Arts & Entertainment >>

• Best Hair on a Local TV Personality (Male)
  Art Holliday
  KSDK-TV (Channel 5)
  The choices for best hair on a male TV personality range from balding to bald to helmet. It is tough to find long hair -- much less a ponytail, mullet or mohawk -- in this ultraconservative news-reader crowd. This year's award goes to KSDK Channel 5's Art Holliday, the newscaster with the... More >>
• Best Hair on a Local TV Personality (Female)
  Vickie Newton
  KMOV-TV (Channel 4)
  Picking a winner in this category is like selecting an entrée at Applebee's: Everything's designed to appeal to the widest possible audience, so it all tastes pretty much the same, nothing too bold or spicy. This year's winner, Vickie Newton, has a hairstyle -- best described as... More >>
• Best Movie Theater
  The Hi-Pointe Theatre
  What the St. Louis cinema scene lacks in screen volume, it makes up for with character. The luxury of the Chase, the ornate majesty and scheduling ingenuity of the Tivoli, the stridently highfalutin art-house standards of Plaza Frontenac, the seamless milieu of old and new at the Esquire --... More >>
• Best Drive-In Movie Theater
  Skyview Drive-In
  Once a monolith rising from the open fields of the river bottom, the Skyview Drive-In now competes with the strip malls, fast food and the hectic traffic of North Belt West in Belleville. Opened in the summer of 1949, the Skyview was state of the art -- even expanding, like a dinosaur sprouting... More >>
• Best Art Cinema
  Cinema St. Louis/St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase
  Cinema St. Louis, the organization formerly known as SLIFF, has grown in many directions over the past few years, the best of which showcases the filmmaking talents of homegrown auteurs. The St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase celebrated its third anniversary in 2003, hosting the talents of more than... More >>
• Best Long-Running Movie
  Monument to the Dream
  Want to see a movie with high drama and breathtaking visuals? When's the last time you visited your neighborhood cinema in the bowels of the Gateway Arch? Charles Guggenheim's mesmerizing 28-minute documentary Monument to the Dream is an optical illusion of a film. As you sit watching, you know... More >>
• Best Local Artist
  Daniel Raedeke
  St. Louis' best local artist doesn't work the conventional gallery circuit. Daniel Raedeke made it a practice to inhabit this town's art marginalia, showing his work at Kroma Contemporary Living (a furniture store) and Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts, and making his paintings in the Carondelet... More >>
• Best Museum
  The Saint Louis Art Museum
  It's hard to think of a museum as keyed into its city's history as the Saint Louis Art Museum. Built in 1904 for the World's Fair, the edifice perfectly reflects the Beaux Arts taste that dominated the turn of the century. But what makes the Saint Louis Art Museum our best museum this year? A... More >>
• Best Museum Exhibition
  Sculpture and Drawings by Richard Serra
  OK, the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts isn't technically a museum, but why split hairs? The Richard Serra show is not only the best museum exhibition of the year, it's also the best one we've seen at the Pulitzer since it opened in 2001. It includes two seldom-exhibited "Prop" pieces, as well... More >>
• Best Art Gallery
  Washington University Gallery of Art
  After a ten-month closure for renovations to the School of Art, the Washington University Gallery of Art reopened in 2002 with a season that featured some of the best art of the past year. Last fall's H.W. Janson show was a fascinating retrospective of that scholar's formidable curatorial legacy... More >>
• Best Gallery Show
  David Helm
  Automated Dispositions
  Many St. Louisans remember the astonishment to be found inside 2000's Wonderland exhibit at the St. Louis Art Museum. Installation artists transformed the SLAM's special-exhibition spaces into what seemed to be sets from sci-fi films and other bizarre walk-through experiences. Earlier this year,... More >>
• Best Curator
  Olivia Lahs-Gonzales
  When Olivia Lahs-Gonzales left the Saint Louis Art Museum in 2001 to become director of the Sheldon Art Galleries, she faced a whopping challenge. Newly fashioned out of a former parking garage, the mazelike linked galleries have all the charm of Holiday Inn reception rooms, and they can't seem... More >>
• Best Zoo Animal
  Takin
  Tucked away on the eastern edge of the zoo, ensconced between the giraffe enclosure and the wallaby pit, rests the unacknowledged (until now) mistress of the animals, the takin. If the lion is King of the Jungle, then the takin is Queen Mother of Beasts. Her informational placard notes that this... More >>
• Best FM Radio Personality
  Bob Reuter
  KDHX (FM 88.1)
  Bob Reuter's Bob's Scratchy Records show on KDHX is like the Holy Grail of rock & roll. Between noon and 1 p.m. every Tuesday, Bob (a sometime-contributor to the Riverfront Times) spins lost and not-so-lost classics from the Sonics, AC/DC, the Gun Club, Joy Division, Lee Hazelwood, James Brown,... More >>
