Arts & Entertainment >>

• Best Arts Organization
  Opera Theatre of St. Louis
  OK, so Opera Theatre of Saint Louis isn't a scrappy, underfunded arts organization in need of publicity -- any more. Since its humble beginnings in 1976, Opera Theatre has become one of the most celebrated arts groups in the United States, with its performances routinely reviewed by the New York... More >>
• Best Museum
  Laumeier Sculpture Park
  Laumeier Sculpture Park turns 30 next year, but it looks fresher than ever. Some of the finest outdoor works have recently been restored; now it's a pleasure, rather than a pity, to contemplate installations by Ursula von Rydingsvard, Beverly Pepper and Jackie Ferrara, among the works of dozens... More >>
• Best Museum Exhibition
  Inside Out Loud: Visualizing Women's Health in Contemporary Art
  By virtue of its name change, the former Washington University Gallery of Art now qualifies as a museum, but it matters not: Inside Out Loud was the best exhibition anywhere this year. Curated by Janine Mileaf of Swarthmore College, this incredible survey brought together poetic and harrowing... More >>
• Best Museum Improvement
  The New Media Series
  Say you're a well-established art museum in a large-ish Midwestern town. You're not particularly known for showing experimental art in the newer media, but you'd like to be. You have no galleries to spare, but you do have some funky extra space at the top of a stairwell. What do you do? If... More >>
• Best Local Artist
  Brandon Anschultz
  St. Louis is fortunate to possess a thriving art scene, a variety of venues and a roster of artists both well-established and up-and-coming. Some of these artists are making big, splashy noises and poised on the brink of art stardom, and they're finally getting their due. This year the decidedly... More >>
• Best Art Gallery
  Mad Art Gallery
  St. Louis is lucky enough to support a thriving art scene, a slew of talented artists and an eager audience. This year, as it did four years ago, Mad Art Gallery has proven to be the best art venue to serve the city's cultural scene in its manifold forms. From his ongoing open call for art,... More >>
• Best Gallery Show
  1984-2004: Twentieth Anniversary Celebration at Elliot Smith
  Though it took place in the fall of 2004, this very fine group show serves well to mark one of the most significant art events of 2005: the closing of Elliot Smith Contemporary Art. ESCA was a Central West End institution, an anchor in the neighborhood and one of St. Louis' premier art venues.... More >>
• Best New Play
  Hearts
  Born and reared in St. Louis, Willy Holtzman came to playwriting late. But once he did, he wrote from the heart. In the late 1990s, he set to work on a play about his father, a University City High School grad who shipped off to Europe in World War II and lived to tell the tale. Countless... More >>
• Best Stage Production
  The Exonerated
  HotCity Theatre got off to a blistering start last November with a compelling Readers Theater production of The Exonerated, a tidy piece of advocacy theater about inmates unjustly sentenced to death row. The script by Jessica Blank and Erik Jansen is clearly a polemic. But the production was a... More >>
• Best Musical Moment
  Beauty and the Beast
  Beauty and the Beast, which opened the Muny season, was an ebullient evening of tuneful family fun. True, too many Muny productions seem antiquated and lumbering. But if any lesson has trickled down through the institution's 86-year history, it's the need to reach out to youngsters. The Muny... More >>
• Best Theater Company
  The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
  The Rep should always be St. Louis' best theater company. Last season it was. For starters, the schedule didn't include a single play by Agatha Christie. On an even more positive note, the Irish comedy-drama Stones in His Pockets was theater perfection -- flawlessly directed and gorgeously acted... More >>
• Best Children's Theater (1 Comment)
  WiseWrite Festival of One-Act Plays
  Would you believe sixteen plays in one morning? All written by ten-year-olds? On a damp April morning, fifth graders from Cote Brilliante and Hudson elementary schools descended on the Loretto-Hilton Center for the ninth annual WiseWrite Festival of One-Act Plays. A partnership between the... More >>
• Best Shakespeare
  The Tempest
  This past summer's festival production of The Tempest offered a Dickensian take on Shakespeare: It was the best of productions and the worst of productions. But at its best, it was more rewarding than anything the Shakespeare Festival ever offered before. Among its virtues was the eye-popping... More >>
• Best Local TV Commercial
  St. Louis Aces Team Tennis
