Paradise Lost Two: Revelations
Paradise Lost Two: Revelations 2000, NR, 140 min. Directed by Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . In 1996, this pair filmed Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, a disturbing documentary about three teenagers who were convicted of brutally murdering three second-graders in Memphis, Arkansas. These teens…
Center for Young Cinema: Semester-End Films
Center for Young Cinema: Semester-End Films NR. Directed by , Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . Semester-End Films is a showcase of eight new student works from the past semester. The projects range from narrative films to experimental pieces shot on Hi-8 video, mini DV, and Super-8 film. Also screening will be selections…
Prison On Fire
Prison On Fire NR, 98 min. Directed by Ringo Lam, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Chow Yun-Fat, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Ka-Kui Ho, Fui-On Shing, Kwong Leung Wong, Roy Cheung. In this Hong Kong movie, Chow Yun-Fat (Anna and the King) plays a cynical prisoner jailed for the manslaughter of his adulterous wife…
Queer as Folk, Charles Mcdougall
Queer as Folk, Charles Mcdougall NR, 270 min. Directed by Sarah Harding, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Aidan Gillen, Craig Kelly, Charlie Hunnam. The Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival (aGLIFF) presents one of the favorites from last year’s festival: the gay British TV soap opera Queer as Folk. Produced by Channel…
Killer of Sheep
Killer of Sheep 1977, NR, 83 min. D: Charles Burnett; with Henry Sanders, Kaycee Moore, James Miles. Charles Burnett’s work draws on the daily lives of the inhabitants of South Central Los Angeles. Killer of Sheep is a soul-pounding exploration of the life of a Black man who works in a slaughterhouse. Shot in a…
SPAMTASTIC™ SPAMARAMA™
6. April 4, 1993 1993 was the first year a local charity became involved. Arnsberger recalls that “several people pointed out the wisdom of making the thing a charity event … the chance to give something back to the community, all that. It took me a while to find a charity who would have us,…
Exhibitionism
Kerthy Fix’s Heaving Shadows at the Skin Show is an intimate, sometimes disturbing look at a group of people in perpetual free fall. Public Domain’s production of Howard Barker’s Possibilities is a fascinating invitation to the Theatre of Catastrophe and to run around on the tarmac.
Record Reviews
Violent FemmesFreak Magnet (Beyond/BMG) Ask Davíd Garza about his Violent Femmes-inspired local trio Twang Twang Shock-a-Boom from a decade or so back, and he’ll shriek and run away. Query David Byrne about his band Talking Heads, who in turn inspired the Femmes, and he’ll likely shrug and go back to his latest mambo effort. So…
Short Cuts
Upcoming events and workshops of interest to the Austin film community.
The Skulls
The Skulls 2000, PG-13, 107 min. Directed by Rob Cohen, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring William Peterson, Steve Harris, Christopher McDonald, Leslie Bibb, Hill Harper, Craig T. Nelson, Paul Walker, Joshua Jackson. I never thought I’d run across a film that makes the lumbering 1983 Michael Biehne/Bill Paxton film The Lords of Discipline…
Second Helpings: Tex-Mex
Food writer Rachel Feit serves up local Tex-Mex in this week’s “Second Helpings.”
SPAMTASTIC™ SPAMARAMA™
7. April 1, 1995 Columbia University film student Cressandra Thibodeaux followed event organizers around for a couple of weeks before SPAMARAMA™ ’95 shooting film for what was to be a documentary for her master’s thesis. What started out as one segment of a documentary eventually evolved into SPAMARAMA™: The Movie, with many local celebrities in…
Exhibitionism
The Possibilities:Theatre on the MoveRobert Mueller Municipal Airport, through April 15 Running time: 2 hrs, 15 min What could be better than watching Howard Barker’s The Possibilities in an old airplane hangar at the Robert Mueller Airport and running around on the tarmac during intermission? The question stumps me, too. Probably the best example of…
Record Reviews
Steely DanTwo Against Nature (Giant) As high schoolers, my friends and I listened to Steely Dan and imagined we were sophisticated California snobs doing champagne and cocaine out by the hot tub circa 1976. Somehow, went the rationalization, the Dan’s mellowtone jazz-rock vibe elevated the pursuit of lifelong adolescent decadence to an art form. Donald…
Video Reviews
(“Video Reviews” wishes to thank Encore Movies & Music, I Luv Video, Vulcan Video, and Waterloo Video for their help in providing videos, laser discs, and DVDs.) While his Eighties peers have gone the troubled road of VH1’s Where Are They Now?, John Cusack has been steadily building an astonishing résumé that includes practically every…
Whatever it Takes
Whatever it Takes 2000, PG-13, 92 min. Directed by David Hubbard, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Julia Sweeney, Colin Hanks, Aaron Paul, James Franco, Jodi Lyn O’Keefe, Marla Sokoloff, Christine Lakin, Shane West. With a running time of 92 minutes, Whatever It Takes is too long by an hour and a half. Another…
Page Two
If you have a gossip columnist, have the courage to stand behind him.
