Arts & Entertainment >>

• Best Hair on a Local TV Personality (Male)
  Larry Conners
  Since former KSDK desk jockey Dick Ford has been put out to pasture and long-time KMOV anchor Julius Hunter has retired, Channel 4's Larry Conners has been the elder statesman of the local nightly news. Conners has seen us through the '80s, '90s and the first decade of the new millennium with... More >>
• Best FM Radio Personality (1 Comment)
  Donnie Fandango
  Donnie Fandango is the antithesis of a corporate-radio stooge. In early 2007 the DJ started hosting the morning show on KPNT (105.7 FM) — where he also worked from 1996 to 2001 — and immediately distinguished the Point from the city's other radio stations with a novel concept:... More >>
• Best Radio Station
  KDHX (88.1 FM)
  Nestled at the far left end of the radio dial, KDHX (88.1 FM) is almost too easily taken for granted. But after 22 years on the air, the city's only community radio station continues to be as stubbornly quirky and independent as St. Louis itself. The two-hour blocks programmed by its volunteers... More >>
• Best Theater Company
  Upstream Theater
  Before Philip Boehm created Upstream Theater five years ago, no one was bemoaning the lack of European theater here in the heartland. So Boehm has succeeded in filling a void that didn't exist. It has been a pleasure to watch this theater company — perhaps more accurately described as a... More >>
• Best Actor in a Play (2 Comments)
  Whit Reichert
  In The Subject Was Roses, a young soldier returns home from World War II. He went to war as a boy; he has returned as a man. But he's still a son, and he must deal with the new family dynamics that the war has wrought. What remains most memorable about Avalon Theatre Company's staging of Frank... More >>
• Best Actress in a Play
  Michelle Hand
  In Rebecca Gilman's involving play, Dana is a frustrated artist who ends up in a sanitarium and then — when she realizes her health insurance is about to run out — pretends to be colorful slugger Darryl Strawberry in order not to get evicted. In this NonProphet Theater Company... More >>
• Best Stage Production
  The Lieutenant of Inishmore
  "It was too bloody," someone was heard to complain. Perhaps some thought it was. But to intrepid viewers made of sterner stuff, this Irish yarn about (among other things) the love of a man for his cat was, to put it mildly, bloody terrific. Not that there is anything mild concerning Martin... More >>
• Best Musical
  The Music Man
  Sure, best musical: With the passing decades, it becomes ever more clear that Meredith Willson's 1957 romantic comedy about a two-bit thimble rigger of a con man who tries to hornswoggle the good people of River City, Iowa, is an essential American musical. From its very first song, The Music... More >>
• Best Ensemble Cast
  Three Tall Women
  Art isn't easy, Stephen Sondheim laments in one of his more popular theater songs. Art is especially not easy when it's written by Edward Albee — which is why the Muddy Waters staging of Three Tall Women, Albee's dreamlike meditation about femininity, was a jaw-dropping revelation. What... More >>
• Best One-Person Show
  An Almost Holy Picture
  What a brave thing to do. Heather McDonald's two-hour monologue about one man's journey to — and away from — God was not kindly received when Kevin Bacon starred in the piece on Broadway. Apparently fast-lane New Yorkers didn't have time to focus on the story of Samuel Gentle, a... More >>
• Best Hair on a Local TV Personality (Female)
  Bonita Cornute
  TV hair and regular, non-televised hair are two totally separate things — especially for women. Your average, everyday lady doesn't use a can and a half of Aqua Net on her tresses! Nor is she at the salon every five minutes getting color touchups and the like. In all of local TV land,... More >>
• Best Trifle
  A Shot in the Dark
  Deep, probing theater has its place, but let's admit it: There's a touch of the tired businessman in all of us. Sometimes at the theater we prefer to put our brains on hold and just coast through the evening. Which is why, a couple of generations back, there used to be a steady diet of Parisian... More >>
• Best Guerrilla Theater
  Oleanna
  There's nothing wrong with advance planning. Some local theater companies announce their plays a year ahead of time; some even cast their shows a year in advance. Then there is the occasional production that slips in under the radar, a story that a few people want to tell so badly that they just... More >>
• Best Theater Surprise
  Abigail Isom at the Kevin Kline Awards
  Nobody quite knows how it happened. (Or perhaps those who do know aren't talking.) But apparently at the eleventh hour, even after Lee Roy Reams had flown into St. Louis to host the fourth annual Kevin Kline Awards in March, he and the show's director, Ron Gibbs, together came up with the idea... More >>
• Best Movie Theater
  Chase Park Plaza Cinemas
  Netflix, the megaplex and the Internet have all but sucked the magic and decadence out of the moviegoing experience. Chase Park Plaza Cinemas fights to bring back that special-occasion feeling. Nestled within the capacious Chase Park Plaza, the theaters are intimate but not too... More >>
• Best Film Festival
  Reel Late at the Tivoli
