By Kim Velsey 2/14 10:30am

Billionaires

7 Photos

Tilman Fertitta's Awesome Week.

Houston Billionaire Tilman Fertitta Is Having the Best Week Ever

How has your week been? Ours has been kind of meh. But you know who is having the most excellent mid-February? Houston restaurant honcho Tilman Fertitta.

Mr. Fertitta’s publicist—one of Mr. Fertitta’s publicists?—reached out to The Observer to let us know that Mr. Fertitta has been enjoying an awesome week. Unlike some billionaires, Mr. Fertitta does not just buy a $19.5 million condo and throw in the towel. No way. He also opened a Last Vegas restaurant with his business partner Eva Longoria (quite an improvement over the overweight middle-aged men who usually fill out the business partner category) and hosted a lavish Gulf-coast Mardi Gras party featuring a performance by Kool & the Gang.  And there are pictures! Read More

By Rex Reed 7/24/12 5:09pm

movies

Hirsch and McConaughey in Killer Joe.

Trailer Park, Unhitched: With Killer Joe, Friedkin Continues His Slow Descent Into Depravity

Director William Friedkin has always been attracted to lurid movie material. From the gruesome, overcooked The Exorcist to the vile and unhinged Cruising, he craves plots about deeply conflicted characters who are hopelessly alienated, disconnected from both the society that surrounds them and even their own lives. One craves another well-crafted action nail-biter like his Oscar-winning The French Connection, but at 76, his view of the world just gets darker than ever. Small wonder, then, that he has found his literary soulmate in Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts, whose twisted, controversial and fascinating work has found its way to the screen through Mr. Friedkin’s jaundiced camera twice—first in the repellant schizophrenic thriller Bug, and now in the toxic trailer-trash thriller Killer Joe. When this sick, ludicrous cocktail of sex, violence and mayhem was first unveiled a year ago at the Toronto International Film Festival, one wag aptly described it as “the ghost of Tennessee Williams meets the spirit of Quentin Tarantino.” For shock value, cut to Gina Gershon, crawling across a filthy kitchen floor covered in blood to perform fellatio at gunpoint on a Colonel Sanders drumstick, and you have a high-water mark in tastelessness that gives depravity a bad name. Read More

By Rex Reed 1/10/12 8:22pm

movies

Quaid.

Beneath the Darkness: Run Run Run Run Run Run Run Away From This Psycho Killer Nonsense

Nagging question of the day: What heinous sin could the otherwise gifted, versatile and generally underappreciated Dennis Quad have committed to deserve a submental punishment called Beneath the Darkness? This sorry rip-off of every horror flick that turns up on late-night cable programming is a major head-scratcher. Filmed in two Texas highway speed bumps called Smithville and Bastrop, and boasting 61 final thank-you credits and endorsements for everything from the Hula Hoops Diner & Soda Shop to the Wells Fargo Bank of Bastrop, it is, from the picture, very much a community effort. God knows no professional appears to have come within a 500-mile radius. Except, of course, Mr. Quaid, who has a lot of explaining to do. Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 8/29/11 10:56am

Goodbyes

beckhat

Happy Trails! Glenn Beck Is Moving to ‘Backwater’ Texas

Now that Glenn Beck is no longer employed by Fox News, he’s free to vacate New York, bastion of liberal values and target of God’s punitive weather systems.

In April, Glenn Beck first announced would he be leaving New York, though it was unclear where he was headed. After an international speaking tour, the Post reports he’s putting down roots in Bosque County, Texas (population 17,204). Mr. Beck will operate GBTV, via Mercury Radio Arts, out of Dallas. Read More

By Steve Cohen 7/20/08 1:46pm

Energy and the Sinking Economy

Last Thursday, former Vice President Al Gore joined the many voices that have been calling for a crash program-a "moon-shot" national effort to get us off of fossil fuels. Senator Obama applauded the speech saying "For decades, Al Gore has challenged the skeptics in Washington on climate change and awakened the conscience of a nation Read More

By Felix Gillette 3/06/08 11:52am

Night Shift: Super Tuesday II in the Fox News Studio

Tuesday, March 4, around 8 p.m., Bill O’Reilly bounded across a chilly studio on the first floor of the News Corp. building on Sixth Avenue toward the desk at the back of the room.

There, the members of the Fox News Super Tuesday II political team—Brit Hume, Juan Williams, Bill Kristol, Nina Easton and Fred Read More

By Niall Stanage 3/04/08 3:08pm

Clinton Sells Age and Experience, Austin Crowd Buys

AUSTIN, Texas—Last night, at her final pre-election rally here in Texas, Hillary Clinton once again invoked the prospect of a 3 a.m. call to the White House.

She told a crowd of around 3000 at the Burger Center sports facility that they should choose whichever candidate they would prefer to answer such a call.

Clinton Read More

By Steve Kornacki 3/04/08 2:46am

The March 4 Stakes for Hillary

Two things are obvious: If Hillary Clinton can somehow win both Texas and Ohio, she stays; if she loses both states, she’s tuna fish.

A third possibility—a split decision—will present Clinton the justification to push on if she wishes to, but without any clear way to win.

Let’s say Hillary wins Ohio (as the latest Read More