A Mongolian Tale
A Mongolian Tale 1995, NR, 103 min. Directed by Zie Fei, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Naren Hua, Tengger, Dalarsurong. Set in Mongolia, the movie tells the story of two children raised by a nurturing surrogate grandmother. A boy and a girl, everyone assumes they will grow up and marry but then the…
99 Women
99 Women 1969, NR, 90 min. D: Jess Franco; with Luciana Paluzzi. Prolific and controversial Italian filmmaker Jess Franco helped usher in the golden age of women-in-prison movies with this gem.
The Great Escape
One of the all-time great action movies also features an all-star international cast. Steve McQueen is unforgettable as the “Cooler King” in the drama about an Allied prisoner escape from a Nazi POW camp.
Young Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is the original Spy Kid in this Chris Columbus-penned story about the master sleuth in a youth. The more one knows about Holmes lore, the more the film’s foreshadowings of future cases will be evident.
Live Free or Die
Live Free or Die 2000, NR, 70 min. Directed by Marion Lipschutz, Rose Rosenblatt, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . Mark the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade with this screening of a docuemntary about a Bedford, N.H., doctor whose unwavering commitment to women’s comprehensive health care has had a detrimental effect on…
Aurora Picture Show’s Rock Star Parking
Aurora Picture Show’s Rock Star Parking NR. Directed by Various, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . This program of short films and video that challenge the stereotypes about the physically disabled is curated by Carlos Lama of Houston’s Aurora Picture Show. The films include Paul Woodal’s “Passion: The Game of Life” (1999), Peter…
Nineteen Eighty-four
Nineteen Eighty-four 1984, R, 115 min. Directed by Michael Radford, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring John Hurt, Richard Burton, Suzanna Hamilton, Cyril Cusack. George Orwell’s grim Big Brother universe was given a punkish production design for this British film version released in 1984.
The Real Bruce Lee
The Real Bruce Lee 1973, NR, 120 min. Directed by Jim Markovic, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Dragon Lee, Bruce Lee. Put together in the wake of Bruce Lee’s sudden death this movie comprises a half-hour documentary and a full-length feature called The Ultimate Lee. The documentary includes rare footage of Bruce Lee…
Our Man Flint
Our Man Flint 1966, NR, 108 min. Directed by Daniel Mann, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring James Coburn, Lee J. Cobb, Gina Golan. Austin Powers has little on this Sixties spy spoof in which Coburn plays one of the coolest, suavest superspies on the planet. He works for Z.O.W.I.E. and tries to stop…
Two Towns of Jasper
Two Towns of Jasper 2002, NR, 89 min. Directed by Whitney Dow, Marco Williams, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . As part of our local celebration of Martin Luther King’s birthday, a special pre-screening of this intriguing P.O.V. documentary will be shown in advance of its national airing on PBS (cable channel 9)…
A World of Noodles
You’ll be relieved to know that MM Pack has the noodle wisdom.
Weed Watch
And now one from the Dept. of Turnabout is Fair Play: Back in March 2002, Portland, Ore., police became Dumpster divers, riffling through the trash of a fellow officer, 13-year veteran cop Gina Hoesly, in an attempt to find evidence linking her to rumors that she had been doing drugs, reports Willamette Week. The cops…
Short Cuts
Say hello to two Patric(k)s, and goodbye to some recently departed film greats.
Second Helpings: Fast Food Nation
“Second Helpings” offers tasty, bite-sized restaurant listings compiled from new and previous reviews, guides, and poll results. This week’s entries were updated by Erin Mosow. For quick, reliable information about Austin eateries, check here. Burger King Various locations/various hours (late-night drive-through at some locations) If you’re cruising for flame-kissed meat but you don’t have time…
Noodle-ism
Noodle-ism107 W. Fifth, 275-9988 Monday-Thursday, 11am-10pm; Friday, 11am-midnight; Saturday, noon-midnight; Sunday, noon-9pmwww.noodle-ism.com “Do you have the noodle wisdom?” inquires the menu at Noodle-ism. If not, this is the place to help you find it. Take your pick at this international house of noodles — Japanese, Thai, Malaysian, Chinese, Italian, or some combination thereof. And nothing…
Farewell to ‘Mother Rose’
Before sunrise on the first day of 2003, Austin lost one of its most outspoken and fiercely protective champions of severely challenged children. They don’t make many people like Rosemarie “Rose” McGarrigle. An early civil rights activist, McGarrigle was the founder and executive director of Hope House, or Casa Esperanza, a nonprofit residential home for…
TV Eye
TV Eye checks out Time Warner Cable’s Digital Video Recording system.
