’71

A kinetic chase movie uses the Troubles of Northern Ireland as its setting

by Marc Savlov

The Luv Doc: Family Friendly

Dear Luv Doc, My next door neighbors have about five (maybe six? who knows?) children who are always outside screaming and fighting – especially in the wee hours of the morning. Their mother is home all day but doesn’t watch them at all. I don’t know what she does inside all day, but the outside…

by The Luv Doc

Chappie

Impeccable visual effects don’t counteract the film’s lackluster emotional affect

by William Goss

The Bass Drum Heard ‘Round the World

You might not know it, but you’ve heard a TR-808. Released in 1980 by Japan’s Roland Corporation, the rudimentary drum machine supplied the bombastic beats of early hip-hop, the futuristic sounds of house and techno, and even snuck its way into pop hits by the likes of Marvin Gaye. The documentary 808 is a love…

by Dan Gentile

When the Beat Reporter Packs a Pipe

In all of journalistic fantasy, there are few scenarios more desirable than the one that involves marijuana becoming legalized and so centrally intertwined within your publication’s editorial vision (as well as its ad revenue) that your editor’s left with no choice but to send you on a reporting trip to South America. Longtime Denver Post…

by Chase Hoffberger

Tuesday SXSW 2015 Showcases

He^RD X Paypal Music Tech Mashup 7pm, Empire Control Room & Garage HE^RD and Paypal’s music-tech mash-up isn’t in name only. The showcases, running both inside the Control Room and Garage, blend Austin singer-songwriters with some of the biggest names in L.A.’s electronic scene. Not unlike a Saturday farmers’ market, the Garage keeps it local,…

by Chronicle Staff

Quote of the Week

“We know the march is not yet over; we know the race is not yet won.” – President Barack Obama on the 50th anniversary of the March on Selma.

by Chronicle Staff

Uncle John

Generating hardcore, knuckle-gnawing suspense on a microbudget indie isn’t an easy thing to do, but Chicago-based filmmaker Steven Piet’s debut feature Uncle John nails it. Fair warning: Bring a Band-Aid or two, lest you ooze some red on your trousers. Possibly the most subversive aspect of Piet’s film is that for the first 60 minutes…

by Marc Savlov

The Legal Trail

Like many other dates in the year since he was arrested for driving his gray Honda Civic through a crowd of people on Red River Street, killing four and injuring 20 more, Rashad Owens’ March 2 court date only served to precede another one next month. District Judge Cliff Brown said at a February hearing…

by Chase Hoffberger

Tuesday SXSW Music Picks & Sleepers

Kay Odyssey 8pm, Red Eyed Fly Formerly known as Kay Leotard, this local quartet has altered both its lineup and sound in the past year. With psychedelic haze slightly restrained, vocalist/guitarist Kristina Boswell’s newer songs find extra melodic and emotive heft reminiscent of Tara Key’s work with Antietam. Full-length Chimera drops later this year. –…

by Chronicle Staff

Through an Afghan Lens Darkly

Most of what we know about Afghanistan has been framed for us through someone’s viewfinder. Against the backdrop of the country’s rock-strewn landscape, we’ve followed years of political upheavals, a decadelong Soviet incursion, and, most recently, the horrific effects of repressive Islamic fundamentalism on the country as a whole, most harshly on the female population.…

by Anne S. Lewis

SXSW 2015 Records

Asleep at the Wheel Still the King: Celebrating the Music of Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys (Bismeaux) This being the third time Asleep at the Wheel celebrates the King of Western Swing on disc, no one could accuse Ray Benson and friends of running out of ideas. There’s an attention to detail paid to…

by Jim Caligiuri

Night Owls

“I wanted to go further,” Charles Hood says of the glossy shots of his second feature, Night Owls. “We definitely sacrificed the number of takes we could get in a lot of cases, because I really was determined to make the movie look interesting and have that different feeling than I feel like a lot…

by Darcie Robert

SXSW 2015 Records

Jorma Kaukonen Ain’t in No Hurry (Red House) A career lasting more than 50 years, Jorma Kaukonen, 74, could be going through the motions. Except there’s nothing remotely faked or suspect about Ain’t in No Hurry. He teams with Larry Campbell, best known for producing and serving as bandleader for Levon Helm’s latter day work,…

by Jim Caligiuri

6 Years

To follow her debut film, A Teacher, about an illicit romance between student and teacher, writer/director Hannah Fidell again turns her lens to love. But Fidell’s new film, 6 Years, offers a more common scene: Two college-aged high school sweethearts are madly in love but unsure how to adapt their relationship to adulthood. Mel (American…

