Cover Story
Kontinental Krew
Local custom car club, the Kontinentals, bring the third annual Lonestar Rod & Kustom Round Up auto show to town
TCB
One final SXSW missive
About AIDS
A recent Italian study demonstrates that among poz people taking anti-HIV treatment, those relying on a “non-nuke” as part of their combo were more satisfied with their sex lives than those taking a protease inhibitor. Study participants rated their general sexual satisfaction on a one-to-100 scale. Patients whose “drug cocktail” included a non-nuke (an NNRTI,…
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SXSW Interview: Andrew Loog OldhamAustin Convention Center, Saturday, March 20 “Andrew, Andrew, Andrew Loog Oldham.” It was tough not to hum Mick Jagger’s famously wicked poke at the Rolling Stones’ former producer/manager. For a relationship that ended 37 years ago, Oldham still wears the breakup on his brittle leather sleeve, but only Keith Richards is…
APD Racial Profiling: New Numbers, Old Questions
The 2003 report shows disparities but also problems with the data itself
Big Fat Independent Movies
Sending off SXSW Film 04
The 22 Steps
Screenwriter John Truby’s first Austin seminar
When Wagner Became WAGNER
With ‘The Flying Dutchman,’ Richard Wagner made opera bigger than big
Taste, Memory
By innovating old favorites in an old building, Moonshine is setting new standards
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N.E.R.D.Austin Music Hall, Saturday, March 20 After a contemptuous nonperformance by Handsome Boy Modeling School, the audience was rightfully suspicious when N.E.R.D. arrived 55 minutes late, allowing their backing band Spymob to perform four utterly forgettable tunes first. But all was forgiven when Pharrell Williams and Shay hit the stage, putting Spymob’s preponderance of chops…
2003 APD Racial Profiling Stats
All figures = percentages WHITEBLACKHISPANICOTHER Austin population52.99.830.26.8 Austin drivers (*est.)64.68.321.05.1 Traffic stops52.013.031.04.0 Searches arising from traffic stops31.723.244.10.9 Searches as % of stops5.515.912.42.0 Consent searches as % of searches11.718.013.4– Consent searches leading to seizure13.513.610.2– Pedestrian stops45.527.426.30.7 Searches arising from ped stops38.133.927.30.7 Searches as % of stops23.935.429.723.8 Consent searches as % of searches22.529.921.7– Consent searches leading to…
Big Fat Independent Movies
Blind HorizonD: Michael Haussman; with Val Kilmer, Neve Campbell, Sam Shepard, Noble Willingham, Amy Smart, Gil Bellows Narrative Feature Special Screenings, World Premiere In Blind Horizon, a man (Kilmer) awakens in a dusty border town with a gunshot to the head, a blank slate where his memory used to be, and a terrible premonition that…
Second Annual Austin Jewish Film Festival
March 27-April 3
Ballet East: ‘Tribal’
Ballet East goes “Tribal” this weekend, using movement to explore issues of belonging, the ties that bind, and how tribes can lower us to barbarism or lift us to redemption
Food-o-File
Think things are slowing down after SXSW? Not when it comes to the food business in Austin.
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SXSW Panel: Turn the Beat AroundAustin Convention Center, Saturday, March 20 Sponsored by the Recording Academy and moderated by L.A. radio jock Jason Bentley, Saturday’s Turn the Beat Around panel addressed critical issues surrounding the current state of electronic dance music. Identifying the addition of a dance album category to the Grammys as a top…
Naked City
Headlines and happenings from Austin and beyond
Big Fat Independent Movies
Crown HeightsD: Jeremy Kagan; with Mario Van Peebles, Howie Mandel Narrative Feature Special Screenings Van Peebles and Mandel star in this film based on actual events. When a Hasidic Jew kills a black child in a 1991 car accident, rumors fly and tempers flare, blistering into three days of civil unrest. The film follows the…
TV Eye
“This is one of those rare cases where the initial conception was ambitious to begin with,” Executive Producer Steve James says of The New Americans, a three-part documentary premiering March 29 on PBS’ Independent Lens.
