Cover Story
The Usual Suspects
The first year of the Will Wynn era closes to very mixed reviews, as Austinites wonder whether the city leadership is floundering.
The Irony of Fate
The Irony of Fate 1975, NR, 192 min. Directed by Eldar Ryazanov, Starring Andrei Myagkov, Barbara Brylska. In a drunken New Year’s Eve mixup, a man mistakes his friend’s life for his own.
Kansas City Bomber
Kansas City Bomber 1972, PG, 99 min. Directed by Jerrold Freedman, Starring Raquel Welch, Kevin McCarthy. Raquel Welch delivers some of her finest work as this roller-derby star trying to balance her personal and her professional life.
The Great Race
The Great Race 1965, NR, 150 min. Directed by Blake Edwards, Starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, Peter Falk, Keenan Wynn, Arthur O’Connell, Vivian Vance, Dorothy Provine, Larry Storch, George Macready. Edwards’ ode to slapstick follows the format of that other big mid-Sixties comedy, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, by sending a…
Perry Calls for CPS Probe
The governor orders another investigation of human-services agency
Exhibitionism
Shard Live Performance Collective’s original production Political Asylum creates a vision of everyday chaos through asylum bars
Phases & Stages
Bobby Bare Jr.’s Young Criminals’ Starvation League From the End of Your Leash (Bloodshot) Bobby Bare Jr.’s last album had everyone who heard it falling all over themselves with praise. There was a vocal minority, though, who found it whiney and self-indulgent. From the End of Your Leash is likely to avoid such a split,…
Second Helpings: Slices of Life, Part I
Aljon’s Pizza 1945 E. Oltorf, 851-8686 Monday-Friday, 11am-10pm; Saturday-Sunday, noon-10pm It might take a little longer to get your pie at this unassuming neighborhood gem, but the chewy, well-bubbled crust and spiced-right Roma-tomato sauce make skipping the factory-style chains a worthwhile endeavor. In addition to pizza, Aljon’s serves lasagna, ravioli, manicotti, and a fine selection…
Clean Air in Texas? Not!
The state’s clean bill of health means less than meets the eye (and nose)
The Latest in Paper
Based loosely – very loosely – on the Seventies German film actress and cabaret singer of the same name, Ingrid Caven’s is a world psychologically damaged, and perpetually haunted, by the horrors of the 20th century
Phases & Stages
PJ HarveyUh Huh Her (Island) Four years after PJ Harvey illustrated Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, her voice growls with unbelievable ferocity. A coat of armor covers her soft core, but still, she teaches that femininity and masculinity are often interchangeable. Still, she sings about love while humping a guitar. Uh Huh…
Music String
Tracing the history of Austin hip-hop through its vinyl
Call Him Unimpeachable?
The governor’s gamble on casinos may yet come up snake-eyes
News/Print
Qbp6++
Phases & Stages
Beastie BoysTo the Five Boroughs (Capitol) Like Jane’s Addiction on 2003’s kinetic but ultimately disappointing Strays, the Beastie Boys have become prisoners of their own mythology. They’ve long since completed the transition from panty-raiding Run-DMC freaks to committed peace activists with killer crossover dribbles, but their first album since 1998’s Hello Nasty finds Mike D,…
TCB
Time to get suicide out of the bars and back in ‘Heathers’ where it belongs
Austin @ Large: Big-Box Breakdown
Impact? What impact? The city’s slothful retail strategy.
Page Two
Left-leaning criticism is not the same as political extremism
Phases & Stages
If the mechanics of millennial metal are Seventies vintage (Young Heart Attack = Humble Pie), then Sweden’s Hellacopters gyrate like UFO. It’s the piano mostly, commingling with acoustic underpinnings (“Rainy Days Revisited”), and Nicke Andersson’s anthemic tenor, which, like old Phil Mogg’s vox, is the titanium casing on this arena rocket. And as with Michael…
Toll Road Plan Remains in Fast Lane
The fact that it’s Travis Co. Commissioner Gerald Daugherty, of all people, asking the region to slow down on road construction is a bit of an irony. Daugherty is the great champion of Central Texas road building, the man who almost single-handedly defeated the light rail proposal in Austin. Yet there he was at last…
Stranded
Karen Bernstein’s ‘Are the Kids Alright?’ examines the state of mental health care in Texas
After a Fashion
Stephen ‘courts’ the United folks and their roadkill, shares his dishy Internet source bookmarks, and finds out which red and which white go with huntin’ and fishin’… monarchs and gossip and bears, oh my!
Phases & Stages
Bob MarleyThe Legend Live (Trojan/Sanctuary) By November 1979, when this concert was filmed, reggae’s Haile Selassie – 34-year-old Bob Marley – was battling cancer. In the hourlong, newsreel-style bonus documentary included on The Legend Live, Marley looks terrible – gaunt, sallow. The Lion of Judah is dying. In front of a hillside of approximately 10,000…
ACC Goes Back to the Drawing Board
Plans for new South Austin Campus bust the college’s budget
Relearning Love
Richard Linklater is watching the clock. He perches on a sofa in the Paramount’s mezzanine, the muffled sounds of his 1995 film Before Sunrise echoing from the screen behind a pair of French doors. Interviewers come and go in 15-minute increments. Next up are reporters from People, who will lob questions about the Austin premiere…
Soccer Watch
Three cheers for the underdogs!
