The Sword and the Sorcerer
The Sword and the Sorcerer 1982, R, 100 min. D: Albert Pyun; with Lee Horsley, Kathleen Beller, Simon McCorkindale, George Maharis, Richard Moll. The Alamo’s first annual Sword and Sandal Film Festival features live wrestling onstage before every epic. Thursday, with The Sword and the Sorcerer, there will be sumo wrestling; Friday, with Conan the…
River’s Edge
Disturbing condensation of starkly youth anomie in the wake of a girl’s murder, a conspiracy of boys, and the counsel of Dennis Hopper, who dances with a blow-up sex doll in the woods.
The Devil-Doll
The Devil-Doll 1936, NR, 79 min. Directed by Tod Browning, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Lionel Barrymore, Maureen O’Sullivan, Frank Lawton, Robert Greig, Lucy Beaumont. In this seriously creepy horror movie, Barrymore stars as a Devil’s Island escapee who takes revenge on the three men who framed him by shrinking human beings to…
Rock & Roll Books
The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora by Michael Nesmith St. Martin’s, 256 pp., $24.95 Having been a TV star in the Sixties (The Monkees), a country musician in the Seventies (The First National Band), and a film producer in the Eighties (Repo Man), it’s only natural that Michael Nesmith should round out the Nineties…
The Year It All Went Wrong
Looking back at club closings in Austin in 1999.
Naked City
More sponsors are added to A2K New Year’s Eve party, Austin Energy Green Choice program is about to be announced.
Second Helpings: Fast Food Tour
Take a Fast Food Tour with Greg Beets in this week’s installment.
Rock & Roll Books
Say Goodbye by Lewis Shiner St. Martin’s, 256 pp., $23.95 Even though he hasn’t lived here for a few years, Lewis Shiner is in many ways still an Austin writer. Not only do his characters tend to shop at HEB and cruise I-35, but they also tend to epitomize certain Austin stereotypes, particularly the laid-back…
Cookbook Reviews
City Tavern Cookbook: 200 Years of Classic Recipes From America’s First Gourmet Restaurant by Walter Staib Running Press, 224 pp., $22.95 Gourmet American food seems like a modern concept and a hard one to stake original claim to. We may be tempted to credit contemporary chefs with creating the genre of American Gourmet, but, in…
Dancing About Architecture
All the good and happy things that happened in Austin music, 1999.
Naked City
Parents and neighborhood activists are outraged that the city has failed to implement recommendations made by the Sidewalk Task Force years ago.
El Quemado
For more than 40 years, José Francisco Treviño has been exploring the world of art. Now, in the largest retrospective it has ever presented, Mexic-Arte Museum shows us Treviño’s discoveries, and Mary Jane Garza explains how they came to be.
The Rockpile
Rolling Stone Raves: What Your Rock & Roll Favorites Favorcompiled by Anthony Bozza, edited by Shawn Dahl Morrow, 400 pp., $30 (paper) The latest in a never-ending quest to dumb down music, Rolling Stone marginalizes rock & roll even further in this ludicrous volume of hot air quotes from its mind-numbing “Raves” column. So many…
Cookbook Reviews
The Cook and The Gardener: A Year of Recipes and Writings From the French Countryside by Amanda Hesser Norton, 632 pp., $32.50 I can’t help it. Every time I read about author Amanda Hesser’s muse, Monsieur Milbert, I envision Chancey the Gardener from the movie Being There. Milbert is the inspiration for Hesser’s cookbook/chef’s journal…
Record Reviews
BeckMidnite Vultures (DGC) Ol’ Dirty Beck? Let’s listen in: “I wanna defy the logic of all sex laws,” he sings on Midnite Vultures’ opener “Sexx Laws,” as a sumptuous horn section and insouciant banjo battle for supremacy in the background. It seems that after the acerbic, introspective detour of Mutations, Mr. Hansen has decided it’s…
Naked City
The City Council considers ways to strengthen Austin’s Minority- and Women-owned Business Enterprise Program, which awards contracts for city work to businesses owned by minorities and women.