  Few moviegoing experiences beat catching a weekday matinee when you're supposed to be at work, and the midnight movie is one of 'em. You spend two hours sitting in the dark, absorbed in another world, completely foreign from the one you live in. You emerge onto a street that should be familiar,... More >>
• Best Zoo Animal
  Bleeding-Heart Dove
  When it comes to favorite animals, our preferences are a bit atypical. While others seek out fave fauna that can be placed in categories such as "adorable" and "cuddly," our most-beloved are best described with such words as "anachronistic" (giant anteater, our pick for 2004), "badass" (the... More >>
• Best Casino (1 Comment)
  Ameristar Casino
  Utter the word "casino" and some people's eyes will light up as bright as the Vegas strip as they imagine swank lounges and $10,000 poker hands. Utter that same word and other people will scowl as they envision pensioners robotically feeding quarters into slot machines. Or avoid this dichotomy... More >>
• Best Strip Joint
  The Dive Bars of Alton
  As it turns out, there are two types of strip joints on the east side. The first are those neon dens in Sauget, Washington Park and Brooklyn that leave no doubt you'll see Live Nude Girls. That is what you pay for via the cover charge at the door. Which brings us to the lesser-known joints... More >>
• Best Local Artist
  Gina Alvarez
  Gina Alvarez may be the consummate materialist, if a deep sensitivity to the textures, hues, transparency and weight of things is a qualifier. Though trained as a printmaker, Alvarez often produces everything but work on paper, ingeniously deploying ceramics and fabric to create almost... More >>
• Best Arts Organization
  Interchange
  "Think about your future!" the woman demanded, her sense of purpose giving her a powerful presence despite her petite frame. "You students who are here on scholarships — you are putting that all at risk." The year was 2009, but fourth-grade teacher Sue Ellen Turner was taking her students... More >>
• Best Reporter (TV/Radio Division)
  Kevin Killeen
  Let NPR tout its "driveway moments." Over on the AM dial, veteran KMOX radio reporter Kevin Killeen causes a few such moments three times a week on the local level with Whole 'Nother Story. The segment consists of interview-based audio featurettes that, in Killeen's words, "make fun of the odd... More >>
• Best Art Gallery
  Boots Contemporary Art Space
  This sliver of a nonprofit gallery, which occupies a brightly renovated storefront on Cherokee Street's antique row, admirably maintains sure footing in progressive art practices and timeworn good neighborliness. Founded in 2006 by St. Louis artist Juan William Chávez and co-operated by a... More >>
• Best New Art Gallery
  Good Citizen Gallery
  In just under a year since its inaugural exhibition, Good Citizen Gallery has followed through on the promise of its name, hosting a consistently reliable series of well-executed shows that balance neighborly beneficence with integrity in craft. Founder Andrew James, an artist and replanted St.... More >>
• Best New Multimedia Gallery
  The Luminary Center for the Arts
  In a former convent on Kingshighway just west of Tower Grove Park, the husband-and-wife team of James and Brea McAnally have created an unusual new arts venue they call an "artist-run resource center." The Washington University grads (Brea's a photographer, James a musician) offer support for... More >>
• Best Gallery Exhibition
  Here and There
  This small gem of a group photography exhibition, curated by former St. Louisan Justin Visnesky, depicted the elegant near-nothingness that constitutes our deeper relationship to familiar places and things. A reflection on a life divided between two places — St. Louis and elsewhere —... More >>
• Best Museum (1 Comment)
  Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts
  The building, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando, is gorgeous. The exhibitions are rigorous and pitch-perfect, and often deal with light and space, capitalizing on Ando's minimal but essentialist design (witness this past year's Light Project, Dan Flavin: Constructed Light... More >>
• Best Museum Exhibition
  Gedi Sibony: My Arms Are Tied Behind My Other Arms
  Anthony Huberman, new chief curator of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, orchestrated a subtle, poetic solo exhibition of work by New York-based Gedi Sibony to resonant effect. Consisting of mostly found construction-grade detritus — chunks of carpet, swaths of plastic drop cloth... More >>
• Best Installment in an Exhibition Series
  Between Beach Ball and Rubber Raft
  Who among us doesn't struggle with the "anxiety of everyday existence"? For his curatorial debut, recent Webster University grad William Gass (not to be confused with the local literary elder statesman) attempted to confront this universal theme, and the result was widely resonant despite its... More >>
• Best Gallery to Die in the Past Year
  Maps Contemporary Art Space
  The little storefront gallery that existed for only a little more than a year made such a significant impact on the local arts community that its name deserves mention, once again, if only in memoriam. Co-run by brothers B.j. and Chris Vogt, the Belleville alternative art space offered something... More >>
• Best New Local Art Trend
  Artist-run print shops
