Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival (aGLIFF)
Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival (aGLIFF) Directed by Various, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . aGLIFF is celebrating its 15th year as the Southwest’s biggest and best-known gay and lesbian film festival. This 12-day-long event screens scores of features and shorts, narratives and documentaries, and hosts a number of visiting filmmakers.…
Rollerball
Rollerball 1975, R, 122 min. Directed by Norman Jewison, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring James Caan, John Houseman, Maud Adams, John Beck, Moses Gunn, Ralph Richardson. In Norman Jewison’s dystopic future, corporations run the world, and indivualism is taboo. People are distracted by the all-consuming national sport of rollerball a gladiatorial cross-between…
Center for Young Cinema Screening
Center for Young Cinema Screening NR. Directed by Various, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . Center for Young Cinema (CYC) is screening more than 12 films produced and directed by kids ages 13-18 who partook in the Center’s summer movie workshops. Co-sponsors include the Austin Film Society annd QT5. For more see auschron.com/issues/dispatch/1999-11-12/screens_feature.html…
Vampire Circus
Vampire Circus 1972, PG, 87 min. Directed by Robert William Young, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring George Baxt, Judson Kinberg, Wilbur Stark. Evereyone including the animals are clowns by day and vampires by night in this Hammer horror spectacle. Introducing the film will be sci-fi novelist and Hammer expert Jason Henderson…
Record Reviews
Davíd GarzaOverdub (Atlantic) What Davíd Garza really needs is an experienced producer. One of those wily, major-label vets from the Sixties and Seventies, a Guy Stevens (London Calling) perhaps, or Gus Dudgeon (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road). Someone to help shape the Austin rocker’s skyrocket musical vision. Garza’s combustive Atlantic debut, ’98’s This Euphoria, sounded like…
Naked City
A proposed bond package to lengthen roads draws support from business lobbyists but opposition from environmentalists and local Democrats.
In Person
I’m not the only one who notices the hand-fans first. Stepping into the George Washington Carver branch library — a modest but beautifully muraled rectangular structure on the Eastside — one can’t help but covet one fan in the middle of one glass case, the one with Martin Luther King Jr.’s likeness bobbing above that…
Record Reviews
Jad Fair and Daniel JohnstonIt’s Spooky (Jagjaguwar) Those who attended the Fair/Johnston gigs around the Electric Lounge’s demise doubtlessly expect little from a collaboration between these two musical eccentrics. The shows mixed high doses of ineptness and pretension and little of the innocence and magic that colors the best of Fair’s and Johnston’s work. It’s…
Naked City
Conflicts, corruption, charges of favoritism: When will that TDHCA ever get its act together?
Page Two
Georgetown’s Smart Growth struggles, and Mayor Watson’s
American Outlaws
American Outlaws 2001, PG-13, 95 min. Directed by Les Mayfield, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Colin Farrell, Scott Caan, Timothy Dalton, Ali Larter, Will McCormack, Kathy Bates. “Bad is good again,” reads this tweener Western’s marketing tagline. Nope, sorry gang, bad was never good, and American Outlaws is much, much worse. I’d like…
Record Reviews
Brown WhörnetRadio Ablum (Perverted Son) You’ve been there before, I’m sure. You’re deliriously tired, nodding off after miles and miles of hard driving, and you’ve already burned tread marks into every CD in your carrying case. With no other recourse, ladies and gentlemen, it’s rrrrrradio time! First time around the dial, there are some odd…
Naked City
Light rail is still full steam ahead, but with a new conductor.
Public Notice
Public Notice asks not what it can do for its community but what *you* can. This week features part of our Austin-area Volunteer Opportunities List and informs of dear old “Public Notice”‘s demise..
Fast Food Fast Women
Fast Food Fast Women 2001, R, 96 min. Directed by Amos Kollek, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Angelica Torn, Valerie Geffner, Victor Argo, Austin Pendleton, Robert Modica, Louise Lasser, Jamie Harris, Anna Thomson. After carving out a little niche with gritty character studies like Fiona and Sue, Israeli-born writer-director Amos Kollek essays a…
Record Reviews
God Drives A GalaxyIt’s Late but I Feel Early (India) This is an appropriate title for God Drives a Galaxy’s sophomore effort, because it sounds about five years too late. It’s Late but I Feel Early comes at you with so many saccharine, off-kilter hooks and riffs you’d swear it was a hot KNAC summer,…
Naked City
Mayor what’s-his-name is gone — who’s next?
Letters at 3AM
Technological progress is altering fundamental issues of identity.
