Arts & Entertainment >>

• Best Theater Company
  Rep Studio
  There must be something in the air down there, some sort of compound that frees the imagination. Whatever it is, it allows St. Louis Rep staffers to cut loose and re-explore theater in ways that don't happen on the Mainstage. Right now the Emerson Studio Theatre is just about the only place in... More >>
• Best Actor
  Kevin Beyer
  Anyone who needs reminding that acting eloquence does not require dialogue should have seen Kevin Beyer's tenebrous performance in the New Jewish Theatre production of Arthur Miller's Broken Glass. The drama, set in Brooklyn in pre-World War II 1938, probes the unhappy life of Phillip Gellburg,... More >>
• Best Actress
  Julie Layton
  Because HotCity Theatre's GreenHouse staging of Skin in Flames, an intense Spanish drama written by Guillem Clua in response to America's invasion of Iraq, was an American premiere, everything about the work-in-progress was a surprise. But as a poverty-stricken Third World factory worker, Julie... More >>
• Best Newspaper Columnist (1 Comment)
  Bernie Miklasz
  Regular readers of this particular fishwrap might be surprised to see us freely admit that we like and respect our counterparts at St. Louis' Only Daily. But we know good work when we see it, and good work does get done at the Post-Dispatch. The labors of Bernie Miklasz perennially put the... More >>
• Best Reporter (Newspaper Division)
  Jake Wagman
  Jake Wagman is your prototypical old-school reporter—scrappy, dogged, endlessly prolific. He also embodies the quintessential rumpled look, as if he just rolled out of bed or stayed up all night banging out the last few grafs for a Sunday banner story. The frenetic newshound prowls the... More >>
• Best Reporter (TV/Radio Division)
  Cordell Whitlock
  If there's a utility player in local television news, it's got to be KSDK's Cordell Whitlock. Whether reporting live from a hailstorm in Granite City or just leaning over the desk to breathlessly deliver us the news as the station's primary fill-in anchor, Whitlock covers all the bases. In just... More >>
• Best TV News Anchor
  Randy Jackson
  No more beating around the bush. The RFT loves Randy Jackson—and not just his hair (though it is fab). That's not to say Ol' Blue Eyes didn't have some tough competition: KMOV-TV (Channel 4)'s Larry Conners will always have a special place in our hearts, Rick Edlund on KPLR-TV (Channel 11)... More >>
• Best Weathercaster
  Dave Murray
  Dave Murray is the Jose Oquendo of St. Louis weather. He's had the chief meteorologist gig at FOX 2 since 1989 and will freely and self-depreciatingly admit to being a weather geek. But he also reports for KSHE (94.7 FM), KPNT (105.7 FM), KIHT (96.3 FM) and fills in for other weathercasters like... More >>
• Best Hair on a Local TV Personality (Female)
  Rebecca Wu
  "It's like, 'How much more black could this be?' And the answer is, 'None. None more black,'" Nigel Tufnel says in This Is Spinal Tap. He could very well have been talking about Rebecca Wu's hair. The KSDK-TV (Channel 5) anchor used to wear it parted left to right, cut in a tragic,... More >>
• Best Hair on a Local TV Personality (Male)
  Randy Jackson
  Randy Jackson's hair is befitting of a dude's dude. It seems entirely possible to run into him at Home Depot, buying some PVC pipe for a pond he's making in his backyard. You'd maybe spot that head of hair in one of those ads for boxer briefs that feature handsome but nonthreatening men with a... More >>
• Best Local TV Commercial
  Affordable Auto Credit
  INT: BATHROOMMIDGET sits on a TOILET, reading a newspaper. He spies an ad.ANNOUNCER: People are blowing their top...MIDGET'S head explodes.ANNOUNCER: ...over the hot deals at AFFORDABLE AUTO CREDIT.MIDGET, face sooty, climbs out of the hole his head-explosion caused. (MIDGET'S head is... More >>
• Best TV Station
  My46 TV (WRBU-TV Channel 46)
  Most recent TV news has focused on the new, awkwardly named "the CW," which debuted this month and combines programming from the old UPN and WB networks. The CW can be seen on our former WB affiliate, KPLR-TV (Channel 11), and its lineup features America's Next Top Model, 7th Heaven, Smallville... More >>
• Best Radio Station
  KCLC (89.1 FM) "The Wood"
  Those who lament the homogeneity and predictable playlists of traditional radio stations now often just switch to satellite providers to get their radio fix. But St. Louis is lucky to have our own version of satellite radio on the terrestrial airwaves, courtesy of the station run by students at... More >>
