Dallas Does Reality TV

The knives come out: Three Dallas chefs, including firebrand John Tesar, tocompete on Top Chef

Dallas cheftestants Danyele McPherson of The Grape, John Tesar of Spoon andJoshua Valentine of FT33.
Top Chef returns for a 10th season November 7.

Dallas scores big once again in reality TV. Three local chefs will compete on Top Chef: Seattle, the latest season of the Bravo cooking show hosted by Tom Colicchio and Padma Lakshmi. It premieres Wednesday, November 7, at 9 pm.

The show will follow the same format as last season's Top Chef: Texas by opening with an unusually large number of contestants — 21 — including four from California; three from Los Angeles; two from New York; two from Boston; three from Colorado; three from Washington, D.C.; and one each from Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Hawaii and Georgia.

Dallas contestants are Danyele McPherson, John Tesar and Joshua Valentine, who will be the pastry chef at FT33, the new restaurant from chef Matt McCallister.

Oklahoma native Valentine, 33, got his A.O.S. in culinary arts from Le Cordon Bleu, Minneapolis. He has worked at Restaurant Alma in Minneapolis; Local, Stephan Pyles and Samar by Stephan Pyles in Dallas; The Coach House in Oklahoma; and Divine Swine.

Valentine says before filming began, he was unaware there would be other chefs from Dallas.

"I had no idea about the other Dallas chefs," he says. "I didn't know John other than by reputation and reading about him. I worked with Danyele at Stephan Pyles when Matt [McCallister] and I were there. She was a line cook."

He says that during the taping of the show, the three Dallas chefs didn't group together. "Everybody was fending for themselves," he says.

On the Bravo website, McPherson is described as the 31-year-old sous chef of The Grape, originally from Waynesville, North Carolina. She got her BA in anthropology from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, followed by an "attendance" at the Culinary Institute of America, before leaving for an internship. Stephan Pyles is listed under her work experience.

New York native Tesar is the 54-year-old chef and restaurateur of Spoon Bar & Kitchen who attended La Varenne Ecole de Cuisine, Paris. His resume is lengthy: Club Pierre in Westhampton, 13 Barrow Street, 44 & Hell’s Kitchen, Vine and The Supper Club in New York, RM Seafood in Las Vegas, The Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas. Hey, there's no mention of The Commissary at One Arts Plaza.

The show will bring back Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen, the digital video series hosted by Tom Colicchio in which losing contestants get a second chance at appearing in the show's finale.

Dallas has provided endless contestant fodder for reality TV, from Mark Cuban and Michael Irvin on Dancing With the Stars to Sean Lowe of The Bachelorette to Sunny Sinclair on The Biggest Loser. Tim Halperin, Hollie Cavanagh and Kelly Clarkson appeared on American Idol; Jany Lee and Hilari Younger made it to HGTV's Design Star. Louise Black and Shirin Askari were contestants on Project Runway, and recently it was announced that Joe Kirkland (of Artist vs Poet) will appear on The Voice.

Oodles of Dallas chefs have gotten in on the reality-TV action, from Ben Starr and Jennie Kelley on MasterChef to Blythe Beck on Naughty Chef to Morgan Wilson and Lina Biancamano on Top Chef: Just Desserts. Plus there was Carrie Keep on Hell's Kitchen and Liza Garza and Melissa d'Arabian on Next Food Network Star.

Three area chefs have competed on Top Chef: Tiffany Derry, Casey Thompson (now in Napa Valley) and Tre Wilcox. Fort Worth chef Tim Love was on Top Chef: Masters, and Tesar was on Extreme Chef last year. (He won.) Bravo just announced Top Chef: The Cruise with Derry, Thompson and Love.

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Movie Review

Jessica Chastain drama Dreams stumbles through steamy romance

Photo courtesy of Teorema

Isaac Hernández and Jessica Chastain in Dreams.

The opening scenes of the new drama Dreams are bracing, fictional sequences that call to mind real-life scenarios. In them, a young Mexican man named Fernando (Isaac Hernández) goes through a somewhat harrowing journey from the back of a semi truck in South Texas all the way to San Francisco. It’s a familiar immigrant story that seems to set the stage for a film with something interesting to say.

It turns out, however, that Fernando has not made the long and arduous trek for a job. Instead, it’s to be with Jennifer McCarthy (Jessica Chastain), a rich woman who helps lead a foundation dedicated to multiple things, including funding dance academies. Fernando, a talented dancer, and Jennifer have been in an off-and-on affair for years, with Jennifer wanting to keep their relationship a secret.

Although both are drawn to each other in an inexplicable, lustful way, their bond is tenuous, with each of them dissatisfied for different reasons. Fernando clearly sacrifices much more of himself than Jennifer, who wants for nothing except maybe more affection from her father, Michael (Marshall Bell), and brother, Jake (Rupert Friend).

Writer/director Michel Franco seems to try to inject tension into Fernando and Jennifer’s relationship from the start, an attempt that is only halfway successful. It’s clear from the way they greet each other - not to mention a steamy sex scene shortly thereafter - that they have known each other for a good length of time. Franco is able to get across this familiarity with an economy of scenes, and the intensity of their bond holds for a while.

But as the film progresses and both of them grow disenchanted with their arrangement, Franco starts taking the story in some odd directions. The biggest issue is that it’s never clear at what point in time the story is taking place. Fernando ends up making multiple trips back and forth across the border, with Jennifer doing the same at one point, and Franco’s use of flashbacks muddies the waters, wrong-footing the audience when he should be trying to draw them further into Fernando and Jennifer’s complications.

Revelations in the final act make the story even more confusing, as both main characters start saying and doing harsh things that seem to come out of nowhere. That would be all well and good if Franco actually committed to their changes of heart, but he keeps things wishy-washy for most of the final 15 minutes, resulting in an ending that makes little sense for either character.

Despite the story issues, both Chastain and Hernández give compelling performances. Chastain has been a little under the radar since winning an Oscar for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, but she keeps this character interesting longer than it should have been. Hernández has limited credits and appears to have been cast for his dancing ability, but he goes toe-to-toe with Chastain on more than one occasion and acquits himself well.

Dreams had all of the ideas to explore a more in-depth story about the complicated immigration policies between Mexico and the U.S., or how wealthy people take advantage of those less fortunate. But Franco never finds the right footing, settling instead for a titillating and somewhat mystifying relationship story that feels half-baked.

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Dreams is now playing in select theaters.

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Movie Review

Jessica Chastain drama Dreams stumbles through steamy romance