Double Indemnity
Double Indemnity 1944, NR, 106 min. Directed by Billy Wilder, Starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson. Wilder clocked another classic with this quintessential femme-fatale story about a pair of lovers who bump off the woman’s husband for the insurance money. It’s Fred MacMurray like you’ve never seen him (if you only know him…
O Rooster, Where Art Thou?
As Second Youth Family Theatre revives its original musical version of The Bremen Town Musicians, set in 1930s America with a country, bluegrass, and gospel soundtrack, writer / lyricist / composer Allen Robertson reflects on the show’s creation 12 years ago.
Sheet Music
Motown: Music, Money, Sex, and Powerby Gerald Posner Pantheon, 350 pp., $24.95Boogaloo: The Quintessence of American Popular Musicby Arthur Kempton Pantheon, 496 pp., $27.50 The saga of Motown Records, like that of the entire African-American music continuum — or “boogaloo” as Arthur Kempton streets it — is a multivolume, Pulitzer Prize-winning prism through which U.S.…
Is Texas High Court Contaminated by Toxic Campaign Cash?
Weekley family activism leaves a plaintiff worried about her chances for justice at the Supreme Court.
British Invasion
Local Cooper Mini enthusiasts rallied at the Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek this weekend in conjunction with the opening of The Italian Job.
Articulations
This year’s Austin Critics Table Awards ceremony turned into something of an endurance test, setting a new record for length at three and a half hours.
Sheet Music
Great God A’Mighty! The Dixie Hummingbirds: Celebrating the Rise of Soul Gospel Musicby Jerry Zolten Oxford University Press, 304 pp., $30 The story of the Dixie Hummingbirds parallels the rise of the music business in the 20th century. From humble beginnings in the Twenties, when James Davis and his high school friends began singing in…
KOOP Trial Short-Circuits
KOOP 91.7FM founder Jim Ellinger traveled from Houston to the Travis Co. Courthouse this week, hoping to retrieve at least $4,000 in expenses he claims the radio station’s current management has owed him since the late Nineties. He might have gotten his moment, if he hadn’t been a friend of the presiding judge, Pct. 5…
America’s Sweetheart
Georgetown’s Palace Theatre celebrates a weekend of Mary Pickford films.
Exhibitionism
In the Zachary Scott Theatre Center production of Side Man, director Dave Steakley conducts the play’s overlapping conversations and monologue “solos” like a good bandleader, but that fine work can’t compensate for the distance from the action created by playwright Warren Leight in depicting the gap between jazzmen and their families.
Sheet Music
Solid Foundation: An Oral History of Reggaeby David Katz Bloomsbury Press, 396 pp., $23.95 (paper) The history of Jamaican popular music has been told a number of times before, perhaps most comprehensively by Steve Barrow in his Rough Guide to Reggae. One of the collaborators on that project was David Katz, a Californian now based…
Judge Triana vs. Superduplex
For several months, the tan superduplex at the corner of 35th and Duval has stood, in gradual phases of construction, as a boxy, towering testament to zoning gone awry — at least to some of the folks, including Travis Co. Court at Law Judge Gisela Triana, that live in its shadow. Claiming 10% reductions in…
Short Cuts
Slanted and Enchanted, ‘Dazed and Confused’ Dept.: The beer was cold, the barbecue was hot, the breeze was downright invigorating, and the 2,400-plus attendees to last Saturday’s Dazed and Confused Reunion at Walter E. Long Park were, in a word or two, rocked senseless. Ten years on and Richard Linklater’s seminal slice of Seventies high…
Exhibitionism
A program of songs sacred, secular, and straddling those two realms, all by Italian Renaissance composer Claudio Monteverdi, provided Conspirare with another opportunity to provide that which it does so well: powerful, ethereal song that seems to come directly from the distant, historical source yet has all the immediacy of new work.
