Cross of Iron
Cross of Iron 1977, R, 119 min. Directed by Sam Peckinpah, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring James Coburn, Maximilian Schell, Senta Berger, James Mason, David Warner, Klaus Lowitsch, Walter Kelly. This is the final film in the Peckinpah series (the second Sunday TV program has been canceled). This is also the only print…
Too High, Too Wide and Too Long: A Texas-Style Road Trip
Too High, Too Wide and Too Long: A Texas-Style Road Trip 1999, NR, 52 min. Directed by Karen Dinitz, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . Bob “Daddy-O” Wade, the Texas artist probably best known for the giant iguana he installed atop New York City’s Lone Star Cafe, is the subject of Dinitz’s documentary.…
Eijanaika (What the Hell!)
Eijanaika (What the Hell!) 1981, NR, 151 min. Directed by Shohei Imamura, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Kaori Momoe, Shigeru Tsuyugushi. In this period recreation, Imamura’s film tells a story of a carnival huckster on the payroll of both the Emperor and the Shogun dynasty, who, along with his backwoods girlfriend, is swept…
A Long Journey to Guadalupe
A Long Journey to Guadalupe 1996, NR. Directed by Juan Francisco Urrusti, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . The Chicano/Latino Film Forum is back in action following a hiatus. And what better way to celebrate Our Lady of Guadalupe’s Feast Day than with this award-winning documentary by Mexican cinematographer and filmmaker Juan Francisco…
The Howling
A TV newswoman goes on a therapeutic retreat after a traumatic experience but instead encounters werewolves in this sharp and amusing film.
Star Chambers
Take a peek behind the dressing room doors of Austin theatre through the lens of photographer Bret Brookshire.
Book Reviews
Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist by Richard Rhodes Knopf, 352 pp., $26.95 Oliver Sacks once championed a brilliant and lucid autistic woman named Temple Grandin, whose rare and shocking capacity for self-revelation was matched only by her remarkable career as a designer of abattoirs. Had Sacks not chosen to spotlight Temple…
Full of Schtick!
Greg Beets sends up Austin’s wacky pop-punk-cum-Saturday-morning-send-up band, the Peenbeets.
Record Reviews
Sara HickmanNewborn (Sleeveless) Awww… No question that Newborn is utterly adorable, but what’s remarkable is how it avoids being too precious. Sara Hickman deftly sidesteps cutesiness by creating an album of lullabies and singalongs for parents to join in on rather than simple songs for babies. To that end, she adapts the classic “Hush (Little…
7 and 7 Is
New singles from Spoon, Knife in the Water, the Put Downs, the Beach Birds, and Roar! Lion
Video Reviews
Grand Theft AutoD: Ron Howard (1977); with Ron Howard, Nancy Morgan, Paul Linke, Marion Ross, Don Steele, Rance Howard, Clint Howard. After working with Roger Corman on Eat My Dust, Ron Howard returned for this semi-sequel. He also used this film as an opportunity to jumpstart his directing career and collaborate with his dad, Rance,…
Star Chambers
CamelotKatie Goan attaches the beard she wears to play Merlin in the Mary Moody Northen Theatre production of Camelot. The St. Edward’s University senior reports that the production inspired its own particular pre-show routines. The women in the cast “had a ritual of listening to oldies every night,” she says. “We would do our vocal…
Off the Bookshelf
The Book on the Bookshelf by Henry Petroski Knopf, 288 pp., $26 Who on earth would write a history of the bookshelf? Henry Petroski, a professor of engineering and history at Duke, has already written The Pencil, a history of that underappreciated writing utensil, as well as The Evolution of Useful Things, in which he…
The Peenbeets Reviewed
The PeenbeetsThe Peenbeets Get Beet Up! (Starco/General Structures Inc.) It’s as predetermined as stink on a jock strap, as natural as a wet dream: The nerdiest middle school kids turn out to be the coolest adults. Try telling that to the seventh-grade loser, recoiling from his latest humiliation as milk flies out his nostrils onto…
Record Reviews
8 1/2 Souvenirs Twisted Desire (RCA/BMG) Changes — that’s the history of Austin’s 8 1/2 Souvenirs. Founded five years ago by Olivier Giraud, the local swing band has undergone so many lineup changes that the wünderguitarist is now the only original member. Twisted Desire, the band’s latest, retains the Souvenirs’ founding cinematic-dramatic-eclectic spirit, but given…
Mapping the Future
Seven longtime Austinites talk about Smart Growth, neighborhood planning, and the future of Central Austin in an October roundtable discussion.