by Ashley Moreno

SXSW 2015 Records

Royal Thunder Crooked Doors (Relapse) Royal Thunder commands a study in contrasts. On Crooked Doors, the Atlanta quartet’s second LP, rumbling doom stomps gracefully as drummer Evan Diprima pounds and bassist Mlny Parsonz weaves. Guitarists Josh Weaver and Will Fiore lay down a blanket of riffs that cut cleanly, rather than fight dirty, for a…

by Michael Toland

Nina Forever

True love waits. And waits … and waits … and waits. And then it returns from the grave to remind you that it’s still waiting, wanting, and needing, all slick with gore and mucking up not only your pristine white sheets but also your new, post-grief romantic entanglements. Oh, la mort! “We never thought of…

by Marc Savlov

SXSW 2015 Records

Quantic Magnetica (Tru Thoughts) Will Holland soundly rejects Latin music, as a term and idea. For the first strictly solo studio project since 2006’s An Announcement to Answer, the UK native makes full use of his relocation to Cali, Colombia. Absorbing seven years of authentic culture there and collaborating with musicians from the equatorial continents…

by Kahron Spearman

Mr. Smarty Pants Knows

According to Randall Munroe of What If?, most 6-, 8-, or even 12-pound bowling balls will float in seawater. The last letter added to the alphabet was J. It wasn’t added until the 19th century. Before that, everyone thought of I and J as the same letter. That’s why Washington, D.C., has no J Street.…

by Mr. Smarty Pants

Raiders!

Filmmaker Jeremy Coon had heard rumors about the Raiders of the Lost Ark fan film. Some kids in Mississippi who spent their allowance and seven summer breaks making a shot-for-shot remake of the adventure classic back in the Eighties. Movie geeks described it with lavish hyperbole. Mind-blowing! Face-melting!  “I thought it was an urban legend,”…

by Sarah Hepola

The Folk Hero We Deserve

There’s a Chinese folk tale following a cadre of exceptional, identical male siblings – sometimes there are five of them, sometimes seven – who fight for justice and overcome obstacles through ingenuity and teamwork. Each of the brothers has a superpower of sorts, from extraordinary strength to being impervious to heat to crying tears so…

by Melanie Haupt

Fantastic Worlds

A lifelong plunge into adventure with Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard is linked by Frank Frazetta

by Louis Black

Soccer Watch

With just two weeks now until their regular season opener, the Austin Aztex finalized three big signings this week: two familiar names that fans will be happy to see back, plus a young striker who may have more upside potential than anyone we’ve seen play in Austin. • Tony Rocha has been an offensive spark…

by Nick Barbaro

Twinsters

It’s the kind of thing that happens only in fairy tales – twins, separated at birth, adopted by different sets of parents in different parts of the world, each growing up with no knowledge of the other until a chance sighting reunites them as adults. Could it happen in real life? That’s exactly what Anaïs…

by Nora Ankrum

The Human Condition

Alex Garland isn’t a big fan of auteur theory. Despite having penned lauded screenplays with heaps of distinctive style (28 Days Later, Dredd, Never Let Me Go), Garland only recently jumped to the director’s chair with Ex Machina, making its North American premiere at SXSW 2015. Glowing reviews in Europe and stateside hype aside, Garland…

by Cindy Widner

The Showalter State

From his early work with the State comedy troupe to last year’s underrated They Came Together – and most famously with his script (co-written with David Wain) for Wet Hot American Summer, which will be revived for a series by Netflix later this year – Michael Showalter helped pioneer ironic Gen X humor. His new…

by Michael Agresta

A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story

Lizzie Velasquez takes her bullies’ word daggers and reshapes them into teaching tools – a superhuman feat for most, a path of healing for Velasquez. It’s actually her humanity, in all its beautiful, painful glory, that gives her the wisdom to channel emotions into positive change. She’s all about the love, even for her most…

by Jessi Cape

T-Rex

The boxer is one of the great poetic embodiments of the American Dream, like the frontiersman or the hip-hop mogul. Born with nothing, the boxer (whether fictional like Rocky Balboa or real like Joe Frazier, or a bit of both like Mike Tyson) drags himself out of poverty and into redemption, which, in America, means…

by Josh Rosenblatt

Headlines

City Council meets today (March 12) with a historically light agenda, but perhaps with other worries on their minds: last week’s release of the draft “Zucker Report,” which catalogs major problems in the Planning and Development Review Department. See “Council,” Mar. 13, 2015. The SXSW Festivals – Education, Interact­ive, Film, Music, and so on –…

by Chronicle Staff

Counterculture Time Capsule

The late documentarian Les Blank filled a special role in American musical history. He was a bit like the music writer Peter Guralnick or folk music collector/scholars John and Alan Lomax. Though he made all kinds of documentaries, Blank’s music films are deep, sympathetic dives into the world of roots musicians and into the (often…

by Lars Nilsen

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