  Cottage industry seems to be seeing a renaissance in St. Louis in the form of artist-run print shops, which are delivering fine, handmade goods out of small studios or neighborhood storefronts. Evil Prints, All Along Press, Rad Lab and the Firecracker Press are producing limited-run printed... More >>
• Best Local Impresario (1 Comment)
  Jim Dolan
  Tough economic times have killed a number of local music venues and concert series over the past couple of years, but no presenter in recent memory has bounced back from adversity faster or more decisively than Jim Dolan. His cabaret series at Savor in the Central West End, owned and operated... More >>
• Best Reporter (Newspaper Division)
  Joe Mahr
  Late in the afternoon of Friday, July 18, 2008, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department announced it would hold a press conference at its headquarters — a telltale sign they're trying to hide something. "The Friday-afternoon press conference is the classic m.o. of an agency trying to... More >>
• Best Graffiti Artist (1 Comment)
  Redd Foxx (a.k.a. Ed Box)
  Daring. Creativity. Respect. That's the holy trinity that defines great graffiti artists. Redd Foxx has all three traits in abundance. He routinely hits the most visible (and seemingly impossible-to-reach) places — see his "4Give Yo Self" message scrawled on a building overlooking I-70... More >>
• Best Comic-Book Artist (1 Comment)
  Chris Samnee
  Meet Chris Samnee, the hardest-working comic-book artist in St. Louis. You may have seen his work in DC's The Mighty, which he started drawing earlier this year. Or maybe you've admired the drawing in Marvel's Dead of Night series or Daredevil: Blood of the Tarantula or the Oni graphic novel... More >>
• Best Reading Series
  St. Louis County Library
  In the past year, the St. Louis County Library has booked heavyweights such as Michael Chabon, Daniel Silva, J.A. Jance and Rick Riordan. That last fella, if you didn't know, is the author of young-adult novel sensation The Lightning Thief, and his appearance drew more than a thousand clamoring... More >>
• Best Local Young Adult Author
  Sharon Shinn
  Enough with the vampires already. Have our imaginations become so stunted that the only fantasy novels anybody wants to read nowadays are ones about eternally young people with fangs who can only lust after timid virgins? We call for a boycott of the bloodsuckers! Who's with us? Show your... More >>
• Best Book by a Local Author
  Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town
  Sure, you could fill a small library with recent books on how and why crystal methamphetamine wormed its way into America's heartland. But until you've read Methland, you ain't read nothing. St. Louisan Nick Reding spent nearly four unnerving years wading deep into the life of Oelwein, Iowa, a... More >>
• Best Local Poet
  Mary Jo Bang
  "We were going toward nothing/all along." It's an alarming sentiment, but compellingly elegant. Mary Jo Bang's voice is singularly persuasive; following it through her poems is like allowing your hand to be warmly held as you're directed somewhere near-terrifying but undeniably riveting. The... More >>
• Best Local Poet to Die in the Past 12 Months
  Donald Finkel, 1929-2008
  SHHH Listen, shhh alone among trees I've come for a heart-to-heart with the woods I fall on my knees for a tête à tête with a geode behind his limestone brow I sense the clean hard corners of his thought facet to facet, glinting dimly postulates of amethyst and... More >>
• Best Newspaper Columnist
  Tony Messenger
  As editorial page editor for the Springfield News-Leader, Tony Messenger endorsed Republican Jim Talent for the U.S. Senate. As political columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Messenger went after GOP governor Matt Blunt for egregiously flouting the Sunshine Law. What's not to love about a... More >>
• Best TV News Anchor (1 Comment)
  Sandy Miller
  Most local television stations struggle to fill their nightly newscasts with a half-hour of, well, actual news. FOX 2 (KTVI) does the seemingly impossible, airing a continuous hour-and-a-half of local news. The first hour airs between 9 and 10 p.m. The second program, FOX 2 News Edge, runs from... More >>
• Best Weathercaster (1 Comment)
  Cindy Preszler
  Ah, the plight of the weathercaster. Is there a job more criticized by members of the general public? None of you even know how radar works or what barometric pressure is, yet you think you can forecast the weather. Ha! You couldn't do it! You would look like an idiot in front of that green... More >>
• Best TV Station
  KETC-TV (Channel 9)
  Who needs cable when we have Channel 9? Beginning this year with the digital TV conversion, KETC has been broadcasting four channels on its dial. Channel 9.1 shows traditional PBS programming such as Sesame Street, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and Antiques Roadshow, as well as locally... More >>
• Best Local TV Commercial
  Midwest Hemorrhoid Treatment Center
  For too long hemorrhoids have been the malady that dare not speak its name. Now comes the Midwest Hemorrhoid Treatment Center to offer corporeal and psychological relief. MHTC's ad depicts men and women of a certain age leading an active lifestyle: golfing, jogging and shopping in comfort.... More >>