SPAMTASTIC™ SPAMARAMA™
8. April 15, 1996 Another in the series of pitched battles between multiple winners hotel sous-chef John Myers and journeyman restaurant chef Pat Knight. Both men were well-known for great-tasting dishes and artfully conceived displays of showmanship, which naturally put them in head-to-head competition for the coveted SPAMERICA’S™ Cup, a traveling award bestowed to the…
Blessed Deliverance
The Borderland: A Novel of Texas by Edwin Shrake Hyperion, 416 pp., $24.95 Bud Shrake’s The Borderland follows so closely on the heels of Stephen Harrigan’s The Gates of the Alamo that the reader of Texas fiction could almost believe that there is some deep serendipity at work. Both novels are set in the Texas…
Record Reviews
Scritti PolittiAnomie & Bonhomie (Virgin) Oh, but this bodes ill for the new millennium: Welsh Eighties pop soulsters Scritti Politti have reformed and returned with a new album. Scritti Politti, for god’s sake, progenitors of pre-Nineties pop pablum like the R&B-flavored, not-quite-a-hit-and-for-good-reason “Perfect Way”!! While that once might have seemed as likely as a Steely…
TV Eye
NBC actually dropped Freaks & Geeks — the smart, funny, refreshingly true-to-life high school comedy? Well, duh. Also, a look at the WB’s DC, the latest ensemble drama to feature incredibly good-looking people.
Public Notice
“Public Notice” is the sassy yet totally sincere public service column of the Austin Chronicle. This week is Part Two of a list of community groups that need YOU! (Part One ran last week.)
SPAMTASTIC™ SPAMARAMA™
9. “MR. SPAM-MAN”™ With lyrics by David Arnsberger, sung to the tune of “Mr. Sandman.” Arnsberger and the Uranium Savages were famous for their satirical song parodies performed in the early years of SPAMARAMA™. Among the other titles are “Good Luncheon” (to the tune of “Good Lovin'”), “Swine Has Come Today” (to the tune of…
Postscripts
Upcoming literary events in Austin.
Record Reviews
OasisStanding on the Shoulders of Giants (Epic) At one time, the boys of Oasis provided all the histrionics one could ask from rock & roll theatre, putting out two fantastic albums that captured their mad-for-it unruliness. The Gallagher brothers’ initial arrogance came from a lot of things — working-class bluster, Liam’s love of his own…
Restaurant
Restaurant 1998, R, 108 min. Directed by Eric Bross, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Lauryn Hill, John Carroll Lynch, Catherine Kellner, Simon Baker-Denny, David Moscow, Malcolm Jamal Warner, Elise Neal, Adrien Brody. In this intelligent indie drama made in 1998, a trendy restaurant in Hoboken, J.T. McClure’s, becomes a melting pot for a…
Letters at 3AM
October 1, 1955, a half-hour show called The Honeymooners slipped in some uneasy truths under cover of laughter.
SPAMTASTIC™ SPAMARAMA™
10. March 28, 1998 The 20th anniversary party was held at Auditorium Shores with an estimated 8,500 people reveling in a glorious spring day. Longtime security chief Joe Cook recalls, “It was a beautiful thing to see, a real cross-section of the population, everybody having a great time. It surely wasn’t the old Austin because…
Book Reviews
Travel Advisory: Stories of Mexico by David Lida Morrow, 272 pp., $24 David Lida moved to Mexico City because New York was no longer chaotic enough for his taste. For a man like him, happiness is a city where volcanic ash rains down on the streets every now and again, where frequent earthquakes and a…
The Watson Way
Mayor Kirk Watson talks about challenges for austin during his next term.
