Island of the Sharks
Island of the Sharks NR, 40 min. Directed by Howard Hall, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Linda Hunt. Cocos Island, 300 miles of the coast of Costa Rica, serves as the remote setting for this look at the world’s highest concentration of large marine predators.
Peeping Tom
This abundantly creepy, and always controversial, British movie never goes out of style. A cameraman for the movies by trade, this killer’s fetish has to do with photographing the fear in his victims’ faces at the moment of their death. Of course, the story’s subject of voyeurism may go a long way toward explaining its…
Yellow Submarine
Yellow Submarine 1968, G, 90 min. D: George Dunning; with the Beatles. Sixties’ psychedelia in which the Beatles must fight the Blue Meanies, who have invaded Pepperland. Visually inventive cartoon is complemented by clever, whimsical narration and 11 songs from the Beatles, including “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”and “All You Need Is Love.”
Sullivan’s Travels
Sullivan’s Travels 1941, NR, 91 min. Directed by Preston Sturges, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake, Robert Warwick, William Demarest, Franklin Pangborn. Preston Sturges biting the hand that feeds him. Hollywood was home to the greatest success Sturges ever knew, yet even he couldn’t resist cataloguing its inanities and teeing…
Off the Bookshelf
One for the Road by Tony Horwitz Vintage, 211 pp., $12 (paper) We can thank Vintage for reissuing this decade-old account of Tony Horwitz’s adventures in the Australian outback. Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize winner and staff writer at The New Yorker, moved to Sydney with his Australian wife way back in the Eighties and discovered…
Real Life Rat Tales
Carol Brorson consults the experts to get to the roof of Austin’s rat problem.
Record Reviews
Chuck ProphetThe Hurting Business (HighTone) Since founding the critically revered roots rock band Green on Red during the Eighties, guitarist and songwriter Chuck Prophet has been performing in near obscurity; bouncing from label to label, while making superb, mostly overlooked albums and building a solid, devoted cult following, especially in Europe. The Hurting Business, Prophet’s…
Executing Justice
Larry Robison, a schizophrenic killer whose parents tried to get help for their son but were turned away by state mental hospitals, is scheduled for execution on Friday.
My Dog Skip
My Dog Skip 2000, PG, 95 min. Directed by Jay Russell, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Frankie Muniz, Diane Lane, Luke Wilson, Kevin Bacon, Caitlin Wachs, Harry Connick Jr.. To say that I wept copiously during My Dog Skip, the feature adaptation of Willie Morris’ ode to his childhood pup, is not by…
Off the Bookshelf
White Rose by Amy Ephron Morrow, 240 pp., $23 White Rose is a romance novel for educated women, an observation that isn’t meant unkindly. The book lacks the necessary character development and motivation to be a truly first-rate work, though it’s entertaining and reasonably well-researched. Set in the 1890s, White Rose is the story of…
Some Words from the Professionals
The best way to discourage rats in your home is to limit food sources outside and to make access to the indoors impossible to them. Any opening into the house larger than a nickel should be sealed. All cracks, openings where pipes enter buildings, and places where the roof intersects, are potential rat entry points.…
Record Reviews
Robbie FulksThe Very Best of Robbie Fulks (Bloodshot) This ironically titled anthology actually contains stuff that never made it on to other Robbie Fulks releases for one reason or another; Fulks teamed up with producer Steve Albini to pull together this material. From the first track to the last, it’s filled with Fulks’ admittedly weird…
Taken to Task
AISD Superintendent Pat Forgione presents the district’s dropout prevention task force recommendations, but not all members of the community are happy with the results.
The End of the Affair
The End of the Affair 1999, R, 109 min. Directed by Neil Jordan, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Ralph Fiennes, Julianne Moore, Ian Hart, Stephen Rea, Jason Isaacs, Samuel Bould. For a story about an illicit sexual affair and all the love, deceit, and jealousy it engenders, The End of the Affair is…
Off the Bookshelf
Edith’s Story by Edith Velmans Soho Press, 240 pp., $25 Edith Velmans was a teenager in Holland when the Second World War began. When the Germans invaded, their campaign against Jews began with restrictions against Jewish families such as Edith’s, and ended with the transport to camps of even the aged or hospitalized. However, Edith’s…
I Remember Rattus
Ken Lieck remembers Rattus.
