Office Space
White-collar prisoners of the corporate office will recognize themselves in this very funny, Austin-lensed movie.
The Ghosts of Dickens’ Past
The Ghosts of Dickens’ Past 1998, G. Directed by Bruce Neibaur, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Cary Lawrence, Jennifer Bertram, Christopher Heyerdahl. Not reviewed at press time. This family drama/fantasy film is a co-production of Canada’s CINAR television production studio and Feature Films for Families, a U.S. company that shoots straight-to-video family films.…
Affliction
Affliction 1997, R, 110 min. Directed by Paul Schrader, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek, James Coburn, Willem Dafoe, Mary Beth Hurt. “Some days I feel just like a whipped dog,” says Wade Whitehouse (Nolte). The sad, uncomprehending look in his eyes both confirms his words and foreshadows the ones…
Jawbreaker
Jawbreaker 1999, R, 87 min. D: Darren Stein; with Rose McGowan, Rebecca Gayheart. Is high school today really this treasonous? All I can remember is getting sidelined for wearing a Plasmatics T-shirt with a too-fleshy Wendy O. Williams on it. That and the occasional parking-lot fisticuffs with Joe Tough Guy. Granted, the cliques have always…
October Sky
October Sky 1999, PG, 108 min. Directed by Joe Johnston, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Laura Dern, Natalie Canerday, Chad Lindberg, Chris Owen, William Lee Scott, Chris Cooper, Jake Gyllenhaal. Let me preface this by saying I have absolutely nothing against former Austinite Joe Johnston. His work with George Lucas, as production and…
Public Notice
Think we’re just being clever with the name? Heck no. Texans for Israel and the Hillel Jewish Student Organization are bringing a larger-than-life Israel-Style Block Party to West Campus’ San Antonio Street (2100 block) next week, Thu, Feb 25, 3:30-9:30pm. A featured attraction of the event is a climbable 25-foot “mountain”(!), so you might actually…
The Forum PUD
Map This 118-acre proposed mixed-use development would occupy three tracts of land on the southwest and southeast corners of South MoPac and William Cannon (1, on map at right, and color rendering B, below). Anchored by a 183,000-square-foot Lowe’s home improvement store, the project also would include 200,000 square feet of office space, 115,000 square…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
The number of home-schooled children in the United States has increased 20-fold since 1980. In 1952, Grace Hopper devised the programming language that enabled the computer revolution to begin. Her legacy, though, included the Millennium bug that could bring much of modern life to a standstill in 2000. Doris Day occasionally slept covered in Vaseline…
Ain’t Misbehavin’
Robin Rather hit the nail on the head when she said the S.O.S. Alliance wasn’t fun to watch any more. She was talking, of course, about the mellowing of a political climate that used to keep Austin throbbing with passionate, ideological debate, and more than a few good brawls that pitted environmentalists squarely against developers…
Kingdom Come
illustration by Jason Stout The reader’s letter was brief, just two sentences: “Would you have any thoughts on establishing or outlining guidelines for a platform of a Theocratic Party? An attractive one could rally the religious right, possibly to mass defection from the GOP.” I confess that my first response was: Why me? Why do…
On The Lege
During his campaign for attorney general, John Cornyn insisted the job was “not about being the state’s top cop.” But now, Cornyn is trying to prove he’s tough on crime, issuing lengthy statements before the executions of George Cordova, Danny Lee Barber, and Andrew Cantu. The releases describe each crime in excruciating detail, including gut-wrenching…
Quiet Creeks
Out here in these woods, where the placid and aging Yeti patrols the paths, declaring them his own, small birds hop and scratch the ground perilously close to the business end of the furry carnivore, as if they sense that he’s gone white-faced and is done with all that chasing business. And the birds aren’t…
Only in Texas
Rumors of the demise of Texas Monthly’s Web site are exaggerated, but have at least some basis in fact. The monthly recently told its Web staff that changes were afoot with the magazine’s Web presence, in hopes of bringing in some profit from the Net, and those changes may or may not involve the continued…
Coffeeshop Chronicles
Episode 2: Flightpath Coffeehouse Neighborhood: Northern Hyde Park Address/Phone: 5011 Duval, 458-4472 Hours: Daily, 8:30am-midnight Munchables: Pastries, bagels Standard Cup o’ Joe: $1.28 (refills $.60) Crowd: Students/UT transitional Artwork: Painting and photography shows Soundtrack: Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, Esquivel, Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue Bonus Points: Ample seating, accessible power outlets The Room: Here’s…
Naked City
Before attending Tuesday’s groundbreaking ceremony for nonprofit developer Central Texas Mutual Housing Association’s affordable apartment complex on Slaughter Lane, City Councilmember Gus Garcia asked city housing official Paul Hilgers how much the city had invested in the project. “I said, ‘That’s the good part, the city doesn’t have anything in this one,'” recalled Hilgers. That’s…
