Cover Story
Rare Bird
From her office vantage point, beside the rosy glow of the majestic Capitol dome, 78-year-old feminist, political powerhouse, and gay rights lobbyist Bettie Naylor keeps a watchful eye over the doings at the legislature
Caesar’s Park
Caesar’s Park 2000, NR, 67 min. Directed by Sarah Price. Ceasar’s Park by Sarah Price (producer of American Movie) is the filmmaker’s up-close look at her Milwaukee neighborhood.
Incubus
Incubus 1965, NR, 78 min. Directed by Leslie Stevens, Starring William Shatner, Allyson Ames, Milos Milos. It’s the one and only film ever made in Esperanto (with English subtitles), and it figures that Shatner would be the star of this sci-fi curiosity.
Horror Express
Horror Express 1973. Directed by Eugenio Martin, Starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing. Lee and Cushing together: What more do you need to know? That Lee plays an anthropologist whose latest discovery thaws out aboard the Tans-Siberian Express and murders the passengers?
Inflated: Blow-Up Sex Doll Films
Inflated: Blow-Up Sex Doll Films An humorous collection of blow-up doll films made by underground filmmakers Steve Hall and Cathee Wilkins. The films all follow the naughty adventures of horny characters Candy and Summer as they live lives full of bestiality, underage sex, illegal aliens from Africa, devil worship, plushies, tube tops, and more. Includes…
More Happy Feet
Dance legend Fayard Nicholas returns to Austin for the fifth annual Soul to Sole Festival
Phases and Stages
Nine Inch NailsStubbs, May 25 Shouting Marianne Faithfull-by-way-of-Kurt-Weill and sporting a look straight out of Cabaret, stark Boston duo the Dresden Dolls set the stage for Nine Inch Nails’ dramarama. The Dolls’ bleak rendition of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” lingered over Stubb’s packed-to-the-outhouses sell-out, and when Trent Reznor and his cohorts stepped onstage, the primal…
Lege Wrap-Up
Workers’ Comp: Disagreeing to Agree It took Gov. Rick Perry to broker a last-minute agreement on workers’ compensation, after the two chambers deadlocked during negotiations. The state’s workers’ comp system has been fraught with problems in recent years, with a list of medical providers dominated by chiropractors and a dispute resolution system that Rep. Burt…
Top of the Heap
Austin Chronicle: What were some of the early indications that made you know you wanted to be a performer? Hedda Layne: My mother took me to see the movie New York, New York starring Liza Minelli. It … well … changed my life. I had already been a songstress and performer in my own home…
Arts Review
The Latino Comedy Project’s ‘Citizen Quién?’ hits the audience like a 300-pound masked Mexican wrestler rebounding almost horizontal off the ring ropes of parody
Phases and Stages
Chip Taylor & Carrie RodriguezRed Dog Tracks (EMI) This is the cycle you hope for: a stellar debut album matched by an equally radiant second effort bookended by a third volume that promises more of the same. Red Dog Tracks continues Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez on their lovingly worn path of genre-bending roots rock…
Lege Wrap-Up
Helter Shelter And you thought Robert Talton just hated queers. Turns out that the Pasadena Republican doesn’t like affordable-housing incentives either. Fortunately, his legislative attempt to eliminate such state-funded programs suffered an 11th-hour massacre on the House floor. Talton, who tried to sell his bill as an “affordable-housing” measure, believes that poor people would be…
Arts Review
Like the police forensics center they stand before, the flora and fauna of Art in Public Places’ Elevated Prairie deal with the inevitable: the life / death / life cycle
Phases and Stages
Martha Wainwright(Zoë) You’ll find no comparisons of Martha Wainwright’s long-awaited debut full-length to the work of her über-famous father (Loudon) and brother (Rufus). It’s too bad, because Wainwright seems to have found the alchemical secret to blending the wry storytelling of her folksy pops and the ornate embellishments of her faboo brother. In fact, allusions…
Lege Wrap-Up
A Budget, We Got Well, at least they got a budget out the door. The 2006-07 spending road map is the one piece of major legislation – and the only law that’s constitutionally required – the House and Senate managed to hash out this session. Barring significant changes by the governor, and pending the comptroller’s…
Culture Flash!
