Cover Story
Building the Perfect Beast
Building the perfect acoustic (and soon, electric) guitar – by hand
The Dead Brothers: Death Is Not the End
The Dead Brothers: Death Is Not the End 2006, NR, 90 min. Directed by M.A. Littler. The Dead Brothers are a burial band with an interest in the European roots of the blues and all its trappings. The band Possessed by Paul James will perform live.
Pop Films
Pop Films 1966-1969, NR, 120 min. Directed by Peter Whitehead. This program includes nearly two hours of promo films, the first-ever footage of Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett performing live and in the studio, and some rare surprises from the director’s extensive archive.
Made in Secret: The Story of the East Van Porn Collective
Made in Secret: The Story of the East Van Porn Collective 2005, NR, 86 min. Directed by East Van Porn Collective. A group of Vancouver friends, dissatisfied with the pornography they were viewing, vowed to make their own – and thus, a collective was born. This video illuminates their work, while remaining non-porographic.
Choose Your Own Weird Wednesday
Choose Your Own Weird Wednesday It’s interactive night as the audience is given three titles to select from as the evening’s viewing choice.
The Being
The Being 1983, R, 82 min. Directed by Jackie Kong, Starring Martin Landau, Marianne Gordon, Bill Osco, José Ferrer, Dorothy Malone, Ruth Buzzi, Kinky Friedman. A gruesome alien monster is devouring the residents of sleepy Pottersville, Idaho, the “Spud Capital Of The World.” The film also features Texas gubernatorial candidate in a small role.
Dirt: A Season Inside the Devil’s Bowl
This Audience and Documentary Jury Award winner from the last Austin Film Festival follows the 2002 season of Mesquite’s Devil’s Bowl Speedway, and is replete with an oversized cast of characters who run the gamut from outrageous to sublime. A Q&A with the filmmakers will follow the screening.
The Really Good Film Festival
The Really Good Film Festival The Really Good Film Festival showcases the talent of the Austin film industry. It creates a platform for directors, writers, producers, and actors to exhibit their imagination and ability. The festival will screen the top eight short films submitted. The judges’ choice for top film will be awarded a cash…
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum 1966, NR, 99 min. Directed by Richard Lester, Starring Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, Buster Keaton, Jack Gilford, Michael Crawford. A whole gaggle of talents appear in this anti-Spartacus comedy that tells the story of a slave in ancient Rome, who connives to win his freedom.…
Adam’s Rib
Adam’s Rib 1949, NR, 100 min. D: George Cukor; with Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Holliday. In addition to being a Tracy-Hepburn gem, this co-stars the inimitable Judy Holliday as a woman charged with attempted murder of her philandering husband. Hepburn and Tracy play married lawyers arguing opposite sides of the case – and the…
Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man
Part concert film and part fascinating biography, this deft film is a moving tribute to Leonard Cohen’s musical legacy.
The Play About the Baby
Though the baby in Edward Albee’s ‘The Play About the Baby’ may or may not exist, the play is funny and, in its evocation of a traumatic dream state, terribly, horribly frightening
Mandola’s Italian Market
It’s all good
Concordia Moving Plans
The little Lutheran school along I-35 is relocating, and a large mixed-use development is slated to take its place
You, Me and Dupree
The story of the houseguest who won’t leave gets another reworking in this diverting yet disposable Owen Wilson vehicle.
Vaudeville Vanya
Some of Austin’s finest young actors have banded together as a creative family called St. Idiot Collective and are out to make solemn Anton Chekhov fun with ‘Vaudeville Vanya’
Clay Pot Buffet
A culinary and cultural treat for Austin
Laredo Overrun by Documented Politicos
Second of two House Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Nonproliferation hearings held in South Texas; and Department of Homeland Security progresses with plans to militarize – and privatize – border
Wassup Rockers
Larry Clark, the director of Kids, is back 10 years later with this look at a group of teenage male Latinos in Los Angeles who have more than the usual difficulties finding somewhere to fit in.