Video Reviews: D.O.A. (1950)
D: Rudolph Maté (1950); with Edmond O’Brien, Pamela Britton, Luther Adler, Beverly Garland. In 1950, Edmond O’Brien was at the top of his form, typically in “everyman” roles. His fleshy features and stocky build made him an unlikely leading man but a believable victim of circumstance. In D.O.A., he plays Frank Bigelow, a man poisoned…
Star Chambers
Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling 1Sarah Richardson applies lipstick while making up for Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling.
Off the Bookshelf
The Angel of Galilea by Laura Restrepo Vintage, 208 pp., $12 (paper) In a country where the worst slums are named after Biblical cities, priests enlist teenage thugs to intimdate parishoners, and the newspaper’s top priority is the national beauty pagent, an angel arrives in the barrio. Beleagured Bogotá reporter Mona is sent to get…
Age of Innocence
Middle school teacher Mindy LaBernz teaches her students about “real life” and pop music magic.
Record Reviews
Marti Brom & her Barnshakers Snake Ranch (Goofin’) Rockabilly releases tend to be problematic. It’s a genre of music that is best experienced live, and while modern-day rockabillies try valiantly to capture the spontaneous feel of early Sun or Starday releases, it usually comes out sounding a little too mannered. Marti Brom’s new release finds…
The Participants
Ben Heimsath is an architect in the family firm of Clovis Heimsath Architects and a member of the city of Austin’s Planning Commission, where he chairs the Codes and Ordinances subcommittee. Before joining the PC, Ben led the mid-Nineties work of the Citizens Planning Committee and its successor, the Citizens Planning Implementation Committee — the…
TV Eye
Reflections on the memorable television specials of Christmas past
Star Chambers
The Rocky Horror Show 1The dressing area for Meredith Robertson during The Rocky Horror Show.
Off the Bookshelf
Tales of Badmen, Bad Women, and Bad Places: Four Centuries of Texas Outlawry by C.F. Eckhardt Texas Tech University Press, 224 pp., $15.95 (paper) Texas “tall” tales are particularly gruesome, perhaps because of the lengthy amount of time Texas was an unsettled state, a perfect breeding ground for the unlawful. In the stories Eckhardt has…
Dancing About Architecture
Final fareweall to the Texas Tornado; Frank Kozik Sells Out?; Sixteen Deluxe and Meat Purveyors shake up, but don’t break up.
Record Reviews
Quick DrawlTwo Dollar Buffet (Dry River Bed) Though the name of this band might suggest another hyperactive white trash parody rock band, nothing could be further from the truth. This local quartet plays acoustic music with guitar, mandolin, bass, and fiddle that, while firmly rooted in traditional bluegrass and country, steps forward into original material…
Naked City
Shane Phelps will run against Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, Sam Billings quit the Cap Metro board; Larry Paul Manley runs up against neighborhood opposition.
Flawless
Flawless 1999, R, 112 min. Directed by Joel Schumacher, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Robert De Niro, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Miller, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Daphne Rubin-Vega. The remarkable thing about the latest effort by writer-director Joel Schumacher (8MM, A Time to Kill) is not its familiar story of unlikely friendship but the…
Star Chambers
A Christmas Carol 1In the women’s dressing room at the State Theater, female cast members of A Christmas Carol line up before the mirrors. From left to right, Lucy Carapetyan, Lauri Raymond, Lisa Shenk, Andrea Osborn, and Lara Toner. Asked about her pre-show routine, Lauri Raymond says, “I’m pretty obsessive about having enough time to…
Off the Bookshelf
A House in Gross Disorder: Sex, Law and the 2nd Earl of Castlehaven by Cynthia B. Herrup Oxford University Press, 224 pp., $25 On April 25, 1631, an extraordinary trial opened and closed in London: The 2nd Earl of Castlehaven was tried and found guilty of rape and sodomy. He was condemned to death and…
Record Reviews
Broadcasts Vol. 7(107.1 KGSR-FM/Radio Austin) The annual rallying cry of KGSR’s Broadcasts CD is that it seems to get better every year, but with number seven now in the can, it’s a moot point. That said, Broadcasts Vol. 7 could well have the greatest number of truly inspired performances and maybe the most marquee names…
Record Reviews
ToscaAmado Hats off to Glover Gill. Not only is he one of the more technically and emotionally mature keyboardists in Austin, now Amado clearly confirms he’s a damn fine writer as well, penning eight of 10 gorgeous tracks on Tosca’s second release. The two remaining tunes are worthy as well; “Tango para una Francesa,” the…
Naked City
Members of the state Bond Review Board and House Urban Affairs Committee push for changes in the Department of Housing and Community Affairs’ tax credit subsidy process.
