Reality TV Speculation

Which Dallas chefs will return to Bravo’s Top Chef? We offer clues.

UPDATE: Top Chef has announced the eight returning chefs, as follows, with the pertinent Dallas chefs highlighted:

Sam Talbot (season 2: Los Angeles); Casey Thompson (season 3: Miami and season 8: all-stars); Amanda Baumgarten (season 7: Washington, D.C.); Brooke Williamson (season 10: Seattle); Sheldon Simeon (season 10: Seattle); John Tesar (season 10: Seattle); Shirley Chung (season 11: New Orleans); and Katsuji Tanabe (season 12: Boston). The show premieres December 1.

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Cooking reality show Top Chef returns for its 14th season with a December 1 debut on Bravo TV, and it comes with an extra dash of intrigue: The cast is a mix of eight new chefs and eight returning chefs from past seasons who've never won.

Bravo has released the names of the eight newbies (none from Texas), but won't reveal the identities of the eight returning chefs until next week. That leaves us with one recourse: to handicap which Dallas chefs might turn up in that group.

The season takes place in Charleston, South Carolina, with host Padma Lakshmi, head judge Tom Colicchio, and Gail Simmons, who are joined by new judge Graham Elliot. A release describes it as "old blood versus new." Challenges include a shrimp-and-grits cook-off, a "biscuit blowout," and a holiday-themed Feast of Seven Fishes dinner.

Meanwhile, Dallas Top Chef alumni include John Tesar, Tiffany Derry, Tre Wilcox, Danyele McPherson, Casey Thompson, and Josh Valentine.

Let us move on to the process of elimination.

John Tesar. Dallas' most ~~hated~~ loved chef made season 10 must-see TV. His skills surpassed his fellow contestants, and in terms of entertainment value, he was solid gold. His soliloquy on pickles earned its own YouTube (since removed). Many felt he was eliminated before his time.

In promising circumstantial evidence, Tesar parted ways this summer with Aphelia Group, making it a surprisingly Tesar-free summer. (Summer is when the season was in production.) Also, suspiciously, Tesar was unable to show up at CultureMap's Tastemaker awards when he won for Best Chef. You gotta have something serious going on to miss that.

It could just be that he's busy working on his new steak cookbook. But we'll optimistically hope otherwise.

Odds: 5 knives out of 5 on being a likely returning chef.

Casey Thompson. Although Thompson lives in California, she still has ties to the DFW area. In 2010, she helped launch Brownstone, a restaurant in Fort Worth's West 7th district, semi-remotely. So we'll call her "ours."

Thompson has no restaurant of her own right now. Coincidentally, she was just in Dallas to cook at the eighth annual Burgers & Burgundy fundraiser benefiting DIFFA. Which is, hmmm, Tesar's signature event. Where she set up in the exact same tent as Tesar. Double hmmm.

Other promising clues: On May 7, she said she was "working on a project," and on July 15, she posted a "hells yeah!" vote of support for Top Chef.

Odds: 4 knives out of 5.

Tiffany Derry. Derry was a Top Chef fan favorite, and her TV chops were sufficiently impressive that she scored slots on a number of reality-TV and competition-style shows such as Bar Rescue and Chopped Junior. But she's been working on another restaurant called Roots Southern Table, at Trinity Groves in Dallas. This doesn't rule her out entirely as a contestant, but she's been on two seasons already.

Odds: 2 knives out of 5.

Danyele McPherson. McPherson was a Top Chef short-timer, appearing on season 10 with Tesar. She's currently slammed, overseeing an empire of restaurants that include the original HG Sply Co. in Dallas, a second HG Sply Co. in Fort Worth, Remedy on Greenville Avenue, and a new restaurant in Rockwall called Standard Service. No way she has time for TV right now.

Odds: 1 knife out of 5.

Tre Wilcox. Chef Tre Wilcox, who appeared on season 3 along with Casey Thompson, is a busy man. He has six various Facebook pages going, a restaurant in Plano called Julia Pearl, a catering company, and an events space. It's possible he could have also been juggling taping this summer, but Wilcox was very much present in Texas.

Odds: 2 knives out of 5.

Josh Valentine. Former FT33 chef was also on season 10, where he tussled with Tesar. He currently lives in Oklahoma, and his Facebook page indicates a new baby happened this summer.

Odds: 0 knives out of 5.

Tiffany Derry

Photo by Lisa Stewart

Tiffany Derry

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Movie Review

The End of Oak Street can't live up to its Spielberg inspirations

Photo by Daniel McFadden

Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway in The End of Oak Street.

Steven Spielberg is the iconic director of the last 50 years, so it’s no surprise that many other filmmakers have borrowed from his classic films. But most of the time those come in the form of references or homages, not straight up theft, which is what it feels like watching The End of Oak Street play out in front of your eyes.

Set in the early 1980s in an idyllic suburban neighborhood of an unnamed city, Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) are parents to two teenagers, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery). They’re also possibly heading toward divorce, as Audrey is secretly writing a novel with a thinly-veiled plot about their life, and Brian is cagey about having to earn extra money with a pizza delivery job.

That all gets put on the backburner when a mysterious event takes their entire neighborhood back to the time of dinosaurs. Armed with little more than a shotgun and sledgehammer, Audrey and Brian do their best to keep the family safe in their house. But the longer the ordeal goes on, circumstances force them out onto the streets and into the increasing danger that’s all around them.

Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, the film tries immensely hard to be like the Spielberg movies its filmmaker clearly adores, but fails at almost every turn. It never earns the broken family in ‘80s suburbia vibes that were prevalent in E.T., going all in right away in the opening scene with a neighborhood block party that feels forced. Other elements like a bully who has it out for Brian, the family dog that disappears, and an angry neighbor come across as the tropes they are and not as organic parts of the plot.

When it finally gets to its dinosaur sequences, they pale in comparison to those found in Jurassic Park. The strange manner in which the dinosaurs appear is a big part of that, but the action involving them forgoes ominous moments that could build tension for those that play up gore in an unexpected way for a PG-13 movie. Many of the attacks have so little emotional meaning that they come off as comical, which is entertaining but in a hollow way.

As if those weren’t enough, Mitchell - perhaps at the behest of producer J.J. Abrams (who made his own Spielbergian film, Super 8) - tries to honor Spielberg in other ways. Just like in Jaws, he employs the use of a split diopter lens, which keeps characters in both the foreground and background in focus. But instead of using it judiciously, it’s brought out in three separate scenes, including a laughable one with the four family members where it turns into overkill.

Hathaway, coming off of a role in The Odyssey that could earn her an Oscar nomination, is the best part of this film. But even her evident skills are dragged down by the ridiculousness of the story, which requires hysterics that even she can’t sell. McGregor can normally be counted on for a good performance, but he gives several line readings with strange cadences that make his already-underwritten character come off worse. Stella and Convery are okay, but their roles are unmemorable overall.

Mitchell and his team can never settle on exactly what type of film they were trying to make, and so even though The End of Oak Street has a few moments that work, they’re surrounded by many others that don’t. In trying to emulate Spielberg - there’s even a blatant Back to the Future (produced by Spielberg) rip-off towards the end - all Mitchell has done is show how difficult it is to be the master.

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The End of Oak Street opens in theaters on August 14.