Articulations
A Planet of Their Own The way Bonnie Cullum gave me the news about her performance venue Planet Theatre, my heart about quit. When she came on the line, all she said was, “We’re closing tomorrow.” Now, even though I was expecting a call from the VORTEX Repertory Company artistic director and Queen of Planet…
The Africa Cookbook: Tastes of a Continent
by Jessica B. Harris, Simon & Schuster, $25 hard Most ethnic cookbooks deserve critical consideration when they arrive on the scene. They supply historical facts and cultural notes which complete our knowledge of another people’s food, otherwise garnered from tastes in ethnic restaurants or on travels afar. Like the best of these books, Jessica Harris’…
Work Release
Mike Judge photograph by Todd Wolfson Back in early 1990, Mike Judge — who who finally gravitated toward his early love of animation and filmmaking after working as an engineer for a government contractor and later as a musician in Dallas — created a series of shorts featuring the nebbishy character of Milton, a corporate…
Exhibitionism
Paramount Theatre, February 13 Anything and everything is grist for the musical mill. In a reversal of literary fortunes, a hit movie has become a hit national tour. Richard Maltby Jr. and David Shire, the team that brought the agonies and ecstasies of pregnancy to Broadway with the unexpectedly successful Baby (nominated, in those lean…
Food-O-File
Due to the explosive growth in the greater northwest area, FM2222 may just become Austin’s long and winding restaurant row. It has the firmly established anchor tenant in The County Line (5402 FM2222, 346-3664) at Bull Creek, plus prime locations from the city all the way to the lake. Tequila Texas Cafe & Cantinais set…
Scanlines
D: Walter Hill (1996) with Bruce Willis, Bruce Dern, Christopher Walken, William Sanderson, David Patrick Kelly, Karina Lombard, Leslie Mann. Bruce Willis in Walter Hill’s Last Man Standing, a loose remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo Walter Hill directed this loose remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo with John Smith (Willis) as a drifting mercenary gunman who comes…
Dude, It’s Mitch Hedberg!
As an art form, stand-up comedy gets no respect. A lot of great headliners come through the Capitol City Comedy Club, but as far as the general population of Austin is concerned, they don’t deserve that much attention. Even our city’s hardcore comedy aficionados probably can’t remember the names of half the comics they see.…
Believe the Buzz
Vespaio 1610 S. Congress, 441-6100 Tue-Sun, 5:30-10pm photograph by John Anderson “Well, it wasn’t the full-blown Vespaio experience,” was my initial response to friends and colleagues eager to hear what I thought of my first meal at Austin’s hot new dining spot. “But the food, for the most part, was really good.” The “experience” I…
Old Hollywood Tales
It’s true that old people have a hard time with change. I am currently adjusting to a new work schedule that keeps me at home, and it’s a royal pain. I now have daytime hours that are foreign to me. I get to spend a lot of time Web-surfing but I have also become quite…
Book Reviews
Duane’s Depressedby Larry McMurtry Simon & Schuster, $26 hard Larry McMurtry, Texas’ preeminent novelist for almost 40 years, announced last year that he would write one more novel, his 20th. What may be McMurtry’s final novel, Duane’s Depressed, wraps up the Thalia trilogy that began with The Last Picture Show (1966) and continued with Texasville…
Dancing About Architecture
Cheap Tricks The Cheap Trick three-night stand at La Zona Rosa last week, wherein the band duplicated one of their best-regarded LP’s each night (Cheap Trick on Wednesday, In Color on Thursday, and Heaven Tonight on Friday), was hardly unique to Austin; the Bay Area, I’m told, got four nights, with the last being Budokan…
Bad to the Bone
Nick Nolte and Paul Schrader on the set of Affliction The affliction referred to in the title of Paul Schrader’s new movie, which the writer/director adapted for the screen from a novel by author Russell Banks, has nothing to do with any pop disease of the week. No, the affliction addressed by the story roots…
Alternate Histories
Bestselling crime novelist James Ellroy isn’t just another writer who uses post-war Los Angeles as the setting for his stories. Plop yourself down into the hep and hyper hard-boiled groove of one of his dozen noir joy rides and it’s immediately obvious that he somehow melted down that era and mainlined it into his soul.…
A View From the Cheap Seats
illustration by Jason Stout Abra Moore had a dream. While attending the Grammys as a disinterested spectator in 1997, she dared to think big. A sexier date? No. A more glamorous dress? Uh-uh. A golden gramophone statuette to call her own? Not even close. “I was sitting in the seats way in the back,” confesses…
Short Cuts
“I just got off the phone with Ron Howard,” squealed head geek Harry Knowles when I called over to Ain’t It Cool world headquarters (http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com). I was checkingin with Knowles to follow up on the progress of the “Open Letter to Ron Howard” (http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=3046) that he posted on his movie tipsters Web site on Saturday…