The Grandfather
The Grandfather 1998, PG, 147 min. Directed by Jose Luis Garci, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Fernando Guillen, Alicia Rozas, Cristina Cruz, Agustin Gonzalez, Cayetana Guillen Cuervo, Rafael Alonso, Fernando Fernan Gomez. Nominated for an Academy Award last year, Garci’s film is a sprawling, epic, two-and-a-half-hour period piece rife with gorgeous, sun-dappled shots…
Second Helpings: Taquerias
Tasty, bite-sized restaurant listings compiled from new and previous reviews, guides, and poll results. This week’s entries were compiled by Mick Vann.
Star Chambers
A Christmas Carol 2Actor Judson L. Jones makes a last-minute adjustment before making an entrance in A Christmas Carol.
Local Bestsellers
This week’s list of bestsellers is from Toad Hall Children’s Bookstore, 1206 W. 38th.
Record Reviews
Ed BurlesonMy Perfect World (Tornado) We’ll never know how Doug Sahm would have fared as an A&R man, but if Lewisville, Texas’ Ed Burleson (his first signing to the nascent Tornado imprint) is any indication, his ear was as golden as his voice. Burleson’s own voice is no slouch, either: a rich blend of Clint…
Record Reviews
GovindaEntwined & Entranced (Earthtone) The follow-up to Govinda’s previous seance, O Earthly Gods — not including the soundtrack to Evilution, which was also released this year — Entwined & Entranced is exactly the sort of exotic spell all those writhing bodies at the Mercury Lounge have been calling down from the spirit world. Playing violin,…
Naked City
Two 101-X deejays claim they were unfairly fired after making controversial comments in the wake of the A&M bonfire tragedy; but station management says there were deeper reasons for the decision.
Same Old Song
Same Old Song 1997, NR, 120 min. Directed by Alain Resnais, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Pierre Arditi, André Dussollier, Lambert Wilson, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Agnès Jaoui, Sabine Azéma. Sadly, the latest film by Alain Resnais, the great French filmmaker responsible for such seminal classics as Hiroshima, Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad,…
Star Chambers
The Rocky Horror Show 5The Rocky Horror movie ushers give each other a final check before entering the Kleberg Stage auditorium. From left to right, Lara Wright, Melissa Ann Santos, Meredith Robertson, and Larissa Wolcott.
Star Chambers
The Rocky Horror Show 2Actor Joe York scrapes the ceiling of the men’s dressing room at the Zachary Scott Theatre Center wearing his full Frank N. Furter regalia. The platform shoes and headpiece boosted his ordinarily imposing 6′ frame to more than seven and a half feet. When he’s getting ready for a performance, York…
Page Two
The Evil Regents Return.
Record Reviews
Dale Watson & his Lone StarsPeople I’ve Known, Places I’ve Been (Continental Song City) Dale Watson can do no wrong. Having released an album a year for the past five years — each better than the last, and culminating with 1998’s outstanding The Truckin’ Sessions — Austin’s country baritone makes it look like a walk…
Record Reviews
Clay MooreMeeting Standards (Viewpoint) Those who frequent Austin’s handful of jazz venues know about guitarist Clay Moore. Although his name only occasionally appears on the marquee, he’s often found enhancing the sonic landscape of numerous local ensembles as one of the most in-demand sidemen in town. This is Moore’s debut release as a leader and,…
Naked City
CAMPO prepares to undergo a controversial peer review of its transportation planning process.
Man of the Century
Man of the Century 1999, R, 78 min. Directed by Adam Abraham, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Marisa Ryan, Bobby Short, David Margulies, Frank Gorshin, Dwight Ewell, Brian Davies, Victor Young, Cara Buono, Anthony Rapp, Susan Egan, Gibson Frazier. Johnny Twennies (Frazier) is a man out of time. As his name implies, he’s…
Articulations
Farewell to two local galleries, welcome to the new dean of the UT College of Fine Arts.
Star Chambers
Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling 2Sarah Richardson gets a head-start on her make-up for Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling; she’s the first cast member to arrive. “I’m really nervous if I’m not there early,” says Richardson. “I’m never nervous when I’m performing. Being onstage doesn’t make me nervous. But the idea that I’m…
Public Notice
Public Notice is noticing a lot of public service types getting into the holiday spirit. Events big and small are happening all over town, as are opportunities to give, give, give.
