Wigstock: The Movie
Wigstock: The Movie 1995, NR, 85 min. Directed by Barry Shils, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring The Lady Bunny, Rupaul, Joey Arias, Misstress Formika, Lypsinka, Flloyd Alexis Arquette, Jackie Beat. The Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival (aGLIFF) sponsors the concluding offering of its monthly outdoor summer film series before the festival…
All That Heaven Allows
All That Heaven Allows 1955, NR, 89 min. Directed by Douglas Sirk, Starring Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Agnes Moorehead. Jane Wyman plays a widow in a small New England town who needs her hedges trimmed. Rock Hudson plays the gardener who comes to prune her shrubs. Soon, love and affection sprouts between them, but their…
Jacob Young Retrospective
Jacob Young Retrospective Directed by Jacob Young, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . Young is one of the most provocative documentarists working today. This West Virginian’s knack for finding unusual subjects is only equaled by his talent for showcasing them through the lens of his penetrating curiosity. The Dancing Outlaw films have become…
Don’t Look Now
Don’t Look Now 1973, 110 min. Directed by Nicolas Roeg, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland, Hilary Mason. This is one of those movies that keeps on giving – its gothic moodiness is impossible to shake off. Julie Christie is at her most lumininescent and Donald Sutherland is at his…
Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 1966, NR, 111 min. Directed by François Truffaut, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Julie Christie, Oskar Werner, Cyril Cusack, Anton Diffring. Truffaut’s only film in English is an adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s science fiction novel about a future in which books are banned and their possession is a high crime. Werner…
Fiddler On the Roof
Fiddler On the Roof 1971, G, 181 min. Directed by Norman Jewison, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Topol, Norma Crane, Leonard Frey, Molly Picone. Famed Israeli actor Topol, who headed the London stage version of the musical, stars in this all-out filmization of the popular show. Papa Tevye fights to preserve Jewish traditions…
Gandhi
Gandhi 1982, G, 188 min. Directed by Richard Attenborough, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Ben Kingsley, Candice Bergen, Edward Fox, John Mills, Trevor Howard, John Gielgud, Martin Sheen, Rohini Hattangady, Athol Fugard. An epic biopic, over three hours in length, Gandhi captures the spirit of the man and his struggles. The film won…
The Night of the Hunter
The Night of the Hunter 1955, NR, 93 min. Directed by Charles Laughton, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, Peter Graves. The great Charles Laughton’s only film as a director is a story often imitated but rarely equaled. With a screenplay by James Agee, the story has Mitchum…
For a Few Dollars More
For a Few Dollars More 1966, R, 130 min. Directed by Sergio Leone, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Gian Maria Volenté, Klaus Kinski. This Leone film is the sequel to A Fistful of Dollars, the movie that practically invented the spaghetti Western and turned Clint Eastwood into an…
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters 1984, PG, 107 min. D: Ivan Reitman; with Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Sigourney Weaver. The original Ghostbusters mined the comedy-horror genre way before it became the fashionably ironic and overused format it is today. The comedy here is solid-gold, Bill Murray is in peak form, and the effects are a lot of…
American Pie
American Pie 1999, R, 95 min. D: Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz; with Jason Biggs, Chris Klein, Seann William Scott, Eugene Levy. What hath Porky’s wrought? This new, faster version of the semi-classic teen sex farce is a howler, bawdy yet constrained within its gross gridlock. It’s as if the final print of Fast Times…
The Swindle
The Swindle 1997, NR, 105 min. Directed by St?phane Audran, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Francoise Cluzet, Michel Serrault, Isabelle Huppert. Even if — especially if — your movie tastes run to the aggressively stylish textures and Benzedrine-cranking narratives of young filmmakers such as Doug Liman, Guy Ritchie, and Danny Boyle, I call…
Besieged
Besieged 1999, R, 92 min. Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Claudio Santamaria, David Thewlis, Thandie Newton. It’s been many a luna since Bernardo Bertolucci has given us a movie as potently charged with emotional interiority as he does with his new one, Besieged. Made in collaboration with his wife…
The Loss of Sexual Innocence
The Loss of Sexual Innocence 1999, R, 101 min. Directed by Mike Figgis, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Julian Sands, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Saffron Burrows, Stefano Dionisi, Kelly MacDonald, Hanne Klintoe, Femi Ogumbanjo, Johanna Torell. I’ve just seen one of the purest examples of unmitigated artistic self-indulgence since the Seventies heyday of Ken Russell.…
Arlington Road
Arlington Road 1999, R, 117 min. Directed by Mark Pellington, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Mason Gamble, Robert Gossett, Joan Cusack, Hope Davis, Tim Robbins, Jeff Bridges. Paranoia strikes deep in Arlington Road, a political thriller in which the manicured lawns and barbecue smiles of suburbia mask a banal malevolence. Here, evil has…
The Blair Witch Project
Something wicked in the woods in this eagerly-awaited horror.