Record Reviews
DrunkTableside Manners (Jag Jaguwar) The orange glow burning through the snow-crusted windows on Drunk’s album cover hints that warmth triumphing over coldness is the theme of this outing. Anyone who has heard this Richmond, Va., band before knows to expect morose, wintry compositions, but in the past, Drunk have taken asides which indicate that they’re…
Cop Watch
With two months to go, the Austin police oversight focus group starts finalizing its recommendations for auditing internal APDinvestigations.
Following
Following 1999, R, 70 min. Directed by Christopher Nolan, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Darren Ormandy, Nicolas Carlotti, Jennifer Angel, Gillian El-Kadi, Dick Bradsell, John Nolan, Lucy Russell, Alew Haw, Jeremy Theobald. Ever get the inexplicable feeling you’re being followed? How about those times when you come home to your flat to find…
Off the Bookshelf
Those Bones Are Not My Child by Toni Cade Bambara Pantheon, 848 pp., $27.50 Bambara (The Salt Eaters) invested the last 12 years of her life in this book based on the Atlanta child murders. Paralyzed by the killer’s appetite and particularity, the City Too Busy to Hate fell victim to the class, racial, and…
Rats!
Think you’re the only one with a rat problem? Bernadette Noll reassures that you are not alone.
Record Reviews
Songs: OHIAThe Lioness (Secretly Canadian) Songs: OHIA is songwriter Jason Molina and whatever amazing musicians he can dig up. The role of the band on The Lioness is filled by Scottish ensemble Arab Strap, and while their playing evokes the mood of Molina’s songs to what seems perfection, they succeed so well that the focus…
Naked City
The Austin Independent School District’s dropout prevention task force will hold the last of three public forums on its recommendations for dropout prevention and reduction at 5:30pm today, Thursday, Jan. 20, at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church. 1206 E. Ninth. For more info, go to http://www.austin.isd.tenet.edu. In anticipation of former secretary of state Henry…
Cradle Will Rock
Cradle Will Rock 1999, R, 132 min. Directed by Tim Robbins, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Ruben Blades, Angus Macfadyen, Bill Murray, John Turturro, Susan Sarandon, Vanessa Redgrave, Cherry Jones, Hank Azaria, John Cusack, Emily Watson. What considerations, if any, do artists owe those who finance the production and display of their work?…
Local Bestsellers
Local bestsellers are based on recent sales at Austin bookstores selected to reflect varied reading interests.
Whirled of Sound
Tracking down Rob Halverson and Robinson Ear’s Little Whirled of Sound.
Record Reviews
Cuadernos de La Habana(Winter & Winter) Like everything else in Havana, the cafe in which you sit is crumbling. “These streets ooze poverty,” writes Italian poet Mario Luis Malfatti, “but it would be difficult to bear poverty with more dignity.” Proud, impoverished Cuba, an island paradise defoliated by communism, discarded by time. “Music here is…
Council Watch
Council moves out of City Hall annex, addresses the needs of poor, examines csc’s record on hiring minority contractors, approves neighborhood proposal for the chamption tract, names a designer of the Mexican American Culture Center.
Supernova
Supernova 2000, PG-13, 91 min. Directed by Thomas Lee, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Wilson Cruz, Robin Tunney, Peter Facinelli, Lou Diamond Phillips, Robert Forster, Angela Bassett, James Spader. How bad is it? Very bad indeed. Advance word on this sci-fi free for all has been growing increasingly grim since production wrapped almost…
Second Helpings: Wine
In this week’s installment of the weekly dining guide Second Helpings, Chronicle food writer Wes Marshall covers Austin’s best wine stores.
