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| Friday | Saturday | Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday |Thursday |
FRIDAY 26 | |
 | Print Study Exhibition Blanton Museum of Art, Art Building, 6pm All those Old Master paintings recently unveiled at the Blanton Museum of Art in UT's Harry Ransom Center are drawing a wealth of attention from Austin art lovers (and deservedly so), but don't assume that they're the only art masterpieces to have made their way to the 40 Acres of late. In fact, the Blanton has recently acquired another Renaissance-era wonder -- Abduction of Helen, a 1547 print by Andrea Schiavone -- as well as an artistic treasure from an era closer to ours, Georges Braque's 1911 Cubist effort, Fox -- and both will receive their first public showing on the UT Austin campus this Friday, as part of the "Spring 1999 Print Study Exhibition." The Blanton's commitment to giving the campus and the city opportunities to see some of the 11,000-plus works on paper in its astonishing collection on a regular basis is most commendable and offers everyone in Austin a place at the table for a visual feast every spring and fall. I mean, c'mon, when you're served up steaming platters of Chagall, Oldenberg, Motherwell, Stella, and Rembrandt, for the luv o' Pete, that's an art banquet! A public reception will be held to mark the opening of the "Print Study Exhibition" and the "1999 Art Students Exhibition" -- a meal of its own -- on display in the Art Building March 26-April 11. Through May 9. 23rd & San Jacinto. Free. 471-7324. -- Robert Faires Sursum Corda! Central Christian Church, 8pm Lift up your hearts! That's the rousing appeal from Austin Choral Artists in this spring concert designed to awaken your spirits from their winter torpor (or, as is more likely the case, from the torpor brought on by waiting for a winter that never came). ACA director Morris Beachy provides a program of sacred works from the last two centuries that share the power to elevate the spirit: Sergei Rachmaninoff's Ave Maria and Blessed Is the Man; Giuseppe Verdi's Stabat Mater; and Franz Joseph Haydn's Theresienmesse. These pieces are drawn from the later years of these fine composers and reveal their artistry in full maturity burnished with grand, golden glory. Adding to the already considerable power of Austin's granddaddy of choral ensembles are featured soloists Susan Fernandez, Linda Ramsey, David Underwood, and Russell Gregory. 12th & Guadalupe. $12 ($10 seniors, students). 454-TIXS. -- Robert Faires
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SATURDAY 27 | |
 | The VORTEX 2000 Fundraiser Planet Theatre, 1-5pm It may be written that the meek shall inherit the earth, but as of now, it must also be noted that the rebel shall inherit the Planet. In this case, the Planet is Planet Theatre, and the rebel is maverick director Bonnie Cullum, who spearheaded the drive to transform the dilapidated Eastside barn into a home for her VORTEX Repertory Company and other out-of-this-world performing artists. After five years of paying rent, Cullum has purchased the property. Now she and VORTEX have a home of their own, and like any new homeowner, they're eager to spruce up the place. Thus, the VORTEX 2000 Fundraiser, a day-long party-cum-yard sale-cum-carnival-cum-concert that will kick off a $100,000 fund drive to renovate the Planet (soon to be rechristened The VORTEX) and make it the alternative theatre space of everybody's dreams. Beginning at 10am Saturday, the company will be hawking books, furniture, clothes, etc.; then at noon, they'll start spouting poetry, playing music, and entertaining you in vintage VORTEX style, with performances by Kirk Smith, Jo Beth Henderson, the Diviners, Mick D'Arcy, guitar wiz Stormie M. Graham, and others. Then comes a Celebrity Auction with old VORTEX pal Annie Sprinkle serving as your hostess with the mostes'. Go to celebrate the purchase of the property or go to support the crew's fix-up campaign, but go. Companies this committed don't come along every day, and they deserve a hand. 2307 Manor. $10. 478-LAVA. -- Robert Faires
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SUNDAY 28 | |