Lowe’s Loses Again
The Brodie Lane big-box project remains shut down until a September trial
In Space
WorldStarGazette.com
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
A nudge is as good as a wink to a blind bat.If you are highly allergic to poison ivy, you should also avoid ginkgo nuts, lacquered boxes, and cashew shells, because they contain the substance in poison ivy that causes rashes.Allen Ginsberg slept with someone who’d slept with Walt Whitman.On average, it costs six times…
Wynn’s World: The Picks and Pans
Grading city government under the Will Wynn administration
The Hightower Report
The economy has ‘improved’ … so why aren’t you smiling? And meet Macedonia, our ‘anti-terror’ ally.
Short Cuts
Gamers, get ready
To Your Health
Treating fibromyalgia
DVD Watch
The English Patient: Collector’s SeriesMiramax Home Entertainment, $29.99 Eight years ago, and quite unwittingly, Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient became the blueprint for the nascent (and now somewhat maligned) Miramax Prestige Picture: epics steeped in equal parts pedigree and tragedy. But don’t blame Minghella – his sumptuous adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s award-winning novel rightfully stands…
Naked City
Headlines and happenings from Austin and beyond
TV Eye
Comedy makes a comeback
The Common Law
Can nonprofits raise money with a raffle?
A Load of ‘Special Waste’
Activists slam TCEQ reclassification of toxic TV tubes
Unclothed for Business
Kitty Kitty Bang Bang keeps burlesque alive in Austin
Day Trips
‘The Texas Post Office Murals: Art for the People’ bridges the gap between coffeetable art book and travel guide
America’s Heart & Soul
Inspirational documentary is about Americans with true grit working in a land where seldom is heard a discouraging word.
Youth Activists vs. AISD Rules
PODER conference aims to spotlight district discipline bias
Burly-Q Confidential
Burlesque is what your more adventurous old uncles jaunted out to see while their neighbors were settling down for a night of My Little Margie or Leave It to Beaver. Burlesque is a bastion of relatively innocent carnality that fell to shambles as the sexual liberation of the Sixties opened up stages to women who…
About AIDS
There’s lots of optimism about HIV treatment today, and rightly so. But the truth is that the present treatments eventually fail for about half of the poz people who use them. The primary cause: drug resistant HIV. Although not yet ideal, the available medications are powerful and sophisticated, but HIV is a slippery critter to…
King Arthur
In this cinematic retelling Arthur and his men are trained to be a warrior SWAT team for the Roman Empire.
No Sex, Please, We’re Texas
Progressive coalition challenges abstinence-only health textbooks
Arts Bullets
It’s the Changing of the Bard, from Dietz to Swanson, and Tina Marsh plays it cool for CO2. Artists talk techniques, and teens tell you where to find Good Love.
Letters at 3AM
Our country’s newest immigrant generation is no longer learning that this nation will belong to them
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Will Ferrell’s Anchorman needs more work behind the scenes.
Filling Hospital Hot Seats
Dozens apply for thankless jobs on the new district board
Quinton’s Back at Zach
‘Twisted Onion’ star Everett Quinton joins the cast for Zach’s ‘House Arrest’
Brunch, Dinner, and Dessert Theatre
The drama of the Chez Zee menu
Sleepover
Spy Kids‘ Alexa Vega graduates to tween hijinks.
Bound For the Board?
A Who’s Who of applicants for the hospital district board
One to Grow On
It’s a happy first birthday for Arts on Real
Taco Sabroso
Rosa Santis’ serious taqueria
The Clearing
Despite the contributions of Robert Redford, Helen Mirren, and Willem Dafoe, The Clearing is a psychological thriller sans suspense.
ACC Adopts $131M Budget
Trustees narrowly approve plan to raise tuition, fees, salaries
Exhibitionism
Different Stages’ production of Molly Sweeney is a restrained and elegant parable through which we come to see the beauty in not seeing
Food-o-File
Digesting Austin’s food news for you!
Before Sunset
Linklater summons up an affair to remember.
Lick Creek: The Crisis Continues
Stop-work orders keep piling up on West Cypress Hills
Exhibitionism
Like The Mountains’ tale of two brothers fighting to survive the division of Berlin into East and West is little more than a soap opera sketched from history
Phases & Stages
Simon & Garfunkel, the Everly BrothersFrank Erwin Center, July 6 For all their pleasant melodies, pastoral imagery, and harmoniously finger-picked guitar, many of Paul Simon’s songs are born of a profound sense of loss. Green leaves turn to brown, a boxer loses everything but his dignity in New York’s asphalt jungle, Joe DiMaggio departs for…
Luv Doc Recommends: Two Note Solo’s Drunken Film Festival
If your weekend plans don’t involve getting drunk, then you may want to flip back up to the Music, Screens, or Arts sections. Sorry, this is the end of the road where recommendations are concerned. If you’ve made it back here without penning something exciting into your social calendar, we can pretty much assume that…