Articulations
Candidates in the running for artistic director of Ballet Austin.
Postscripts
What’s so good about the usually fatal disease local writer Tom Doyal contracted?
Cookbook Reviews
The 2nd Ave Deli Cookbook: Recipes and Memories From Abe Lebewohl’s Legendary New York Kitchen by Sharon Lebewohl and Rena Bulkin Villard, 225 pp., $24.95 As you head south on Second avenue, past Lindy’s (famous cheesecakes), you’ll enter the East Village, home to some of Manhattan’s (almost) affordable housing, cheap ethnic eats, and piercing salons.…
Record Reviews
Bob MarleyChant Down Babylon (Tuff Gong/Island) It’s been nearly 20 years since the untimely death of Bob Marley, and still his music is more popular today than ever before. Legend, a basic greatest hits package, has been at or near the top of Billboard’s “Pop Catalog Albums” chart for the better part of the Nineties.…
Naked City
UT Regents Rita Clements and Tony Sanchez torpedoed Herzog & De Meuron’s design for the Blanton Museum because it didn’t fit in with the Campus Master Plan. But neither do most buildings built on campus since the mid-1960s.
Exhibitionism
Robert Faires gets a kick from the Flaming Idiots at the Zachary Scott Theatre Center.
Off the Bookshelf
Hollywood Haunted: A Ghostly Tour of Filmland by Laurie Jacobson and Marc Wanamaker Angel City Press, 160 pp., $14.95 (paper) For the superstitious scandal monger in all of us, this recently revised and updated book of tales asks only that you suspend that tired disbelief in exchange for a camp good time. It offers the…
Food-o-File
Virginia B. Wood surveys her favorite food publications.
Record Reviews
Alpha YaYa Diallo The Message (Wicklow) Former member of the West African group Fatala, Alpha Yaya Diallo throws his multi-instrumental hat in the expanding world music ring with The Message, his third solo release and first for Chieftain Paddy Maloney’s Wicklow label. Born in the West African nation of Guinea in 1962, Diallo moved to…
Naked City
George W. Bush’s tightly choreographed campaign excludes all but the friendliest media; but will it backfire?
Exhibitionism
Robi Polgar examines the Vortex production of Rob Nash’s Senioritis
Off the Bookshelf
Frank Lloyd Wright: Europe and Beyond edited by Anthony Alofsin University of California Press, $50 The Guggenheim Museum and Falling Water may be landmark structures in America’s architectural canon, but they certainly don’t reflect the diverse accomplishments of their esteemed maker. Frank Lloyd Wright: Europe and Beyond examines the influence of both the country upon…
Party of One
Welcome to the Chronicle’s guide to a New Year’s home alone, loser.
Record Reviews
John Lewis Evolution (Atlantic) Composer/arranger and Modern Jazz Quartet musical director John Lewis played piano in the bands of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Lester Young, and has made some fine albums featuring himself on that instrument. He’s got a distinctive solo style, characterized by economy, a light touch, attractive melodic ideas, and unhurried-but-precise articulation.…
Wild, Wild Webcasts
Why party in line when you can party online?
Rock & Roll Books
The Winter, Semiannual, When We Feel Like It Rock & Roll Books Roundup
Off the Bookshelf
A House for My Mother: Architects Build for Their Families by Beth Dunlop Princeton Architectural Press, $34.95 (paper) Talk about a project fraught with psychological baggage! Imagine an architect taking on her parents as clients, the task being to replace the childhood homestead. Beyond dealing with all those childhood connections and considering, perhaps for the…
The Loser’s Night Before New Year
(With apologies to Clement Clarke Moore) Be Glad You Are Spending New Year’s Alone ‘Twas the night before New Years, when all through the house The guests were all gathered, the music was Strauss; The champagne was iced in the kitchen with care, In hopes that the bubbles would enamor all there; The guests were…
Record Reviews
Ellis MarsalisDuke In Blue (Columbia) The Other Side of Ellington Duke’s Motivation (Palmetto)Arkadia Jazz All-StarsThank You, Duke (Arkadia)Don SebeskyJoyful Noise (RCA)Daniel Barenboim & GuestsTribute to Ellington (Telarc) Tony Bennett Sings Ellington Hot & Cool (Columbia) The Symphonic EllingtonNight Creature (Soul Note)Marcus RobertsIn Honor Of Duke (Columbia) As we come to the end of the first…
Short Cuts
Upcoming events and workshops of interest to the Austin film community.