  A handsome young man, naked save for a comically pronounced athletic supporter, stands on a tennis court. A moment passes, allowing this image to sink in -- could that be an actual codpiece he's wearing? -- and then the volley of tennis balls commences. The man spins and ducks, twirls and... More >>
• Best Media Circus
  Premiere party for The Longest Yard
  St. Louis isn't Hollywood, or New York, or even Sundance. We don't get a lot of movie premieres, so forgive us if we get a little excited when a film chooses to come to us for its unveiling. We'll concede that it was just an Adam Sandler movie (and a Sandler movie on the wrong side of Big Daddy... More >>
• Best Hair on a Local TV Personality (Male)
  Len Turner
  In the future, the straight-edge parts of Rather, Jennings and Brokaw will go the way of the dodo. In the new era of TV news, the best reporters will wear their hair gelled, dyed or mussed just so. Unimaginable? Check out FOX 2 reporter Len Turner. Since his 1999 arrival, Turner's been wearing... More >>
• Best Hair on a Local TV Personality (Female)
  Cindy Preszler
  No matter the forecast -- be it rain, hail, sleet or snow -- meteorologist Cindy Preszler's hairdo is Santa Barbara in the summertime: golden sunlight, cloudless skies, a hint of lavender on a gentle breeze. It is her silky smoove coiffure that provides the rest of us with the wherewithal to... More >>
• Best Weathercaster
  Mike Roberts
  If you were to date KSDK-TV's Mike Roberts, you might describe him as a nice guy who, after a few drinks, really loosens up and tells slightly off-color jokes with punch lines like, "Now that's what I call an Alberta clipper!" or "No, I said "dew' point." He has the demeanor of a well-liked... More >>
• Best TV News Anchor
  Kay Quinn
  A pinch-hit anchor most frequently found gracing the weekend evening desk, Kay Quinn's utility status means she also must hit the field and report, primarily on matters surrounding health. Quinn's a professional, and when a professional gets her mitts on a story, that's when it really takes off.... More >>
• Best TV Station
  KDNL-TV (Channel 30)
  In the ongoing battle of local TV news teams, one station truly distinguishes itself: KDNL. The sleepy Sinclair station doesn't do this by hustling for scoops or hiring the hottest anchor ladies. Au contraire, mon frère: They refuse to do local news at all! Maligned by local media... More >>
• Best Reporter (Broadcast Division)
  Virginia Kerr
  Some will argue that Virginia Kerr isn't really a reporter, but rather a performance artist. Then again, people made the same assertions about the late, great George Plimpton and Hunter S. Thompson, both of whom weathered their critics just fine, thank you. While Kerr ain't in the same zip code... More >>
• Best Reporter (Newspaper Division)
  Jill Moon
  Jill Moon worked for years as a freelance makeup artist before heading back to school. In December she'll graduate from Webster University with a degree in global journalism. Along the way the thirtysomething writer became the best reporter at the best student paper in Missouri. Moon's Journal... More >>
• Best Newspaper Columnist
  Bill McClellan
  For 22 years, Bill McClellan has stood up for the city's lost souls, cheered on the underdog and banged heads with governmental bureaucracies near and far. He may lack the iconoclastic sensibilities of a Jimmy Breslin or Mike Royko. Then again, he's not inclined to invoke Greek tragedy or resort... More >>
• Best Metro Evening Whirl Lead
  June 14, 2005
  The Metro Evening Whirl popped briefly back on the national radar this year with the passing of founder Benjamin Thomas, who died in Los Angeles at age 94. But even without Thomas, who retired in 1996, the Whirl has soldiered on under the watch of editor Anthony Sanders, generating more buzz in... More >>
• Best Actress
  Lavonne Byers
  There's a (specious) rumor floating around town that Lavonne Byers actually had to audition for the role of the cunning villainess in the recent St. Louis Shakespeare production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Audition? The director and producer should have gotten down on their knees and begged her... More >>
• Best Actor
  Kevin Beyer
  An actor who knows his role is always a comfort, but an actor who knows his role in the play is a necessity. Kevin Beyer is an all-knowing actor. Long a local theater fixture, never has he been more impressive than in the varied performances he delivered over the past thirteen months. First... More >>
• Best Ensemble Cast
  Stones in His Pockets
  Two actors might not add up to an "ensemble," but sixteen characters certainly do. And two actors playing sixteen characters in the Rep's production of the Irish comedy-drama Stones in His Pockets was theater perfection. To see two actors breathe as one -- not to mention sixteen -- in the... More >>
