BMX Bandits
Kidman made her screen debut at the age of 16 in this Aussie teen picture about bikers, some bank robbers, and a carton of walkie-talkies.
Nekkid Cowboy
Nekkid Cowboy 2001, NR. Directed by Jen Drummond, Katy O’Connnor, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Tom Griffin. The Nekkid Cowboy is a fictitious local hero invented by the filmmakers. A fantasy hero, the Nekkid Cowboy frequents Austin hot spots wearing nothing but a cowboy hat. The movie documents the filmmakers’ quest to find…
Digital Divas
Digital Divas NR. Directed by Various, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . Digital Divas is a three-day forum dedicated to exploring and celebrating the impact women have had in the field of digital video. The festival includes film screenings, panel discussions, mentoring sessions, and children’s events. Among the films are the following features:…
Quadrophenia
Quadrophenia 1979, R, 115 min. Directed by Franc Roddam, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Phil Daniels, Mark Wingett, Philip Davis, Leslie Ash, Garry Cooper, Sting, Ray Winstone. It’s Mods vs. Rockers in 1960s England in this coming-of-age rock movie inspired by the Who’s concept album Quadrophenia. This newly remastered print has been remixed…
The Last Hope
The Last Hope 2001, NR, 91 min. Directed by Christopher Hrasky, Kurt Volk, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . This documentary feature by first-time filmmakers Hrasky and Volk explores the makeshift society that arose among the fans who camped out for six weeks on the sidewalk in front of Mann’s Chinese Theatre in…
Mr. Smarty Pants
The sand of trivia in your brain’s Vaseline
Dr Pepper, Texas
What makes the Dr Pepper in Dublin, Texas, so much better than that made anywhere else?
Naked City
Travis County’s Road Bond Package 2001
Ghost World
Brilliant portrait of teen anomie is based on the underground comic book by Daniel Clowes.
Second Helpings: Previous Hot Sauce Contest Winners
A guide to Austin restaurants that have won awards in previous Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Contests.
After a Fashion
Your Style Avatar takes you on a tour of two local, innovative businesses: Cush Cush and Big Red Sun.
After Napster Part 2
Does having your music free online bring more or less cash?
Naked City
Three employees of the state Senate’s Media Services Department are fired without known reason.
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
Smith turns his stoner Greek chorus into leading men on a mission.
aGLIFF 2001 Schedule
Featured films and other recommended films at the Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival
Day Trips
The homey hospitality of the Panhandle’s Hotel Turkey
Publish and Perish
In 1998 Congress passed a law. Actually, they passed a whole bunch of laws in 1998. The one we’re concerned with is the Digital Millennial Copyright Act (or DMCA) and its bringing together of the Recording Industry of America (RIAA), another organization with a four-letter designation SDMI, and Professor Richard Felten of Princeton University. SDMI…
Naked City
Will Sixth Street Recycles come to an unhappy end?
John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars
John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars 2001, R, 98 min. Directed by John Carpenter, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Ice Cube, Clea Duvall, Pam Grier, Jason Staham, Natasha Henstridge, Lobo Sebastian. When John Carpenter was on Late Night With Conan O’Brien the other night, promoting his new film, the host turned to him and…
A Bad Year Gets Worse
The Austin Arts Commission has found itself stewing in a bubbling gumbo of controversies this year, and lately that gumbo has been getting hotter and hotter, with resignations from the Commission, an investigation by the Texas Commission on the Arts, and a call for reforms by a City Council member.
To Your Health
My mother’s menopause was tough on the whole family, but that was 22 years ago. I am only 36, and I hope there are better ways of dealing with menopause by now. Can I prepare for this time of my life?
Napster Gone Barbados
What if Napster went offshore?
Naked City
KUT zaps World Music and AfroPop Worldwide
Bubble Boy
Bubble Boy 2001, PG-13, 84 min. Directed by Blair Hayes, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Swoosie Kurtz, Marley Shelton, Danny Trejo, John Carroll Lynch, Verne Troyer, Dave Sheridan, Brian George, Patrick Crenshaw. It’s a shame if the controversy surrounding Bubble Boy distracts people from what a smart, subversive, and genuinely good-hearted…
Articulations
It may still be too hot to frolic in the noonday sun, but it’s not too hot to put on a show to help someone in need, and that’s what a number of Austin artists are up to this month, raising funds for flood victims in Houston and an Austin musician with a spinal cord…
About AIDS
HIV Treatment Education Festival
Dancing About Architecture
Mambo John Treanor dies, but Austin jazz lives!
The Hightower Lowdown
W.’s “clean coal” energy policy; credit-card hucksters on campus; the B-1 Boondoggle keeps flying
Down From the Mountain
Down From the Mountain 2000, NR, 98 min. Directed by D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus, Nick Doob, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Holly Hunter, David Rawlings, Colin Linden, Chris Thomas King, John Hartford, Gillian Welch, Alison Krauss, Ralph Stanley, Emmylou Harris. Bluegrass fans should have few complaints about this stellar concert film, which unites…
Exhibitionism
In Corpus Christi, Terrence McNally’s retelling of Jesus’ life, the playwright’s provocative spin on the tale — setting it in 20th-century Texas and making its protagonist a gay man — never obscures the Gospel story’s essence or message of love, and as staged by Real Rain Productions, it succeeds in bringing us to this old,…
Coach’s Corner
“Cub Fans Dare to Believe,”says the headline. “Hah!” says Coach. Also: odds and ends about football, Tiger Woods, and Andy Roddick.