Rat Race
Rat Race 2001, PG-13, 105 min. Directed by Jerry Zucker, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Kathy Bates, Dean Cain, Dave Thomas, Vince Vieluf, Wayne Knight, Paul Rodriguez, Lanai Chapman, Amy Smart, Kathy Najimy, Breckin Meyer, Jon Lovitz, Seth Green, Cuba Gooding Jr., Whoopi Goldberg, John Cleese, Rowan Atkinson. Why some Paramount production executives…
Record Reviews
The Wontons Hex AppealThe Wontons”Snake Eyes” b/w “Vampire Girl” In an age where sloppy punk rock bands dot the globe with a frequency rivaling McDonald’s, novelty often becomes the key delineator between garden varieties and standouts. Austin’s Wontons have a keen understanding of this phenomenon, and accentuate their raucous noise with a dynamic, flailing stage…
The Hightower Lowdown
The media buys the Pentagon’s lies, W can’t keep his free-market ideology straight, and biotechnology brings us Frankenpigs.
Day Trips
Get your kicks on — that’s right — Route 66.
Second Helpings: Ice Cream, Part II
Austin’s often overlooked ice cream shops
Record Reviews
Super XX ManVolume V (Post-Parlo) Scott Garred was the schoolboy nerd who walked around the halls with a “kick me” sign on his back. He was the bullies’ favorite target. Garred was also the introspective class poet who’d rather read and write quietly, while the other kids ran around outside. Then one day, he got…
Teen Angst Turns a Page
Based on the cult comic book series by Daniel Clowes and directed by Terry Zwigoff of Crumb infamy, Ghost World is an often poignant, frequently hilarious, and occasionally disturbing immersion into the world of 18-year-old Enid (American Beauty’s Thora Birch), a teenage outsider who faces the daily tsunami of cultural mediocrity and an uncertain future…
Mr. Smarty Pants
Sleek new info-bites, right off the showroom floor!
Playing the Bad Guy
With actor David Stahl currently appearing as the wicked Richard III and actor Katherine Catmull having recently played the evil Goneril in King Lear, the challenge of playing villains seemed a ripe topic to launch a series of artist-to-artist conversations on craft.
Record Reviews
Monte Montgomery Wishing Well (Texas Music Group) Wishing Well is something different from Monte Montgomery. His third CD overall and first for the Austin-based Texas Music Group, it finds him moving away from the guitar flash he’s become known for and concentrating on pop songs. Unfortunately, Montgomery’s style of pop sounds seriously dated. His bio…
A Guy on a Mission
QTV will give Austinites another chance to experience Quentin Tarantino as a passionate educator.
After a Fashion
Happy Second Anniversary, After a Fashion! Follow along as Stephen has a great weekend talking “inner slut” with Lucinda Williams!
Articulations
Nominations for the 2000-01 B. Iden Payne Awards for theatre excellence
Record Reviews
Shane BartellReferenceMichele SolbergBeyond the Blue (Chocolate) Summer minus great pop music is like no air conditioning. Everyone’s blood is up, and in Texas especially, crazy from the heat is more of a lifestyle than an expression. It’s hard to blame Shane Bartell for wanting to lie around listening to the Red House Painters in “Harris…
QT5 Festival Schedule
All films will be shown at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown, 409 Colorado. Ten-day festival badges are $125 ($115 AFS members); five-day festival badges (any five days) are $75 ($70 AFS members); single-night passes are $30 for Friday and Saturday nights and $20 during the week. Passes may be purchased at the door. Sunday through Thursday…
To Your Health
I am becoming concerned that my 12-year-old daughter is overweight. Is it too early to give her some pointers on how to lose weight?
Exhibitionism
Tornado in Slo Mo, the autobiographical album by Darcie Deaville, contains songs drawn from Deaville’s tumultuous past that ring with a saving not-gonna-take-it-anymore grace, but her one-woman show at Hyde Park Theatre based on the same material falls way short of compelling.
Record Reviews
Malford Milligan The Gospel According to Austin Vol. 2 The first edition of The Gospel According to Austin was a glorious if unexpected success. It featured a wide array of Austin artists, from Ruben Ramos and Don Walser to Guy Forsyth, performing what’s been referred to as “root-gospel” to great effect. Volume two is structured…
Short Cuts
Cattle call!
About AIDS
Catholics vs. condoms, round two
Liquid Assets
This weekend is a great opportunity to see the winemaker’s art in progress. If you ever wanted to see what happens as they turn grape juice to wine, now is the time. Harvest is now complete, and the juice is fermenting. Luckily, 14 wineries in Central Texas will be open this weekend to strut their…
Record Reviews
BlazeSay What Now? Blaze is the foremost no-bullshit young jazz band to hit the local scene in years. Their self-titled debut album was far and away the best straight-shooting local jazz release of last year, and its sheer excellence earned it a spot on many local Top 10 lists. The standard five-piece dynamo, led by…
TV Eye
South Park takes on sex ed.
