch those credit cards. While most errors are innocent, they can still lead you into a trail of confusion and irritation. This is from the St. Louis Magazine blog Relish.
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Frontenac Grill
And so a restaurant that began as a Coco's, that mid-price, polite version of Denny's, has gone through a few name changes, like a Las Vegas grass widow, and now it's come full circle to be the Frontenac Grill. The project was mostly completed by the late Mike Faille, whose more-or-less full story appeared in
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Way to Heaven
The theater is an excellent place to look at what is real and what is false, and whether what is occurring on stage actually happened, and why, or if the playwright is taking us along on a leap of fantasy directly from his, or her, imagination. "Way to Heaven," which opened last night as a
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Albert Nobbs
With Glenn Close and Janet McTeer providing dazzling performances, the sad, intimate, always-reaching-but-never-touching story that is "Albert Nobbs," falls short of excellence, a conclusion I intensely disliked having to reach. But the movie, which opens here today, fails to strike the necessary chord. Perhaps the brilliant Close is just too tightly wrapped, disappearing into herself
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Man on a Ledge
We're not very far into "Man on a Ledge," when we realize that Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) is no more going to jump off the Roosevelt Hotel window ledge than you and I. But what's he doing out there? That comes clear a little while later as this hodge-podge of a movie combines dozens of
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Lester’s Sports Bar & Grill
What does it take to make a sports bar? Many television sets, of course, all tuned to an all-sports station that features either games or loud conversations by groups of former athletes forever interrupting one another or questioning someone’s manhood — maybe both at the same time. And what about a sports bar and grill,
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Oleanna
Clarence Thomas has been a U.S. Supreme Court Justice since 1991, approved by the Senate in a 52-48 vote, the narrowest confirmation margin ever, amid a lot of sexual harassment discussion involving Anita Hill. A year later, "ripped from the headlines" in "Law & Order" style, "Oleanna" opened on Broadway as David Mamet's take on
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A Steady Rain
The Chicago School of drama, led by such as David Mamet, Nelson Algren and Tracy Letts, involves pain, profanity and polarization, in almost-equal parts. It's well-represented in newcomer Keith Huff's "A Steady Rain," which opened last night in the Rep's Studio Theatre and will run through Feb. 5. It's tough theater, directed in proper style
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A Dangerous Method
Michael Fassbender has been on movie screens everywhere, it seems, playing a variety of characters and handling all of them very well. "A Dangerous Method," in which he portrays Carl Jung, "Haywire," an action flick, and "Shame," in which he's a cold sex addict, all open here today. ("Shame" will be the next review.) They