RESearch Reviewed
Real Conversations #1: Henry Rollins, Jello Biafra, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Billy Childish Interviews by V. Vale Re/Search, 240pp., $12.95 (paper) Leave it to V. Vale to put out a book that consists of little more than transcripts of people arguing over why people don’t read anymore! Luckily, the Re/Search maven, who’s brought you classic tomes covering…
Capitol Chronicle
Cornyn’s health-care opinion is neither compassionate nor conservative.
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin 2001, R, 127 min. Directed by John Madden, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Irene Papas, Piero Maggio, David Morrissey, Christian Bale, John Hurt, Penélope Cruz, Nicolas Cage. The delicate tremolo of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin lulls you so completely that it when it comes time for the movie to wrench your…
Exhibitionism
While the dirigo group should be applauded for the scope of The Gypsy Chain, this ensemble-developed project about Earth First! activist David “Gypsy” Chain, who was killed defending the forests of Northern California from illegal clear-cutting, the onstage effectiveness of the work falls short of its sociopolitical message, while Gypsy’s personal story is lost in…
Flaming Lips & Tongues on Fire
Attention former computer geeks and dot-com whiz kids: You are one of us now. Welcome to slacker culture. There are a few small adjustments you’ll need to make. The designer clothes looked nice, but you’ll soon discover they are hot as hell when you’re outside in the sun throwing the Frisbee around. Better get some…
Live Shots
Benefit for Sarah Elizabeth CampbellLa Zona Rosa, August 12 Like so many benefits, this one had a bittersweet edge to it. A return to the scene of Sarah Elizabeth Campbell’s storied “Bummer Nights,” which the veteran Austin singer-songwriter hosted at La Zona Rosa for many years, it was also a fundraiser for yet another musician…
Down Home Movie
A conversation with Nick Doob, co-director of ‘Down From the Mountain,’ a new documentary about the musicians behind the soundtrack behind ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’
Flaming Lips & Tongues on Fire
The 11th Annual ‘Austin Chronicle’ Hot Sauce Festival Schedule 10:30-11:30am Check-in for individual and restaurant contestants at the south end of Waterloo Park 11:00 Festival begins 11:00-12:00 Floramay Holliday performs 12:30-2:30 Kevin Fowler performs 3:00 People’s choice balloting for best commercial sauce ends 3:00-5:00 Cornell Hurd Band performs 5:00 Awards announced
Live Shots
Betty Blowtorch/PeachesEmo’s, August 14/August 16 As if summer wasn’t hot enough already, last week it was a wonder the Austin Fire Department wasn’t deployed to Emo’s to hose down the rampaging libidos. “Licky licky, sucky sucky, can’t nobody here say they don’t want to fucky fucky,” declaimed one-woman hormone factory Peaches. The 33-year old punkesse,…
Short Cuts
Tales from the Tarantino trenches
Book ‘Em
Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail Stories by Bobbie Ann Mason Random House, 208 pp., $22.95 Bobbie Ann Mason doesn’t write a bad sentence. She doesn’t waste a phrase or seem to know a single cliché. None of her details are boring, and not a line of her dialogue is flat. Her language is fresh, lucid,…
Flaming Lips & Tongues on Fire
Contest Judges At the heart of the Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival is the contest itself. The blind tasting competition for individuals and restaurants is conducted by some of the top chefs in the state of Texas. They take hot sauce seriously, and so do most of the people who enter. Several previous winners in…
Live Shots
Syd Straw & David HalleyCactus Cafe, August 16 Words may not suffice to describe this show. It was one of those things where you probably had to be there to fully appreciate it. It was a night that was highly entertaining, and its unusual nature made it more appealing, but at times it was like…
Video Reviews
When Liz is good, she’s very, very good, but when she’s bad, she gives it all she’s got.
Book ‘Em
Starting Out in the Sixties by Aram Saroyan Talisman House, 209 pp., $21.95 (paper); includes photos and index This book has it all. Take, for example, the pedigree of the author, who himself is poet, novelist, editor, biographer, memoirist, essayist, photographer, and father of three. Aram Saroyan is the son of Armenian-American writer William Saroyan,…
Flaming Lips & Tongues on Fire
Contest & Festival Facts The Capital Area Food Bank and The Austin Chronicle invite you to join us for the 11th Annual Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival, this Sunday, August 26, from 11am to 5pm at Waterloo Park (12th & Red River). Admission is FREE, with your donation of a nonperishable food item for the…
Live Shots
Sub OsloStubb’s, August 17 Let’s not forget, it is a barbecue place. And certainly, wherever Sub Oslo plays, more than just the barbecue is smokin’. The Denton-based seven-man sound system gets the royal treatment from a unique live mixing process that captures the booms and beats as they filter down from the stage, knocking them…
Video Reviews
Debra Winger plays a federal agent on the tail of a chameleon-like young woman (Theresa Russell) who marries wealthy men and then kills them.