Rock & Roll Books
Austin City Limits: 25 Years of American Music by John T. Davis; photos by Scott Newton; foreword by Lyle Lovett Billboard Books, 192 pp., $35 It’s too bad nobody has yet invented a way to listen to books. A headphone jack on the spine, a little volume-control knob, and you’re in business. Because with a…
Off the Bookshelf
Anthony Van Dyck: 1599-1641 edited by Christopher Brown Rizzoli, 359 pp., $75 Born on the eve of the 17th century, Anthony Van Dyck is, along with his mentor Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), one of the great Flemish painters. Page after page of full-color reproductions of his prodigious portraiture, including rarely viewed works from the British…
Ten Ways to Entertain Yourself Home Alone on New Year’s Eve
1. Suck nitrous out of whipped cream cans and yell, “Happpp Peeeee Newwwww Yeeeeeeeear!” until you faint. 2. Find mates for all your single socks. Fail to see the irony. 3. Ponder the psychedelic maze of your PC’s automatic screensaver. Cheer wildly when you see the rat. (For Mac users: Stare at your 3-D Screensaver.…
Record Reviews
Jack KerouacJack Kerouac Reads “On the Road” (Rykodisc)Lawrence FerlinghettiA Coney Island of the Mind (Rykodisc) Having witnessed Bird, Gillespie, and Monk improvise the birth of bebop in Upper Manhattan, Jack Kerouac devised a free-flowing wordplay that borrowed both the textures and the rhythms of jazz. You can see the riffs jumping off the page in…
Video Reviews
The Wind and the LionD: John Milius (1975); with Sean Connery, Candice Bergen, Brian Keith, John Huston, Geoffrey Lewis, Steve Kanaly. It is amazing to realize how many of the talented cinematic names of the Seventies and Eighties have lost their luster in the Nineties. Sure, Scorsese and Coppola are legends, and Scorsese’s work is…
Rock & Roll Books
Patti Smith: An Unauthorized Biography by Victor Bockris and Roberta Bayley Simon & Schuster, 320 pp., $25 Patti Smith Complete: Lyrics, Notes and Reflections by Patti Smith Anchor Books, 264 pp., $25 (paper) For too many gawky kids and deliberate outsiders in the mid- to late Seventies, Patti Smith was both communion wafer and Messiah.…
Local Bestsellers
This week’s list of bestsellers is from Adventures in Crime and Space Books, 609-A W. Sixth.
Your Worthless Self
An Austin Chronicle book review of You Are Worthless: Depressing Nuggets of Wisdom Sure to Ruin Your Day by Dr. Oswald T. Pratt & Dr. Scott Dikkers
Record Reviews
Guy Clark Cold Dog Soup (Sugar Hill) Guy Clark takes a decidedly folky approach on his latest for release for Durham, North Carolina bluegrass indie label Sugar Hill, lining up acoustic guitar, mandolin, mandocello, and fiddle accompaniment for that lived-in sounding voice of his. Verlon Thompson provides rhythm guitar and harmony vocals on nearly every…
Video Reviews
TOUTE UNE NUITaka All Night Long D: Chantal Akerman (1982); with Natalia Akerman, Aurore Clément, Jan Decorte, Pierre Forget.WINDOW SHOPPINGD: Chantal Akerman (1986); with Myriam Boyer, John Berry, Delphine Seyrig, Nicolas Tronc. NUIT ET JOURaka Night and Day D: Chantal Akerman (1991); with Guilaine Londez, François Négret, Thomas Langmann, Nicole Colchat. UN DIVAN À NEW…
Rock & Roll Books
I Was a Murder Junkie: The Last Days of G.G. Allin by Evan Cohen Recess Records, 128 pp., $18.99 (paper) I always had the feeling that every day could have been G.G. Allin’s last day, but the Grim Reaper apparently had to wait 37 years to finally nail “the sickest man in rock and roll.”…
Page Two
The oddest part of the next week or so is not how much will happen but how very little really will.