Sheet Music
‘We’re the Light Crust Doughboys from Burrus Mill’: An Oral History by Jean A. Boyd University of Texas Press, 192 pp., $40 (paper) If it were possible to put a finger on a single catalyst that started Western swing, it’d have to be the Light Crust Doughboys. Conceived in the early Thirties by Burrus Mill…
Naked City
Quote of the Week: “It is exactly the Stenholms of the world who will disappear … the moderate Democrats. They will go so that no Texan need grow up thinking that being a Democrat is acceptable behavior.” — Leading Republican gasbag and anti-tax crank Grover Norquist, responding to comments from a bitter U.S. Rep. Charlie…
TV Eye
The Kentucky collective Appalshop presents a more truthful depiction of the rural life in Headwaters: Real Stories From Rural America.
Exhibitionism
Every visit to Hyde Park Theatre brings a discovery of something new, and in the case of Quake, it’s playwright Melanie Marnich, whose surrealistic tale of a woman in search of a perfect love, a big love, a love that makes the earth move, is witty and perceptive.
Sheet Music
Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers of Honky-Tonk, Western Swing, and Country Jazzby Rich Kienzle Routledge Press, 288 pp., $19.95 (paper) By anyone’s measure, Rich Kienzle is an authority on country and roots music, having written countless books, articles, and CD liner notes on his subjects. In Southwest Shuffle, culled partly from liner notes for a Bear Family…
Naked City
In January 1999, Iraqi elementary schoolteacher Akbal Thyab heard a U.S. cruise missile slam into the ground nearby her home in Basra and ran outside to check on her two young sons, Haider and Mostafa. They were covered in blood. Unable to carry both children, she picked up Mostafa and ran him to the hospital.…
Wrong Turn
Wrong Turn 2003, R, 95 min. Directed by Rob Schmidt, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Desmond Harrington, Eliza Dushku, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Jeremy Sisto, Kevin Zegers, Lindy Booth. The American horror film, like Michael Jackson’s nose, has become a denuded affair, a shadow of its former glory, cut and chopped to secure the R…
Page Two
Classic “Page Two” here: a very long introduction to set a framework to think about the larger meaning of a more local incident. Bear with me. Politics is inherently spin. As an elected official, how do you get to do what you want to do (or think needs to be done) while convincing as many…
Sheet Music
Heartaches by the Number: Country Music’s 500 Greatest Singles by David Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren Vanderbilt University Press, 320 pp., $59.95 You can’t please everyone, especially when you’re writing a book as ambitious as this one. Surely David Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren knew this from the start — that there would be those offended by…
Naked City
State House Rep. Elliott Naishtat, D-Austin, is heading to Massachusetts this weekend to deliver the keynote speech at the Bay State’s Democratic Party convention. Naishtat plans to discuss his experiences as a Killer D, one of the House members who skipped town — and Texas — to thwart U.S. House Majority Leader (Hot Tub) Tom…
2 Fast 2 Furious
2 Fast 2 Furious 2003, PG-13, 94 min. D: John Singleton; with Paul Walker, Tyrese, Eva Mendes. John Singleton’s sequel to last year’s sexy and entertaining street-racing mini-epic is awash in more Miami South Beach neon and carbon fiber fins than all the fish in Finding Nemo on a gill’s night out in Tokyo’s Ginza…
After a Fashion
Keg party at the lake! We get starstruck at the 10th anniversary party for Dazed and Confused, Richard Linklater’s classic ode to bud and tube socks.