Trailer Tales
Having a hard time getting the word out about your book? Witness the latest adventures of Santa Fe mystery writer Walter Satterthwait, who began his Terrible Trailer Trash Tour in January and will pop up at Barnes & Noble Arboretum on Thursday, February 25 at 7pm to read from his latest mystery, Masquerade (his others…
Record Reviews
(Columbia/American) There’s been a lot of talk that By Your Side is the Black Crowes’ long-anticipated “comeback” or “return to form.” And in many ways it is: It’s heavy, unyielding, and very, very Shake Your Moneymaker. But that By Your Side is such an unapologetically rock & roll album shouldn’t be surprising; Sho’ Nuff, the…
Quiet Creeks
photograph by John Anderson Out here in these woods, where the placid and aging Yeti patrols the paths, declaring them his own, small birds hop and scratch the ground perilously close to the business end of the furry carnivore, as if they sense that he’s gone white-faced and is done with all that chasing business.…
Negative/PositiveMaleCouples About AIDS
Support Group Starts March 4 The Negative-Positive Connection is a support group sponsored by AIDS Services of Austin. To be eligible, men must be in a male/male relationship with one partner who is HIV-positive and one who is HIV-negative. The group begins Thursday, March 4, and will run from 5:30 to 7:00 for six weeks.…
Building From Scratch
The notion of turning a post-aviation Mueller into a progressive “urban village” — mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly, transit-oriented, green, diverse, affordable, sustainable — was first advanced by the Mueller-area neighborhoods themselves back in the Manor phase of the Move-It Era, when it was an idea genuinely before its time. By 1996, when the city appointed the RMMA…
Vines of Ridicule
Narciso de Mataderos o El EspejoBy Pablo Su�rez “A characteristic style … treatinga serious subject in a nonsensical manner, as in ridicule.” That’s what Webster’s New World Dictionary has to say about parody, and as you walk through the current show at the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, it’s certainly easy to apply those…
Coach’s Corner
Friday I went to my first ballet and, well … uh … let’s move on to the conclusion of last week’s NBA column, where I covered the league’s longtime mud-splattered doormats. This week: Who will take the crown from the Bulls? The usually incorrect conventional wisdom was, as the lockout wore on and on, the…
Goals, Goals, Goals
What, exactly, are we trying to do with the New Mueller? Here are the goals identified by the Process and Goals Task Force back in 1996: Fiscal responsibility. It must pay for itself and increase the city’s tax base. Economic development. It must include “a wide range of employment opportunities for a diversity of the…
About AIDS
Negative/Positive Male Couples Support Group Starts March 4 The Negative-Positive Connection is a support group sponsored by AIDS Services of Austin. To be eligible, men must be in a male/male relationship with one partner who is HIV-positive and one who is HIV-negative. The group begins Thursday, March 4, and will run from 5:30 to 7:00…
Day Trips
The little house in Prairie Lea produces big pastries. photograph by Gerald E. McLeod The Blue Ribbon Bakery in Prairie Lea between San Marcos and Luling is a hobby that turned into a full-time job for Maurica and Nils Boothe. The name comes from the more than 50 ribbons and seven trophies adorning the walls…
A Disjointed Family
The building: It comes up again and again in conversations with people associated with Cornerstone, and never in a positive light. The expenses associated with the Red River building were “substantial,” Chapple says, and Cornerstone’s lease mandated that the organization pay property taxes, insurance, and maintenance of the building. “The air conditioner went out I…
Armadillo Lepers
I have heard that armadillos carry leprosy. Is this true? How about any other nasty diseases? �Tom Wilkinson, via AOL A query to the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board drew the following response: “Q. Why don’t lepers play hockey? A. Too many face-offs.” You see why scientific progress is slow. I have, however, established that…
Billboard Blues
A hot tip for all you real estate speculators hoping there’s still room to make a killing in the Austin real estate market: Go East. According to Councilmember Gus Garcia, the East Cesar Chavez neighborhood is the next Hyde Park. The occasion of his remark was the presentation of the E. Cesar Chavez Neighborhood Plan…
Page Two
So much issue, so little time, so little space … The pull-out section this week is a guide to live music venues in Austin that I think is pretty cool. I haven’t really gotten a chance to read much of it yet, but Raoul assures me that his writers all really came through for him…
Turning Point
S.O.S. Chair Robin Rather When the City Council gave its preliminary approval of the Forum last November, S.O.S. representatives failed to effectively refute the Forum’s pro-mitigation arguments, and came out looking like the head-in-the-sand anti-growthers some critics have charged them to be. Nevertheless, S.O.S. Chair Robin Rather insists that S.O.S. had “an airtight case against…
