Cover Story
Arts String
A guide to 10 new companies that are charging up Austin’s theatre scene
A Scanner Darkly Premiere
A Scanner Darkly Premiere 2006, R, 100 min. Directed by Richard Linklater, Starring Keanu Reeves, Rory Cochrane, Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr.. Local premiere of Linklater’s latest, which is an animated adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s cautionary tale about drug abuse and the government’s intrusion into personal privacy. Linklater and special guests will…
Microcinema/Outdoor Yard Art Show With Lori Surfer-Varga and DJ rADiCon
Microcinema/Outdoor Yard Art Show With Lori Surfer-Varga and DJ rADiCon Outdoor cinema includes Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires and other shorts, as well as “Balm Away” and “barbie of Villendorf” by Phyllis Masters and laura Tabor-Huerta.
Monkey Business and Horse Feathers
Monkey Business and Horse Feathers A double bill of Marx brothers films every Wednesday. Dress in gangster attire or wear your graduation cap and gown to get free snacks. Morris Weiss, a Marx brothers expert, will introduce the films and display his memorabilia.
‘Table Tennis’ for the Xbox 360
Rockstar Games, following its reign as cool-gaming king with the Grand Theft Auto series and the retro-hip Warriors, decides to lower the stakes with Table Tennis. Their latest release focuses less on style and lets the simple beauty of the sport shine. The players are rendered well without dropping any jaws, and the soundtrack sidesteps…
To Your Health
Is there a reliable and inexpensive way to test a home for radon?
Phases & Stages
PhoenixIt’s Never Been Like That (Astralwerks) A snare battery blasts in with high staccato guitar, and it’s immediate: This is a departure. No longer is Versailles quartet Phoenix mired in the ambience of fellow Frenchmen Air; no longer is soft-rock irony a driving force in their music. Led by the smooth vox of Thomas Mars,…
Lobbying for Energy Efficiency
Coalition aims to reduce state’s electricity consumption and costs through expanded utility efficiency programs
The Common Law
Protesting High Property Taxes – Persuasive Evidence
Phases & Stages
ShellacEmo’s, June 9 When punk rock destroys fashion and melodrama, only the roots show. Chicago’s post-rock trio Shellac stands as one of the most influential and sporadic bands of the Nineties, and for their Austin debut, engineering guru Steve Albini (right) was a lisp away from sci-fi dork, his aluminum Travis Bean guitar fastened around…
On the Water Front
Austin Water Utility and EPA announce new labeling program for high-efficiency products
Day Trips
Col. Charles Goodnight’s home and all of his many accomplishments are being remembered and restored by the Armstrong County Museum and the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department
‘Y’ Can’t We Be Friends?
The Fix290 Coalition provides a test case for highway and community compatibility
Point Austin: Up or Out?
Debates over open space and neighborhoods are the discourse of community
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Prison populations and a Polish pope
CAMPO: Whose Ox Gets Soothed?
Fix290’s proposal gets praised at Tuesday’s meeting for its cooperative approach
Beside the Point
At 3am, who cares what’s going into the bonds?
Texas in Bold, Dark Strokes
When Jack Jackson wasn’t studying, researching, and presenting history in painstakingly drawn graphic novels, this wildly talented artist and scholar was making it himself
Soccer Watch
Places to watch the WC, and more
Follmer Fights Back
Fired APD Officer Joel Follmer to seek reinstatement
The Hightower Report
State Secrets; and The GOP’s Xenophobic Goofiness
Austin Tea Party
The Tea Embassy presents Best on Ice
Good Morning, Afghani-Stan!
Stan Knee will be one of thousands of former U.S. police officers now working abroad in lucrative postings, typically as private employees of international conglomerates under contract to the U.S. government
Throwback Throwdown
Can the next-gen and old-school coexist?