TCB
Out with the old (“Dancing About Architecture”), and in with the news: “TCB” and the closing of the Mercury and Sound Exchange.
The Complete Book of Pasta and Noodles
The Complete Book of Pasta and Noodlesby the editors of Cook’s Illustrated Magazine Clarkson N. Potter, 484 pp., $19.95 (paper) Spaghetti and meatballs, chicken noodle soup, macaroni and cheese, kugel — Americans have eaten varieties of pasta for a long time, even though the use of the umbrella term “pasta” only recently penetrated the popular…
When Weed Is Really Weed
The legal wrangling over a suspicious patch of ragweed has finally come to a close, after Travis Co. agreed to pay a settlement to several Spicewood residents who were the subject of an illegal drug raid, the Texas Civil Rights Project announced Dec. 29. According to TCRP’s Jim Harrington, the county will pay $40,000 to…
Video Reviews
This film rendering of the sordid junkie degradation and deaths of Sex Pistols’ bassist Sid Vicious and girlfriend Nancy Spungen bleeds through with a tad too much MTV, but few music biopics can top Gary Oldman in Sid & Nancy.
Song of Life on Death Row
How Dead Man Walking came to be an opera — and to be produced in Austin before almost every other city in the world — reveals the great risks and rewards in developing new works for the modern operatic stage.
Food-o-File
Virginia B. Wood says goodbye to her beloved South Austin neighborhood.
Naked City
Breaking stories from Austin, the region, and elsewhere
Nicholas Nickleby
Charles Dickens’ picaresque teems with wonderful performances and bright direction by McGrath (who also did the same for Jane Austen in Emma).
Dead Man Writing
The libretto of Dead Man Walking was written by playwright Terrence McNally, author of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, Love! Valour! Compassion!, Corpus Christi, many other plays, and the books for the musicals Kiss of the Spider Woman, Ragtime, and The Full Monty. McNally, originally from Corpus Christi, has won four Tony…
Holiday in San Antonio
The birth of Austin’s punk scene: the Sex Pistols at Randy’s Rodeo in San Antonio, 25 years ago this week.
Naked City
In our Top 10s issue last week, we goofed in our list of the “Top 10 Election Night Moments.” Under the items “Vote counting gone right” and “Our own private Florida,” we incorrectly stated that a programming error in the eSlate voting machines caused vote-counting problems in Tarrant Co., and we thus did a disservice…
Antwone Fisher
Antwone Fisher 2002, PG-13, 117 min. Directed by Denzel Washington, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Denzel Washington, Derek Luke, Joy Bryant, Salli Richardson, Earl Billings, Kevin Connolly, Viola Davis, Novella Nelson. In his debut as a film director, Denzel Washington delivers a lean and engaging work that tells the based-on-true-life story of a…
More Than a ZIP Code
In the exhibition “Road to 78704,” artists Jill Alo and Tina Weitz pay tribute to the distinctive mood and ambience of South Austin.
The Witnesses
Nick Barbaro was living in Dallas in 1978. He is now publisher of The Austin Chronicle. Bill Bentley had recently moved to California in the late Seventies. He is now a vice-president at Warner Bros.-Reprise. Louis Black was a New Jerseyite attending the University of Texas. He is now editor of The Austin Chronicle. Ken…
Naked City
Musician and producer Michael Morales, brother of former attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Dan Morales, is under investigation by federal agents for an extortion plot against Morales’ erstwhile opponent Tony Sanchez, major Texas papers reported Tuesday. Citing anonymous sources, The Dallas Morning News says the younger Morales is thought by the feds to be the…
Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times
Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times 2002, NR, 74 min. Directed by John Junkerman, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . While it’s inarguable that MIT Linguistics professor and reigning American intellectual Noam Chomsky is one of the intelligentsia’s most eloquent and spellbinding pragmatists, you wouldn’t know it from this dull and…
Articulations
A family of Austin artists faces deportation, playwright Cyndi Williams gets some recognition in Big D, and Arts Center Stage both gives and gets.
