Cover Story
Feeding the Film
Sixteen-hour days, hundreds of hungry crew members, remote locations, tight facilities, and tough competition: Two local caterers go to the movies
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains 1981, R, 87 min. Directed by Lou Adler, Starring Diane Lane, Ray Winstone, Peter Donat. Back before anyone knew what a riot grrrl was, Diane Lane starred as one in this notorious flop, which also features members of the Clash and the Sex Pistols.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Planes, Trains and Automobiles 1987, R, 93 min. D: John Hughes; with Steve Martin, John Candy. Candy and Martin star in this holiday classic as unlikely travel companions just trying to get home for Thanksgiving.
My Neighbor Totoro
Miyazaki’s magisterial children’s tale about a magical forest.
Letters at 3AM
Most of the American soldiers who have died in Iraq came from little places that the 21st century has left behind
Phases and Stages
Pleasant GroveThe Art of Leaving (Badman) Pleasant Grove. The name itself insinuates breezes and silence, subdued color and broken horizons, the atmosphere in which this Dallas fourpiece excels. The Art of Leaving is at the same time beautiful and absentminded, accidental and dreamy, sneaking out the back door without anyone noticing. While Art is awe-inspiring…
Naked City
The city tries to combine historic protection, urban redevelopment
Twilight Samurai
A near masterpiece, this atypical samurai movie is more an epic of the heart than the battlefield.
Second Helpings
Magnolia Cafe 1920 S. Congress, 445-0000 24 hours a day, seven days a week 2304 Lake Austin Blvd., 478-8645 24 hours a day, seven days a week Both Magnolia locations pack ’em in at all hours, and weekend brunch hours can easily result in a 45-minute-to-an-hour wait. Why don’t folks throw up their hands and…
Day Trips
The Silver K Cafe brings fine dining with a Texas accent to the highway between Austin and Fredericksburg
Phases and Stages
Fort Worth Teen Scene! Vols. 1-3 (Norton) On the basis of the 73 sides collected here from 1964-67, there’s no doubt where Fort Worth stood on the Eternal Sixties Debate: Beatles or Stones? Cowtown bands would much rather have been the Stones than the Fab Four. For that matter, they would rather have been the…
Naked City
The feds want their public documents to become un-public
The Village
Shyamalan coasts into this village that is wracked by the wages of fear, manipulation, and forestry.
TCB
John Walker’s blues, an ACTV uprising, and AC / DC gets keelhauled
Phases and Stages
Jon Dee GrahamThe Great Battle (New West) On a rebellious whim in the Seventies, my grandfather built a beach house on Galveston Island. It was a shack. The slats on the deck splintered and creaked, the furniture smelled like mildew, and the rooms were layered with smoke. I loved it. My dad would spin Bruce…
Naked City
The GOP candidate for Congress hits the Eastside streets
Stitching Up a Storm
Textile art is alive and well in the Camp Fig exhibition “Pins & Needles”
Food-o-File
Roger Mollett relearns cuisine; plus, cupcakes make a comeback
Making Ends Meet
The new AISD budget hurts, but less than in past years
Austin @ Large: Access of Evil
It’s a conspiracy! Defending Austin from the music network.
The Site Is the Studio
Artist Andy Coolquitt builds a show from scratch in the Fresh Up Club
Saving Face
Ian McLagan pulled up a few pints of ‘black madness’ and out popped ‘Five Guys Walk Into a Bar’ …
The Big Items
Funding Increases Included in the Proposed AISD BudgetIncreased employee pay and support: $18,051,843 Reduction in 12th-grade class size from 32 to 28 students: 908,280 Increased utility costs: 756,062 Additional special education teachers (16.5 full-time employees): 749,331 Increase in Partners in Education funding: 243,689 Total: $20,709,205Additional Increases Recommended by the Citizens’ Task Force on the BudgetMusic/Art/PE…
Slash the State
In Texas, the social contract is now written in disappearing ink
Culture Flash!