Record Reviews
Tanya Raye Brown Meet the Mrs. (TRB) Long in the background providing the infallible acoustic rhythm guitar for husband Junior Brown, Tanya Raye Brown steps up to center stage for this release. Though her guitar-leviathan husband plays on every song (and provides duet vocals on “His and Hers”), this is more than a Junior Brown…
Record Reviews
Third DegreeZydecopia In a town as zydeco-deprived as Austin, any respite is a welcome one. Thus, Third Degree’s Zydecopia is a suitable stopgap until you’re able to make the 300-mile pilgrimage to bayou country. Far removed from the frenzied dance-floor funk of Lil’ Brian Terry or the late Beau Jocque, Zydecopia is still worth a…
Naked City
The fight over the fees for the lawyers who won the state’s multibillion-dollar settlement with the nation’s tobacco companies appears to be over.
Caligula
Caligula 1979, NR, 156 min. Directed by Tinto Brass, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Peter O’Toole, Helen Mirren, John Gielgud, Malcolm McDowell. Not reviewed at press time. This infamous 1980 mix of “historic” porn and gruesome disembowelings comes to theatres as an uncensored 20th-anniversary director’s cut, overflowing with Penthouse pets and the forever-lost…
Exhibitionism
Ada Calhoun covers Laura Somers’ desire, a “reconsideration” of Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms.
Star Chambers
Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling 3Above, the Heavenly Shades corset train pulls out of the station. Cast member Florinda Bryant has her corset pulled by fellow cast member Sarah Richardson, who has her corset pulled by costume assistant Jennifer Kirkland. According to Frontera artistic director Vicky Boone, the company has developed its own pre-show…
Mr. Smarty Pants
Impressionistic poultry patching and a proclivity for plynths
Record Reviews
Jerry Lightfoot & the Essentials with Jerry LaCroix Better Days The word for this album is “sleeper,” and that’s a damn shame. It’s a potent dose of Gulf Coast soul, a regional genre that has suffered in recent years. The Texas-Louisiana nexus once produced musical wonders on a regular basis and the names on the…
Record Reviews
PeglegasusTired of Adventures (Entropic Carnival) Third time’s the charm for Peglegasus, the decade-old Austin bar band dropping into one of their best beer-drenched blurs, “Superdiver,” absolutely cold as the first notes on Tired of Adventures. Everyone spreads out a little after that, guitarist/singers Berke Marye and John Voskamp rummaging about the SST post-punk closet, everything…
Naked City
UT students and faculty stage a rally to protest the regents’ handling of Blanton museum designs.
Exhibitionism
Skipper Chong Warson examines Different Stages’ new take on Uncle Vanya.
Star Chambers
The Santaland Diaries 1The Santaland Diaries is one show for which actor Martin Burke has relatively little to do to prepare. He comes onstage in street clothes and changes into his Christmas Elf costume in front of the audience. So to pass the time before the show, he pores over his treasure trove of candy…
After a Fashion
Our style avatar branches out to service and sales.
Record Reviews
Rob Roy Parnell Jacksboro Highway (Blue Rocket) His older brother, Lee Roy, may have a successful career as a distinctive performer in today’s country music, but Rob Roy Parnell’s heart is buried deep in the blues. His debut, Jacksboro Highway, is in the same vein as early work by fellow Texas bluesmen Delbert McClinton, Jimmy…
Record Reviews
Swine KingGargantuan Fantasy Mall (Eco-Disaster) Time has been kind to the recordings Randy “Biscuit” Turner has been party to. Lost master tapes have miraculously reappeared, and outtakes have been in plentiful supply for two complete Big Boys reissues, as well as the supplemental Wreck Collection album. His subsequent effort, Cargo Cult, was plagued with lineup…
Naked City
U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) will speak on Friday, Dec. 3, at 9:30am at the Bass Lecture Hall (Sid Richardson Bldg.) at UT’s LBJ School of Public Affairs.
The Last Fool of Chelm
Nathan Englander has taken the pulpit. A small crowd is gathered in the synagogue on a cool Monday night during the 16th Annual Austin Jewish Book Fair, and right at the altar, just below the massive stone tablets declaring the laws of the holy, straight to the right of the representations of fire, and before…
Star Chambers
The Santaland Diaries 2Backstage hallway in Zach’s Whisenhunt Arena Stage showing two of the dressing rooms for The Santaland Diaries. In the dressing room at right, actor Meta Rosen prepares her make-up under the watchful eye of her daughter.