Decade on the Vanguard
Seems like only yesterday that a few drama school grads from Brown showed up in town, proclaimed themselves a theatre company, and aimed to prove it by staging some original rock musical thing called Kid Carnivore in the Electric Lounge. They had this audacious idea that you could get people under the age of 30…
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Saturday SXSW “Live Shots” and more
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Big StarAustin Music Hall, Friday, March 19 This reunion showcase was a disappointing example of what happens when power-pop goes bust. The current members of Big Star – singer Alex Chilton, drummer Jody Stephens, and Posies Jonathan Auer and Ken Stringfellow – phoned in a snoozer of a set inspiring audience speculation that someone onstage…
Naked City
A proposal to allow signs to be moved has advocates seeing red
Big Fat Independent Movies
Experimental Shorts D: Various Fears of Dieter screening Germany’s Most Disturbing Home Videos were assuaged by “Static,” a sonically punishing glimpse into a future of white noise. Whilst director Paiman Kalayeh was “sticking it to the Man,” Ian Kibbey’s two uncredited films, “Drawn” and “Right and Left” were simple yet powerful meditations on line and…
Short Cuts
Will McDonald’s be part of our post-SXSW, prehibernation meal?
Articulations
Helping ensure the future of classical music are four young Central Texas musicians who won the 2004 Pearl Amster Concerto Competition and two UT School of Music doctoral candidates chosen to learn conducting from Maestro Kurt Masur
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Eszter Balint Soho Lounge, Saturday, March 20 To the indie-hipster cognoscenti, NYC’s Eszter Balint will always be John Lurie’s smaller, more Hungarian cousin Eva. That’s the totemic power of Jim Jarmusch’s 1983 slo-core cinematic masterpiece, Stranger Than Paradise, the film that single-handedly brought an obscure, skull-wielding bluesman’s manic nightmare vision to millions (fine, thousands) who…
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SXSW Interview: Joan BaezAustin Convention Center, Saturday, March 20 Joan Baez must have a tasty ass, because there sure were a lot of folks lining up to kiss it at Saturday’s SXSW interview. The gracious 63-year-old folksinger looked absolutely fabulous, having taken time out of her current tour in support of the recent Dark Chords…
Naked City
GOP players get the vapors over side issues in the scandal
Big Fat Independent Movies
Jandek on Corwood D: Chad Freidrichs Documentary Feature 24 Beats Per Second, Regional Premiere Houston musician Jandek doesn’t do interviews. He doesn’t appear in public. His entire public persona consists of 35 whispery albums, their 35 grainy covers, and one 1985 interview he recorded before he dropped out of communication altogether. Not surprisingly, this has…
Roll Over, Beethoven
An interview with Francis Preve, laptop composer and producer
Exhibitionism
With Neil LaBute’s The Mercy Seat, the dirigo group takes us back to 9 / 11 and shows a couple laying bare their relationship against that day’s monstrous tragedy
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Minnie DriverBlender Bar @ the Ritz, Saturday, March 20 On any given night in Austin, you can go see Tia Carrera, only it’s not really Tia Carrere, the actress. Yet on a SXSW Saturday in Austin, you could go see Minnie Driver, and damn if it wasn’t Minnie Driver. And think about it: Julie Delpy,…
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The WalkmenExodus, Thursday, March 18 Like a jilted lover begging for forgiveness with every ounce of passion he has inside, Hamilton Leithauser paced onstage in a energetic feud with words, screaming into the mic, back arched and head thrown back. The Walkmen frontman let everything flow as he grasped the Exodus full house. As impassioned…
Naked City
Neighbors get organized, call on Todd Baxter, and cut a deal with the LCRA
Big Fat Independent Movies
Love Me if You DareD: Yann Samuell; with Guillaume Canet and Marion Cotillard Narrative Feature Special Screenings, Regional Premiere Julien (Canet) and Sophie (Cotillard) have this thing they’ve done since they were kids, and it keeps life worth living. They call it “Game or Not,” a steady back and forth of dares, like Julien pissing…
Day Trips
The world’s largest collection of spurs is almost too big to comprehend.