Stephen Mills in Montreal, Conspirare in the studio, the Blanton’s first Impressionist painting, and party for the Texas Biennial
Phases and Stages
Kevin FowlerLoose, Loud & Crazy (Equity) If the Lord truly loves the drinkin’ man, Kevin Fowler’s heavenly acreage will surpass the King Ranch, because Loose, Loud & Crazy gives Dwight Yoakam and Shane MacGowan a bottomless tab at Ginny’s Little Longhorn. In 12 short songs, the Austin honky-tonker refracts imbibing through the filters of work…
City, County Budgets Hold the (Bottom) Line
At both City Hall and the courthouse, it’s all quiet on the fiscal front
The Hightower Report
Punishing thought crimes: Bush cracks down on dissent, and the GOP rejects your right to read
Exhibitionism
“New American Talent – The 19th Exhibition” merits repeated visits, for the abundance of energy and originality of vision among its many featured artists
Phases and Stages
The Cornell Hurd BandCen-Tex Serenade (Behemoth) There may be no more salient testament to the vibrancy of live music in Austin than experiencing the Cornell Hurd Band every Thursday night at Jovita’s. Guitarist Hurd and his C&W orchestra are rooted in the Western swing of Bob Wills, but their exhaustive repertoire spans eras and genres…
The Budget Calendar
At City Hall Budget hearings will be held at 6pm Thursdays, during the regular City Council meetings, as follows: Today, Aug. 5: Public safety – which consumes nearly two thirds of the city General Fund – goes under the microscope. Compared to last year’s eruption of firefighter discontent, this one should be quiet – although…
In Space
There’s more to AtomFilms than ‘This Land,’ the satirical short so broadly bipartisan that it’s been touted by unlikely bedfellows Fox News and Salon.com
Exhibitionism
Alan Pogue’s photographs of Haiti in the exhibition “Mountains Beyond Mountains” are closer to truth than assumptions
Phases and Stages
Floyd TillmanThe Influence (Heart of Texas) Floyd Tillman isn’t exactly a household name. His most recent charting single came the last time an Irish Catholic from Massachusetts ran for president. Though inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1984, he spent the last half of his life in semiretirement, living near Houston and…
Newborn District Takes Its First Steps
Hospital board gets a crash course in the realities of Austin health care
DVD Watch
The Criterion connection, Renoir-style
The Latest in Paper
“Like any expert in a marginalized genre that’s gone mainstream, Neate can be tedious,” writes John Freeman. “But he also has a knack for sussing out the cutting edge of the hip-hop scene.”
Phases and Stages
RajamaniSabas Odds are Jim Reeves and Hank Williams don’t immediately come to mind upon hearing Oliver Rajamani’s worldly music, yet these country stars are among this local multi-instrumentalist’s global inspirations. Born in India, Rajamani traveled the Mediterranean before landing in NYC, finally planting roots in Old Waterloo. Drawing from the Roma (gypsies), Indian folk, and…
Hospital District Board
Clarke Heidrick: chairman; attorney with Graves, Dougherty, Hearon & Moody law firm; chaired hospital district steering committee Carl Richie II: vice-chairman; former city Housing Authority commissioner; attorney with Gardere Wynne & Sewell; assisted in creation of Texas Ethics Commission Dr. Thomas Coopwood: recently retired trauma and general surgeon at Brackenridge; past president, Travis County Medical…
TV Eye
Keeping one eye on television and the other on pop culture.
Page Two
The reason that we can even discuss such a thing as the Austin film industry is not limited to names you most often hear associated with it
Phases and Stages
Foscoe Jones & the DistractionsA Song Like This … (Invisible Inc.) Austin’s Foscoe Jones belongs to a family of music that really doesn’t need any more members. In the Texas tradition of Django Walker and Cory Morrow, Jones is the guy who sells out shows along Sixth Street to frat boys, despite the fact they…
Movie Night in the Land of the Free
A meeting of the minds at the Crawford showing of ‘Fahrenheit 9 / 11’
Short Cuts
Austin ups its indie status by an icon; Moore misses out on his own party, kind of; and Jesus is a film fanatic
Soccer Watch
Onward to Greece; and Mexico passes the Chivas
Phases and Stages
Johnny WinterI’m a Bluesman (Virgin/Pointblank) Partly because he’s such a hot dog, it’s always been a little laughable to think of Johnny Winter as a bluesman, even when he’s doing his best to approximate a purist, as he’s done most of the last two decades since the mass audience deserted him. Quite simply, the guy’s…
Gimmicks Rule the KEYE-TV Newsroom
Austin’s ratings doormat rolls out broadcast-news ‘innovations’
After a Fashion
Has your style avatar Stephen found religion … or just joined a cult?