Day Trips
Eat barbecue for breakfast at Zimmerhanzel’s BBQ in Smithville.
Record Reviews
Okkervil RiverStars Too Small to Use (Jound) In this age of syrupy-sensitive singer-songwriters and prettified cookie-cutter country superstars, we tend to forget that folk and country music used to be creepy — scary even. Austin trio Okkervil River remind us of this fact, as the group’s visceral folk music kidnaps Will Oldham and Michael Gira…
Record Reviews
SINISLive at Dante’s Pleasure Palace (Hypeshop) In the Austin School of Big Dumb Rock, you can’t get much bigger or dumber than Sinis. And that’s a good thing. An earnest appreciation for the society of the spectacle is all one needs to enjoy a Sinis show, and while Live at Dante’s Pleasure Palace doesn’t quite…
Council Watch
Travis Country residents battle with private school’s placement of its athletic field
Postscripts
Details about where Austin’s own writin’ reverend Charles Meyer will be reading from his new murder mystery about a serial murderer, as well as the Austin connection to British journalist Clare de Vries’ I & Claudius: Travels With My Cat
Star Chambers
The Things They Carried You can learn a lot about an actor by studying the area where he or she dresses. That’s because actors tend to settle in this space and make it into extensions of themselves. The items they bring with them to the dressing room frequently reveal what the individual actors consider either…
Coach’s Corner
Always pick the team with the most to play for.
Record Reviews
Eliza GilkysonMisfits (Realiza) Eliza Gilkyson’s career has taken many twists and turns over the better part of three decades. She began as a teenager performing folk music while living in New Mexico and worked her way to a stint as an atmospheric, New Age artist in the early Nineties touring and recording with Andreas Vollenweider.…
Record Reviews
Soak 2179 (Rainmaker) The newest from Austin’s hard rock quartet Soak reverberates consistently throughout, which is no mean feat considering Soak used a handful of studios across the state to record 2179’s 12 tracks. Opener “People Don’t Care” is a woofer fest, the modern rock radio-friendly “Place Your Hands” rolls with an urgent Front 242ish…
The Kid’s Got Moxie!
Man of the Century director Adam Abraham talks about old-style Hollywood panache, the precarious nature of a career in independent cinema, and a little film that could — and did.
Book Reviews
Waiting: A Novel by Ha Jin Pantheon, 320 pp., $24 The winner of the recently announced 1999 National Book Award for Fiction, Ha Jin surprised critics by beating, among others, Kent Haruf’s compassionate and moral Plainsong. Yet Jin earns the prize few expected he would get. Waiting has that mythical veneer of exotic lands and…
Star Chambers
A Christmas Carol 3The next generation of actors starts developing their dressing room rituals. Anna Reyes, left, and Paulina Reyes, right, prepare for their parts in the State’s A Christmas Carol.
About AIDS
Silence is proving deadly for Latino communities.
Record Reviews
Teddy Morgan & the PistolasLost Love and Highways (HighTone) Teddy Morgan’s previous outfit, the Sevilles, trafficked in solid, if unspectacular, blues-rock one or two degrees removed from the blandness of a Sixth Street happy hour. Now Fronting the Pistolas, his Lost Love and Highways is an eyebrow-raising 90-degree turn back to the soil, adding a…
Record Reviews
The GardenersTomato (Greenhouse) The Gardeners hoe whiteboy funk, but not in the Limp Korn Bizkit mold; it’s more along the lines of early-Nineties stuff like Billygoat or Mary’s Danish. And there’s a reason that stuff went out of style — because it’s lame. The New Orleans-style riff-rock of numbers like “Big Dog” is hamstrung by…
No Ordinary Folk
Producer Fred Miller remembers the making of this antiwar documentary, which focuses on the music of folk legends Peter, Paul & Mary.
Book Reviews
Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide by Kay Redfield Jamison Knopf, 432 pp., $26 Orthodox opinion will hold that Kay Redfield Jamison’s Night Falls Fast is the most compelling discussion of suicide in many years — though not because of the book’s more obvious virtues. One can hardly fail to notice that Jamison possesses a talent…
Star Chambers
A Christmas Carol 4A dressing-room table reveals what the well-dressed London gentleman is sporting in this season’s A Christmas Carol: sideburns!