Page Two
Don’t be afraid of State Highway 130.
Rob Halverson Reviewed
Rob HalversonRobinson Ear’s Little Whirled of Sound (Jumping Man) Anyone who saw a Robinson Ear Machine set during their fabled run at the Victory Grill knows that the troupe did its best to re-create a late-night living room feel, right down to the battered floor lamps and the 15-minute barefoot piss-break jam sessions that cropped…
Hitting the Pavement
Building SH 130 is still being considered in terms of costs, routes, and whether it will be a toll road.
Media Clips
After working out some of its kinks, Austin’s all-news cable channel, News 8, earns a high “C” for constant availability, lengthy news segments, and decent-quality programming.
Sharing the Dance
A new generation of Austin choreographers is expanding our concept of dance through the combination of movement styles and traditions from across the globe, and Barbejoy Ponzio talks to them about the part fusion plays in their work.
Public Notice
Our weekly calendar of activist and volunteer events and fundraisers.
Hammer of the Gods
The rise, fall, and rebuilding of Austin stickman Thor.
What Will It Look Like?
Regardless of where it’s built, SH 130 is expected to have a 349-foot-wide right of way for those segments without frontage roads, 529 feet for those with frontage. Frontage roads are only planned by TTA for segments where they’re necessary to restore access to land that would otherwise get severed by the highway, but cities…
Bringing Out the Dead
Swiss documentary maker Richard Dindo considers himself a “portraitist or biographer of those who are no longer with us.” This week, he brings two films : about revolutionary Che Guevara and writer Jean Genet : to town as part of the Austin Film Society’s Texas Documentary Tour.
Articulations
A major change in the staff for the Salvage Vanguard Theater; a new endowed chair for the UT Department of Art and Art History.
Letters at 3AM
High school students comment on the meaning of the new millennium.
Dancing About Architecture
Another club bites the dust, the first happy bands of 2000, the Greatest Band in the World comes to SXSW, more people do stuff
SH 130 Hot Spots
The Texas Turnpike Authority has looked at western and eastern SH 130 alignments in three different segments, thus producing eight (2 x 2 x 2) alignment options. The TTA prefers No. 3 — west/west/east, the red line — but Austin, Travis County, and Round Rock have all officially backed an eastern alignment (presumably No. 2,…
Short Cuts
Upcoming events and workshops of interest to the Austin film community.
Exhibitionism
Othello: Brought Low by the PatriarchyThe Off Center, through January 22 Running Time: 3 hrs Luna Mama Productions has taken William Shakespeare’s tragedy of the dark general Othello, whose love for the pale Desdemona is undermined by the devious soldier Iago, and created a lesbian adaptation whose mission is the “war against the general enemy,…
Day Trips
Huntsville … it’s more than just a prison town!
Record Reviews
The Jesus LizardBang (Touch & Go) Here, in the mass grave of corpses left behind by 1999, lies the Jesus Lizard. Born in Austin, raised in Chicago, this martyred quartet of pious punk rockers died for your sins — crucified by an indifferent and cruel alt.rock empire. Their epitaph is written thusly in the good…
Where the Road Will Go
These aerial shots — two of more than 40 included in the SH 130 EIS — show current conditions at two of the most critical points along the preferred alignment. In Round Rock, SH 130 would go over the Kenney Fort historic site (just south of the intersection with US 79) and over the ecologically…
Video Reviews
NO WAY OUT D: Joseph Mankiewicz (1950); with Sidney Poitier, Linda Darnell, Richard Widmark, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee. THE INTRUDER D: Roger Corman (1961); with William Shatner, Robert Emhardt, Leo Gordon, Frank Maxwell. In No Way Out, Ray Biddle (Widmark) is shot along with his brother in a foiled gas station robbery. The two are…
Exhibitionism
Dark of the Moon: Gotta Slop Them HogsThe State Theater, through February 6 Running Time: 2 hrs, 30 min So if Othello wasn’t enough of a meditation on the female purity front, here’s the Smoky Mountains version, a weird Hee Haw-y fairy tale about the “witch-boy who tried to be a human and the girl…
After a Fashion
Go high-stakes shopping with Dodie Kazanjian in her new book.