• Best AM Radio Personality
  Chuck Norman
  WGNU (920 AM)
  Chuck Norman is responsible -- if that word can be used -- for WGNU, which bills itself as "Radio Free St. Louis." Without Norman's special approach to radio, listeners wouldn't have Lizz Brown and Richard "Onion" Horton on the black and left, or Earl Holt and Crane Durham on the white and... More >>
• Best Radio Station
  KWUR (FM 90.3)
  Although it seems contrary to select a station that can't be heard more than a mile and a half from its transmitter (in Clayton, just off the Washington University campus), KWUR (FM 90.3) is the best radio station in St. Louis precisely because of its contrary nature. A 10,000-milliwatt... More >>
• Best Actress
  Linda Kennedy
  There are some lovely actresses in St. Louis, but too often you see them onstage once and then not again for a year or two, if at all. For too many women, it's too tough to sustain a body of work. If Linda Kennedy is the best actress in town, that's in large measure because her considerable... More >>
• Best Actor
  Terry Meddows
  Terry Meddows is like a theatergoer's insurance agent; whenever he walks onstage, you know you're in good hands. Meddows has had quite a year. From his wonderfully wacky small-time thug in the ECHO Theatre Company production of Criminal Genius to the chilling desperation of his George in Vanity... More >>
• Best Stage Production
  A Streetcar Named Desire
  Hothouse Theatre Company
  It's been nearly a year since Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire visited the ArtLoft Theatre. But memories of that raw yet evanescent production continue to haunt. Under Marty Stanberry's sensitive direction and charged by Carolyne Hood's uniquely understated interpretation of Blanche... More >>
• Best Musical
  Damn Yankees!
  St. Louis Black Repertory Company
  The Black Rep really knows how to wind up a season. Last year they went out strong with the ebullient Bubbling Brown Sugar. This year they outdid even that with Damn Yankees! In the Black Rep's hands, this timeworn musical about the Devil's attempt to claim a baseball lover's soul was sinfully... More >>
• Best Farce
  A Flea in Her Ear
  Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
  OK, so there wasn't a lot of competition for this category. But when something is good it deserves recognition, and the St. Louis Rep's rendition of Georges Feydeau's classic A Flea in Her Ear was very good indeed. The frantic French farce about marital mix-up and mistaken identity was directed... More >>
• Best Comeback
  City Players of St. Louis
  For six decades, as far back as the 1930s, City Players was an active part of the local community-theater scene. But in recent years the group fell on hard times. So there was a communal sigh of relief three years ago when Ted Gregory stepped up to try to restore the theater's fading reputation.... More >>
• Best New Performance Space
  Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center
  When it comes to theaters, St. Louis has a leviathan complex. The Muny and the Fox are both too large to sustain a viable performer-audience rapport. If and when it's eventually refurbished, Kiel Opera House will be too large, as well. The Edison isn't too big, but with seats that face away from... More >>
• Best Theater Company
  HotHouse Theatre Company
  A theater season can be made or broken before the first play is produced. If the season lacks imagination or reach, the quality of the productions can become secondary. During the past twelve months, HotHouse has mounted a thoughtful and cohesive season that speaks directly to its community.... More >>
• Best Children's Theater
  Metro Theater Company
  Metro doesn't call what they do "children's theater"; they call it theater aimed at "young people." However you label it, the Metro Theater Company production of Captain Lindbergh's Ocean Flight was one of last year's local theater highlights. And it's coming back to the Missouri History Museum... More >>
• Best Theater Deal
  University theater productions
  Editor's note: A correction ran concerning this story; see end of article. Not that long ago, college theater was about young kids putting white flour in their hair and pretending to be adults. Those days are gone. Anyone who saw Magan Wiles' delectable performance as Babe in last fall's St.... More >>
• Best TV Station
  WRBU-TV (UPN 46)
  Local viewers who like their television free need to thank the Roberts Brothers, Michael and Steve, for increasing their options this year. WRBU dropped the home-shopping format and switched to UPN shows, Jerry Springer, plenty of reruns and seldom-run movies. It's not PBS by any stretch -- how... More >>
• Best Local TV Commercial (1 Comment)
  Becky's Carpet and Tile Superstore
  Becky's TV spots (most often seen during the late-night hours on second-tier networks) feature her as the Queen of Carpet, floating above the Arch in a fairy-godmother get-up, selling carpet at UNBELIEVABLY LOW PRICES!!! The special effects are strictly 1950s B-movie standard, but the spots are... More >>
• Best Weathercaster
  Joe Petrovich, Ph.D.