Sheet Music
Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal by Ian Christe HarperCollins, 385 pp., $24.95 After a flurry of punk and hardcore history books — among them Steven Blush’s American Hardcore and Mark Spitz and Brendan Mullen’s We’ve Got the Neutron Bomb — a definitive and far-ranging stab at doing the same…
Naked City
The Texas Gay Pride weekend is bigger than ever this year, in spite of the state’s newly signed Defense of Marriage Act that withholds recognition of civil unions established in other states. Friday offers two event options: Project Transitions’ annual Texas Swing benefit at 8pm at Saengerrunde Hall, 1607 San Jacinto, and the Capital City…
Blue Car
Blue Car 2003, R, 96 min. Directed by Karen Moncrieff, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring David Strathairn, Agnes Bruckner, Margaret Colin, Frances Fisher, Regan Arnold, A.J. Buckley, Sarah Buehler, Amy Benedict. Blue Car, while driving across some familiar yet delicate turf, threatens to careen perilously past the edge of propriety and taboo. And…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Confucious say: The use of knives at a Chinese dinner is considered “poor taste.”The Tower of Death in Bhukara, Uzbekistan, built in 1100, was formerly used for executions (victims were thrown from windows). Recently, city fathers forbid the construction of a modern hotel within view of the tower.According to The Great American Bear by Jeff…
Sheet Music
The Smiths: Songs That Saved Your Lifeby Simon Goddard Reynolds & Hearn, 176 pp., $19.95 (paper) Though they’ve arguably been eclipsed in influence by New Order, the Smiths remain the most important British rock band of the Eighties, and the mere existence of this exhaustive song-by-song recount of their career speaks volumes about their fervent…
Naked City
On May 28, six of the nine justices on the Court of Criminal Appeals showed up in court to hear oral arguments in the case of Robert Springsteen, the first defendant tried and convicted for the December 1991 yogurt-shop murders. Springsteen’s case is also the first to come back on appeal — but likely won’t…
The Man Without a Past
A man, beaten into amnesia, builds a new life in this Oscar-nominated Finnish film.
Day Trips
Farm Fresh Soaps in Calvert wants to clean up the world one bar of soap at a time. The little factory and store in this historic village may not cure all of the world’s ills, but it is making it a better-smelling place to live. Chrissy Daley has been making herbal soaps for almost 10…
Call and Answer
It’s been a hard spring of politics in Texas; now it’s time to relax with a book.
Naked City
After months of community resistance to Seton Healthcare Network’s proposal to take possession of the city-owned Children’s Hospital, the health care giant now appears to be enjoying a smooth ride toward realizing its goal. The City Council today (Thursday) will consider a zoning change that would enable Seton to build a new Children’s Hospital on…
Raising Victor Vargas
Raising Victor Vargas 2003, R, 88 min. Directed by Peter Sollett, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Victor Rasuk, Judy Marte, Melonie Diaz, Altagracia Guzman, Silvestre Rasuk, Krystal Rodriguez, Kevin Rivera. The camera fixes first on a 16-year-old named Victor (Victor Rasuk), who is flexing his abs and licking his lips. Then, on a…
Summer Reading 2003
Summer Reading 2003: Augusten Burroughs’ follow-up memoir to his bestselling Running With Scissors
To Your Health
Is the Atkins diet a good option for weight loss?
Books Discussed in This Essay
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Truth About Corporate Cons, Globalization, and High-Finance Fraudsters by Greg Palast Penguin Putnam Inc., 367 pp., $14 (paper) Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron by Mimi Swartz with Sherron Watkins Doubleday, 386 pp., $26 Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover…
Naked City
The story that 37-year-old Cliff Katz, nephew of restaurateur and recent mayoral candidate Marc Katz, allegedly solicited a man to kidnap and murder his wife Angela, made lurid late-news visuals and Statesman headlines earlier this week. According to the daily, Cliff Katz, a gas-station cashier, offered a man named John Garza $1,000 to kidnap and…
The Good Old Naughty Days
The Good Old Naughty Days 2002, NR, 69 min. Directed by Michel Reilhac, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . Upon first blush, this collection of mostly European “blue” short films shot prior to the advent of sound is a little disconcerting – the panoply of sexual acts portrayed might upset any naive notions…
All You Can Read
The Chronicle Food staff samples a buffet of books for the culinarily curious.
About AIDS
HIV Treatment Works — 20 Years or More! How long will the anti-HIV treatment last? Will it enable an HIV-infected person to survive a normal lifetime? The answer isn’t concretely known and depends on how well the poz patient sticks with taking the pills. However, a new study announced in AIDS, the journal of the…
Adiós! Don’t Let the Door …
A Quick Roundup of the Best and the Worst of the 78th Lege
Naked City
Free food, democracy, little plastic cards, instant results: These elements comprised Community Connections, a pilot program by Capital Metro and the Texas Citizen Fund that enabled Austinites to plan pedestrian- and bicycle-oriented transportation projects in their neighborhoods. The bonus, Cap Metro staffers say, is that all projects requested during the program — which wrapped up…
Second Helpings: A Little Italy, Part II
“Second Helpings” takes you on a return tour of Italy in Austin!