Eyes Wide Shut
Kubrick’s final work gets sexual
Lake Placid
Lake Placid 1999, R, 82 min. Directed by Steve Miner, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda, Oliver Platt, Brendan Gleeson, Betty White. Further proof that the end times are upon us, this scattershot, PETA-friendly monster movie is penned by the same wag who weekly brings us both Ally McBeal and…
Pariah
Pariah 1999, NR, 98 min. Directed by Randolph Kret, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Angela Jones, Dan Weene, David Lee Wilson, Aimee Chaffin, Dave Oren Ward, Damon Jones. “Great. Astonishing. The best film in Park City,” raves filmmaker Penelope Spheeris (The Decline of Western Civilization, Wayne’s World) in the press for Kret’s debut…
Taj Palace
6700 Middle Fiskville Rd., 452-9959 Daily, 11am-2pm, 5:30-10:30pm Unceremoniously installed in an ordinary-looking strip mall, Taj Palace offers a bit of exoticism in north Austin. Taj Palace primarily serves North Indian Cuisine, which is usually milder than the fiery fare served in the south. Unlike its south Indian counterpart which relies more heavily on chilies,…
Scanlines
Mallrats D: Kevin Smith (1995) with Shannen Doherty, Jeremy London, Jason Lee, Claire Forlani, Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Stan Lee. Critics seem to divide into two neat camps over writer/director Kevin Smith. There are those who think he is a guttermouth loser portraying the same, with a home-movie style and…
Articulations
Last December, when UT Austin President Larry Faulkner announced that the firm which would design the new Blanton Museum of Art at Speedway and MLK was Herzog & de Meuron Arkitekten, Basel, Switzerland, we tried to think positively about the choice. Given the firm’s glowing reputation, based on projects like the new Tate Gallery of…
Dancing About Architecture
Kim Gordon photograph by Romina Derra Rather than the natural disaster predicted by the downpour of Internet postings about Sonic Youth’s Ryder van full of equipment being stolen just prior to the group’s two-night farewell to Liberty Lunch, everybody’s favorite DIY institution did just what many locals had hoped they might do with all their…
Short Cuts
This summer has been an odd one for moviegoing. Few new movies were scheduled to open during the early part of the season. Distributors ceded the eight weeks between mid-May and mid-July to Twentieth Century Fox and the feared spectre known as The Phantom Menace. Many of them kept certain dates loose so that they…
Exhibitionism
The Yard @ The Vortex, Through Jul 17 Running Time: 30 min Remember summer days spent running sunburnt through the sprinklers? Face smeared with mud, sweat, and sticky watermelon juice? Playwright Wade Williams does. His original play, produced by One Theatre Company, is like fizzy cherry pop at the end of one of those sun-baked…
Not a Wussy Girl Band
(l-r): Shannon Wade, Susie Martinez, Sarah White, Lisa Wickware photograph by Todd V. Wolfson When the women of Handful first convened their “Church of Divine Distortion” back in September 1996, they had but one overriding motive. “The idea was that none of us wanted to be a wussy girl band,” asserts drummer Susie Martinez. “The…
What Price Cable?
I can’t believe it. I ordered HBO and Showtime. To understand how traumatic this is you have to understand a very basic thing about me. I’m cheap. Cheap is not such a bad trait, given that I’m poor, too. I have an MFA and I work for UT, so being thrifty, flinty, miserly, and frugal…
Coach’s Corner
What an absolutely perfect ending for the last days of the century. It incorporated many — if not all — of the learned marketing gimmicks of the 100 years past; ruses which can turn a local murder case, or the parentage of a teenage tennis player, or a private sexual indiscretion, into a worldwide circus.…
In Development
photograph by Todd V. Wolfson Admitting their band “still needs a lot of development,” Kitty Gordon co-founders Mark Addison and Nina Singh are perhaps the only two music industry insiders who have heard the local act’s seven-song EP, Seven, and not thought “huge advance,” “bidding war,” and “radio-ready.” Whether the duo’s reluctance to hype their…
Self-Improving Summer
People make a big deal out of New Year’s resolutions. Not me. The New Year means nothing in terms of promises to myself I’ll never keep. I make resolutions, yes. I just ignore them. Lose weight. Exercise more. Spend time more productively. Stop smoking. Noble goals all, but let’s face it, they last about as…
Matchstick Crowns and Monkey Tails
Limited edition prints of Julie Speed’s Please Help Me, My Brain Is Burning are on sale at the Austin Museum of Art with proceeds to benefit the museum. For more information, call 495-9224.