Price of Glory
Price of Glory 2000, PG-13, 118 min. Directed by Carlos Avila, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Ernesto Hernandez, Paul Rodriguez, Ron Perlman, Maria Del Mar, Clifton Collins Jr., Jon Seda, Jimmy Smits. Less talk, more fisticuffs, por favor. The sweet science falls prey to yet another boxing debacle, this one on the screen…
After a Fashion
This year’s Academy Awards fashion winners and losers.
SPAMTASTIC™ SPAMARAMA™
11. April 1, 2000 The 22nd annual SPAMARAMA™ is set to take place in and around the Austin Music Hall from noon until 6pm this Saturday. Both Third Street and Nueces near the Music Hall will be closed to accommodate the event, with the cook-off on Third Street and the SPAMALYMPICS™ events on Nueces. Food…
Book Reviews
The Flatness and Other Landscapes by Michael Martone University of Georgia Press, 171 pp., $24.95 Michael Martone explores what he likes to call the “Midwestern paradox” in The Flatness and Other Landscapes, which has won the Associated Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction. “My isolation on one of the margins of the world,” he says,…
Easy Money
City plots downtown’s retail future
The Road to El Dorado
The Road to El Dorado 2000, PG, 83 min. Directed by Don Paul, Eric Bergeron, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Elton John, Edward James Olmos, Armand Assante, Rosie Perez, Kenneth Branagh, Kevin Kline. Perish the day we turn to cartoons for historical accuracy — a philosophy that serves The Road to El Dorado…
Mr. Smarty Pants
Hot tea in the summer, but beer popsicles anytime!
A Man, A Can, A Plan
Don’t start Dave Arnsberger talking. As an original yuckmeister of the Uranium Savages and founding father of SPAMARAMA™, he has much to say. Some of it revolves around the band, some of it revolves around the pink stuff in the can. Some of it just revolves. Austin was a very different place in 1972, when…
Book Reviews
The Suburbs of Heaven by Merle Drown Soho Press, 304 pp., $24 Before the promise of on-demand printing, the sheer overabundance of unused books in garage sales, flea markets, homes, dormitories, and the secondhand retail market led me to one cynical conclusion: There are too many people writing. Such a harsh stance arose out of…
Naked City
Robin Rather, Brigid Shea, Mary Arnold leave the SOS board; Town Lake park tree not 300 yeears old after all.
High Fidelity
High Fidelity 2000, R, 113 min. D: Stephen Frears; with John Cusack, Jack Black. This relatively faithful adaptation of Nick Hornby’s beloved music-culture novel is a smart, funny, and youth-savvy relationship film. The film’s Chicago locale is its primary deviation from the book, which is set in London. Otherwise, lines of dialogue and the story’s…
Coach’s Corner
Coach postulates that free-throw percentage determines longevity in the NCAAtournament, bitches about concession food at Frank Erwin Center.
Food-o-File
The state of Texas is busy with culinary contests; Cuisines editor Virginia B. Wood gives the details.
Book Reviews
Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture by John Conroy Knopf, 304 pp., $26 Possibly the most assiduously depressing book of the spring, Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People is journalist John Conroy’s analysis of how and why human beings inflict, undergo, and countenance torture — defined in pertinent part by the United Nations in 1975…
Naked City
Mayoral and City Council candidates announce their intent to run for office.
Not One Less
Not One Less 1999, G, 106 min. Directed by Zhang Yimou, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Sun Zhimei, Gao Enman, Tian Zhenda, Zhang Huike, Wei Minshi. The strategies employed by famed Chinese director Zhang Yimou in his latest work mark a fascinating shift from the highly textured dramas that established his reputation. In…
Day Trips
Eagle Lake rallies around the endangered Attwater’s Prairie Chicken population with its annual festival.
Strange Fruit
Pineapple and pizza has had a grip on Tom Reavley for almost as long as he can remember. He remembers one day when the glorious combination stripped him of his innocence.
Book Reviews
Knick Knack Paddy Whack: A Novel by Ardal O’Hanlon Henry Holt, 244 pp., $23 About a fourth of the way through his debut novel, Ardal O’Hanlon lets his first-person narrator, 19-year-old Patrick Scully, get laid by a girl who looks “a bit like your man the lead singer from Soft Cell.” Drunk on vodka in…
Naked City
California regional planner John Landis shares his thoughts about high-tech growth in San Jose and Austin.