Exhibitionism
Nashville-based photographer Jack Spencer is such a maestro in the darkroom that the prints he creates have the mysterious, almost shrouded look of Old-West silver tintypes
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ShearwaterMaggie Mae’s, Saturday, March 20 Even as late as Saturday, after a whirlwind of bands, parties, guests, meals, and libations, it was hard to dispel the powerful image of Okkervil River’s SXSW Wednesday daytime set at Emo’s. Fresh off a marathon drive from Oklahoma, Austin’s Americana rock masters boiled over with a mammoth intensity bordering…
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Mission of BurmaLa Zona Rosa, Thursday, March 18 There was a dividing line, about 40 feet from the stage, between the folks that had waited years to see these Boston art-rockers and those who looked like they were at a freak show. Guitarist Roger Miller was the mad professor, with his brown blazer, strawlike hair,…
Naked City
Clean-energy firms caught in crossfire over federal energy bill
Big Fat Independent Movies
Male FantasyD: Blaine Thurier; with Robert Dayton, Cindy Wolfe, Steve Wood, Shane Nelken, Kim Cote Narrative Feature Competition, World Premiere “I am a god. I create this reality,” muses Andrew (Dayton), the obnoxious oddball at the center of this narrative exercise in masculine self-loathing. He badgers every female he passes on the street for a…
Jersey Girl
Ben Affleck plays a widower dad in this family dramedy from an uncustomarily sweet Kevin Smith.
Exhibitionism
On the first anniversary of the American-led invasion of Iraq, the Austin Symphony offered a pleasing variety of views of the American landscape through music by 20th-century composers
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AtashCaribbean Lights, Saturday, March 20 “You guys have four minutes,” nudged SXSW, reminding Austin’s Atash to start on time. Such is the onus on the first band of a showcase-packed night, lest they delay the stacked schedule. Good thing, then, that this worldly collective doesn’t require electric power to enliven a room, since a few…
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Critics Picks: Best SXSW 04 showcase Greg Beets: N.E.R.D., Austin Music Hall, Saturday Michael Bertin: Big Star, Austin Music Hall, Friday Jim Caligiuri: Marah, Continental Club, Thursday Michael Chamy: Broken Social Scene, Stubb’s, Friday Robert Gabriel: Dizzee Rascal, Aussie’s, Saturday Christopher Gray: The Ponys (Chicago), Beerland, Saturday Melanie Haupt: Modest Mouse, La Zona Rosa, Wednesday…
Naked City
Supreme Court hears arguments that Texas courts mishandle capital appeals
Big Fat Independent Movies
Red vs Blue D: Burnie Burns; with Burnie Burns, Gus Sorola, Geoff Fink, Matt Hullum, Joel Heyman, Kathleen Zeulch, Jason Saldana, Dan Godwin, Yomary Cruz Narrative Feature ‘Round Midnight Red vs Blue’s midnight screening at the Alamo sold out after everybody waited in the rain. People in Austin are finally catching on. Cheap is good…
The Ladykillers
The Coen brothers remake a British comedy classic starring Tom Hanks in a flamboyantly love-him-or-hate-him performance.
Readings
Armchair travelers have rarely had it so good as they do with Texas native Griest’s memoir, which reads like one part informative history lesson on the People’s Revolutionary struggle and one part Hope ‘n’ Crosby road movie.
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Murder Dog ShowcaseAussie’s, Saturday, March 20 Beyond a hefty bill of opening acts, including Sylk Smoov, Chamillionaire & the Color Changin’ Click, Bavu Blakes, Swishahouse, and Middle Fngz, the sand pit at Aussie’s obviously belonged to the tandem of Bun B and Dizzee Rascal. Rallying the crowd to “Free Pimp C” along the way, Bun…
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Van Hunt
Naked City
But opponents are blowing a gasket over plans for tailpipe testing
Big Fat Independent Movies
Reel Shorts TwoD: Various SXSW has always boasted some terrific shorts programming, but two of the under-30-minute films here are so good they ought to be picked up and turned into minifranchises: Peter Craig’s “The Climactic Death of Dark Ninja,” in which a pack of pint-sized filmmakers take to the woods behind their parents’ house…
The Same River Twice
A documentary about how things change and don’t change.