Arts Review
With ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,’ directors Ginger Morris and Robin Lewis and a wealth of local musical talent have created something truly special: the best Zilker Summer Musical in the past 10 years
Gun It, Chief!
APD acting-Chief Cathy Ellison is under investigation by APD’s Internal Affairs to determine whether she violated department policy by leaving her gun inside a city vehicle when she dropped it off for repairs late last year, says Assistant City Manager Rudy Garza. Ellison reportedly dropped off her city-owned Ford Taurus to fleet services on Dec.…
Cavite
This rocketing thriller that pits an unseen Filipino terrorist against an unwitting Filipino-American dupe is one of the purest examples of no-budget, seat-of-the-pants, gloriously DIY filmmaking since The Blair Witch Project.
Arts Review
Only one woman in Austin could play Shirley Valentine with the charismatic hold of a storyteller, and that would be Bernadette Nason, who stars in Onstage Theatre Company’s production
The Fan’s Perspective
Austin Chronicle: It sounds like you got in on the ground floor of Collings guitars. Lyle Lovett: I met Bill in 1978. I was looking for somebody to do a fret job on my Martin D35. I saw a singer-songwriter at a small place in Houston called Theodore’s, a guy named Rick Gordon. He was…
Weed Watch
Limbaugh gets caught with illegal Viagra; and U.S. Supreme Court rules that police violation of knock-and-announce rule isn’t grounds for suppression of evidence seized
Arts Review
With its second exhibit, The Donkey Show moves away from the spectacular toward something a little closer to home, or at least to Home Depot: Rebecca Ward works with masking tape, and Kurt Mueller’s supplies are straight from the paint aisles
Phases & Stages
Thom YorkeThe Eraser (XL) Radiohead’s energy source is universal, powered between positive and negative extremes. “Anyone Can Play Guitar” defines the Oxford-hatched quintet’s 1993 debut, Pablo Honey, yet remains forever eclipsed by piano-bar standard “Creep.” Thom Yorke’s alternate-reality-jazz-singer status, indie rock’s Jimmy Scott, solidifies follow-up The Bends and the crystal blue persuasion of “Fake Plastic…
Minimum Wage Woes
In failing to pass bill that would have led to federal minimum wage raise, Congress fails workers
Readings
What better way to escape the vagaries of commodity culture than to escape to a Caribbean tourist trap, be devoured by rabid mosquitoes, and get stalked by deranged natives happy to butcher white folks where they stand?
Phases & Stages
“I had so much footage of him being such a humble, nice guy that he looked pathetic,” confesses director Dick Rude at a Tribeca Film Festival Q&A, assured in the knowledge that his 67-minute Joe Strummer: Let’s Rock Again (Image Entertainment) leaves the late Clash frontman in a heroic spotlight. Reeling from the deservedly disappointing…
Point Austin: Five-Card Draw
It’s still early, but the governor’s race bears a closer look
Readings
Political controversy aside, this is a mystery that works, one whose turns are neither obvious nor illogical
Phases & Stages
Tool10,000 Days (Dissectional) Tool’s fourth studio release ain’t their best, but this hasn’t effected its popularity. The math-mystical quartet’s 10,000 Days went platinum soon after its release. How? Thanks to 2001’s justifiably multiplatinum Lateralus. Five-year between-album interludes prime fan salivary glands. 10,000 Days references the duration singer Maynard James Keenan’s mother endured a stroke-induced paralysis…
The Hightower Report
War Numbers; and Ignoring News of the People
After a Fashion
Stephen eats out. You can’t take him anywhere.
Phases & Stages
Christopher O’RileyHome to Oblivion: An Elliott Smith Tribute (World Village) The apparent suicide of singer-songwriter Elliott Smith in October 2003 hit like a death in the family. Concert pianist Christopher O’Riley didn’t share in this grief. Instead, as happened with many others, Smith’s passing served as an introduction to his music. With Home to Oblivion,…
Extra Credit
How a class I took in college helped find distribution for a low-budget, high-caliber indie
Day Trips
The Robert E. Howard Museum in Cross Plains modestly holds the story of the creator of ‘Conan the Barbarian’ like a thin-shelled egg
Phases & Stages
Brad Mehldau Trio House on Hill (Nonesuch) Brad Mehldau & Renée Fleming Love Sublime (Nonesuch) In the decade he’s been recording with his trio, 35-year-old pianist Brad Mehldau has set a particularly high standard for his generation. The trio, with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy, recently disbanded with Rossy’s departure, and this sterling…
Short Circuit
SXSWclick announces its 15 finalists
To Your Health
Is lithium safe for a teenager?