A Map of the World
A Map of the World 1999, R, 127 min. Directed by Scott Elliott, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Sigourney Weaver, Julianne Moore, David Strathairn, Chloë Sevigny. Of all our exalted moral virtues, truth may be the most problematical. Why? Well, for starters the unvarnished truth is often damned hard to reconcile with the…
About AIDS
A promising new style of condom may enhance pleasure for both parties.
Gung Ho
Q&A with punk priestess Patti Smith.
Book Reviews
The Boys Across the Street: A Novel by Rick Sandford Faber & Faber, 278 pp., $24 Rick Sandford, who died of AIDS in 1995, led a colorful and eventful life: Once a gay porn star under the name Ben Barker, he also worked as a stand-in for television and movie stars, counted novelist Christopher Isherwood…
Naked City
Local daily’s gossip columnist gets his column suspended after offending Texas Monthly publisher with a recent column.
SPAMTASTIC™ SPAMARAMA™
In the spring of 1984, my wholesale dessert business and catering company entered the seventh annual SPAMARAMA™ with a dish called SPAMBOLI™. Though we garnered only an honorable mention in the professional division, a local TV news crew did stop by our booth for a chat. CNN just happened to pick up that story, and…
Dancing About Architecture
Austin Music Commission chair Bob Livingston steps down, no one steps up; Man’s Ruin returns to Austin; Michael Corcoran’s suspension is puzzling.
Off the Bookshelf
Suicide Blonde by Darcey Steinke Grove Press, 191 pp., $12 (paper) Suicide Blonde follows pretty, sexy, San Francisco subcultured Jesse through a major change. Jesse narrates the novel as she leaves her lover and finds herself doing things she knows are “wrong” but longs to do, as if perversion is a form of transformation. The…
Naked City
GirlStart, formerly SmartGrrls, opens the first-ever Girls Technology Center in West Campus.
SPAMTASTIC™ SPAMARAMA™
1. April 1, 1978 Hippies Dick Terry and Dave Arnsberger were grousing about the proliferation of chili cook-offs and hit on a novel idea. “Anybody can cook chili. Making something like SPAM® taste good, now that would be a real challenge,” says Dick Terry. “Yeah,” says Arnsberger, “let’s have a SPAM® cook-off and call it,…
Record Reviews
Lou ReedEcstasy (Reprise) The spare and halting guitar that kicks off Ecstasy is like a crash in the middle of the night — a jarring awakening that demands your full attention. Before letting you slide back into unconsciousness, opening track “Paranoia Key of E,” a stripped-back rock song built on a basic riff and Reed’s…
Off the Bookshelf
South Mountain Road A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery by Hesper Anderson Simon & Schuster, 288 pp., $23 Hesper Anderson, daughter of Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Maxwell Anderson (What Price Glory?, Key Largo), has recorded her difficult coming of age in this pain-filled memoir. The author suffered a privileged childhood replete with a manic, self-obsessed mother, celebrity…
Naked City
A civil lawsuit brought by Yosefa Alomang, an Amungme tribe member who was tortured by Indonesian troops near Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold’s massive Grasberg mine in Irian Jaya, was dismissed last week by an Orleans Parish judge in Louisiana. The suit, filed in 1996, alleged that Freeport was responsible for some of the actions taken…
SPAMTASTIC™ SPAMARAMA™
2. March 28, 1981 SPAMARAMA™ number four is held in the second Soap Creek Saloon location on North Lamar in what had formerly been a roadhouse called the Skyline Club. The most memorable features of this year’s party were a portable hot tub on a trailer in the parking lot and a “Miss SPAMARAMA™” beauty…
Record Reviews
The CureBloodflowers (Elektra/Fiction) Is that all there is? Robert Smith is enigmatically coy (of course) as to Bloodflowers being the Cure’s valediction, but it sure feels like something’s over. Half the fun is playing spot the not-quite-oblique allusions to the end: “Out of This World” cries “we always have to go back to real lives”;…
Off the Bookshelf
Tupperware The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America by Allison Clarke Smithsonian Press, 265 pp., $24.95 Centuries from now, scientists will dig through the layers of our civilization and discover … Wonder bowls, Ice-Tups popsicle freezers, and other Tupperware — so much of it that these anthropologists of the future may assume it was used…
Naked City
The League of Women Voters will meet at 7pm Wednesday, April 5, to discuss the theory and practice of “sustainability,” at the Keller-Williams training room in the Spyglass Point office building, 1801 South MoPac. Featured panelists include Dr. Robert Cushing of the UT Sociology Dept. and Community Action Network Executive Director Fred Butler. For more…
SPAMTASTIC™ SPAMARAMA™
3. April 11, 1984 This year, the party was held in the beer garden of the third Soap Creek Saloon location on South Congress, where the Terrace Motel used to be. The original Potentate of Potted Meat, Smitty’s chef Pat Knight, won the professional division with his Chicken-Fried SPAM® with cream gravy. Knight was attended…
One Man Talking
In these days of HDTV, IMAX theatres with SurroundSound, and interactive software in 3-D hyper-realism, who wants to listen to one man talking for 90 minutes on a stage? A lot of people, when the man is Steven Tomlinson, award-winning economics lecturer, lay preacher, and Austin’s premier monologist, as Wayne Alan Brenner explains.