• Best Theater Cubed
  Into the Woods
  Schools rush in where angels fear to tread. Although some of the area's larger, more timid theaters are scared to death of Stephen Sondheim, our local universities know a nifty composer when they hear one. So what fun it was this spring when, quite by happenstance, Lindenwood, Wash. U. and... More >>
• Best Theater Memory
  Lobby Hero
  Some productions -- even the good ones -- come and go, and you're ready to move on to the next. But some productions grab hold and don't let go. Kenneth Lonergan's Lobby Hero is overwritten, and parts of the Rep Studio production were overacted. But both the play and the production continue to... More >>
• Best Theater Poster
  The Kevin Kline Awards
  A good poster oughta make you want to see the play. The Deaf West Theatre production of Big River, which played the Fox last April, sported a knockout poster on which the clouds hovering over Huck Finn and Jim on their raft were actually wispy fingers signing in ASL. But the year's most... More >>
• Best Theater Switch
  Intimate Apparel
  Theaters rely on subscription sales to provide the backbone of their audiences. In order to sell season tickets, folks want to know what they're buying; that's only fair. But it does compel theaters to select their plays months in advance, thus eliminating the possibility for spontaneity. This... More >>
• Best Theater Surprise
  Scapin
  And what a felicitous surprise it was! Although Off Center is one of the area's many well-intentioned amateur groups, it's hardly a company for whose productions you cancel all other engagements. But their interpretation of Molière's seventeenth-century romp Scapin was one of the high... More >>
• Best Art Cinema
  Plaza Frontenac Cinema
  Everyone loves going to work, but aside from all that joy we feel about the daily grind, er, the daily funfest, the most dedicated among us still reflect upon the possibilities a life of leisure could offer. So why not pretend you have nothing productive you should be doing on a Tuesday... More >>
• Best Film Festival
  Tivoli Reel Late Movie Series
  Dark Crystal never won an Oscar. Neither did Wet Hot American Summer. So what? The English Patient won a trunkful of the useless golden statuettes and no one in search of a good time would line up at midnight and pay good money to see that torpid prize-winner. That very distinction is what makes... More >>
• Best Movie Theater
  Moolah Theatre & Lounge
  The entire concept of movie theaters is in trouble. As DVDs become the real moneymaker for movie studios, as high-definition TV sets get bigger, better and cheaper, more and more people are staying home where the seats are better, there's beer in the fridge and you don't have to worry about... More >>
• Best Ushers
  Jeanna and Kelsey
  The once-noble position of movie theater usher seems to be going the way of the farrier and court jester. Apparently nobody told Jeanna and Kelsey, the two teenage ushers who tended the over-long line at the AMC Creve Coeur 12 during the midnight premiere of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, that... More >>
• Best Radio Station
  WEW (770 AM)
  Perennial fave KDHX (88.1 FM) spins a wide swath of musical genres from around the world. But with few exceptions, most of the spinning is performed by middle-aged whiteys for the pleasure of their fellow middle-aged whiteys. Most of the programming on WEW (770 AM), meanwhile, is spun by actual... More >>
• Best FM Radio Personality (1 Comment)
  DJ Kaos
  It's been chaos this year for the DJ formerly known as Big Sexy Kooool. In July he engaged in a controversial exchange with KATZ (100.3 FM) morning-show co-host Syllli Asz, riffing on a hypothetical situation in which a cop released a suspect from handcuffs and invited him to spar. Suddenly... More >>
• Best AM Radio Personality
  Martin Kilcoyne, KFNS (590 AM)
  This category's a toss-up between Kilcoyne and Tim McKernan, the wee man who slides into the chair next to the moonlighting Channel 2 sports anchor every weekday morning at 7 at 590's incongruously located studio in Webster Groves. By ditching his TV gig and focusing on the spoken word, McKernan... More >>
• Best Radio Gimmick
  "'70s, '80s...Whatever We Want"
  Since developing critical faculties in your early teens, you haven't liked any radio station; the only musical taste you can abide is your own. That is how it should be. But often comes the time when a group of diverse people must compromise and pick a radio station to listen to -- think family... More >>
• Best Casino
  i-Bar
  Remember when you first walked into a casino? Weaned on images of Robert De Niro playing high stakes games in bespoke suits, you were crushed to discover that in reality today's casinos are populated by blue-hairs who alternate breaths between an oxygen tank and a Misty cigarette as they deposit... More >>