We are Waiting for Sockot
Theatre Editor Robert Faires offers this hand-warming way to ring in the New Year.
Record Reviews
Sally TimmsCowboy Sally’s Twilight Laments for Lost Buckaroos (Bloodshot) One has to wonder what attracted the members of the Mekons to American country music. Punks from Leeds, England, with a political edge seem like a good stretch from the Grand Ole Opry, and yet they released a couple of well-received country tinged albums in the…
TV Eye
Hankering for millennium specials? Got 27 hours to kill? Find out what’s in store this holiday season on the boob tube.
Rock & Roll Books
Future Jazz by Howard Mandel Oxford University Press, 240 pp., $26 What will jazz be like in the next millennium? No one knows for sure, of course, but veteran jazz writer Howard Mandel suggests where it might be headed and who might be the influental artists in this study of portraits and interviews with a…
Public Notice
Public Notice ponders the end of the world as we know it, and feels damn fine. Happy New Year!
New Year’s Video Reviews
The Chronicle picks some great video titles for New Year’s Eve.
Record Reviews
Fiona AppleWhen the Pawn ” (Clean Slate/Epic) When the Apple hits cascaded ‘cross the fall of ’96, with the video so nasty and the twitchy, pouty lips, I thought: “What’s this sex bomb on my TV, this anorectic on the air?” and despite that sullen image 10 million teenage girls were ensnared. Tidal moved unheard-of…
The Cider House Rules
The Cider House Rules 1999, R, 129 min. Directed by Lasse Hallström, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, Michael Caine, Delroy Lindo, Paul Rudd, Jane Alexander, Kieran Culkin, Kathy Baker, Kate Nelligan, Heavy D, Erykah Badu. Novelist John Irving wrote the screenplay for The Cider House Rules based on his…
Rock & Roll Books
The Secret History of Rock: The Most Influential Bands You’ve Never Heard by Roni Sarig Billboard Books, 288 pp., $18.95 (paper) There are two great fallacies in rock: commercial disc jockeys play the music they want; and all rock musicians ride in chauffeured limousines. In reality, commercial deejays are data entry drones, told what to…
After a Fashion
Lo-carb diets are all the rage right now. Funny thing, they’ve been around a long time…
Music to Wallow By
Wayne Alan Brenner’s list for maudlin millennium-toasting listening displeasure is sure to send you flinging yourself off of Leonard Cohen’s “Tower of Song.”
Record Reviews
WheatHope and Adams (Sugar Free) Underneath the lo-fi façade of Hope and Adams, the second full-length release from Boston-based trio Wheat, is a straightforward and unabashed exercise in pop songcraft that’s as refined as it is scabrous, as accessible as it is elaborate. Simple and time-tested melody and structure are encased in the moody trappings…
Mansfield Park
Jane Austen’s third novel is infused with liberal doses of modern attitudes and autobiographical tidbits from the author’s life.
Rock & Roll Books
Tha Doggfather: The Times, Trials, and Hardcore Truths of Snoop Dogg by Snoop Dogg with Davin Seay Morrow, 256 pp., $23 For the handful of folks who made it 263 pages into last year’s most talked-about but least-read rock bio, Marilyn Manson’s The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, the comedic highlight was a three…
Mr. Smarty Pants
How do YOU spell Shakespeare?