Lilith Fare
It was sometime after Bonnie Raitt’s sexy and spirited Southpark Meadows twilight set at Lilith Fair last year that it occurred to me: The Pretenders and B-52’s played here last week. Were @#$&%* great. Why aren’t they on Lilith Fair? Chrissie Hynde, Kate Pierson, and Cindy Wilson; they don’t come more “chick rock.” Where’s Garbage?…
Hot Fun in the Summertime
illustration by Jason Stout Something about summer is rebellious and barefoot and staying up way past our bedtime. Something in our brains goes native; Bain de Soleil brews in our blood. As the earth completes its transition from chilly monochrome to tropical profusion, we go with it. From beef stew to gazpacho, from layers to…
Marcel Duchamp’s X-ray Specs
Linda Dalrymple Henderson in her home office surrounded by her father�s inventions. photograph by Crawford Morgan My first encounter with Universityof Texas art history professor Linda Henderson occurred in the late Eighties when I attended a lecture put on by the Quark Club, a loose-knit organization of intellectuals from various disciplines who attempted to find…
Lipstick Traces
�Viva el Amor! (Warner Bros.) Fin de siecle — end of the century. It’s become a musical gauntlet to run, the last chance to make a statement about the century that spawned rock & roll and everything after. Punk-era new wavesters Blondie took the challenge earlier this year, anteing up two decades after the fact…
Off The Bookshelf
A Memoir of Stanley Kubrick by Frederic Raphael Ballantine, $12 paper Stanley Kubrick’s death gave Frederic Raphael something few screenwriters get: the last word. Raphael co-wrote Eyes Wide Shut with Kubrick from Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 Traumnovelle. As Raphael explains in his new memoir of working with Kubrick, “Sisyphus is the screenwriter’s mythological patron saint. For…
Postscripts
This weekend brings us the Agents! Agents! Agents! & Editors Too! Conference, that annual fast-paced absorption of knowledge about the publishing industry put on by the Austin Writers’ League. It’s a fascinating thing to watch; writers, would-be writers, wannabe writers, they all hover around agents and editors like moths to light, seemingly searching for the…
Punk Pawns
photograph by Todd V. Wolfson Even the greenest music journalist would expect the phrase “love sausage” to surface in an interview with Kid Rock or the Scabs, but never clean-cut Austin rockers the Shindigs. They’re just so nice. The PG-13 punk that pervades their self-titled debut, released this March, is hardly innocuous, but save a…
Book Reviews
by Don Webb St. Martin’s Press, $22.95 hard Maybe Don Webb believes that good writing is+a nonrenewable resource; the Austin writer seems to be conserving his considerable powers of invention and narrative for his next book, which is to say that they’re not well exercised in Essential Saltes: An Experiment. His second surrealist mystery invokes…
About AIDS
Quick Quiz #1: In conceiving a child, what percentage of the time does an HIV-positive man transmit his virus to the child? (a) always, 100% (b) 53% (c) 16% (d) none of the above. Quick Quiz #2: In conceiving a child, what percentage of the time does an HIV-positive man transmit his virus to the…
Losing Ground?
