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The Houston Post/Fri., Jan. 5, 1979/ 13E [[image]] Review Exhibition of Mexican film posters [[image]] El-Toro Restaurant Mexican Foods NOW OPEN AT IH 10 (EAST LOOP) AT MERCURY DRIVE FEATURING HOUSTON'S MOST BEAUTIFUL RESTAURANT AND THE MOST AUTHENTIC MEXICAN FOOD SERVED IN TEXAS. OPEN 11 A.M.-9:30 P.M. WEEKDAYS 11-10:30 FRIDAYS AND SATURDAYS OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK TAKE OUT SERVICE AVAILABLE VISIT OUR OTHER LOCATIONS: BAYTOWN, LA PORTE, CLUTE 674-3487 TWO COMBINATION PLATE with beans & potato salad $2.75 FAMILY TAKE-HOME SPECIAL Choice of 1 lb. meat Beef, Ham, Ribs or Links 1/2 pint barbecue sauce 1 pint slaw 1 pint potato salad Take-Out Only $5.95 THE BARBECUE SHACK 11129 Bellaire 498-9115 [[image]] [[?]] of Excellence The carriage Trade Dinner Club SPECIAL NOTICE TO MEMBERS JANUARY, 1979 #6-DAVE'S STEAKHOUSE: not valid on Friday night. #8-BRITANNIA: Closed. Replaced by GLASS MENAGERIE SUNDAY BRUNCH. valid 11:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Telephone: 367-1000. By reservation only. #9-GLASS MENAGERIE: Closed Monday. #10-LOUIS XIV: Closed. Replaced by THE VINTAGE ROOM, RAMADA INN WEST, 7787 Katy Freeway. Telephone: 682-1611 Valid Saturday thru Thursday, 5:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. Not Valid holidays. No credit cards please. #11-LILIAN'S: Closed Monday. #23-JIMMIE GEE'S: Now "KEVIN'S SOUP AND." Valid Monday thru Saturday, 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. 711 Franklin St. Telephone: 222-7756 #24-DIANA: Closed. #30-ALBERT GEE'S: Closed. #41-NATHAN WEATHERBURN'S: Closed Sunday. #45-PROUD TEXAN: Replaced by THE BARKER HOUSE;214 Morton St., Richmond, Texas. Valid Tuesday thru Thursday, 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. and Saturday5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Not valid holidays. Closed Sunday and Monday. No credit cards please. Telephone: 342-6707 #46-APPLEGATE'S LANDING: Closed. Replaced by Z. Z. ZAMORA, 2402 Commonwealth. Telephone: 526-3953. Valid Tuesday thru Thursday and Saturday, 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Valid Wednesday and Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Closed holidays. No credit cards please. #48-ADMIRAL PERRY'S: Closed. #56-RUBAIYAT: Closed. Replaced by THE CHARCOAL ROOM, RAMADA INN SOUTHWEST, 6855 Southwest Freeway. Telephone: 771-0641. Valid Monday thru Saturday, 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Closed Sunday. Not valid holidays. No credit cards please. #62-JACK BLACK'S: Closed for concept change. #64-LOS TRONCOS: Now valid thru Thursday. #69-THE WINDMILL DINNER THEATRE: Now valid for buffet 6:00 p.m. and curtain call 8:15 p.m. #74-THE FOUNDRY: Name changed to BEEF'N'BARREL CO. #75-FIVE TO FIVE RESTAURANT: 2618 Winrock. Telephone: 783 - 0545. Valid Friday and Saturday, 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. and Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, 5:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. Not valid Monday or holidays. Gratuity will be included. Reservations only. By dialing 789-5191 after 5:00 p.m. 365 days a year, you will hear a recorded message updating the most recent information on the current program. The Carriage Trade Dinner Club 55 Woodlake Square • Houston, Tex. 77063 • (713) 789-51911 (Please insert this NOTICE in your Directory) [[image]] Love and life in Mexican movie - poster art at Contemporary Arts Museum By MIMI CROSSLEY Pest Art Writer When romantic Mexican film star Pedro Infante died in a 1956 plane crash, women fans were said to have committed suicide en masse. For in the ultra-dramatic world of Mexican cinema, passion is much bigger than life. So is the art of Mexican movie posters, as seen in the exhibition opening this weekend in the lower gallery of the Contemporary Arts Museum metal shed building at Montrose and Bissonnet. IN THE SHOW OF 45 posters, plus a dozen lobby cards advertising films from the 1940s and '50s, everything is monumental. Giant, pulsating lips are pursed to kiss the nearest hero; villains snarl over a whole city; comedians pop their eyeballs out into enormous, distended globes. Though Mexican films --- like movies produced in the United States --- have gotten more complicated and violent, those innocent days of what is known as the golden age of south-of-the-border cinema created a wealth of popular folk art. both the style and iconography of this genre have spawned a generation of young American artists in the Southwest, from the photo-realism of painter Jesse