Cover Story
A Double Life
Napoleon Beazley was executed by the state of Texas, but he lives again in a new play
Masculine-Feminine
Masculine-Feminine 1966, NR, 103 min. Directed by Jean-Luc Godard, Starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Chantal Goya. In this, the first of three films completed by Godard in 1966, the filmmaker explores the courtship rituals of the “children of Marx and Coca-Cola,” as he calls them. The film perfectly captures the hesitations, bravado, and awkwardness experienced by France’s…
Spinal Retentive: 25 Years of Spinal Tap Oddities
Spinal Retentive: 25 Years of Spinal Tap Oddities Ken Lieck hosts this compendium of taped performances and TV appearances from band/not-band Spinal Tap.
Sonic Oddities
Sonic Oddities 100 min. This wide-ranging program from archivist Steve Parr features — you got it — all kinds of sonic oddities found on celluloid and small screen.
Funny Family Flicks
Funny Family Flicks The program includes gaffe-happy film clips and an examination into the technology that went into creating them.
The Needle
The Needle 1988, NR, 81 min. Directed by Rashid Nugmanov, Starring Viktor Tsoy, Marina Smirnova. A young man vows to take down the Soviet mafia.
Thirst
Thirst 2004, NR, 65 min. Directed by Alan Snitow, Deborah Kaufman. This documentary explores the politicization of what seems like a basic human right: that of access to water.
Pulse: A Stomp Odyssey
Pulse: A Stomp Odyssey 2002, NR, 40 min. Directed by Luke Cresswell, Steve McNicholas, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . Tap your toes around the world in this wordless documentary about global rhythms. The Stomp dancers begin by making music from household instruments before the film begins its international journey from the Bushmen…
Supreme Court: Football or Fluff?
Supreme Court hears arguments in state’s appeal of previous ruling that faulted Texas’ method of funding schools
Bad News Bears
Richard Linklater’s remake of Michael Ritchie’s 1978 classic premieres in Austin on Wednesday, July 20, 6pm, at the Paramount Theatre (713 Congress). Admission to the screening, which is presented by the Austin Film Society, ranges from $8 to $40. Linklater and his cast will be in attendance. For more information, see www.austinfilm.org. The film opens…
About AIDS
“I got a ‘negative’ HIV test about a year after I last had risky sex, but I’m concerned about the incubation time. Could HIV be dormant and show up later, even if I haven’t had unprotected sex since the test?” Questions like this are among the most common inquiries that About AIDS receives. The basic…
Phases and Stages
For the Sake of the Song Originally from Colorado, Jade Day has called Austin home for two years, during which he’s released a couple of discs of solo acoustic music. Chimera is a five-song EP from an upcoming full-length that expands Day’s sound quite a bit via a band, yet fails to overcome his overwhelming…
AISD: Low-Budget Wrassling Resumes
Budgeting for public education always involves struggles between competing needs, but these days the competition is particularly fierce
TV Eye
There’s only one other way to receive a second chance in this country: Get yourself a reality show
In Aspen, an Austin-Flavored Celebration of the Chef
A weekend at the ‘Food & Wine’ Classic
Funny Ha Ha
In his microbudget debut, writer/director Bujalski shows a superb knack for capturing real moments (the stuff that happens between all the big moments) and the residue of our half-fulfilled inclinations.
AISD Numbers
It’s all about the money
DVD Watch
Had Hollywood not balked for nearly a decade in letting its first screenwriting superstar direct one of his stories, ‘Unfaithfully Yours’ might today be recorded as Sturges’ directorial debut from 1932 / 33. Instead, it remains the modern Moliere’s final treasure.
On the Road to the Right Recipe
Austin chefs tour area farms
Dark Water
Despite a dream cast, this Hollywood remake of a Japanese horror classic is all wet.
More Summer Fireworks at ACTV
A half-year after a city-led investigation began into missing money at ACTV, no answers are forthcoming. In the manner of many of the colorful programs and personalities that populate the public access airwaves, conspiracy theories abound – and not solely over the missing funds.
Naked City
Terrorism kills more than 50 in London, war in Iraq kills thousands
Food-o-file
An exclusive glimpse into the potluck party of a food editor; plus, Austin in Oregon and this week’s Event Menu
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Burton and Depp’s screen version of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book is truer to the source material and generally splendid, artful, and often sinister, yet it doesn’t completely displace the earlier screen version.