Off the Bookshelf
Phoenix A Brother’s Life by J. D. Dolan Knopf, 224 pp., $22 In Phoenix, J. D. Dolan delves into the complex relationship he shared with his older brother John, employing a disjointed narrative while attempting to find answers to why the once-close brothers lapsed into distance and silence. With sharp, taut prose, Dolan is most…
Signed and Sealed
Well, it’s over. The city of Austin’s settlement with Gary Bradley no longer has the qualifier “proposed” stuck before it, the way every criminal is described as “alleged” on the evening news. Instead, you can henceforth refer to it as the “unanimously approved” Bradley settlement, following the council’s 7-0 vote in favor of adopting the…
SPAMTASTIC™ SPAMARAMA™
4. May 4, 1987 Held under the oaks behind Terry Boothe’s South Austin joint, The Red Pig (now Magnolia Cafe South), the ninth annual SPAMARAMA™ was covered by an ABC news crew from Los Angeles. Former Clarksville Cafe chef (and current Chronicle food writer) Mick Vann took first place in the professional taste division with…
A Dynamic Greater Than You Can Imagine
Buckminster Fuller believed pieces of things could be combined in new ways to create a powerful new dynamic. Now, playwright Alice Wilson is combining her words with Bucky’s life for a dynamic new solo show. Wayne Alan Brenner gets the story.
Local Bestsellers
Local bestsellers are based on recent sales at Austin bookstores selected to reflect varied reading interests.
Sphere of Influence
The creators of Phantasm talk about the amazing success of their work over the years and why on Earth it’s been so successful in the first place.
Here on Earth
Here on Earth 2000, PG-13, 96 min. Directed by Mark Piznarski, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Leelee Sobieski, Chris Klein, Josh Hartnett, Annie Corley, Michael Rooker. She dies in the end. That might ruin the movie for you – except director Mark Piznarski and writer Michael Seitzman have already done that for me.…
SPAMTASTIC™ SPAMARAMA™
5. May 20, 1990 The annual party found a new home at the city park in front of the Cedar Door on West First. “Gus Koerner at the Cedar Door is a great guy to work with,” says David Arnsberger. “We always had a great time at his place.” This year’s event goes down in…
Articulations
A historic merger between the Paramount Theatre and the State Theater Company.
Record Reviews
The TheNakedSelf (Nothing) Serious as ever, intense to the verge of melodrama, possessed of a worldview that hasn’t brightened any since the dawn of the Reagan era, Matt Johnson, aka The The, has emerged from another of his characteristic, interminable silences with NakedSelf. Half a decade has passed since Johnson’s tribute to Hank Williams, Hanky…
Not Boxed In
Although filmmaker Carlos Avila grew up in Echo Park, only 10 miles from Hollywood, it couldn’t have seemed farther away. With Price of Glory, Avila has finally arrived.
Beautiful People
Beautiful People 1999, R, 107 min. Directed by Jasmin Dizdar, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Charlotte Coleman, Charles Kay, Rosalind Ayres, Roger Sloman, Heather Tobias, Danny Nussbaum, Siobhan Redmond, Gilbert Martin, Nicholas Farrell, Faruk Pruti, Dado Jehan, Edin Dzandzanovic, Julian Firth. Beautiful People is the best film about the English immigrant situation since…