Trevino in San Antonio to prints made by a group of California artists in Sacramento known as the Royal Chicano Air Force. THE MOVIE-POSTER ARTISTS of that older era were anonymous, hired by the studio to grind out visual publicity. What they had to work with were the stock plots and characters of the time: rancheros, or singing westerns, were the most popular; dramas always involved the plight of a beautiful woman with titles like Jorge Negrete's last film in 1953 --- El Rapto. Comedies were broad slapstick built around Mexico's best-known exports to Europe and the United States, Cantinflas (still making films) a n d T i n T a n ( h e of t h e p o p p i n g eyeballs). Though these films and accompanying posters echo U.S. styles of a decade before them, there are notable differences. American posters of the 1940s show monumental figures too, but are simpler and use much more type. Mexican poster artists didn't know the meaning of white space. Most Mexican posters advertising dramas make use of the common technique of tracing and airbrushing over still photographs so that the composition looks like a kind of collage or photomontage. But Mexican artists of all movie genres tend to fill up all available space with images and color. AND THOUGH THE STOCK images are there (Maria Felix's face is perfect, with flawless skin and dimpled chin), you can see the unknown artist struggling to let himself free. When this happens, the images take on the grandeur of Mexican murals and monuments, as in the incomparable poster for Rosauro Castro (1950). Who knows what this movie was about? A dozen interpretations spring up as we see a ragged heap of a child lying on the ground with a giant-sized stone-gray head of a man towering over him. The head is slowly cracking and breaking up, like an enormous statue. STYLES ARE FREER FOR comedies, and it is in these posters that Mexican art themes develop. Comedians such as Cantinflas were always drawn as cartoons, even when juxtaposed with photo-like images of other stars. For the Tin Tan movies, though, the studio employed a real master (whose name is lost to us). Everything is done in patterns, curves and chorus lines. The 1956 movie, El Campeon Ciclista, is the best example in the exhibition. It is great figurative illustration, and its popular imagery of buxom girls riding bicycles is strikingly similar to the work of El Paso artist Luis Jimenez, as pointed out by the show's organizer, Santos Martinez. The styles of the Tin Tan artist and of the equally unknown draftsman who created the wildest folk poster in the show (that done for Las Carinosas, 1953, with a line of lovely ladies puckering up their lips like flowers) are also based on shallow perspective and filling up space. It is this influence that makes contemporary Mexican-American realism very different from American Pop Art of the 1960s, similarly based on advertising art. IN THE CHICANO ART survey organized by Martinez and shown at the CAM last year, images and color in Mel Casas giant-sized, poster-like paintings created a tension at variance with the work of '60s Pop Art heroes Wesselman, Lichtenstein and Warhol. These movie posters of yesteryear provide a valuable clue as to why. The posters and research on the Mexican film industry were lent by Enrique Flores, Xavier Gorena, Azteca Films, Lucy Espinosa, Arnulfo Arais and Al Zarzana. The show will be up through January. CAM WINTER SCHEDULE: While the board of trustees is still screening candidates for the post of museum director, acting director Betsey Knight will stay on to launch a winter season. January is booked up by a dance festival organized by Roberta Stokes, with seminars and performances starting Jan. 19 in the upstairs gallery, while Mexican Movie Posters occupies the lower gallery. In February, the CAM downstairs will feature the work of Lynn Lennon, a Dallas photographer who documented the Big Thicket in East Texas with camera and tape recorder. The lower gallery will also host Jerry Danzig and his Cirkut Camera, shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Upstairs in February, the gallery is reserved for a theme show by Texas artists around the idea of fire, to be organized by sculptor James Surls. Tentative dates are Feb. 16 to April 15. CAM BOARD ELECTION: Officers of the board of trustees for 1979 elected at the end of December are: Robert L. Gerry, chairman; Mrs. I.H. Kempner, president; Mrs. E. Rudge Allen, Fred Hofheinz, Mrs. Franciso Lorenzo, Neil Morgan and Peter Morris, vice presidents; John M. Sullivan, treasurer; and Mrs. A.L. Ballard, secretary.
