The Incubus
The Incubus 1981, R, 94 min. Directed by John Hough, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring John Cassavetes, Kerrie Keane, Helen Hughes, John Ireland. Top-liner John Cassavetes goes slumming for cash in this grizzly horror outing about a sleepy New England town beset by the wretched deeds of a serial rapist and murderer.
Airplane!
Airplane! 1980, PG, 86 min. D: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker; with Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty. The spoof that launched a thousand parodies – this is the one that’s 100% funny.
The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms 1953, NR, 80 min. Directed by Eugene Lourie, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Paula Raymond, Paul Christian. An atomic bomb blast sets off this prehistoric creature that runs roughshod over humanity. The better-than-average effects are by Ray Harryhausen.
After a Fashion
Put this column on the top of your holiday shopping list, and while you’re at it, pick out something special for Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Phases and Stages
RaffiChristmas Album (Rounder) Raffi is the undisputed kingpin of folk-infused, eco-friendly children’s music that NPR-leaning parents love almost as much as their offspring. Though cloying at times, Raffi’s organic, enthusiastic tone on this reissued 1983 collection is mainly an invitation to Yuletide sing-alongs. The traditional favorites are here, along with intriguing choices like Roger Miller’s…
Mental Health by the Numbers:
A statistical summary of mental health care in Texas.
Austin @ Large: Austin at Large
Austin girds its loins for its biennial journey up Granite Mountain.
Mr. Smarty Pants
Despite its neutrality, Switzerland has more than 15,000 secret underground military installations.Toy reproductions of ants are often blue-tinted because the real ones are bluish in color when observed under a microscope.In the 1950s, the city of Melbourne established the Moomba Festival, naming it after what they thought was the aborigine word for “Let’s get together…
Phases and Stages
Jim NaborsChristmas (Columbia/Legacy) Apparently, when he left the Marine Corps, Gomer Pyle joined the Metropolitan Opera. With a lower register that could swallow Wyoming, his alter ego Jim Nabors’ double-barreled tenor plus kitschy Sixties arrangements equals a stocking full of campy treats. The bizarrely go-go “Go Tell It on the Mountain” is great, but the…
Suit Blames Roadwork for Fatal Bike Crash
The family of late UT professor Bill Gardiner says an improperly performed street cut led to his 2000 death in a bike crash.
Capitol Chronicle
The legislative leadership sends out feelers about a pilot voucher program.
Day Trips
Mountain Biking Texas, a new book by former Austinite Christopher Hess, guides cyclists to the best trails in the Lone Star State. Bikers, like birders, need to have their “life list” of trails they have seen and conquered, or at least glimpsed and attempted, and this guidebook is as good as any wish list of…
Phases and Stages
Charlie Daniels BandA Merry Christmas to All (Audium) Hey, when did Santa start wearing a Buick hubcap for a belt buckle? Oh, never mind, it’s just ol’ Charlie Daniels hisself. There’s a lovely crooning of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” a bombastic bluesy take on “Blue Christmas,” and a hammer-and-tongs original, “It’s Bad to Have…
Garcia Says ‘No Mas’
Bringing an end to months of speculation, Austin Mayor Gus Garcia announced Wednesday he will not run for re-election in May. “I have enjoyed my time in the mayor’s office,” Garcia noted in his statement, “and deeply appreciate all the courtesies the citizens of this community have extended to me.” But the 69-year-old mayor, who…
The Hightower Report
Christmas tree growers treat the poor in an un-Christian manner; Oliver North re-invades Grenada.
Second Helpings: Coffeehouses Part I
“Second Helpings” is coming to you caffeinated.
To Your Health
As I get older my eyes keep getting dryer. Some brands of the artificial tears seem to make it even worse. Is there a “natural” remedy?