The funniest person in town now, Austinite responsible for critical mass, ‘Intergalactic’ to go national, and the Map covers downtown
Phases and Stages
The Hold SteadySeparation Sunday (Frenchkiss) The stories of the Hold Steady are one part religious guilt to two parts Sunday morning hangover. Singer Craig Finn’s voice is grating, nasal, like the guy screaming in your ear at last call about conspiracy theories and how shitty light beer is. The music is like some unholy amalgamation…
Naked City
Headlines and happenings from Austin and beyond
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
For a movie about magic pants, this film shows a surprising level of sophistication – in its performances, its production values, and its emotional maturity.
Page Two
Prelude to a column on cinematographer Haskell Wexler – by way of defending the ideological, political, and philosophical passions of John Sayles and Maggie Renzi against the intellectual bankruptcy of most current film criticism
Phases and Stages
Gorillaz Demon Days (Virgin) It begins with an “Intro” ripped from Dawn of the Dead, then come sirens, screams, and Neneh Cherry. Surely, the end is at hand? Not unless your surname is Nakamura. Gorillaz’s sophomore slink chucks the soundscaping Automator in favor of Dangermouse, and the results are reason enough for Damon Albarn’s other…
Naked City
DeLay-related organization promised corporate money would get to GOP candidates
Cinderella Man
Ron Howard and Russell Crowe have once again combined their efforts to create a big Hollywood biopic that exudes the strong whiff of Oscar bait.
After a Fashion
Your Style Avatar has been hitting the gay male porn sites again. (Again.) And this time he comes back with a real mouthful. OK, that joke was too easy … he’s comes back with a critical treatise. There.
Phases and Stages
Up to this still formative point, equanimity between the audio and visual portions of most CD/DVD combos has been mostly nonexistent. One or the other always betrays the balance of resources. Double DVD set Blanco y Negro, Bebo & Cigala en Vivo (Bluebird) spins off from last year’s Lágrimas Negras CD, the heralded summit of…
Naked City
Transportation board responds to activist calls for more compact-city planning
Layer Cake
A contemporary gangster film that both looks and feels like a Britnoir classic filtered through the Jam’s bang-on sense of style, Layer Cake takes a realistic approach to Britain’s criminal underclass.
About AIDS
Special precautions need to be taken when prescription meds are combined with other meds, with some herbs, or even with some foods
The Island of Dr. Ersek
Austin’s media-friendly Robert Ersek is the king of pop cosmetic surgery
Naked City
Austin group declares solidarity with Arizona boycott
Don’t Move
Italian story of a surgeon who falls in love with a country girl (Penélope Cruz), flirts with the self-pitying mindset of the slumming elite, and becomes something of an apology for bourgeois classism.
Day Trips
The ‘Baseball As America’ exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is a baseball lover’s dream come true
Dreaming of Jennifer
She went to sleep Kelly, she woke up Jennifer Aniston
Naked City
Gasoline/electric hybrid concept auto cruises through Austin
Brothers
This psychological drama from Denmark is interesting and well-performed, but it’s no Cain and Abel.
To Your Health
How is “black vinegar” different from regular vinegar?
AMD Not Budging Under Pressure to Reconsider Move
Enviro groups, public officials still pitching an eastern option
Point Austin: Doing the Right Thing
The city takes a small step toward racial reconciliation
“Visions of Mexico”
“Visions of Mexico” 2005, NR, 52 min. Directed by James Cars, Jason Syesta, Narrated by Jeff Jackson. The world premiere of new rock-climbing documentary by Austin filmmakers will be follwed by a Q&A and afterparty (included in ticket price). The film uses an international cast of climbers to reveal some of Mexico’s top peaks and…
On Culture’s Front Lines
The 2005 class of the Austin Arts Hall of Fame
The Common Law
Copyright – notice of copyright and copyright time limits
Campaign Update: Frontrunner Dues and Blues
Kim and Clarke race for the line
The Hightower Report
‘Texas – Third World and Proud of It!’ and a job-busting and environment-exploiting agreement
The Magnificent Ambersons
The Magnificent Ambersons 1942, NR, 88 min. Directed by Orson Welles, Starring Tim Holt, Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Agnes Moorehead. Welles’ Amberson family saga about class differences in America is based on Booth Tarkington’s novel. Though this was Welles’ follow-up to Citizen Kane, the final cut of the film was taken out of…
It’s a Flaky, Gooey, Crusty, Sugary, Savory Morning
Wake up to the delicious diversity of our town’s breakfast pastry
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Kim Cattrall vs. a monkey
Forgotten but Not Quite Gone
The 79th Legislature ends not with a bang, but lots of whimpers
Cattle Is Forever
The Austin Film Society presents ‘Return to Giant’
Ten Worst Enemies of Gay Texas
From the statehouse to the bathhouse, gay Texans better watch their backs
Soccer Watch
You’ll never walk alone!