Record Reviews
Modest MouseBuilding Nothing out of Something (Up) Whether to keep a budding fan base interested between 97’s outstanding Lonesome Crowded West and whatever awaits us from their anticipated major-label outing, or simply to fulfill contract obligations with Northwest indie label Up, Issaquah, Washington’s Modest Mouse continue buttressing their small canon, this time Building Nothing out…
What About Non-attainment?
As everyone knows by now, Austin is likely to be declared in “non-attainment” of the federal Clean Air Act next summer. Many people seem to believe that this automatically freezes federal highway funds and would kill off SH 130, but that’s not quite true. What non-attainment would do first, according to Capital Area Metropolitan Planning…
TV Eye
David E. Kelley is one of the most gifted and powerful television writers of the late Nineties : so why is he wasting his talents on trips around the belly buttons of the most self-obsessed, spoiled creatures ever created for the small screen?
Exhibitionism
Candide: On the Road AgainBass Concert Hall, January 14 We all come into this world as innocents. Every one of us begins our journey through life assuming the best about people and what life has to offer. It is only when we have encountered enough pain and disappointment, enough deception and hatred and cruelty, that…
Mr. Smarty Pants
Confounding logic, punchlines, and baking tips.
Record Reviews
Hamell on TrialChoochtown (Such-A-Punch) Ed Hamell continues doin’ it for himself. Sure, there are other voices and instrumentalists here and there on Choochtown, but far and away, the latest disc from the anti-folk singer is dominated by the man, his words, and that locomotive-at-full-steam acoustic guitar of his. Starting off with a treatise on why…
Traffic Report
AVERAGE DAILY TRAFFIC IN 2020 (number of vehicles per day) These estimates of vehicles per day on SH 130 and on other area highways and arterials in 2020 all presume that SH 130 will be a free road. The preliminary guesstimates show that a toll-road SH 130 would be carrying up to a third fewer…
Next Friday
Next Friday 2000, R, 93 min. Directed by Steve Carr, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Justin Pierce, Mike Epps, Tom “tiny” Lister, Tamala Jones, John Witherspoon, Ice Cube. Ladies and gentlemen: the No. 1 movie in America? Five years after the release of Friday, rapper Ice Cube’s comedy about pot and potty humor…
Homegrown Don Quixotes
Austin writer Neal Barrett Jr.’s latest mind-over-matter comic thriller, Interstate Dreams, “has an oddly disorienting effect,” Chronicle reviewer Mike Shea writes.
Coach’s Corner
Any Given Sunday bites, but no worse than the Coach’s prognostications last week. Old wisdom: The Colts are the best in the league. New wisdom: Titans may be for real.
Record Reviews
ElliotT Sharp: TectonicsErrata (Knitting Factory) It’s major construction on a grand scale, not quite to that of those plates under the continents, but worthy of the name. Tectonics is Elliot Sharp & Co., and “Co.” can mean so many things in the world of this avant-snazzz collaborateur of New York’s razor edgy art-jazz scene. In…
A Grave Injustice
Small Houston funeral home operator claims state agency is coming down hard on him while going easy on funeral giant SCI.
Genghis Blues
Genghis Blues 1999, NR, 88 min. Directed by Roko Belic, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman; the musical technique known as “throatsinging” popular in the tiny upper Mongolian region known as Tuva; and one big, black, blind guy playing the blues: Some people and events are just waiting…
Postscripts
Local bestsellers for ’99.
About AIDS
Where to get free, anonymous HIV testing in Austin.
Record Reviews
John Abercrombie Open Land (ECM) Kenny Wheeler A Long Time Ago (ECM)Paul Bley, Gary Peacock, Paul Motian (ECM) ECM ranks among the great independent jazz labels, along with Commodore, Blue Note, Savoy, and Prestige. Some fans tend to put its albums down as New Agey, but ECM never recorded George Winston. Chick Corea, on the…
SCI: One Foot in the Grave?
Rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet, but the world’s largest funeral company is having a near-death experience. Once a darling of Wall Street, Service Corporation International is being hammered by a stock market that is no longer enamored with low-tech undertakings. A year and a half ago, the company’s stock was trading for about $45…
Book Reviews
The New Sweet Style: A Novel by Vassily Aksyonov Random House, 496 pp., $29.95 The New Sweet Style, by Russian émigré novelist Vassily Aksyonov, is more than a postmodern wink at the nature of fiction, the absurdities of democratic and totalitarian states, the garish beauty of pop culture, love, death, celebrity, and genetic inheritance. There…
Beefed-up
“This is food you know; there are no surprises,” Chronicle food writer Barbara Chisholm declares about Ray’s Steakhouse.
Record Reviews
Claude “Fiddler” WilliamsSwingin’ the Blues (Bullseye Blues & Jazz) Ninety-two-year-old violinist Claude “Fiddler” WIlliams may not be quite as feisty as he was back in 1936 when he joined the Count Basie Band at the famed Reno Club in Kansas City, but to this day, the Muskogee, Oklahoma, native retains a honey-sweet tone and deep-blues…
Off the Desk
Willie Lewis announces his re-election bid for city council, opposing Thomas Hollywood Henderson and police officer Danny Thomas; Intel is looking for land in Austin, SOS is being honored for smart growth work.
Book Reviews
How She Knows What She Knows About Yo-Yos: Stories by Mary Ann Taylor-Hall Sarabande Books, 225 pp., $13.95 (paper) Reading short stories, especially whole collections of short stories, often leaves me depressed. Perhaps this is partly their nature: Their brevity is sad in itself, echoing as it does the evanescence of our own lives and…
Food-o-File
The new year has brought several big changes among Austin’s restaurants; Cuisines editor Virginia B. Wood provides the details.
Record Reviews
Afel Bocoum Alkibar (World Circuit/Nonesuch) World Circuit has quickly distinguished themselves with such gems as Ali Farke Toure and Ry Cooder’s decade-best Talking Timbuktu, Malian songstress Oumou Sangare’s lively Worotan, and a little something called the Buena Vista Social Club. Add Malian Afel Bocoum’s Alkibar to the list. Picture Dale Watson and Willie Nelson playing…
Playing It Safe
According to the latest FBI crime statistics, El Paso and Austin rank No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, among the cities with the lowest murder rates in the nation.
Book Reviews
Void Moon by Michael Connelly Little, Brown, & Co., 400 pp., $24.95 Michael Connelly’s eighth crime novel, Void Moon, takes its title from an astrological term. When the moon moves from one house to another, there’s a period of time in which it’s technically between houses and, therefore, in an astrological void; and the experts…
Mini-Review
All About Cuban Cooking by Josefina Alvarez AACC Publisher, $14.95 (paper) With Cuba in the news more and more these days, the debut of this self-published bilingual cookbook by Cuban culinary arts instructor Josefina Alvarez couldn’t be more timely. Alvarez includes all the well-known staples of the Caribbean island’s national cuisine, everything from the ever-present…
Record Reviews
The Baby Namboos Ancoats2zambia (Palm/Durban Poison) Excluding mainstream fringe dwellers like Portishead or Dot Allison, the problem with most trip-hop is that so much of it is interchangeable. All those dub-heavy, fatter-than-fat, narcoleptic beats sound the same after a while, especially when you’re feeling so … receptive. It takes a keen ear to differentiate between…
Naked City
Cities With the Lowest Murder Rates (rate per 1,000 residents)El Paso .013 Austin .014 San Jose .016 San Diego .019 Portland .028 Cities With the Lowest Robbery Rates (rate per 1,000 residents)San Jose .442 El Paso .590 San Antonio .700 San Diego .716 Austin .782Source: Christian Science Monitor