Phases and Stages
Bob Rivers & FriendsWhite Trash Christmas (Atlantic) If you’ve ever peed in the snow, harbored sexual fantasies about Mrs. Claus, or forgotten to pick up a relative at the airport because you got high, Canadian Bob Rivers is speaking directly to you, my friend. Some tracks misfire, like the insipid “Have Yourself an Ozzy Little…
Arts Consultants: Connect the Cultural Dots
The city’s consultants recommend a new, one-stop shop and more funding for Austin’s arts programs.
Being Charlie Kaufman
Will the real Charlie Kaufman please stand up?
About AIDS
Holiday Tips for HIVers The holiday season is upon us, and we are all likely to indulge in unfamiliar food and drink and perhaps even travel a bit. For immune-compromised people — HIV-positive folks with a T4/CD4 count under 200-300 — some special attention is needed for staying well. Don’t forget to take your meds!…
Phases and Stages
Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town/Frosty the Snowman(Rhino) Here’s something different: the complete soundtracks of two classic animated Christmas television shows, 1969’s Frosty the Snowman and 1970’s Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town on one CD. Among the memorable songs are Santa Claus narrator Fred Astaire’s “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” and Frosty narrator…
Whole Foods Union-Busting?
Whole Foods Market employee Debbie Rasmussen says she was recently fired after giving a botched latte to her co-worker Julie Thayer, who didn’t pay for the latte and was also fired. Both women have been leaders in organizing workers at their Madison, Wis., Whole Foods store — an effort that proved successful last July, when…
Of Antidotes and Elixirs
The Dobie begins a one-week run of Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast on Dec. 20.
Transforming a Neighborhood Near You
Since 1985, Austin’s Art in Public Places program has placed more than 100 works in 57 facilities, transforming not only the look of the city but neighborhoods and the lives of people in them.
Music to the Mouth
Raymond Tatum — the Raymond Tatum — is the chef at a restaurant founded by former rock & roll road cooks Kent and Beth Hayner that has downtown prices in a Highway 71 space with Hill Country class. Oh, and it’s fusion food without being fusion.
Phases and Stages
Clay Walker Christmas (Warner Bros.) Yep, it’s Christmas, all right. Walker sheds no new light on “Silent Night,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” and “O Come All Ye Faithful.” He proves he’s no Mahalia Jackson on “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and no Ray Charles on “Please Come Home for Christmas.” Dig out your…
Weed Watch
The latest dispatches from the front line of America’s war on drugs.
Trigger-happy
Game geek paradise, but only for one more weekend.
Now Playing
Since its inception in 1985, Art in Public Places has put more than 100 art works in city facilities. The following are among the most famous examples. Barbara Jordan Cast bronze portrait bust on granite base David Deming Austin-Bergstrom International Airport 2000 The Community Core Sample Project/The Threshold Project Mixed media, found objects, photos/sand-blasted marble…
Food-o-File
“Food-o-File” sets sail with news about food cruises & more tamales.
Phases and Stages
Patty Loveless Bluegrass & White Snow: A Mountain Christmas (Epic) Patty Loveless could sing an eggnog recipe, and it would sound like country music. Her taking “Silent Night” and “Silver Bells,” then, in an acoustic, bluegrass-tinged setting is heaven for country fans. With a couple of choice originals like the haunting title track and guest…
Naked City
Quote of the Week: “He kept saying, ‘I made a mistake.’ But he didn’t make one mistake. His whole public life has been a mistake.” — NAACP Chair Julian Bond, on outgoing (?) Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. Austin Mayor Gus Garcia announced he will not run for re-election in May. As of press time,…
Butt-numb-a-thon 4
The lineup.
Coming Soon
Art in Public Places juggles between 15 and 20 projects at one time. The following are among those nearing completion. Town Lake Park Children’s GardenBeverly Penn, lead artist, with Steve Wiman, Kate Catterall, Grady Hillman, James Polk, Leticia Rodriguez This children’s park slotted for the city’s new cultural epicenter is a veritable discoveryscape of arts…
Mini-Review
Rachel Feit steps out of time to sample the soulful fare at a longtime Eastside lunch counter.