Readings
In this novel, Karnezis’ ingenious, although ambiguous, framing device consists of repressing any sight or sound of the Turkish enemy as he describes the abbreviated anabasis of one Greek brigade in the Anatolian hinterlands.
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Reigning SoundBeerland, Saturday, March 20 Think about Memphis. What comes to mind? Beale Street, the Stax/Volt record labels, Elvis, Graceland, Sun Studios, various blues shouters, right? Well, you’re mostly correct. Then there’s Reigning Sound, fronted by Greg Cartwright from the Oblivians and Compulsive Gamblers. On Saturday night at Beerland, the Reigning Sound boys brought together…
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Cowboy Jack Clement and BR5-49
Naked City
A local group forms to build community support for marriage equality in Austin
Big Fat Independent Movies
Reel Shorts ThreeD: Various Among the emerging filmmakers at this year’s festival are several who are just starting out or are learning a new trade. The Reel Shorts Three program showcased said directors with a diverse selection of surreal, documentary, and animated films. “A Procession of Them” and “Centripetal Visions” – by Eugene Richards and…
Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
A guilty pleasure for thirtysomething stoners with ironic dispositions and large nacho platters.
Page Two
On love, culture, renewal, timelessness, and SXSW
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Dead Whale TideClub DeVille, Saturday, March 20 Dead Whale Tide hasn’t put out an album yet, but if this showcase was any indication, it’s going to be a celestial trip through several different rooms of music. Lanky local singer/guitarist Justin Preston introduced many new songs in front of Club DeVille’s limestone layered wall, most of…
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The Hives’ Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist
Naked City
The state proposes rules to make it even harder for poor families to get health care
Big Fat Independent Movies
RickD: Curtiss Clayton; with Bill Pullman, Aaron Stanford, Agnes Bruckner, Sandra Oh, Dylan Baker Narrative Feature Competition, U.S. Premiere Clayton’s stylish directorial debut stars Pullman as Rick, a recently widowed single father and a corporate player treading water as No. 2 to his twentysomething “Big Boss” (Stanford). Rick’s first 10 minutes, which introduces Rick’s corporate…
Never Die Alone
Every known hip-hop gangster cliché comes to the fore in this film starring DMX and David Arquette.
Oops!
In our March 19 Music Poll results issue, we misspelled the name of the band Truepenny, which placed in both the Rock and Alt-Punk categories. We regret any confusion or inconvenience this error may have caused.
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Jamie CullumDriskill Hotel, Friday, March 19 After tickling the piano keys a bit and welcoming the crowd, a T-shirt and tennies-clad Jamie Cullum stood on his piano bench and, sans microphone, sang his opening lines a cappella. Reaching the noun in Cole Porter’s “I Get a Kick Out of You,” he literally stomped the piano…
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Joan Jett
Naked City
Congress considers yanking highway funds from states without “drugged-driving” laws
Big Fat Independent Movies
Saved!D: Brian Dannelly; with Jena Malone, Mandy Moore, Macaulay Culkin, Eva Amurri, Chad Faust, Martin Donovan, and Mary-Louise Parker Narrative Feature Special Screenings Mary (Malone) is a devout girl who, along with her psychotically pious pal Hilary Faye (Moore), pickets Planned Parenthoods and rocks for Jesus in the Christian Jewels. The Lord’s plan seems to…
Monsieur Ibrahim
Omar Sharif makes a welcome return to the screen in this gentle French film about a Jewish adolescent and an elderly Muslim shopkeeper.
After a Fashion
Catch Stephen out schmoozing for a good cause or two. It’s that time of year, folks. The social and fashion seasons are upon us.
