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.

John Valentine

Photo courtesy of Bravo

John Valentine

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Movie Review

Film sequel Avatar: Fire and Ash is a technical and visual feast

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Oona Chaplin in Avatar: Fire and Ash.

For a series whose first two films made over $5 billion combined worldwide, Avatar has a curious lack of widespread cultural impact. The films seem to exist in a sort of vacuum, popping up for their run in theaters and then almost as quickly disappearing from the larger movie landscape. The third of five planned movies, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is finally being released three years after its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water.

The new film finds the main duo, human-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his native Na’vi wife, Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), still living with the water-loving Metkayina clan led by Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis). While Jake and Neytiri still play a big part, the focus shifts significantly to their two surviving children, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as two they’ve essentially adopted, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Spider (Jack Champion).

Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who lives on in a fabricated Na’vi body, is still looking for revenge on Jake, and he finds help in the form of the Mangkwan Clan (aka the Ash People), led by Varang (Oona Chaplin). Quaritch’s access to human weapons and the Mangkwan’s desire for more power on the moon known as Pandora make them a nice match, and they team up to try to dominate the other tribes.

Aside from the story, the main point of making the films for writer/director James Cameron is showing off his considerable technical filmmaking prowess, and that is on full display right from the start. The characters zoom around both the air and sea on various creatures with which they’ve bonded, providing Cameron and his team with plenty of opportunities to put the audience right there with them. Cameron’s preferred viewing method of 3D makes the experience even more immersive, even if the high frame rate he uses makes some scenes look too realistic for their own good.

The story, as it has been in the first two films, is a mixed bag. Cameron and co-writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver start off well, having Jake, Neytiri, and their kids continue mourning the death of Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in the previous film. The struggle for power provides an interesting setup, but Cameron and his team seem to drag out the conflict for much too long. This is the longest Avatar film yet, and you really start to feel it in the back half as the filmmakers add on a bunch of unnecessary elements.

Worse than the elongated story, though, is the hackneyed dialogue that Cameron, Jaffa, and Silver have come up with. Almost every main character is forced to spout lines that diminish the importance of the events around them. The writers seemingly couldn’t resist trying to throw in jokes despite them clashing with the tone of the scenes in which they’re said. Combined with the somewhat goofy nature of the Na’vi themselves (not to mention talking whales), the eye-rolling words detract from any excitement or emotion the story builds up.

A pre-movie behind-the-scenes short film shows how the actors act out every scene in performance capture suits, lending an authenticity to their performances. Still, some performers are better than others, with Saldaña, Worthington, and Lang standing out. It’s more than a little weird having Weaver play a 14-year-old girl, but it works relatively well. Those who actually get to show their real faces are collectively fine, but none of them elevate the film overall.

There are undoubtedly some Avatar superfans for which Fire and Ash will move the larger story forward in significant ways. For anyone else, though, the film is a demonstration of both the good and bad sides of Cameron. As he’s proven for 40 years, his visuals are (almost) beyond reproach, but the lack of a story that sticks with you long after you’ve left the theater keeps the film from being truly memorable.

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Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters on December 19.

movies film

Reality TV Speculation

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

John Valentine

Movie Review

Film sequel Avatar: Fire and Ash is a technical and visual feast

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