Phases and Stages
Alan Jackson Let It Be Christmas (ACR) Alan Jackson’s big band Christmas! He drags a whole horn section through “Winter Wonderland” and “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town,” and the effect, though jarring, works well with Jackson’s smooth delivery. He also pulls off a Western-swing version of “Jingle Bells,” with some jazzy Brent Mason guitar…
Naked City
Managers at Bergstrom Airport are a bit red-faced after their plan to eliminate free parking — which they had already begun to implement — was scuttled by the City Council. Parking revenue, which makes up more than one-fourth of ABIA’s income, has plummeted since September 11, but council members worried that, beyond the obvious PR…
Short Cuts
How to make T-shirts without violating child labor laws.
The Blue Christmas Prom
With the Blue Christmas Prom, the good folks at Refraction Arts Project are giving you a chance to give a really nice “in-your-face” to high school and the torture of school dances.
Story Book Children
Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez duet their way into Austin’s heart.
Phases and Stages
Jo Dee Messina A Joyful Noise (Curb) One of contemporary country’s bright new stars, Jo Dee Messina has a distinctive voice that gives her songs an attractive edge. A Joyful Noise ditches the singer’s country trappings for a style that’s classically pop. Fans of Shawn Colvin will find a lot to like, as Messina’s Christmas…
Naked City
Although state regulators say it’s a done deal, last week at least two separate lawsuits were filed on behalf of policyholders against the Farmers Insurance Group settlement. “It’s an awful agreement,” Houston attorney David Burrow told the Houston Chronicle. “I can’t believe any judge anywhere would approve it.” On Nov. 30, the state reached an…
Coming Soon
Trend Watch
Articulations
The consultants hired by the city to evaluate its arts funding process have submitted a report to the City Council, legendary comedy club the Velveeta Room has been replaced by Funnies, and Rob Nash brings season’s greetings to Austin before an Off-Broadway run.
Dancing About Architecture
All news: noise ordinance gripes, AMN budget crunch, Sound Exchange faces rent shortfalls, Williamson County refuses to give up on an amphitheatre, Clifford Antone back on the streets, and the first SXSW 03 confirmees. Plus, three music deaths.
Phases and Stages
Carly Simon Christmas Is Almost Here (Rhino) On her first Christmas album, Carly Simon has tried something a bit different. It’s an all-star affair, produced by Don Was, featuring Willie Nelson (on “Pretty Paper”), Heartbreaker Benmont Tench, drummer Jim Keltner, and even Billy Preston on one track. Recorded almost exclusively live in a hotel room…
Naked City
With complaints against the Texas Association of Business gathering steam six weeks after the election, Travis County prosecutors are considering a criminal investigation into the group’s financing of political ads. The T.A.B. spent $2 million of money from its corporate members in 24 state legislative campaigns without disclosing the source of funding for the ads.…
Video Reviews
There is plenty of bad and ugly to go along with the good, yet each character in Sergio Leone’s American opus seems to live inside a cinematic glass orb in which his virtue and his vice settle like snowflakes around an elegy to himself.
A Piece of Work
In Conspirare’s annual Christmas at the Carillon, the choir’s performance of Jonathan Harvey’s The Angels engulfed the audience like a sudden preternatural shower of light.