On another CSC-controversy front, some citizens are asking for assurances that the planned City Hall, which will be sandwiched between two CSC buildings and across a public plaza from a third, will be designed with adequate attention to community input and concerns. Downtown Commission and Planning Commission member Jean Mather wrote a memo to this…
Book Reviews
by Don Webb St. Martin’s Press, $22.95 hard Maybe Don Webb believes that good writing is+a nonrenewable resource; the Austin writer seems to be conserving his considerable powers of invention and narrative for his next book, which is to say that they’re not well exercised in Essential Saltes: An Experiment. His second surrealist mystery invokes…
Naked City
Bill Bunch, a founding warrior of the Save Our Springs Alliance, is taking a leave of absence from his SOS executive director/chief counsel post to pen the long and winding history of the organization that formed nearly a decade ago. Bunch leaves in mid-August for three to six months. Filling in as legal eagles during…
Day Trips
See appliance evolution at the Fan Man Museum photograph by Gerald E. McLeod The Fan Man Fan Museum in Dallas’ Lakewood Shopping Center might be the coolest museum around. You don’t have to be enthralled by the artistic beauty of hundreds of antique appliances to enjoy this museum. Looking for a refreshing breeze in the…
A Change of Scenery
Some lay of the land: Rainey Street itself runs north-south through the middle of the 88.5-acre Rainey neighborhood, which lies between I-35 and Waller Creek, Cesar Chavez Street and Town Lake. Most of the property lying to the east (along East Avenue) and west (along Red River) of Rainey Street is either vacant or has…
Page Two
Mike Clark-Madison’s cover story on the Rainey Street neighborhood and the dilemma it faces as to its future is indicative of the current important development issues facing Austin. We are constantly told that the old developer/environmentalist wars are over, and the question is, where to go next? If both communities are going to work together…
Approximate Property Values
Single-Family Commercial Rainey St. Neighborhood $19,000 $100,000 West Avenue, downtown $70,000 $225,000 Travis Heights / S. Congress $50,000 $80,000 CBD — Congress Avenue n/a $500,000
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Flies flap their wings in figure-eight patterns. The Apple I computer, built in a garage by founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, was originally priced at $666.66, which got the company into trouble with Christian fundamentalists. Aphra Benn (1640-1689) was the first Englishwoman to make her living writing. A poor Scottish farmer named Fleming once…
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?
Left to its own devices and the ebb and flow of the free market — in other words, if the city doesn’t step in with a massive overlay — development in the area will proceed piecemeal, with individual projects applying for zoning, variances, and permits as they come up. The map at right shows the…
Public Notice
… but make sure that nipple is on good and tight, so as not to waste one li’l drop of life’s precious essence. The Mothers’ Milk Bank at Austin (MMBA) at 900 E. 30th, is throwing a Grand Opening Party this week, Tue Jul 20, 2-6:30pm. There’s been a lot of buzz (slurp?) about the…
Past Planning Efforts
We’ve been down this street before … Having now been on the brink of collapse for more than three decades, Rainey Street has been the focus of many ambitious plans and schemes, both to save the neighborhood and to replace it. Viewed with hindsight, the Rainey plans now on the shelf contain a surprising number…
Automat
Shoal Creek Saloon 909 N. Lamar, 477-0600 Mon-Wed, 11am-10pm; Thu-Sat, 11am-10:30pm; Sun, noon-7pm (kitchen hours all days) Shoal Creek is the local home for all of the Nawlins Saints football games — ’nuff said? Louisiana native Bud George, a 20-year Cajun chef, builds his food from the ground up and does it the right way,…
Off the Hot Seat
Rodriguez’s confidence in his own abilities, however, is inextricable from his infamous brashness — a trait that has gotten him in trouble both in the press and in the courtroom. Judges, reporters, and political opponents alike have been lashed by his biting wit, earning Rodriguez a reputation in some circles as a hot-blooded tyrant with…
Food-o-File
The selection of chef W. Emmett Fox as the new president of the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival coincided with Fox’s departure from the San Gabriel Restaurant Group. San Gabriel owner Reed Clemons opted to replace the executive chef position with a corporate director of operations. Look for Emmett Fox to achieve his…
Into the Woods
How many filmmakers can claim a flotilla of fan Web sites lovingly devoted to their movie months before the actual film even opens? Okay, The Phantom Menace, sure, but I’m talking about an indie film that virtually nobody has even seen yet. I’m talking about The Blair Witch Project, Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick’s ultra-low-budget…
The Great Escape
photograph by John Anderson As we skidded back into our driveway and cut the engine after our first dinner at Sardine Rouge, my husband and I simultaneously leaned back in our seats and looked at each other in disbelief. Did we live here? Had we only been out to dinner? It felt like we’d been…
Getting Personal
Little People, Krawitz’s 1984 documentary on dwarves Jan Krawitz has neither the time nor patience for cinematic navel-gazing. Not for her is the “personal documentary”; there are far too many compelling real-world subjects out there competing for lens time to be off frivolously mining her own stuff. In almost 25 years of filmmaking, the 46-year-old…