• Best Strip Joint (2 Comments)
  Hollywood Showclub
  What makes a strip club great? High ceilings that carry away billows of cigarette smoke. Big bathroom stalls. Black-light carpet, for a naughty-roller-rink vibe. Attractive bartenders who distract you from the price of the drinks. Tables set away from the dance stages. Check, check, check, check... More >>
• Best Place to Blow
  Third Degree Glass Factory
  There are two kinds of oral artists in this world: the Jenna Jamesons and the Dale Chihulys. Both have mastered their mouths to work with delicate media and learned to expand their hardening pieces under seriously hot conditions. In fact, the only real difference between the two métiers... More >>
• Best Public Art
  STL Stonehenge
  St. Louis has some great public art. The Gateway Arch is wonderful. The new Fernando Botero sculpture in Clayton is fabulous, cheeky fun. And who doesn't love to picnic next to Richard Serra's Twain downtown? But this year we salute the mysterious rock sculpture popularly dubbed the Shrewsbury... More >>
• Best Public Art (Temporary)
  I Give Up: The Comic Art of Ted May
  If you were fortunate and paying attention while driving between October 1 and November 15 (give or take a day) last year, you may have spotted Ted May's work on display throughout the metro area. Images from May's award-winning comic-book work were printed onto magnets and affixed to Lisa... More >>
• Best Local Impresario
  Steven Fitzpatrick Smith
  St. Louis Post-Dispatch society spectator Deb Peterson has referred to Steven Fitzpatrick Smith as "one of our town's favorite gadflies," but that's so inaccurate. Gadflies are merely politely tolerated. Smith runs the frickin' show. While his Hoosierweight boxing series continued to stage... More >>
• Best Rock Show Posters
  Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center
  The Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center embodies the best possible interpretation of the original "punk" ethic: interesting, artistic, against the grain. With a schedule of shows that cleave strongly to these ideals, it's no surprise that the posters created to advertise LNAC bands hew to paths less... More >>
• Best Book by a Local Author
  Capote in Kansas
  Rarely do graphic novels attain the respect accorded "serious" literature. For many readers, the very term is synonymous with camp or worse, conjuring images of be-tighted men flying hither and yon, saving the world with their otherworldly powers. A shame that these readers will miss Capote in... More >>
• Best Reading Series
  River Styx Poetry Series at Duff's
  First, a nod to the obvious: For the number of readings given, let alone for the luminosity of the authors invited, no local reading series can compare to that hosted by stalwart independent Left Bank Books. Still, it's refreshing to head across Euclid Avenue to Duff's restaurant (392 North... More >>
• Best Local Web Site
  St. Louis County Library
  Amazon lets you shop for books and music any time of day, in your PJs. The St. Louis County Library's Web site lets you do the exact same thing -- for free. Their catalog has more breadth and depth than Barnes & Noble's, the revamped home page is friendly in a Borders-ish way -- and it's free.... More >>
• Best Listserv
  Critical Mass
  Despite sending out 175 messages a month, the 800-odd Critical Mass listserv members somehow never engage in Internet shorthand, name-calling or even petty bickering -- three staples of the mass e-mail genre. Founded in 2000 by Meridith McKinley, an arts administrator, Critical Mass describes... More >>
• Best Newsletter
  Dunaway Books
  The newsletter is a holdover from a more genteel age. Prior to Web site updates and (God forbid) online streaming media, if a business wanted to keep its employees and clientele abreast of new developments, said business relied on the humble newsletter. The more creative (or perhaps just more... More >>
• Best Zoo Animal
  Malayan sun bear
  In a teen comedy cast entirely with bears from the Saint Louis Zoo, the Malayan sun bear would be the geek. The littlest bear (both at the zoo and in nature), the sun bear is pigeon-toed and funny-faced. His zooey habitat isn't even grouped with the other bears. Surely, the gorgeous brown bear... More >>
• Best Zoo Animal to Die in the Past Year
  Churchill
  In the end, it wasn't a hunter that brought down Churchill, the Saint Louis Zoo's eighteen-year-old polar bear. It was a fist-size ball of cloth that occluded his lower stomach. Born in Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo, Churchill arrived in St. Louis in 1991, where he proceeded to spend his days sitting... More >>