I Eat Alone
Eating alone this New Year’s? Do it in style: Convenience-food epicurean Greg Beets warms your holiday cockles with some tasty ideas for your millennial throwdown.
Record Reviews
Talking HeadsStop Making Sense (Sire/Warner Bros.) If bands like Blondie and the Ramones represented the carefree teenage spirit of punk at the tail end of the Seventies, then Talking Heads and Patti Smith were its elder siblings — art school academics, cynical romantics, intellectual terrorists, punk visionaries. Talking Heads designed new angles in the expression…
Anna and the King
Anna and the King 1999, PG-13, 147 min. Directed by Andy Tennant, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Jodie Foster, Chow Yun-Fat, Bai Ling, Tom Felton, Syed Alwi, Randall Duk Kim, Keith Chin. Anna and the King might be a perfectly fine film if only it were possible to quiet the nagging inner voice…
Rock & Roll Books
Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock & Roll, 1947-1977 by James Miller Simon & Schuster, 416 pp., $26 As Father Time sweeps the detritus of the 20th century out history’s back door, the music industry continues purging a rock & roll catalog that no longer fits in even your friendly, neighborhood Virgin Megastore.…
Day Trips
The back roads of northeastern Travis County snake around enough to make a Sunday drive seem like a journey.
Yum2K Recipes for One
Year 2000 Party PizzasWhat you’ll need: One (1) box of Ritz Crackers (preferably the limited-edition snowflake-shaped Holiday Ritz in specially marked boxes) One (1) pack of Hormel sliced pepperoni One (1) 8 oz. can of Nabisco brand Easy Cheese pasteurized process cheese spread — comes in a variety of flavors; for this recipe, we recommend…
Record Reviews
Eleni KaraindrouEternity and a Day (ECM) The string orchestra, guided by violin, violoncello, and accordion, comes up slowly, deliberately — ominously — like mist cloaking a cold, winter afternoon. A lone violin saws through the ice, “Hearing the Time,” the weighty theme that shrouds the soundtrack to Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos’ three-hour epic, Eternity and…
Galaxy Quest
A parody of Gene Roddenberry’s TV world and its rabid fans.
Rock & Roll Books
Aretha: From These Roots by Aretha Franklin with David Ritz Villard, 254 pp., $25 With utmost respect and admiration for the Queen of Soul, this should have been a much better book. Aretha’s larger-than-life (no jokes, please) 40-year career has placed her at the pinnacle of her achievement and she is, for all eternity, Soul…
Coach’s Corner
A best-of-the-century roundup
Y2Klean!
Follow Lorne Opler on his New Year’s quest to make his laundry A-okay for A2K!
Getting School to Work
Aided by an infusion of new tax dollars from high-tech and other industries, Del Valle ISD finds success by investing heavily in school-to-career programs.
Rock & Roll Books
For What It’s Worth: The Story of the Buffalo Springfield by John Einarson and Richie Furay Quarry Press, 130 pp., $15.95 (paper) The Buffalo Springfield were a quintet of Canadians and Americans who migrated to L.A. in early 1966, intent on being America’s answer to the Beatles. And they very nearly grasped that goal, before…
About AIDS
Perhaps no journey has been more momentous over the last two decades than the one experienced by those infected with and those affected by HIV/AIDS.
Where the Suds Are
B-Gem Laundry Care 1717 S. Lakeshore, 447-9236Burleson Road Washateria 3514 Burleson Frank’s Coin Laundry 2215 E. Cesar Chavez, 322-9213 Jim’s Laundry 1723 E. Riverside, 448-3628 Kleen Wash Laundry 2115 Holly, 474-2650 Koin Wash 834 E. Rundberg, 836-6399 Kwik Wash Coin Laundries 811 E. 531/2, 467-7933 1925 Gaston, 939-7611 1901 William Cannon, 448-7857 2209 S. Congress…
New World Disorder
The World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle collapsed under its own weight.