 | Tito & Tarantula Stubbs The five things you need to know about Tito Larriva: 1) The Plugz. 2) The Cruzados. 3) Steamboat, SXSW 97. 4) The Continental Club, December, same year. 5) Close personal friend of Salma Hayek. Really, it's only that last one that matters, but this L.A.-based quartet has been known to blow a few walls out here in Austin. Out in support of their second release, Hungry Sally & Other Killer Lullabies, a dangerously sinister follow-up to Tarantism -- which came in the wake of Larriva's appearances in Robert Rodriguez's Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn -- this killer live act injects some serious venom into their blues bite, so if Tito can cough up a phone number, maybe Salma will come suck out the poison. Hombre!-- Raoul Hernandez
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MONDAY 29 | |
 | Ravenous Great Hills, Lakehills, Lincoln, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South Antonia Bird is best known for the unsettling Priest, which tackled the issue of gay clergy head on. Ravenous is devoid of such contemporary sociological mores, but that doesn't stop it from being a minor masterpiece of suspense and, you should pardon the pun, a fully fleshed-out examination of carnivorous comedy. Set in 1847, Ravenous opens with the return of Capt. John Boyd (Pearce) from the Spanish-American War. Decorated for taking a Mexican garrison single-handedly, it becomes apparent to Boyd's superior officers that the good captain's bravery was, in fact, a result of stunning cowardice. Feigning death, the officer was carried back to a mass grave behind enemy lines where he found his rotting company less palatable than probable death at the hands of his enemies. Unable to execute the reluctant hero, they instead assign him a new post, at lonely Fort Spencer high in the Sierra Nevadas. There he meets a motley band of fellow soldiers led by Jones' wry Major Hart, who presides over the hyper-religious Pvt. Toffler (Davies), the besotted Major Knox (Spinella), and Arquette's hallucinogen-crazed Cleaves, among others. All misfits to a point, their dull routine is interrupted one evening with the unexpected arrival of Carlyle's Mr. Colqhoun, a frostbitten Scot with a horrific tale. Part of a party of six attempting to cross the mountains as winter set in, Colqhoun tells the soldiers of cave-bound starvation and three months of snowy isolation. In the end, he says, they resorted to eating each other to stay alive. The company's lone Native American scout, George, immediately gloms on the fact that this is the curse of the Wendigo, whereby a man who devours another man absorbs his strength and spirit. Without going too far into Bird's multilayered plot twists (Ted Griffin's script is truly a shocker -- the less said the better), suffice to say Colqhoun is not what he appears, and one by one people start turning up with little pieces missing. And so on. Griffin's script cleverly uses the idea of cannibalism as a ripe, rich metaphor for the country's voracious westward expansion during the mid-19th century, but not to worry, there's plenty more going on here than just highbrow comic turns. Carlyle (forever linked in the collective mind to Trainspotting's pugilistic Begbie) is phenomenal as the absolutely psychopathic Colqhoun: He vacillates from an edgy, Parkinsonian quiver to icily cool evil, a creature of pure, streamlined, animalistic id. Likewise Pearce, who finds the coward at the center of the war hero and runs with it. Arquette, on the other hand, ought to go back to those 1-800-Collect advertisements where he can display at least a modicum of restraint. Bird's grim, picture-perfect direction -- the Sierras are more character than backdrop, and everything else looks like it's already been digested and expelled -- augments what is frankly a small, albeit lusterless, gem of a horror show, for once with as many smarts as body parts.
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TUESDAY 30 | |
 | AUSTIN FILM SOCIETY "Calling the Shots: Women Screenwriters of the 1930s": The Women (1939) D: George Cukor; with Rosalind Russell, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Joan Fontaine, Paulette Goddard, Butterfly McQueen. The Austin Film Society's new series is devoted to films written by women screenwriters of the 1930s, a period during which women screenwriters were quite prolific. The Women was written by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin and was based on a play by Clare Booth. This all-female cast is a witty, all-star bitchfest. The Women will be introduced by novelist and screenwriter Sarah Bird. For more info on the series call the AFS or 322-0145 or see http://www.austinfilm.org. (NR, 134 min.)