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion 2001, PG-13, 103 min. Directed by Woody Allen, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Woody Allen, Helen Hunt, Dan Aykroyd, Brian Markinson, Wallace Shawn, David Ogden Stiers, Charlize Theron. “I like your early, funny movies better,” someone tells Allen’s filmmaker alter-ego Sandy Bates in Stardust Memories, and it’s…
Book ‘Em
King of the City by Michael Moorcock Morrow, 432 pp., $26 Michael Moorcock has written his Pierce Penniless, his supplication to the devil, his invocation and mustering of all the old London spirits. There is, if you like, a novel here, with a plot, but the plot has as much to do with what this…
A Primer on Peppers
Austin’s own Pepper Lady, hot sauces around the globe, and what to swallow when your throat’s on fire.
‘What Is Justice?’
A state program that enables offenders and their victims meet face-to-face has helped Andrew Papke take full responsibility for the drunken driving-related deaths of Beth Early and Daniel London.
Video Reviews
A rather narrow-minded look at interracial love and hip-hop in high school
The Deep End
The Deep End 2001, R, 99 min. Directed by Scott McGehee, David Siegel, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Tilda Swinton, Goran Visnjic, Jonathan Tucker. To be a mother – at least, a good one – is to be a zealot, fanatically devoted to the cause of your children. You’d have to be, to…
Book ‘Em
Zuni and the American Imagination by Eliza McFeely Hill and Wang, 204 pp., $24 Located on the Zuni River west of the Continental Divide and 35 miles south of Gallup, New Mexico, Zuni Pueblo exists in two spheres: a real, changing, historical one and an imaginative one that has drawn from and transformed the real…
A Primer on Peppers
Dr. Jean Andrews: The Pepper Lady It’s almost hard to remember that there was once a time, even here in Texas, when the subject of peppers was not hot. But until the Seventies, the attention paid to peppers was minimal, to say the least. Although segments of the New World population have cultivated, consumed, and…
‘Equal in God’s Sight’
The letters of Martha Early and Andrew Papke
TV Eye
PBS delivers the goods.
Book ‘Em
The Dirt Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Mick Mars, Vince Neil, and Nikki Sixx with Neil Strauss ReganBooks, 431 pp., $27.95 Who’d of thunk a Mötley Crüe biography would be best read with a dictionary at arm’s length? But it winds up it’s Black’s Law Dictionary, not Webster’s, that…
A Primer on Peppers
The Pepper Lady’s Pepper Books Peppers: The Domesticated Capsicums University of Texas Press, 186 pp., $65 This landmark text contains 34 botanical illustrations painted by the author, along with comprehensive information about pepper history, science, cultivation, and culinary and medicinal uses. It includes an extensive glossary and bibliography. The Pepper Trail: History and Recipes From…
Victim and Offender Mediation
A Summary of the Victim Offender Mediation Process
Summer Catch
Summer Catch 2001, PG-13, 108 min. Directed by Mike Tollin, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Brian Dennehy, Brittany Murphy, Jason Gedrick, Fred Ward, Jessica Biel, Matthew Lillard, Freddie Prinze Jr.. Baseball, summer, apple pie, and Freddie Prinze Jr.’s bare butt — what could be more American? Toss in a brief glance at Matthew…
Postscripts
Lawrence Grobel’s new book of interviews contains the master interviewer’s usually revelatory narratives.
A Primer on Peppers
Hot Sauces Around the World Prior to the introduction of chile peppers to the Old World by explorers, the spice of choice was the black peppercorn. But once the chile pepper arrived, it was widely adapted within the amazing time span of only a few decades into the cuisines of almost every region to which…
Round Up the Usual Suspects
Cap Metro tries to re-make its image, Beverly Griffith considers her options, and the budget strains
Page Two
QT5-inspired obsessive cinema dementia; our community suffers another blow with the loss of Mambo John Treanor
Food-o-File
Yes, Texas chileheads, your favorite time of year has arrived! Cuisines Editor Virginia B. Wood has the scoop on festival regulars and the upcoming chile activities in town.
Naked City
News shorts
Public Notice
“Public Notice” talks about friends and the end of this column.
Liquid Assets
Hot chiles and hot weather combine to create a potent thirst. What drink goes best with the mouth-searing intensity of the best hot sauces? Beer, especially from countries that admire the Scoville Unit rating of their homegrown peppers. Let’s start with the cultures that worship the habanero (aka the Scotch Bonnet), the hottest pepper around.…
Naked City
Great news: The South Texas Project is really, really cheap! In a July 25 press release, STP (formerly South Texas Nuclear Project, aka Mother of All Boondoggles) proudly trumpeted that “The South Texas Project nuclear power plant has the lowest average fuel cost of any electricity producer in the U.S.” Tom Smith of Public Citizen…
Tortilla Soup
In Tortilla Soup (based on Ang Lee’s wonderful Chinese film Eat Drink Man Woman), Hector Elizondo plays the family patriarch, a retired master chef and a longtime widower, who lives with his three grown daughters.