So Long, Slug
The Rick Linklater crowd counted on the list of locals who were saddened to learn this week of the passing of Slacker cast member and former Austin scenester Charles Gunning, aka Doug the Slug. “Basically, he died in his sleep,” says friend and fellow California export Mike Alvarez. Alvarez says an autopsy is being performed…
Phases and Stages
The Best of Celtic Christmas (Narada) The charm of Celtic carols is their freshness to ears weary of jingle dogs and songs about sleigh rides when it’s 75 degrees outside. Celtic Christmas is a unique format transcending the usual drippy holiday dross: Disc one highlights songs sung in English, Gaelic, and Breton, plus a few…
Naked City
In yet another sign of the increasingly explicit symbiosis between state government and the business lobby, this week the Texas Public Policy Foundation announced its new president, Mrs. Brooke Leslie Rollins. A graduate of Texas A&M (where she was the first female student body president) and the UT School of Law, Rollins has been a…
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
At once a fanboy’s wet dream and an engaging, emotionally supercharged epic adventure
Exhibitionism
There are some lovely moments in the musical version of The Little Prince produced by the State Theater Company, and the cast does a fine job of bringing to life Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s unusual characters, but the tension that makes the book so special is too often exchanged in the musical for language that is…
The March of Time
Holy Father Time! Is it really already getting close to another South by Southwest Music Festival? Well, if by close you mean near enough that the first batch of confirmed bands has been released, yes it certainly is! You can peruse the complete list at www.sxsw.com/music/festival/index.php, but here’s a few SXSW 03 teasers for now:…
Phases and Stages
Maybe This Christmas (Nettwerk) Another alt.Christmas, this one a Toys for Tots fundraiser revisiting Jimmy Eat World’s serious emo days for “12/23/95” and allowing Vanessa Carlton to work her inner Tori Amos on “Greensleeves.” Bright Eyes’ “Blue Christmas” is probably the best of the bunch, Ben Folds’ “Bizarre Christmas Incident” the funniest, and the irony…
Naked City
The Austin Independent School District apparently doesn’t get enough bad publicity — now the district is trying an exercise in self-parody. Apparently, AISD brass have been stung by the less-than-enthusiastic community response to their proposal to reorganize sixth grade classes now feeding Martin Middle School and Kealing Junior High. So administrators have refused to release…
Gangs of New York
The Lower East Side gang wars of the 1860s are brought to life by Scorsese.
Exhibitionism
In this version of A Christmas Carol presented by Second Youth Family Theatre, actors use minimal pieces of set and costumes to conjure the many places and characters of Dickens’ familiar tale and move through the text with intense focus, knowing exactly what story they need to tell and telling it well.
Phases and Stages
Kenny GWishes: A Holiday Album (Arista) This is the worst album I’ve ever heard. Closing track “Auld Lang Syne (Freedom Mix)” begins with Dubya’s speech at Ground Zero, then G’s caterwauling sax kicks in over 50 years of random historical audio snippets that make “We Didn’t Start the Fire” sound like high scholarship. The song…
Phases and Stages
Los Straitjackets’Tis the Season for Los Straitjackets (YepRoc) Question: How does one improve on the Ventures’ Sixties Christmas album? Answer: Hit the same grooves — once more with feeling. Check out the “La Bamba” hip shake in “Feliz Navidad,” the snazzy “Walk Don’t Run” intro for “Sleigh Ride,” and the “Pipeline” cop in “God Rest…
Naked City
On Dec. 12, during the same Philadelphia press conference in which he signaled his abandonment of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, President Bush announced an executive order making it easier for “faith-based” charities to receive federal contracts for social welfare programs — even if they fail to follow federal equal-protection rules in hiring. “The days…
Two Weeks Notice
Two Weeks Notice 2002, PG-13, 101 min. Directed by Marc Lawrence, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Sandra Bullock, Hugh Grant, Alicia Witt, Robert Klein, Dana Ivey, Heather Burns, David Haig, Dorian Missick. If there were an Olympic sport for screwball comedy, I could think of no two finer representatives for their homelands than…
Exhibitionism
With Ratgirl’s Holy Rockin’ Christmas, Ratgirl proves herself a real artist by tossing the yule’s manifold manifestations into an artistic blender, from which she serves up holiday cheer in a mighty mythological melange, a veritable Xmess.