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WEDNESDAY 31 | |
 | Fear and Desire Alamo Drafthouse 6&10pm Stanley Kubrick Tribute featuring a restored 35mm print of Full Metal Jacket (1987) and a rare (and slightly used) video of Kubrick's first film, Fear and Desire (1953). Full Metal Jacket(R, 113 min.) is Kubrick's study of Marines in training and in Vietnam. As the presskit heralds: "In Vietnam the wind doesn't blow; it sucks." Fear and Desire (NR, 68) is a war movie about four soldiers trapped behind enemy lines. Kubrick always tried to halt any screenings of his first film effort but now we sadly hear him protesting, "over my dead body." The Show With No Name is the cable access show (Sundays, channel 10, 11pm-midnight) that sponsored the Akira Kurosawa tribute last fall. $6.50 admission/$5 AFS members. -- Sarah Hepola
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THURSDAY 1 | |
 | The Thief of Baghdad Alamo Draft House, 6:45pm My grandmother loved Douglas Fairbanks, and so did just about everyone else in the early half of the century. Fairbanks was the original macho love hunk and swashbuckling action star. And the brilliantly outlandish 1924 silent film The Thief of Baghdad was a high mark for both Fairbanks and Hollywood. It's said that the film's sets -- a meld of deco, Orientalism, and urban chic -- stretched for nearly seven acres. The film, so popular that it was remade three times, is loosely based on one of the world's most important literary works, One Thousand and One Nights. So who better to play the live musical accompaniment than local Middle Eastern ensemble 1001 Nights? Led by multi-instrumentalist Kamran Hooshmand, 1001 Nights boasts some of the best in the genre and for this unique performance will feature special musical guests. The band will perform originals and standards during the entire two-and-a-half hour classic, with characters and situations having their own theme and special musical toys enhancing the sonic filmscape. Shown on a 35mm archive print, this one is a sure sell-out. Slackers may get lucky if there's a second screening on Saturday. Either way, don't be caught sitting on your hands. 409 Colorado. 867-1839. -- David Lynch
Cremaster 5 Texas Union Theater, 7pm The Austin Museum of Art. ArtPace, a Foundation for Contemporary Art/San Antonio. The Blanton Museum of Art. When you see these three names atop a press release together -- the equivalent of Leno, Letterman, and Koppel lunching at the same table -- attention must be paid. What could unite these three 800-pound gorillas of Central Texas art? A touring exhibition of Texas-based installation art? A survey of postmodern photography? A commission for Christo to wrap the Capitol? Would you believe a film about the muscle that raises and lowers the testes? Well, that isn't exactly what Matthew Barney's art film Cremaster 5 is about, but it does takes its title from that body part, and the family jewels to which Barney's cremaster is attached apparently may be seen in the film. Don't mistake this, however, for a string of edgy, intensely provocative images a la Robert Mapplethorpe or a Johnny "Wadd" Holmes epic deconstructed and christened art. Barney is a filmmaker whose exposure of the body is submerged within a dense and enigmatic visual language that astounds even as it mystifies. His Cremaster 5 -- the numeral marks it as the last film in a projected five-part series -- takes place in the baroque interiors of the Hungarian State Opera House and among the green tiles of an abandoned Budapest bathhouse, with Barney playing a magician and a giant (whose beribboned scrotum is lifted by a flock of pigeons) and Ursula Andress playing the Queen of Chain, a mournful diva in Elizabethan black who becomes involved with the magician. As with the cinema of Peter Greenaway, the images and textures of the film are what distinguish it more than the story told. Barney saturates the screen with intense colors, with velvets and satins, with exotic birds and lilies and naked nymphs -- an orgy of sensuality. What can be drawn from all this opulence -- and did I mention the operatic score sung in Hungarian? -- is best left to each individual. But it is bound to be a spectacle -- a sentiment with which three 800-pound gorillas of art must agree. 24th & Guadalupe. $8 ($6 UT students w/ID, AMOA members). 495-9224. -- Robert Faires
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