Working-Class Heroes
The Stallion Grill5201 Airport, 380-9433 Monday-Friday, 11am-3pm (soon adding breakfast, starting at 6 or 7am) When caterer Rick Collier leased this former burger and barbecue joint on Airport, he saw the venture as a convenient commercial kitchen for his successful corporate catering operation. Since the kitchen was already set up for serving barbecue and burgers…
The True Originals
In her solo show ‘True Originals,’ painter Daphane Park has created a series of mutant portraits that are 1/3 female creature, 1/3 creepy textures, 1/3 dreamy background
Food-o-File
Reports from rumor patrol; plus, it’s that time of year for many, many different kinds of beer
Media Watch: Libel Suits Ain’t Pretty
Suit against KVUE alleges story defamed local modeling and acting school owner
Players’ Guide
News and rumors from the digital realm
TCB
Talking smack with Doug Stanhope and the Yuppie Pricks, investigating Substance D with ‘A Scanner Darkly’ composer Graham Reynolds
In Memoriam
Bil Pfuderer, an actor, director, and designer in Austin theatre for 20 years and producer of the Zilker Summer Musical from 1980-1995, died in Canton, Ohio, on June 4
Better Git It in Your Soul
Why listen to jazz’s greatest bassist Charles Mingus today? The Creative Opportunity Orchestra’s monthlong Mingus Among Us series has answers.
Naked City
Headlines and happenings from Austin and beyond
In Print
‘Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema’ and ‘Conversations With John Schlesinger’
David vs. Goliath
The retro revival takes on some of the hot recent releases
Mozart! (Like You’ve Never Heard It Before)
Austin choral ensemble Conspirare marks Mozart’s 250th birthday with the newly finished version of his ‘Mass in C Minor’ in the concert Mozart! (Like You’ve Never Heard It Before)
Tina Marsh Reviewed
Tina MarshVolume I: Inside the Breaking(CreOp Muse) The best big-band maestros often sacrifice the spotlight for the greater good, the larger whole, and Tina Marsh remains democratic to a fault. Shouldering Austin’s Creative Opportunity Orchestra since 1980, Marsh and her clarion larynx gnarl and stoke the free-thinking collective’s locomotion. Following 1994’s The Heaven Line, and…
Weapon Against Cervical Cancer Approved
Food and Drug Administration announces approval of vaccine that prevents cervical cancer and genital warts caused by human papilloma virus
In Print
Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinemaby Jamie Russell Fab Press, 320 pp., $29.95 (paper) The eating of brains has become a business, and author Jamie Russell does a great job tracing the slow, shambolic rise of the zombie. Citing the early works of adventurers like William Seabrook, whose 1929 book The…
Nacho Libre
This sophomore outing from the director of Napoleon Dynamite is full of cheesy goodness, courtesy of Jack Black, but a little goes a long way.
Arts Review
Salvage Vanguard Theater’s repertory revival of all three parts of its popular Intergalactic Nemesis series parodying science fiction radio serials delivers three evenings of gluttonous intergalactic delectation
Mingus Erectus
The Complete Debut Recordings (Concord) Moods of Mingus (Savoy) Jazz Composers Workshop (Savoy) Jazzical Moods (Concord) Tijuana Moods (RCA) Passions of a Man: The Complete Atlantic Recordings 1956-1961 (Rhino) The Complete 1959 Recordings (Columbia) East Coasting (Bethlehem) Mingus in Wonderland (Blue Note) Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus (Candid) The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady…
Fighting the Sex War
Christina Page, author of How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex, visits Austin
In Print
Conversations With John Schlesingerby Ian Buruma Random House, 208 pp., $14.95 (paper) If John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy hasn’t aged well, neither have a lot of other Best Picture Oscar winners, and none of those boast either an X rating or Jon Voight as an apple-cheeked rent boy. Marred by an easily shocked vision of fanciful…
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
Racing junkies would be better off browsing the many online drifting videos in which the camera doesn’t cut and the people don’t speak.
Arts Review
The Pat Hazell-Matt Goldman comedy ‘Bunk Bed Brothers’ isn’t just for nostalgic baby boomers; it’s for anyone who can understand the rivalry and love between brothers growing up together
Mingus Among Us
In a Very Rare Mood Alex Coke and John MillsSaxophone Trio & String Quartet Sonny Rollins meets the Kronos Quartet.The Wonderland Band Named for the Mingus in Wonderland record and formed by bassist Beau Sample and alto/baritone saxophonist David Chenu, who play their arrangements of classic Mingus recordings. Featuring ECFA’s Carl Smith, as well as…
Weed Watch: DPS Says Drug Seizures Up
Troopers collect $160 million worth of cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana, department reports
Austin Wranglers
City officials gathered in the House Park end zone Tuesday to fete the decision by NBC to film 12 episodes of Friday Night Lights in Austin beginning in August. Each episode is expected to have a $1.5 million budget, for an overall fiscal impact of more than $20 million locally. It’s about “cultivating a creative…
The Lake House
This tale of magical realism has potential for delightful originality, but the Sandra Bullock-Keanu Reeves love story lacks heat and the science fiction premise spirals into senselessness.