Lege Wrap-Up
A look back at the 79th
Neighborly Concern
As the Texas film industry tries to keep up with New Mexico’s and Louisiana’s, the Lege approves an incentive program tall on talk but short on funding sources
Music String
Talkin’ about the next generation
Food-o-File
More food on TV, openings across Austin, and wine flowing in the streets
Lege Wrap-Up
Schools or Tax Cuts? They’re Still Thinking … This comes as no surprise, but legislators cleared out of the Capitol on Monday without a solution for funding education. They couldn’t agree on school finance because they couldn’t agree on which group of people to stick with the tax bill to make up for reduced property…
DVD Watch
A one-of-a-kind essay centered on art forgery and hoaxes that is built from spare parts, questionable coverage, obvious overdubbing, and outright bluff, ‘F for Fake’ is a masterwork most often hailed for its hijacking of documentary form to tease cinema’s capacity for making truth out of bullshit
TCB
Stumbling through Memorial Day weekend with Small Stars, Gorch Fock, Shane Bartell, and a cast of dozens
Lege Wrap-Up
Corte’s So-Called Life Among the bits of good news coming out of the 79th Legislature is word that San Antonio Republican Rep. Frank “The Fetus” Corte’s latest attempt to define the moment at which life begins failed. His latest bid, HB 16, didn’t even make it out of the House State Affairs Committee – a…
TV Eye
There’s been some mild hoopla over the current crop of female detectives on TV crime dramas
He Explores, She Explores
The different and yet similar work of wife-and-husband artists Ryah Christensen and Sun McColgin
gAyTX FUN GUIDE
Austin’s gay bars and then some…
Lege Wrap-Up
Getting Priorities Straight If there’s one thing activist legislators hate more than homosexuals, it’s activist judges. So this session, lawmakers set out to kill two birds (of the same sex, no doubt) with one stone by passing a proposed constitutional ban on gay marriages. The resolution, sponsored by Pampa GOP Rep. Warren Chisum and a…
Refreshingly Cho
So many times my scrutiny is unscrupulous watching celebrities interact with press. Phony cackles with David Letterman, feigned compassion with Oprah, always so on; I wonder if they even know how to be real anymore, ever-concerned with the impression they make and image they portray. Thus, true identity is lost with flash photography and a…
Message in a Can
What’s been scrawled on bathroom walls inspired the songs and stories of ‘StallGraffiti ATX’
Tiffany & Stephen Go Shopping!
Come along as Your Style Avatar Stephen Moser guides his niece through the wild and wooly world of Austin fashion
Lege Wrap-Up
Capital Punishment: Arranging the Deck Chairs It was a mixed bag for capital punishment reformers this session. Legislators finally agreed to send a life-without-parole sentencing option to Gov. Rick Perry’s desk. But the version before the Guv is a painful compromise for those devoted to meaningful death penalty reform. Instead of adding life-without-parole to the…
Maxwell Smart
AC: You’ve been called a cross between Martha Stewart and Donna Reed. How would you describe yourself? BM: I’d put a dash of Doris Day in there, and just a touch of Auntie Mame. AC: Tell us three must have items for the modern woman. BM: That’s a good question. I would say false eyelashes….…
Luv Doc Recommends: Fourth Annual AGLCC Pride Parade
If you were going to throw a Gay Pride parade in Austin, you’d probably do it on the weekend when 40,000 bikers are in town, wouldn’t you? Hell yes. It’s not like bikers are going to tip the scales of arch-conservatism appreciably – at least not any more so than East Texas legislators. It’s also…