Naked City
Headlines and happenings from Austin and beyond
Point Austin: Squeezing the Schools
Failing all its courses, the Lege sends a love note to Highland Park
Phases and Stages
Jeff KleinThe Hustler (One Little Indian) As a protégé of notorious cad Greg Dulli, Austin’s Jeff Klein is cut from the same crushed-velvet cloth, the disheveled Don Juan who’s irresistible and knows it. Given Dulli’s production of The Hustler, Klein’s third LP, it’s not exactly surprising that the album’s contents are postmarked from the corner…
Wedding Crashers
The film’s sour tone, unremarkable direction, and bewildering characterizations of sexuality and race will probably not not hurt the comedy’s charm at the box office.
Music String
My Education and Cue: the instrumental auteur theory
Naked City
Commission votes for redesign of statue that came out looking like Rep. Al Edwards, banishes original to Galveston
Food and Wine With Altitude
The Colorado scene capitalizes on climate.
Phases and Stages
Sparkwood Jalopy Pop Making a grandiose pop statement is an iffy proposition. In the quest to be universal, it’s easy to overreach and wind up with nicely arranged irrelevance. Sparkwood sidesteps this pitfall by tempering its pop aspirations with a healthy dose of ginger. To that end, the Austin ensemble kicks off its second album…
March of the Penguins
The nature photography is so intimate, and the story of the penguins’ mating is so carefully crafted into a sustained and satisfying narrative, that they become epic heroes: brave, if not fearless, and stalwart fools for love.
Section B
Getting healthy, getting high, and getting shot
Naked City
Wynn announces the formation of Mayors for Public Broadcasting, a nationwide coalition organized to defend public broadcasting from proposed Congressional funding cutbacks
Arts Review
Virgina Fleck’s 8,000-shopping bag mandala, ‘Laguna Gyra,’ swirls in imitation of a significant environmental disaster and sends an urgent, powerful message about the need for environmental restoration
Phases and Stages
Poi Dog PonderingThe Best of the Austin Years (Sony Legacy) Since their Hawaiian genesis two decades ago, Poi Dog Pondering’s had one goal: to make “soul-buoyant” music. Mission accomplished. After busking through the mainland in the late Eighties, the multihued acoustic orchestra settled in Austin. Columbia put out the group’s first three LPs – their…
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Performance artist Miranda July’s feature-length debut is packed with arresting images, moments, and single lines of dialogue – enough to earn the film top awards at Sundance and Cannes.
Naked City
Sunset Farms landfill operator requests 75-foot vertical expansion
Readings
Cormac McCarthy’s first book since the conclusion of his highly acclaimed Border Trilogy seven years ago returns to the rugged frontier of far West Texas. It’s a mythical landscape whose desolate timelessness cannot, however, forestall an unrelentingly changing world.
Phases and Stages
The Total FoxesRetirement Community It’s not a stretch to imagine Total Foxes frontman Jerm Pollet living out Jonathan Richman’s initial post-Modern Lovers vision of only playing high schools and hospitals. Instead of blowing eardrums, the Total Foxes’ localized take on pop-punk puts Pollet’s storytelling front and center, so the idea of gigging on the institutional…
Heights
This intersecting story that follows a half-dozen New Yorkers over the course of one long day and night is intellectually engaging and genuinely surprising, although not terribly risky.
Getting Inside Napoleon
In The Two Lives of Napoleon Beazley, actor Forest Van Dyke has the responsibility of playing the title character, an honor student who committed murder
Naked City
Travis County bond advisory committee recommends commissioners place a $60 million open space fund on November’s proposed bond ballot
Readings
‘Farmworker’s Daughter: Growing Up Mexican in America’ knits familia y raza together into a deceptively simple, if unspoken, universal truth with all the homespun efficacy of Rose Guilbault’s maternal brood spinning ghost stories in a Yaqui Indian adobe near Nogales, Mexico, where the author was born
Phases and Stages
The Golden BoysScorpion Stomp #2 (Hook or Crook) The Golden Boys love to make noise. The Canyon Lake trio spends most of its time out in the middle of nowhere, clanging and banging as loud as they can. The trebly results are debut Scorpion Stomp #2, 30 minutes of brain-damaged garage rock. Opener “Happiness” is…
Juvenile Offenders
The U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down the constitutionality of executing 16- and 17-year-olds will remove 28 juvenile offenders from Texas’ death row
Point Austin: Playing the Numbers
A farewell to faitful servants, and a preliminary look at the city’s priorities
Page Two
Never mind the consipracy theorists, the death of literacy, and the Democrats’ chronic foot-shooting – ‘Page Two’ needs a break.