Coach’s Corner
Yanked back untimely from his idyll in the Rockies, Coach is sucked into the “debate” over college football’s pre-season polls.
History Repeats
A writer and his artist aunt explore cave paintings and see more than just writing on the wall.
Beat Box
With hip-hop apparently taking 2001 off to puzzle over how much bling-bling is too much, and what exactly to do in the wake of OutKast’s Stankonia, this could have easily been a cruel, cruel summer. However, extensive research — yeah, right — has unearthed a handful of recent Lone Star releases that will gladly rub…
Exhibitionism
In the new production of Shakespeare’s Richard III staged by the Disciples of Melpomene, it’s the crafty and well-crafted portrayal of Richard by David Stahl that drives this show — a performance built around performances by a master actor on the stage of life.
The New Cold Concoction
Iced tea gets a makeover
After Napster
The world of online music after the fall of Napster.
Georgetown Smackdown
Suburbanites Wrestle Over Managed Growth, Smart Growth, and “Stupid Growth”
Diving for Pearls
When Edgar Allen Poe invented the detective story in April, 1841 (the date “Murders in the Rue Morgue” appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger), he’d never visited Paris, the city in which the story is set; he’d never met a private eye (for the simple reason that there weren’t any); he’d never even hung out…
Food-o-File
Interesting culinary newsletters and the latest food news around town
MP3 for Dummies
If you are sick and tired of hearing about MP3s because you don’t know what they are, or you download them like crazy and still have no idea what they are apart from songs, then this little primer’s for you. Currently, MP3 is the most widely used format for storing digital music on computer hard…
No Water, Plenty of Sewage
Some major highlights of the Georgetown political grudge matches: 1992: The city’s Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Georgetown Industrial Foundation consider a water park for economic development and tourism, to be underwritten with “4B corporation bonds.” It is one of more than a dozen incentive deals in the works for existing or prospective businesses,…
Postscripts
Jim Bob McMillan has done more at the Writers’ League of Texas than oversee a name change.
Under the Sand
Under the Sand 2001, NR, 95 min. Directed by François Ozon, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Andrée Tainsy, Pierre Vernier, Alexandra Stewart, Jacques Nolot, Bruno Cremer, Charlotte Rampling. Under the Sand is a haunting French movie about a woman whose mind refuses to fully process the information that her husband has suddenly disappeared.…
Dancing About Architecture
Girls and Cats this week: Schrödinger’s Cat, Libbi Bosworth, Lucinda Williams, Dixie Chicks, Shawn Colvin
The Anti-Development Developer?
Of all the new Georgetown City Council members, Mayor Pro Tem Clark Lyda is most enigmatic. The 40-year-old Lyda is a developer by trade whose family has extensive land holdings in Central Texas. He owned South Austin’s famed Terrace property for a while, before selling the former Austin Opry House site to the University YWCA.…
Readings
Yonder Stands Your Orphan by Barry Hannah Atlantic Monthly Press, 336 pp., $24 Albert, Himself by Jeff W. Bens Delphinium, 181 pp., $14 (paper) The “clean, hard images” Barry Hannah says he admires in the work of such authors as Ernest Hemingway are, oddly enough, rare sightings in his own, depending on your interpretation of…
Record Reviews
Libbi Bosworth Libbiville (Ramble) It took Libbi Bosworth five years to follow up her impressive debut Outskirts of You, but Libbiville was well worth the wait. As she has before, Bosworth tackles a wide range of styles with a voice that oozes country. Her melodies continue to be thoroughly infectious, but this time, she comes…
Naked City
Mostly local scuttlebutt, with trips to Cuba and Denver
Readings
Twentynine Palms A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave by Deanne Stillman Morrow, 277 pp., $24 As I opened up Twentynine Palms and read the two-and-a-half-page introduction, I immediately murmured, “Oh, my gosh,” closed the book, stood up, and wandered in circles, still murmuring, “Oh, my gosh,” and adding, “This doesn’t read like…
Record Reviews
Danny Barnes & Thee Old CodgersThings I Done Wrong (Terminus) In a way, it’s almost like standing by and watching a good friend cheat on another good friend. Sure, Danny Barnes, the banjo-pickinest son of Texas to ever tune his chops on punk rock, has put out a few outstanding releases apart from the Bad…
Naked City
On Monday, Aug. 13 — after five years and two convictions — all charges were finally dropped against 17-year-old Lacresha Murray. In 1996, Murray, then 11, was initially charged with capital murder in the beating death of 21/2-year-old Jayla Belton. Police and prosecutors said on May 24, 1996, Murray stomped the toddler to death at…
Local Bestsellers
The 10 top-selling books at Adventures in Crime & Space Books