Phases & Stages
Ralph StanleyA Distant Land To Roam: Songs of the Carter Family (Columbia/DMZ) Ralph Stanley was an infant in 1927 when Ralph Peer first recorded A.P. Carter; his wife, Sara Carter; and their sister-in-law, Maybelle Carter, in Bristol, Tenn. Consequently, the Carter Family, as they soon became known, provided part of the soundtrack that Ralph and…
Film News
Tall tales of the Texas film industry
The Common Law
Temporary restraining order
Studying for Justice
Austin students get a summer immersion in activist history
DVD Watch
Beyond the RocksMilestone, $29.95 Electric Edwardians: The Lost Films of Mitchell & KenyonMilestone, $29.95 Two recently rediscovered and restored treasures from the silent era make their way back from oblivion and onto DVD this month. Electric Edwardians, a collection of film vignettes by English filmmakers Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon, has been culled together from…
Soccer Watch
Italy triumphant, the United States drops in the world rankings, and more
Media Watch
Feds make lame attempt to show broadcasters who’s boss
TV Eye
Nom sequitur
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Neuroses aren’t so sexy after all
Vote Suit
On Tuesday, Judge Rose Spector, a former Supreme Court judge visiting Travis County’s 353rd District Court, ruled against a temporary injunction against the county’s current electronic-voting system. Without the injunction, the lawsuit will proceed to trial some time early next year, but the November election will proceed as planned. Several plaintiffs, including the NAACP of…
Music String
3: Finish The neckless body heads into the finish room, where it gets its first base-coats of polyurethane and lacquer. Before the final sand and buff, the body goes back to the body room for the neck to be set. As subtle as the difference might seem, if the neck had been applied before the…
Oops!
In the July 7 issue, Graham Reynolds’ A Scanner Darkly concerts were incorrectly listed in last week’s “Tone Setter” sidebar. Both shows at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar are Saturday, July 15, 7:15 & 10:30pm. The Chronicle regrets the error. In the Balistica record review for Promise Land last week (July 7), Sergio Carvajal was…
WilCo Court Fight
Suit claims commissioners gutted constable’s budget after it had already been adopted, in order to transfer mental-health duties from constable’s precinct to sheriff’s office
TCB
Guitar (and piano, drum, trumpet, saxophone, clarinet, etc.) nirvana comes to Austin with the NAMM Summer Show
From Stuff, Art
The 21st ‘New American Talent’ exhibition features a whopping 72 works of art, many of them created from everyday objects
The Good Egg: More Than 200 Fresh Approaches from Breakfast to Dessert
The egg, once scorned, is now celebrated
Naked City
Headlines and Happenings from Austin and Beyond
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
The pirate genre will always be buoyed aloft on the swells of outrageous action, ridiculous couture, and the derringest of do – and this sequel is no different.
Camp Nohegan
In the first year of Camp Nohegan, 30 artists gathered for four days in cabins at McKinney Falls State Park, made arts and crafts, took lots of pictures of each other, and generally hung out
Food-o-File
Austin loses a leading foodie, at least for a while; plus, the French rule
Say Hello to Your New ME
Commissioners vote to hire Dr. David Dolinak as county’s third-ever medical examiner
Luv Doc Recommends: 11th Annual Bastille Day Festival
Just because you watched the World Cup finals last Sunday doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a terrorist or a commie or even a foreigner, it only makes you a suspect. That’s OK though, because these days pretty much everyone outside the Oval Office is a suspect, so you’re in good company. Amazing as it may seem,…