Phases and Stages
Confirming that “darkness is far, far greater than the speed of light,” Zeale32’s tour of duty as an underground battle MC culminates with an eponymous disc armed to the teeth with heat-seeking missiles. With fellow ATX gunner Haps dropping both beat and hook, Zeale sprays “In the Jungle” with explosive promise: “In this pack of…
War Drums
The war is over, but all these people keep dying anyway …
Collateral
Michael Mann returns to his stock-and-trade: the glossy, kinetic crime thriller, this time starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx.
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Deep sea diving, absinthe, and Lucy Liu
Phases and Stages
DamesvioletRoom 107 (Sprague) “Unapologetic pop-laced rock & roll” is how Damesviolet describes its sound. Roughly translated, the hard-working Austin quartet is too hard to pop, too nüanced for nü metal. A good thing, more or less. Room 107, the band’s second LP, is unapologetic, in fact. Led by brothers Beaux and Zak Loy, Damesviolet has…
Naked City
HeadlinesQuote of the Week: “I just don’t think people like Ricky are meant to be in the spotlight.” – Sandy Williams, mother of the football star, telling The Dallas Morning News of her shock (and also some relief) over her son’s decision to retire from the NFL Budgets, budgets, everywhere, and not a dime to…
Little Black Book
This is what happens when the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy fails young lovers.
To Your Health
Most people have no trouble drinking water with either chlorine or chloramine at the levels used in municipal water supplies
Phases and Stages
SpartaPorcelain (Geffen) Earlier this year, Sparta – three-fifths of El Paso’s At the Drive-In – changed its logo from an abstract symbol to a swan. Has the ugly duckling become a beautiful creature of grace and impeccability? Has Jim Ward emerged from the shadow of ATDI belter Cedric Bixler, now fronting proggy Mars Volta? Well,…
Naked City
Local peace activist is snared by Pentagon’s “back-door draft”
Maria Full of Grace
A desperate young woman from Colombia, who hopes to better her life, becomes a drug mule for the syndicate, transporting heroin to the States.
The Common Law
Is there a legal duty to help others?
Phases and Stages
Fires Were ShotSolace (Asphodel) Without Thirty Three Degrees and its listening station, how does Fires Were Shot get to be the next Explosions in the Sky? After years of sculpting psychedelic bedroom symphonies to little or no audience, Clay Walton and ex-Winslow drummer John Wilkins finally get their push just as Austin’s avant record store…
Naked City
Legal action seeks to undo 1996 settlement on erstwhile Wal-Mart tract
A Home at the End of the World
Michael Cunningham’s novel is the basis for this story of a love triangle in which everyone’s in love with Bobby (played by Colin Farrell).
About AIDS
As the 2004 World AIDS Conference ground on in mid-July in Bangkok, there was not a lot of truly exciting news. But then, most real-life science is accomplished step by unexciting step. Back home, however, several positive moves forward have been enthusiastically received. The federal Department of Health and Human Services has proposed an “expedited…
Phases and Stages
Steve ArceriEyes Like Poisoned Birds (Distress Signal) Recorded at home on a four-track, Steve Arceri’s second album resonates with the trebly hiss of local DIY cassettes in the mid-to-late Eighties. While the lack of a low-end is jarring at first, this Austinite squeezes intimacy and charm out of his antiquated approach, creating a pastiche that…
Naked City
Walgreens calls a time-out on its South Lamar zoning deal
I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead
Clive Owen stars as the sad, taciturn anchor of this modern film noir by Croupier‘s Mike Hodges.
Luv Doc Recommends: The Rude Mechanicals’ Pink Eye Ball
Local live theatre? Better than a sharp stick in the eye? Not necessarily so. Who hasn’t spent an hour or two bathed in hot sweat, biting through their lips in vicarious embarrassment as their landlord/yoga instructor/dentist/parole officer/sister-in-law pranced around onstage (if there was one) in a silly costume and bad make-up booming lines in an…
