The Texas Hill Country Wine & Food Festival ditches 'Saveur' and Capital Sports & Entertainment; plus, King Arthur Flour proves that whatever didn't kill carbs made them stronger

BY VIRGINIA B. WOOD

Food Reviews

Nubian Queen Lola's Cajun Kitchen

Lola Stephens feels she's blessed to have her cafe open, but trust us: Austin diners are the ones who are blessed

Chantilly Bakery Cafe

Irwan and Sandra Ojong have a nice surprise for you in South Austin

music

The Lone Ranger

The legend of Jerry Lynn Williams

BY BILL BENTLEY

TCB

Danny Crooks licks hep C, Banana Blender backs Chuck B, a fistful of talented new bands emerges, and Texans dominate XM Radio. Christmas comes early.

BY CHRISTOPHER GRAY

THE GOURDS

Texas Platters

The Gourds

Heavy Ornamentals

White Ghost Shivers

Live on the Radio

Box Car Preachers

Auto Body Experience

Bun B

Live shot

Paul Green School of Rock

The Paul Green School of Rock music presents 'The Wall'

Big Chief Kevin Goodman & the Flaming Arrows

Live shot

Austin Jazz Workshop

Big Boss Tenor

Weird Weeds

Hold Me

Attic Ted

Hemogoblin

Handsome Charlies

Gentlemen Never Tell

Assacre

Fantastic Illusions Worth Dying For

the Applicators

I Know the Truth

Belhome

A View of the Woods

the Casting Couch

Row Your Boat

Condition of Sale

We Are Your New Gods EP

the Cooties

Circle Circle Dot Dot

Heroes

Return Prophets

Secular End

Revenge of the Phoenix

screens

Runnin' With the Wolf

One man takes on the used-game business model

BY JAMES RENOVITCH

Player's Guide

Will Wynn represents for the Austin gaming industry (kind of), and Richard Garriott gets the hall-of-fame treatment

BY JAMES RENOVITCH

Punk, Puppets, and Manson as Messiah

John Roecker on 'Live Freaky! Die Freaky!'

BY MARC SAVLOV

In Play

Take control of an elite cadre of players, but be warned: This tournament is more than mere baseball

BY TIM WARDEN

In Play

Sid Meier puts the player in the role of Supreme Leader

BY JEB CALLAN

Film News

Bob Hudgins, successor of Tom Copeland at the Texas Film Commission, isn't wasting any time; plus, Andrew Shapter, Lunafest, and more

BY JOE O'CONNELL

TV Eye

Why 'Love Monkey,' the newest 'Sex and the City' knockoff, might succeed where others failed

BY BELINDA ACOSTA

Screens Reviews

Sam Peckinpah's Legendary Westerns Collection

Film Reviews

Annapolis

Annapolis is a thick but hardly meaty slice of old-school Hollywood hokum.

Bubble

Steven Soderbergh’s Bubble is likely to be remembered as the adequate but unspectacular first volley in Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner’s modern experiment in vertical film integration.

End of the Spear

Members of the violent Waodani tribe of Ecuador kill five Western missionaries, but as a result they choose to abandon their kill-or-be-killed ways.

The Matador

A curious, postmodern sort of buddy comedy, The Matador is like Death of a Salesman if Willy Loman had been a contract killer.

Nanny McPhee

Nanny McPhee is something of a rarity: a movie for children that is about children and their world.

Spike & Mike's Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation 2006

Know this going in: Sex and violence are the currency of Spike & Mike’s gory, twisted economy.

Transamerica

Felicity Huffman’s commanding, gender-bending performance is the primary reason to see Transamerica.

Underworld: Evolution

This tale of the ongoing hostilities between vampires and werewolves is pockmarked by the discordant likes of Puscifer and Slipknot.

arts & culture

Of Cactuses, Crickets, and Cars

Cataloguing the diverse wonders of FronteraFest Long Fringe 2006

BY ROBERT FAIRES

Mozart's Birthday

With a special lecture and three concerts of his music in Austin, Wolfgang Amadeus won't be hurting for recognition of his 250th birthday this week

BY ROBERT FAIRES

Sharir+Bustamante Danceworks

For its first concert of 2006, Sharir+Bustamante Danceworks not only showed off new dances, it let the audience question their creators about how they were made

BY ROBERT FAIRES

Karen Mason

'Sweetest of Nights' isn't just the title of Karen Mason's new CD, it's what you can expect from the musical sensation's Austin Cabaret Theatre appearance

BY ROBERT FAIRES

Arts Reviews

FronteraFest Short Fringe, Week Two

For an evening that included a mutilated cat, a self-loathing writer, and selling one's soul, the second Thursday at the 2006 FronteraFest Short Fringe proved surprisingly upbeat

House and Garden

'House' and 'Garden,' Alan Ayckbourn's coupled comedies performed in tandem by a single cast, is really one show divided between two stages

'Three Snaps Up'

Along with the sneakers and toys it sells, Motive 807 shows art, and most of it is really fresh and funny, like the current eight-artist show 'Three Snaps Up'

columns

Page Two: Earth, Stones, and Thorns of the Wild Ground Growing

The poetry of the right-wing soul: an appreciation

BY LOUIS BLACK

Postmarks

Our readers talk back.

After a Fashion

Stephen gets caught, wants to buy Drew a bra, and is already picking out his attire for the Texas Film Hall of Fame

BY STEPHEN MACMILLAN MOSER

To Your Health

Magnesium taurate has considerable potential as a nutritional supplement, since both magnesium and taurine supplements improve a number of health conditions