The Sex Pistols’ 1978 U.S. Tour
Jan. 5: Great Southeast Music Hall, Atlanta, Ga. Jan. 6: Taliesyn Ballroom, Memphis, Tenn. Jan. 8: Randy’s Rodeo, San Antonio, Texas Jan. 9: Kingfish Club, Baton Rouge, La. Jan. 10: Longhorn Ballroom, Dallas, Texas Jan. 12: Cain’s Ballroom, Tulsa, Okla. Jan. 14: Winterland, San Francisco, Calif.
Naked City
The ProTex Statewide Conference “Building a Better Texas: Mobilizing Progressive Power in Our State” is billed as a one-of-a-kind opportunity for social, environmental, and economic justice advocates from all over Texas to unite. The event, to be held Jan. 24-25 at St. Edward’s University, is sponsored by Consumers Union, Center for Public Policy Priorities, ACLU…
The Pianist
The Pianist 2002, R, 149 min. Directed by Roman Polanski, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Adrien Brody, Frank Finlay, Maureen Lipman, Ed Stoppard, Thomas Kretschmann. The age-old question redone in Holocaust blacks and crimsons: Art — what is it good for? Can it save the world, effect change in the emotional tumors of…
Book Review
City on Fire: The Forgotten Disaster That Devastated a Town and Ignited a Landmark Legal Battle by Bill Minutaglio HarperCollins, 285 pp., $24.95 The 1947 Texas City, Texas, explosion “claimed more lives on American soil than any other man-made disaster in the twentieth century,” Austin writer Bill Minutaglio reports in the preface to his fascinating…
Jan. 10, 1978, Longhorn Ballroom, Dallas, Texas
Nick Barbaro: The Sex Pistols were doing this short, weird Southern tour in funky locations and might never play the U.S. again, and there were already personnel problems in the band. Going seemed like the natural thing to do. They were the Beatles of the punk movement. They were the band. It was an event…
Naked City
The conflict continues between U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and the Bush administration over federal Web-washing — removing from government Internet sites sound scientific info that doesn’t jibe with the regime’s ideological views. Last month we reported that Waxman and other members of Congress sent a scathing letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary…
Narc
Narc 2003, R, 105 min. Directed by Joe Carnahan, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Ray Liotta, Jason Patric, Busta Rhymes, Krista Bridges, Anne Openshaw. Fresh and raw like a blown-out vein, Narc takes a walking-dead, cop-flick subgenre and beats new life into it. Sure, the backspatter’s going to muss your psyche, but think…
Page Two
Bush’s proposed economic reforms highlight the divide between Republican theory and practice.
Set List in San Antonio
“God Save the Queen” “I Wanna Be Me” “Seventeen” “New York” “EMI” “Holidays in the Sun” “Bodies” “Belsen Was a Gas” “Submission” “No Feelings” “Problems” “Pretty Vacant” “Anarchy in the U.K.”
Naked City
A survey conducted by the Organic Trade Association and funded by a grant from Cotton Incorporated reports that Texas is by far the nation’s leader in the production of organic cotton: Farmers in the Lone Star State planted 6,872 acres in 2002, well ahead of New Mexico (589 acres), California (584), Arizona (578), and Missouri…
Just Married
Just Married 2003, PG-13, 94 min. Directed by Shawn Levy, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Ashton Kutcher, Brittany Murphy, Christian Kane, David Moscow. Newlyweds Tom (Kutcher) and Sara (Murphy) disembark a plane in L.A., home from their honeymoon in Europe. Tom elbows his new wife into a steaming cup of coffee. Sara sends…
Letters at 3AM
Even though 2002 was an exceptional year for American cinema, American art has never been more marginalized, ghettoized, and controlled, than it is today.
Jan. 14, 1978, Winterland, San Francisco, Calif.
Ed Ward: I was in a period of deep poverty when the Sex Pistols tour came to San Francisco, and although I desperately wanted to go to the Winterland show, I just couldn’t afford it. I’d been told repeatedly that there was no guest list, but a friend at Warner’s saved the day. I went…
Capitol Chronicle: Let Them Eat Dividends
Republicans offer the same predictable help to the unemployed: tax cuts for the rich.