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MursThe Vibe, Friday, March 19 Definitive Jux recording artist and longtime member of the Living Legends crew, Murs has instigated quite a buzz for himself by way of collaboration with 9th Wonder of Little Brother. With Murs 3:16: The 9th Edition less than a week away from commercial release, anticipation reached a fevered pitch at…
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Susan Cowsill
Naked City
North Carolina joins John Ashcroft’s bong-free crusade
Big Fat Independent Movies
Straight Into DarknessD: Jeff Burr; with Scott MacDonald, Ryan Francis, David Warner, Linda Thorson, James LeGros Narrative Feature Special Screenings, U.S. Premiere In the twilight days of World War II, two American GIs – one wild and violent, the other quiet and haunted by his past – go AWOL in a bid to escape the…
Dawn of the Dead
It’s hard to keep a good zombie down
Second Helpings: Thai, Part I
Madam Mam’s 2514 Guadalupe, 472-8306 Daily, 11am-9:30pm Longtime Austinite “Sap” Apisaksiri married his Bangkok high school sweetheart, a food and restaurant columnist and acknowledged master chef, and brought her back to Austin to open a restaurant in 2001, providing Austin Thai-food lovers with a world-class dining experience. Fans and regulars of Madam Mam’s are nearly…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
A Hindu Heinrich Himmler, a hard of hearing Hoover, and heavenly hemispheres
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Willard Grant ConspiracyBlender Balcony @ the Ritz, Friday, March 19 The Willard Grant Conspiracy is a band fronted by songwriter Robert Fisher that features a rotating cast of 31 from around the world. For SXSW, the Conspiracy consisted of seven players from around the U.S. that filled the oddly configured Blender Balcony with songs of…
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Delbert McClinton and Gary U.S. Bonds
Austin @ Large: Meet and Obscure
The new police contract is neither the cause nor cure of the APD crisis
Big Fat Independent Movies
The United States of Leland D: Matthew Ryan Hoge; with Don Cheadle, Ryan Gosling, Jena Malone, Kevin Spacey, Chris Klein, Michelle Williams Narrative Feature Special Screenings, Regional Premiere The United States of Leland is about an innocuous teenager, Leland (Gosling), who inexplicably murders the autistic brother of his ex-girlfriend. In the aftermath, as the former…
The Common Law
Here are some other quirky new traffic laws you might find interesting
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The EndsBeerland, Friday, March 19 As a local band playing SXSW, it’s always welcome to showcase at your “home” club. Kicking off Friday’s Dirtnap Records showcase at Beerland, the Ends made the most of their spot-on slot with a solid set of crunchy barroom punk rock. The “rock” appellation is a critical distinction here. Vocalist…
Not Quite ‘Ya Se Fue!’
The APD version of the Ozomatli bust at Exodus is … hard to believe
What School Finance Crisis?
The Lege considers school finance, and recommends ways to cut wages and fire teachers
Big Fat Independent Movies
The Life and Times of Bill Hicks Tuesday, March 16 Bill Hicks once told the famed and venerable Yale drama student Robert Klein that his routine was “living in the moment sorta.” But as Steve Birmingham’s Chronicle piece illustrated last week, Bill Hicks’ moment is still going, and he’s very much still living in it.…
AMA Hoochie Koo
Jason Morales’ antiperspirant is no match for Tia Carrera’s metallic assault Chip Taylor, flanked by Wild Things Redd Volkaert (l) and Earl Poole Ball Los Lonely Boy Henry Garza gets down in true shredder mode The King Biscuit Flower Hour (aka Randy “Biscuit” Turner), with guitar accompaniment by Larry Seaman during the Class of ’78…
To Your Health
Can any nutrients help fend off an imminent headache?
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Grand ChampeenClub DeVille, Wednesday, March 17 There are two kinds of showcases at SXSW: those you want to leave, and those you don’t want to end. There’s too much else going on to sit through even a mediocre set. And the really great shows remind you why you abuse your body to endure this absurdly…
AISD Bonds: More Sprawl and Surveillance?
The Austin ISD bond proposal includes plans for new construction and security measures that are raising some public questions
The Hightower Report
A company that wants to get under your skin; and the Social Security hoax
Audience Participation
COHI’s Sera Bonds on how your watching movies at the Alamo can empower women in conflict areas