  KMOV-TV (Channel 4)
  For some reason, television stations market their weathercasters by citing their certification. They're meteorologists. They have this seal of approval, or that. Why they need all that schooling or certification to read what the wire says it will do tomorrow doesn't make much sense, but hey,... More >>
• Best TV News Anchor
  Kathryn Jamboretz
  KPLR-TV (Channel 11)
  Kathryn Jamboretz is not made of porcelain. She is not a size-zero princess who chews out cameramen and demands a chilled bottle of Pellegrino and a foot massage before each newscast. The spunky anchor's self-professed philosophy is to "live where you drink." She's anything but a diva, and she... More >>
• Best Reporter (TV/Radio Division)
  Tom Ackerman
  KMOX (AM 1120)
  At roughly 3 p.m., a time when most broadcast personalities are preening, schmoozing or having fully developed stories fed to them by hapless lackeys, KMOX (AM 1120) workhorse Tom Ackerman can most often be found in the bowels of Busch Stadium, trying to coax journalistic gold out of a... More >>
• Best Reporter (Newspaper Division)
  Mike Fitzgerald
  Belleville News-Democrat
  Few reporters can say they've written stories that launched a federal investigation of a political figure, spawned an indictment and guilty plea and somewhere along the way prompted a death threat against the reporter and his family. But by July 2003, Mike Fitzgerald could add all the... More >>
• Best Newspaper Columnist (2 Comments)
  Bill McClellan
  St. Louis Post-Dispatch
  Most days he looks like he just rolled out of bed after an all-night bender. The bags under his eyes are bigger than the ones Stanley packed on his search for Livingston. After twenty years of columnizing, Bill McClellan looks as tired as his adopted hometown. But make no mistake: McClellan is... More >>
• Best Simple Pleasure in the Post-Dispatch
  "Help Yourself"
  Thursday is the day when the St. Louis Post-Dispatch exposes our town for the folksy Dogpatch it truly is, courtesy of the "Help Yourself" portion of the Everyday section. In "Help Yourself," there's the Questions and the Answers. The Questions are the earnest queries from area residents... More >>
• Best Strip Joint
  Crystal Palace
  When you're driving after midnight on the two-lane blacktop of Highway 157 beyond Cahokia, just when you think you've gone too far, you're in Centreville. And perhaps you have gone too far. That was the point. If you wanted safe and convenient spectator sex, you would have stopped in Sauget.... More >>
• Best Local Web Site
  The Lowlife Guide to St. Louis
  Tourists bound for St. Louis have almost nowhere to turn for guidance. Your Fodor's and your Frommer's devote a page or two to St. Louis in their bigger guides to the whole U.S. of A. but offer little more than outdated, uninspiring tepidities about Laclede's Landing. Lonely Planet's Web site... More >>
• Best Casino
  Ameristar Casino
  Forget the advertising claptrap about loose slots. At base, it's a money-changing business, and your odds of winning are virtually the same no matter where you go. Amenities and ambiance make the difference, and Ameristar boasts above-average -- think Branson or better -- live entertainment and... More >>
• Best Arts Organization
  COCA (Center of Creative Arts)
  Countless kids have cut their teeth on the arts offerings at COCA. Scores of artists have had their works featured in the organization's Anheuser-Busch Gallery. Every year the dance company performs jazz, tap, ballet and modern dance at corporate and civic events throughout the bi-state area.... More >>
• Best Local Writer
  Wayne Fields
  For more than three decades, Wayne Fields has been an academic, a professor of English at Washington University. He does not write academic prose, not even in his most footnoted work. Immune to cant and jargon, Fields writes nimble, lyrical sentences, no less philosophical or provocative for... More >>
• Best Book by a Local Author
  Made in USA: East St. Louis
  By Andrew J. Theising
  If any story deserves to be told, it's that of East St. Louis, the awe-inspiring, tear-inducing city that, in its prime, held 80,000 people but which has dwindled to 30,000 in 2003. It's the great lost suburb that continues to survive seemingly by sheer force of will -- and, of course, sin... More >>
• Best Spoken-Word Artist
  Zaire Imani
  Owing to slam poetry's subjective scoring system -- judging panels are most often chosen from the crowd at random and can include folks of all sexes, races, moods and blood-alcohol levels -- it's often said that the best poet rarely wins. Unless that poet is Zaire Imani. Also known by stage name... More >>
• Best Reading Series
  Left Bank Books
  This one's a gimme. The only reading series in town that consistently brings interesting authors to our burg is the endless round of events at Left Bank Books. Going to Left Bank means communing with apoplectic obsessives such as Michael Light, author of Full Moon, who turned NASA's archive of... More >>
• Best Comedy Show
  The NonProphet Theater Company's Militant Propaganda Bingo Machine
  Considering that Saturday Night Live uses a few dozen professionally seasoned writers to churn out material for a weekly 90-minute program (minus commercials and musical guests) and considering that the last half-hour of that show consistently sucks, what the NonProphets accomplish each Thursday... More >>