Phases and Stages
John TeshChristmas Worship (Garden City) Santa Claus is busted for running the Internet’s largest kiddie-porn ring. Frosty the Snowman turns tricks to support his candy-cane habit. The three wise men knock over a string of liquor stores and escape to Mexico. The former Entertainment Tonight host’s Christmas Worship isn’t quite as bad as all that,…
Phases and Stages
Ella Fitzgerald Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas (Verve) In a manger, under a star, attended by holy men … if anyone, anywhere was ever immaculately conceptualized to sing holiday standards, surely it was Ella Fitzgerald. By the time the sovereign jazz swinger sauces up “Frosty the Snowman,” reprised as one of four bonus tracks…
Naked City
In another of his regular attempts to get his name in the papers, 105th District Judge Manuel Banales of Corpus Christi has proposed changing state law to allow public branding of “sex offenders” even outside his jurisdiction. In 2001, Banales garnered headlines when he ordered 15 sex offenders on probation to place signs at their…
The Wild Thornberrys Movie
The Wild Thornberrys Movie 2002, PG, 79 min. Directed by Jeff McGrath, Cathy Malkasian, Narrated by , Voices by Lacey Chabert, Tim Curry, Jodi Carlisle, Rupert Everett, Danielle Harris, Lynn Redgrave, Marisa Tomei, Flea, Starring . Although I’m a huge fan of L.A.-based animation house Klasky Csupo, I went into their Thornberrys film without having…
Stan Rice’s Final Message
Red to the Rind: Poemsby Stan Rice Knopf, 97 pp., $23 In Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Parliament of Fowls,” the poet asserts that “out of old books … comes all this new knowledge that men teach.” From the epic traditions of Greece and Italy, we have the age-old motif of the hero’s descent into the underworld:…
Phases and Stages
Christmas All Over the World(Sony/Legacy) There are 17 reasons not to buy this collection: It’s the Three Tenors warbling season’s greetings! Christmas All Over the World teams Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, and José Carreras, with guests like Sarah Brightman, Tony Bennett, and Vanessa Williams, but neither the tiresome rehashes nor classical pieces redeem it. Instead,…
Phases and Stages
Christmas Grass: A Celebration of Christmas, Bluegrass Style(Audium) O Christmas Tree (Rounder) Here are two nearly interchangeable collections of Christmas tunes done bluegrass style. Christmas Grass is a mix-and-match set of musicians, including Alison Krauss, Ricky Skaggs, Rhonda Vincent, and Ronnie McCoury on a set that’s all instrumental except for one track. It’s expertly played,…
Naked City
Taking the latest step in its apparent campaign to turn the air we breathe into a concentrated mist of carcinogenic particles, the Bush Administration decided Nov. 27 to allow trucks from Mexico to pass beyond restricted commercial border zones — ending a 20-year moratorium banning the trucks from U.S. highways. The administration claims it wants…
Adaptation.
Adaptation. 2002, R, 114 min. Directed by Spike Jonze, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton, Brian Cox, Cara Seymour, Judy Greer, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ron Livingston, Jay Tavare. Adaptation. is a profound natural process by which living things unconsciously mutate over time in order to achieve greater…
Page Two
More than the insanity or weaponry of Saddam Hussein, we should fear the deepening of a rift between the Muslim world and the West. The haste with which we are building toward war in Iraq is sending the wrong message to both.
Phases and Stages
AmericaHoliday Harmony (Rhino) The idea of soft rock dinosaurs America cutting a Christmas album with Andrew “Lonely Boy” Gold sounds like a bad joke. Those looking for gag gifts won’t be disappointed either, what with “Winter Wonderland” reworked as the group’s “A Horse With No Name” and “White Christmas” liberally sprinkled with “Tin Man” quotes.…
Mental Health Care Meltdown
The mental health care system for Austin and Travis County is increasingly overwhelmed, with no relief in sight.
Naked City
For Thursday night’s community showdown between Browning-Ferris Industries and neighbors of BFI’s Sunset Farms landfill, it seemed appropriate that the air reeked of garbage. Luckily, the stench stayed outside the Travis County Pct. 1 satellite office and disappeared by the end of the meeting. But anger and frustration at BFI are bound to linger for…