Daughter From Danang
Daughter From Danang 2002, NR, 80 min. Directed by Vicente Franco, Gail Dolgin, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . Daughter from Danang is a rarity among personal documentaries: It is candid but not self-conscious, emotionally unsparing but polished and unobtrusive in its production. The camera follows Heidi Bub, a military wife and mother…
Mr. Smarty Pants
According to one source, the average British driver will let rip 912 pints of fart during their lifetime.A very average watercolor of a basket of flowers is on permanent display in the museum of the Improved Order of Red Men in Waco. It’s by a failed artist, Adolf Hitler.San Francisco has the lowest percentage of…
A Young Man on Death Row
Juvenile offender Randy Arroyo’s case puts Texas’s execution factory on trial.
Christian Wisdom
Outside of deep East Texas, you might have missed this mid-December nugget of Capitol news: “Three groups control [state] budget writing: the trial lawyers, the Black Caucus, and the Hispanic Caucus.” That was the considered wisdom of state Rep. Wayne Christian, R-Center, speaking to a town hall meeting at the Jasper Co. Courthouse, as reported…
Day Trips
2002 was the wettest of years and the driest of years. One man’s drought-busting rainfall was another man’s flooded creek. The big news of the year was that there was water in Barton Creek and other Central Texas tributaries on the Fourth of July. After a dry spring, between June 26 and July 6 the…
Barton Springs Eternal
The reconstruction of Barton Springs Road suffers another delay
The Hightower Lowdown
Look out: Bush is “revising standards” again; and the tax man is out to get the poor millionaires of Darien, Conn.
After a Fashion
MY GAY AGENDA I recently had the occasion to visit Lobo Bookstore on Guadalupe. I’d been there a couple of times before but was not deeply impressed. However, it appears to have severed ties with the Lobo stores in Houston and is under the new management of Michael Stewart, so perhaps it will take a…
No Abortions for Men, Either
Apparently, it’s in the best interest of the state of Texas that a poor woman suffering from diabetes go blind rather than have an abortion. That’s one implication of the Texas Supreme Court’s 8-0 decision last week that the state is not constitutionally required to fund abortions for Medicaid recipients — even if the pregnancies…
Minority Rights v. Majority Rule
Lockney, Texas, is probably the last place you’d expect to find the ACLU’s next anti-war-on-drugs champion. But there he was, in the spindly, unassuming frame of a farmer named Larry. That’s Mr. Tannahill to those not on a first-name basis, though pretty much everyone is in Lockney, a town near Lubbock with a population that…
To Your Health
Is it possible to be allergic to electricity?
Not So Fond of Fonda
A skirmish is brewing in Allandale involving one of Austin’s most revered restaurants. The Allandale Neighborhood Assoc. Executive Committee recently gave its approval to an application, endorsed by several residents of the 5100-5300 blocks of Woodview Avenue, for residential parking permits from 5-9pm Tuesdays through Saturdays. Those happen to be the peak hours for Fonda…
New on DVD
‘R Xmas (2001)Artisan Home Entertainment ($19.98) After a couple of recent narrative misfires, maverick filmmaker Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieuetenent, The Funeral) rediscovers his footing in ‘R Xmas. Although ‘R Xmas premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2001, the film did not unspool in the U.S. until November 2002, when it was released in tape…
About AIDS
Semen ‘Makes Women Happy’? “Women exposed to their partner’s semen during sex may find themselves feeling happier than those who use a condom.” This is the suggestion of one of the more unusual studies to arise lately. Researchers at the State University of New York believe that a woman’s mood can be boosted by mood-altering…
Holiday Greetings From the INS: Hit the Road
Austin’s Jamal family faces forced deportation to an unknown destination
‘The Magic of Flight’
Go ahead and wiggle your wings at the incoming IMAX movie, The Magic of Flight. We know you want to.
Table Fable
When a waiter forgets the customer and the service, even good food can be tough to swallow, as Mick Vann discovered on a recent visit to the Tea House.
Austin Bill of Rights Defense
City officials and local law enforcement should not assist federal authorities in discrimination against immigrants, sneak-and-peek searches of people’s homes, and other constitutionally questionable activities, say members of the Austin Bill of Rights Defense Committee. The group, a subcommittee of Austin Against War, plans to lobby the Austin City Council to pass a resolution similar…
Linux Top Gun
This Saturday at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown, hx0rs and newbies alike will compete in the third installment of the Linux Top Gun.