Arts Review
Requiem Intel Building, through June 24 Running time: 50 min A figure stands on an upper floor of an unfinished building, toes gracing the lip of a concrete ledge that is, like every part of the great gray structure, open to the air. Even though we are four stories below and many yards away, we…
Phases & Stages
Tapes n’ TapesStubb’s, June 13 Thank God for air conditioning, because without it, the triple-digit cook out generated by this indie rock triple threat at a sold-out Stubb’s indoors show Tuesday night might have caused the 350 people inside to collapse from heatstroke. Kicking off the triple bill was L.A.’s Cold War Kids, who wed…
Maxey Helps Dems Rebuild
Former state-representative- turned-political-consultant offers his grassroots organizer skills to help Texas Denocratic Party get it together
DVD Watch
John Wayne has been called many things, but “beautiful” isn’t often one of them
Fall to Grace
Shot in Austin with a mostly local cast and buoyed by a fine, evocative score, Fall to Grace is a quiet little ensemble film that pulses with its own unique heartbeat.
Readings
Finally, English-speaking audiences find out what all the Norwegian fuss was about.
Phases & Stages
Be Your Own Pet(Ecstatic Peace/Universal) Let’s imagine the Yeah Yeah Yeahs never existed, because Be Your Own Pet’s two-minute blasts of post-pubescence are true testament to the loud, fast rules of punk. Produced by Redd Kross’ Steven McDonald, the Nashville quartet’s debut LP has a hard-nosed combustibility, from appropriately titled opener “Thresher’s Flail” to “Bunk…
Abbott Spanks Spammers
AG secures more than $10 million settlement against former UT-student-turned-super-spammer Ryan Pitylak and partners
TV Eye
What if?
Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties
Hide the lasagna: The fat, lazy cat – and his doppelgänger – is back.
Readings
Dubbed an “erotic mystery,” Conversations With Mr. Prain is neither erotic nor mysterious
Phases & Stages
The RaconteursBroken Boy Soldiers (V2/Third Man) Jack White has gone on till he’s blue in the face about how the Raconteurs, his new band with singer-songwriter Brendan Benson and the rhythm section of Cincinnati’s Greenhornes, is not a side project. If that’s what it takes to get him to pick up the electric guitar again,…
Anthony Graves Update
Seeking to overturn a lower court’s ruling that death row inmate Anthony Graves must be given a new trial by Sept. 12, AG’s office files final appeal to U.S. Supreme Court
Wah-Wah
The death throes of an empire are are practically nothing when compared with the twitch of the marital death nerve in Richard E. Grant’s semiautobiographical directorial debut.
Page Two: Loss Upon Loss
Legendary cartoonist, historian, and Texan Jack Jackson passes on
Phases & Stages
We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen(Plexifilm) Director Tim Irwin’s heartbreaking documentary of San Pedro, Calif., trio the Minutemen begins with grey-haired Mike Watt in 2003, summing up his serendipitous meeting with D. Boon at age 13: “I was quite smitten with him.” Not the most punk rock of beginnings, but We Jam Econo…
As The Transportation Policy Turns, Latest Episode
The great Central Texas toll roads drama continues to unfold
The Lost City
Andy Garcia’s film is a Cuban exile’s lament – more a dirge for what has vanished than a celebration of the past.
After a Fashion
Stephen takes on the statewide political landscape … and throws a Tupperware Party … sort of.
Phases & Stages
Dr. JohnMercernary (Blue Note) Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint The River in Reverse (Verve) To stealiate from Preston Sturges, as Dr. John might slang, 1,000 pianos dreamed a 1,000 years, and two of New Orleans’ piano princes were born. Their collaborators, Johnny Mercer and Elvis Costello, are the product of a millennia or two of…
Water Management: Swimming in Policy
Governor-appointed committee outlines water policy issues it intends to prioritize
Luv Doc Recommends: Now I’m 64: Paul McCartney’s Birthday Sing-Along
Back in 1968 at the age of 28 John Lennon said, “Never trust anyone over 30.” He was killed 12 years later by a 25 year old. That doesn’t necessarily make Lennon wrong; it just makes the statement ironic. People under 30 are still developing their sense of irony and haven’t yet learned to avoid…