Food-o-File
Virginia B. Wood reheats the food news in this week’s “Food-o-File.”
“We Are Defining When Life Begins”
Address by Rep. Jessica Farrar, D-Houston, to the House May 28, 2003
Capitol Chronicle
The Lege battle over ethics covers a multitude of sins — and hidden agendas.
TCB
Clifford comes home, Steamboat packs up, and Spoon seeks a pianist transplant
Sheet Music
Myself Among Others: A Life in Musicby George Wein with Nate Chinen DaCapo Press, 544 pp., $27.50 George Wein is one of the most successful of all music producers; he’s been associated with the Newport Jazz Festival since it was founded in 1954 and with the Newport Folk Festival as well. He was a founder…
Place 5 Run-Off: It’s All Over But the Votin’
Margot Clarke and Brewster McCracken head for the finish line Saturday.
Austin @ Large: Austin at Large
Some kind of weapon is being held to the heads of the hurry-up council
Summer Reading
W.C. Fields: A Biographyby James Curtis Knopf, 624 pp., $35 It’s always been the fate of the clown to watch himself eventually become subsumed, in the public imagination, by an oversimplified version of the persona he’s created. W.C. Fields is commonly remembered as a sort of drunken bully who acerbically defended his actions with the…
Sheet Music
All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning’s Napsterby Joseph Menn Crown Business, 368 pp., $25 There’s probably not an online music user out there who doesn’t either miss Napster or regret never getting a chance to. It was more than just the ease of use and the enormous musical library available, it…
On the Lege, One Last Time
By the time the clock winds down to sine die in a normal legislative year — however nasty the fights that preceded it — the final state budget vote is generally noncontroversial. Every legislator has a stake in it, every member is aware how much common work and mutual compromise went into it, and even…
The Hightower Report
Bush appointee fights hard … for corporations; and Big Digital Brother Is Watching You
Applause! Applause!
The full list of winners for the 2002-2003 Austin Critics Table Awards, recognizing outstanding achievements in local theatre, dance, classical music, and visual art, as presented during its annual ceremony at the Capitol City Comedy Club.
Sheet Music
Alan Lomax: Selected Writings, 1934-1997by Alan Lomax; edited by Ronald D. Cohen Routledge Press, 384 pp., $30 Born and raised in Austin, ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax (1915-2002) helped introduce the world to Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Aunt Molly Jackson, and countless other folk artists in America and points beyond. Building on the work of his father, John,…
Will Fernandez Bust Throw Eastside Détente Into Turmoil?
El Concilio leader’s drug-and-assault arrest comes just as Mexican-American political cooperation is on the rise.
A Bee Worth Buzzing About
Texas Documentary Tour presents the Oscar-nominated Spellbound.
Minister of Grace
At the age of 88, legendary dancer Fayard Nicholas continues to spread the good word of tap, and this week he does it in Austin as the Festival Legend at the third Soul to Sole Tap Festival organized by Tapestry Dance Company.
Sheet Music
Blind Lemon Jefferson: His Life, His Death, and His Legacy by Robert Uzzel Eakin Press, 109 pp., $17.95 (paper) The story of “Blind” Lemon Jefferson is a striking, if frustrating, tale of the Twenties’ most successful — and most unlikely — male blues singer. Published late last summer by this longtime Austin press, author Robert…
T.A.B. Staff Held in Contempt
After two rejections from appellate courts, the Texas Association of Business filed a third appeal this week in its struggle to fend off a grand-jury inquiry into its alleged violations of Texas campaign finance laws. The six-month investigation took another twist Monday when District Judge Mike Lynch found two T.A.B. employees in contempt of court…
Adult spelling bee at Fadó
The Austin Chronicle and Fadó Irish Pub will sponsor an adult spelling bee immediately following the Spellbound screening and Q&A. Spelling-bee hopefuls must attend the Doc Tour screening (and hold on to their ticket) to take part in the bee; those interested will take a preliminary written test at the Drafthouse to determine who advances.…