Standout Sister Act
Mirabelle 8127 Mesa Drive, 346-7900 Mon-Fri, 11am-2pm; Mon-Thu, 5:30-9:30pm; Fri-Sat, 5:30-10pm; Sun,10:30am-2pmMoney moves mountains. As our fair city is reshaped by the current economic boon, we watch as popular businesses gravitate to the 183/MoPac/Arboretum/Gateway Plex — the new center of Austin (or, if you prefer, the center of New Austin). Banks of newly constructed apartments…
Record Reviews
Davíd GarzaKingdom Come and Go (Wide Open) Davíd Garza isn’t much of a traditionalist musically, but he’s definitely got an old-school work ethic: He writes prolifically, makes albums ASAP, and gets them to fans by any means necessary. So, while Garza waits for the Atlantic machinery to line up behind his second major-label release, the…
Record Reviews
Pop Unknown If Arsenic Fails, Try Algebra (Deep Elm) The idea of love being the carrot on a stick that will solve all your problems is the linchpin of many an insipid pop song. Because punk rock evolved in disgusted opposition to this pixie-dust philosophy, the music has historically gagged itself on matters of the…
Short Cuts
Upcoming events and workshops of interest to the Austin film community.
Book Reviews
Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man by Susan Faludi William Morrow, 662 pp., $27.50 For those of us who grew up in the post-“post-feminist” world, Susan Faludi’s Backlash was an invaluable primer on the history of the feminist movement and what it was they worked so hard to achieve. More important, Faludi’s treatise on…
Star Chambers
The Rocky Horror Show 3With minutes to go before the opening of The Rocky Horror Show, actors Alex Sanchez (foreground) and Rolán (background) share a stretch on the men’s dressing room sink.
Food-o-File
Virginia B. Wood discovers a new Japanese fast food joint in town; mentions upcoming Central Market Cooking School classes; and updates readers on recent happenings among restaurants and restaurant owners in the Hill Country.
Record Reviews
SeelaSomething Happened (newimprovedmusic) At this point, it’s clear that one of this decade’s defining musical characteristics was the clarion call of strong female voices: Joan, Alanis, Sheryl, Shirley, Sarah, Lucinda, Cassandra, Loreena, Fiona, Tori, Erykah, Lauryn, MeShell. The list goes on and on. Locally, in the last few years, a relative number of the same…
Record Reviews
Texacala Jones & Her T.J. Hookers (Honey) Honey Records is a bit of an ironic label for Texacala Jones, because the Hole in the Wall diva specializes in songs that make sandpaper sound like silk — check the sinewy versions of Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t That Peculiar” and Quincy Jones’ “In the Heat of the Night”…
Video Reviews
American GraffitiD: George Lucas (1973); with Richard Dreyfuss, Cindy Williams, Ronny Howard, Candy Clark, Paul Le Mat, Mackenzie Phillips, Charlie Martin Smith, Wolfman Jack. Blame American Graffiti for the nostalgia craze that permeated the early Seventies. In 1973, America was steeped in the Vietnam War and Watergate — what could be more appealing than the…
Book Reviews
Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings by Jonathan Raban Pantheon, 448 pp., $26.50 With the waters of today’s publishing world swirling with titles such as Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm and Erik Larson’s more recent Isaac’s Storm, it’s worth noting that the rough seas in Jonathan Raban’s new book Passage to Juneau are…
Star Chambers
The Rocky Horror Show 4Rocky Horror cast member Karen Kuykendall gives her microphone a final adjustment, while Jill Blackwood enjoys a laugh with Alex Sanchez.
Festival of Lite
Arts writer Robi Polgar finds the true meaning of Chanukah, if not the true spelling …
Record Reviews
The BarbersYou Know How It Is (Grace) In the songs of the Barbers is that magical and tough-to-find combination of poetry, humor, and musicianship that brings the sensibilities of the songwriter (usually Lee Barber) to the fore, turning to neither megalomania nor novelty. The album starts off with a “this job sucks” song, but this…
Record Reviews
The Search for Saturnalia This intimate little six-song EP reeks of a basement keg party in the dead of winter where guitars provide all the warmth. In this case, The Search for Saturnalia combines a few six-string cues from Daydream Nation-era Sonic Youth with a D.C. punk dynamic to create a promising strain of soul-stirring…
Video Reviews
More American GraffitiD: Bill L. Norton (1979); with Cindy Williams, Ron Howard, Candy Clark, Paul Le Mat, Mackenzie Phillips, Charlie Martin Smith, Doug Sahm. Trying to re-create the magic of George Lucas’ American Graffiti was a risky venture for director Bill Norton and not altogether successful, mainly because the sequel employs split-screen imagery. It looked…