• Best Radio Station After Midnight
  WIL (1430 AM)
  Rhinestone cowboys and Wichita linemen are best heard under cover of darkness, their dusky twang and lonely lyrics the very embodiment of solitude and/or desolation. No one knows this better than St. Louis country music stalwart WIL (92.3 FM), which in 2005 decided to flip the format of its... More >>
• Best Ongoing Bill Murray in Caddyshack Impression by a Local Radio Personality
  John Hadley
  Who said it—John Hadley or Carl Spackler? "I smell varmint poontang. The only good varmint poontang is dead varmint poontang." "I've been stressing, even in the downtime of last year, that the cavalry was on the way." "What an incredible Cinderella story! This unknown comes out of nowhere... More >>
• Best AM Radio Personality
  McGraw Milhaven
  What a year it's been for McGraw Milhaven. Thrown on the trash heap during KTRS' restructuring last December, Milhaven returned in April when station management begged him to replace host Dave Lenihan. (Need we remind you of Lenihan's "coon" slip in reference to Secretary of State Condoleezza... More >>
• Best FM Radio Personality
  Staci Static
  She shouts, she screams, she swings from totally bossy to warm and sweet, but Staci Static always commands your attention when she steps up to the mic on Hot 104.1, one of St. Louis' two competing hip-hop stations. Static used to host the 7-to-10-p.m. slot on Q 95.5 FM, where her dedicated fan... More >>
• Best Local Poet
  Carl Phillips
  Eight books of poetry, one book of essays, a translation of Sophocles' Philoctetes, two stints leading Washington University's writing program, and more awards for his poetry than your average writer has fingers and toes, there's no doubt about it: In a city known for its heavyweight poets, Carl... More >>
• Best Book by a Local Author
  Unveiling the Prophet
  "When I follow the thread of the Veiled Prophet Ball back to the myth that gave it its name," writes Lucy Ferriss, "I find rape, murder and battle." A portentous sentence, to be sure, smack-dab in the middle of Unveiling the Prophet: The Misadventures of a Reluctant Debutante —a book that's... More >>
• Best Reading
  Crispin Hellion Glover
  Reading is a fundamental skill; most of us can do it with some degree of proficiency. (If you made it this far, you're golden.) But reading your own work aloud with enough verve to keep an audience hooked on every syllable—that's an art. And Crispin Glover is an artist. In town for a... More >>
• Best Reading Series
  River Styx Reading Series at Duff's
  Thinking back over the past year made us realize how blessed St. Louis is with literary endeavors. The St. Louis County Library has the Buzz Westfall series; the St. Louis Public Library brings in a host of authors; Left Bank Books has an admirably author-packed schedule that even spills over... More >>
• Best Local Artist (1 Comment)
  Sue Eisler
  Sue Eisler has ranked in the top ten of St. Louis artists for years, and has shown her art in private galleries and one-person exhibitions at the Saint Louis Art Museum. Now it's time to give her her due: Sue Eisler is St. Louis' best. Her work is frill-free, the antithesis of the fashionable,... More >>
• Best Art Gallery (10 Comments)
  Hoffman LaChance Fine Art
  Hoffman LaChance Fine Art's Michael Hoffman, Alicia LaChance and William LaChance are artists of unique talent, exhibiting regularly throughout St. Louis and other cities. Collectively, the trio curates a rotation of shows that offer exhibition space to artists who, like the owners, are in the... More >>
• Best Gallery Show
  Pearls are a Nuisance: A Retrospective of Art Chantry
  Art Chantry moved from Seattle to St. Louis a few years back and just kinda skulked around the weird, burned edges of the city, poking around in the crusty bits looking for crap. Crap here is not intended in the pejorative sense. In fact, "crap" is an all-purpose word in the Chantry lexicon,... More >>
• Best Public Art
  Forest Park's Animals Always
  It's a bigger sculpture than any other public zoo's; here in town it's second in size only to the Arch. Albert Paley's Animals Always has been heralded for many best, most, largest and first superlatives since its installation at Hampton Avenue and Wells Drive in late May. From afar it's hard to... More >>
• Best Museum
  Bigfoot 4x4, Inc.