Phases and Stages
Ghostland ObservatoryDelete.Delete.I.Eat.Meat… (Indierect) Like some lunging, stumbling, brain-craving zombie, Austin’s Ghostland Observatory has risen from the necrotic lump of flesh known as electroclash and tries to find fresh meat on their latest, appropriately-titled release. Put out by local imprint Indierect, Delete is hit or miss: sometimes it’s a nice, juicy thumping heart, other times it’s…
Ramsey’s King
How an unknown law student became this year’s Funniest Person in Austin
On the Lege
Instead of businesses, consumers and working stiffs will shoulder much of the property tax cut approved by the Senate.
After a Fashion
Good news? There are a ton of cool Austin style events going on this week. Bad news? Bears. You heard it here.
Phases and Stages
At the Drive-InThis Station Is Non-Operational (Fearless) “If you’re musically [inclined], you can’t be from Texas and not be influenced by At the Drive-In’s live shows,” posits Cory Kilduff, the throat behind Austin hardcore heavies the Rise. “I think that’s what’s wrong with generations of younger kids who never got to see them. They don’t…
To Be Continued!
Something about ‘hOle,’ a new live theatrical serial in nine episodes, is bringing folks back to the Vortex every Tuesday night of this long, hot summer
Lege Notes
Determined to turn the special session into something really special, Gov. Rick Perry added several more legislative priorities to the “to do” list – and legislators have already checked off one of those items. On Tuesday, both chambers approved a pay raise for the state judiciary (a measure that died in the final hours of…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Cell phone distraction causes 2,600 deaths and 330,000 injuries in the United States every year. According to Christopher Walken, one of the good things about making a film in the desert is that there is always plenty of parking. The estimated 7 million illegal immigrant workers in the U.S. now provide the Social Security system…
Phases and Stages
Two Tons of Steel Vegas (Palo Duro) Even though Two Tons of Steel has been named San Antonio’s Best Country Band for eight years running, they’ve yet to match that popularity in other parts of the Lone Star State. Vegas, their eighth album, just might be the one to change that. Long considered a rockabilly…
Dance Ambassadors
Ballet Austin makes a summer jaunt to Europe at the invitation of the State Department
The Hightower Report
Even W wonders; and Bush’s hatchet man thrives on attacking ‘political enemies’
Day Trips
At the Moravia Store, the beer is cold and the polka music fills the air even when there isn’t a band playing in the dance hall
Phases and Stages
Terry AllenThe Silent Majority (Sugar Hill) Terry Allen’s vast artistic oeuvre spans so many media it’s astonishing he can focus on one: music, video, graphic arts, theatre, film, and literature. With 1978’s Lubbock (on Everything), Allen became one of Texas’ premier songwriters, covered by Bobby Bare and Little Feat, and collaborating with David Byrne, Guy…
Homeward the Cellist
For one member of the Jupiter String Quartet, the ensemble’s residency at the 2005 Austin Chamber Music Festival is a homecoming
Layers of Connection
Miranda July’s crazy, shiny lovefest
Soccer Watch
Hurricane keeps Lightning grounded in Big Easy
Phases and Stages
Girlie Action The recently completed Songwriter Series at Threadgill’s WHQ provided “Girlie Action” with a column’s worth of noteworthy women. Chief among them is Robyn Ludwick, whose debut For So Long ought to land her in local Top 10s for 2005. That she’s sister to Bruce and Charlie Robison only partly explains her stunning display…
Arts Review
‘The Flu Season’ is difficult, jumping off in many different directions while focusing on love, time, memory, storytelling, and the nature of the real, but in mounting it here the Championship Theatre Group deserves its name
The Archivist in Austin
Dennis Nyback shows it all to you
To Your Health
There are several causes of water retention or edema, which research suggests may contribute to high blood pressure and other health complications
Phases and Stages
HairBall 8 Punk is a registered trademark nowadays, but for HairBall8 Records, it’s still anarchy at the office. San Diego native Ryan Davis founded the label when he was an exchange student in England and helped a friend release an album. Davis eventually moved to San Antonio with his wife and started calling the Alamo…
War Made Easy
New echoes of Vietnam: ‘Withdrawal would cripple U.S. credibility’
SXSWClick Gets Current
Multimedia contest selects finalists
The Common Law
Buying on eBay – caveat emptor
Phases and Stages
Bonus Tracks The Addictions(Electric Factory) Opener “Candy” is a perfect description for the local fivepiece: hard, sweet, and sticky. Not as ballsy as the typical 710 crew nor as edgy as Beerland, the Addictions are out there on their own, rockin’ without politicking. Just fun, nasty, fist raisers with a pop gleam, leaning heavily on…