  Art, schmart. History, schmistory. There's no better way to get the gray-matter gears turning than by visiting Bigfoot 4x4, Inc., the definitive monument to the monster truck that set off the entire car-crushing craze of the '80s. Check out the original Bigfoot, a Ford F-250 owned by Bob... More >>
• Best Science Exhibition
  Cheech Marin's Chicano Now: American Expressions
  At first we were skeptical. What did an exhibition of contemporary Chicano art have to do with science? With Richard "Cheech" Marin attached, it certainly seemed more Nash Bridges than John Forbes Nash—but if science taught us anything, it's that all hypotheses must be tested before a... More >>
• Best Craft Exhibition
  Rock <\#213>n' Roll Craft Show
  So craft fairs aren't sexy, or fun, or interesting. Craft fairs are something you're forced to attend because you're trying to appease your mother, or because you're trapped in Branson for the weekend and you swore you'd never go to another Baldknobbers performance, so help you God. But trust... More >>
• Best Museum Exhibition
  Contemporary Masterworks: St. Louis Collects
  St. Louisans can be a leetle touchy about how we're perceived. Ever since Chicago relegated our metropolis to second-to-Second City status, we've had a potent case of the "us too"s that sorta makes us look like chumps. "Deeds not words," as Ace Hunter once suavely intoned; deeds not words make... More >>
• Best Loan
  Monets at the Saint Louis Art Museum
  The Saint Louis Art Museum has some good friends. Whereas most of us might borrow a pair of shoes or a CD every now and then, this year SLAM borrowed a trio of canvases from a local private collector. Three paintings from Claude Monet's famed water-lily series—Water Lilies (1916), Wisteria... More >>
• Best Local Comedian
  Greg Warren
  "He always makes me laugh out loud," Last Comic Standing 4 semifinalist and St. Louis native Nikki Glaser says of Greg Warren. "He's a master and I've learned so much from him. He's one of the best headliners around town, for sure." In 2006 the Comedy Central and BET vet has traveled from CA to... More >>
• Best Casino
  The Argosy
  The Argosy Casino's decorating scheme is a mystery. There are planks. There's a suspended dinghy. There are barrels (both wooden and metal). Is it pirate-ship nouveau? Classic warehouse? Or pure pop-industrial kitsch (the vibe is kinda like gambling in the climax of Who Framed Roger Rabbit)?... More >>
• Best Trivia Night
  Lemmons
  Every Wednesday at 8 p.m. (or 8:15, or 8:30, or, you know, however long it takes the teams of eight to settle in with those thick-crust pizzas), the first of five rounds (at ten questions apiece) begins. The creators: Lemmons booker Jamie Foehner and trivia maven Sandy Olive, whose weekly... More >>
• Best Local Impresario
  Steve Schankman
  As founder and president of Contemporary Productions, Steve Schankman had a hand in bringing countless national acts to perform in St. Louis. After SFX Entertainment (to whom he'd sold the company in 1998) was acquired by goliath Clear Channel Communications in 2000, Schankman decided to go it... More >>
• Best Strip Joint
  Larry Flynt's Hustler Club
  Too often the strip-club experience is predictable: anorexic bottle blondes with boob jobs always on the hustle. At Larry Flynt's local lair, things work a bit differently. Bettie Page look-alikes offer you "dollar dances," while up on stage, a woman you swear you saw on www.suicidegirls.com... More >>
• Best Stage Production
  The Sugar Syndrome
  What a mesmerizing evening of theater this was, on every count. For starters, how many 22-year-olds write plays as exhilarating and immediate as Lucy Prebble's The Sugar Syndrome? The story concerns the quirky relationship between Dani, a bulimic teenager straight out of the hospital, and Tim, a... More >>
• Best Musical
  A New Brain
  Talk about a sleeper. Throughout much of William Finn's A New Brain, our protagonist—a frustrated songwriter who is diagnosed with a rare, life-threatening brain disorder—is, if not asleep, at least in a coma. But in the ebullient hands (and feet) of ten gifted Webster Conservatory... More >>
• Best Children's Theater
  Beowulf
  Long before there were vampires and werewolves, there was Grendel, the legendary monster who terrorizes the land in Beowulf, the earliest extant epic poem in the English language. So right off the bat we have a conundrum. Any eighth-century story that's still around is by definition a classic,... More >>
• Best Theater Surprise
  King Hedley II
  When the Black Rep dedicated its past season to the memory of playwright August Wilson, they weren't merely paying lip service to a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. This company has lived and breathed Wilson for years. These actors understand his rhythms; they know how to barrel through his... More >>
• Best Costume Design
  Teresa Doggett
  A year has passed since Act Inc. and Fontbonne University served up Carlo Goldoni's eighteenth-century Italian romp, The Servant of Two Masters. But if any stage production in St. Louis since then has sported more impressive costumes—and that includes Opera Theatre and the big musicals that... More >>
• Best Set Design (2 Comments)
  John Ezell
  Some scenic designs are feasts for the eyes, but John Ezell's voluptuous scheme for the Rep Studio production of Humble Boy was something to inhale. This was the most aromatic set to be seen in these parts in quite some time. Charlotte Jones' British comedy-drama is a contemporary riff on Hamlet... More >>
• Best Ensemble Cast
  Going to See the Elephant
  Many notable examples of ensemble acting graced St. Louis stages during the past year, including some that are honored elsewhere in this section. But Going to See the Elephant, the Orange Girls' debut endeavor, still resonates in the memory, in part because it sneaked up so inauspiciously. No... More >>
• Best Revival
  Bleacher Bums
  Maybe any play not being staged for the first time is a revival for someone. And usually this strait-laced term is restricted for Shakespeare or Shaw or even (forgive the expression) uncut productions of Eugene O'Neill. Compared to those heavyweights, Bleacher Bums, which is billed as a comedy... More >>
• Best Vagabond Theater
  After Midnight
  The dearth of good playing spaces in this town is kinda like the weather. Everybody likes to complain about it, but nobody does much about it. Except for After Midnight, or Midnight Theatre Company, or whatever they choose to call themselves from show to show. Call them what you like, it's Joe... More >>
• Best Art Cinema
  Webster Film Series
  The Webster Film Series' year-round slate of films busts preconceptions that "art cinema" equals talky movies about the existential angst of butter cows, with an all-cello score and an ass-load of unintelligible symbolism. Over the past year, James Harrison and Mike Steinberg, the brains and... More >>
• Best Film Festival (1 Comment)
  True/False Film Festival
  Seems no one told Paul Sturtz and David Wilson that central Missouri is a helluva place for a film festival. Or maybe the True/False Film Festival co-founders just grinned and said, Yep, Columbia, Missouri, is one hell of a place. "We're playing up the romantic notion of coming to the Midwest,"... More >>
• Best Movie Theater
  Moolah Theatre & Lounge
  Who wouldn't want to see one of Angelina Jolie's nostrils enlarged to the size of a two-car garage, her lips to the size of an eighteen-wheeler? The mighty Moolah in midtown ain't no converted Fotomat booth. It is an actual former Shriners temple, converted not for the use of grown men and their... More >>
• Best Theater Marquee
  Hi-Pointe Theatre
  Back in 2001 Sony Pictures got caught putting rave quotes from a made-up movie critic on its posters for such films as A Knight's Tale and Hollow Man. The studio was ordered to pay $1.5 million in restitution to duped moviegoers. Sony's money would've been better spent by hiring Paul Faur and... More >>
• Best New Movie About the Gateway Arch
  The Gateway Arch: A Reflection of America
  A former film documentarian once steered his students away from making movies about architecture, warning, "Never make a moving picture about things that don't move." The 630-foot tall Gateway Arch might be an exception. It doesn't move much—just enough on a windy day to spook you out if... More >>
• Best Zoo Animal
  Henrietta the prairie dog
  One year ago, a very special prairie dog appeared at the Saint Louis Zoo. When the pup surfaced, zookeepers saw that it had only one arm, evidently the result of a birth defect. Because prairie dogs' survival is largely dependent on their ability to dig, things didn't look good for the... More >>