On the Side
As any red-blooded American diner can tell you, the classic side dishes for hamburgers are french-fried potatoes, onion rings, malts, and milkshakes. They’ve endured over the years, and even the fat police and the cholesterol rangers haven’t been able to vanquish them completely. Some burger joints may have made concessions to the anti-fat craze by…
State Budget Wars Spawn Tiff Over TIF
The Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund — and the have-nots it supports — fights to avoid an early death by budget ax.
Naked City
Last week, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration indicted 27 people nationwide on charges of selling various types of drug paraphernalia — bongs, roach clips, and more exotic items, such as pipes shaped like highlight markers and lipstick tubes. The DEA’s sweeps, code-named Operation Pipe Dreams and Operation Headhunter, started over a year ago in Des…
Good Neighbors
Fred Rogers had a lot to teach us about being a good neighbor.
SXSW Film Festival 2003
SXSW Film Festival 2003 Directed by , Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . The SXSW Film Festival 2003 has arrived. The Festival begins today, March 7, and continues through next Saturday, March 15. Premiering around town over the next nine days will be a wide selection of narrative features, documentaries, short films, music…
Food-o-File
Austin gets two new eateries and a possible fosterer for many more, in this week’s “Food-o-File.”
From Liberty Lunch to Homeland Security: Austin’s Walk With CSC
Computer Sciences Corp. is now one of America’s largest defense contractors. Is this a problem for City Hall?
Austin Women in Black
Austin Women in Black, a pro-peace group that formed the week after the September 11 attacks, has mounted six billboards across town advocating peaceful alternatives to pre-emptive war on Iraq. “We are giving visibility and public expression to the many voices for peace that are being ignored by our government,” says Genevieve Vaughan, one of…
Women’s Work Is Never Done
Started in 1978 as a grassroots feminist arts collaborative, Women & Their Work has evolved into an Austin institution, which has survived collapsing economies and shifts in location and mission to become one of the city’s premier visual arts spaces.
Amen.
Amen. 2002, NR, 132 min. Directed by Costa-Gavras, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Ulrich Tukur, Mathieu Kassovitz, Ion Caramitru, Antje Schmidt, Ulrich Mühe, Hanns Zischler, Sebastian Koch. Firebrand filmmaker Costa-Gavras (Missing) turns his lens upon the Holocaust, examining the conditions that allowed the mass exterminations of Jews to continue in virtually full view…
Long May You Run
Previewing the 2002-2003 Austin Music Awards.
Condemned Banks Looks to Supreme Court
Delma Banks death row appeal reads like a laundry list of everything wrong with Texas capital punishment.
“Please, Sir, I Want Some More”
The legislative budget process is leaving buckets of blood on the floor.
“Inside/Outside: Work by Texas Women Photographers”
The Women & Their Work exhibition “Inside / Outside: Work by Texas Women Photographers” finds established Texas artists alongside newcomers, and what this important exhibit reveals are new and older generations in step with one another, the future and the past side by side.
Awards Show Lineup
Austin Music Hall Wednesday, March 12, 7:55pm – sharp 8pm Ruthie Foster 8:30pm Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez 9pm Hole in the Wall Gang 10:30pm The Improbable Return of Redneck Rock
APD Deposes The King
According to employees working at Jazz on Feb. 27, local bass-playing street musician icon Gerry Van King — aka the King of Sixth Street — was arrested by Austin police officers as he stood on restaurant property, where he has played almost nightly for the past 15 years. According to the King, the rap is…
Austin @ Large: Max on a Mission
Will Austin’s turbulent climate produce a perfect storm for Max Nofziger’s mayoral campaign?
A Piece of Work
In Wash, influential media artist Bill Lundberg projects video loops of hands being washed onto the bowls of three white sinks, calling to mind our culture’s fears, now deeper than ever, of dangerous filth that might do us harm.
Naked City
Quote of the Week: “There is nothing in the Bible that forbids capital punishment. The Bible is a rule and guide; as far as I know the Old Testament is still in effect.” — Rep. Robert Talton, R-Pasadena, in a bizarre tirade directed Monday at supporters of a ban on execution of juvenile offenders who…
The Hightower Report
Bush acts like layoffs don’t exist, and uses Iraq to distract the media from corporate corruption.
Articulations
Austin helps the Lysistrata Project become a global phenomenon, and Governor Rick Perry and Austin Mayor Gus Garcia speak out in favor of the Long Center.
Second Helpings: Vegetarian
Are you a vegetarian or curious about dishes without meat in them? This “Second Helpings” is for you, then.
SXSW Picks and Sleepers
Wednesday Picks All showcase times subject to change. Please check official SXSW schedule. KINDERCORE SHOWCASE: Athens, Ga.-based indie Kindercore Records recently supplanted their Romper Room-style logo with a version rendering the “O” in Kindercore as a skull … Ain’t nothing twee about the Agenda!, a fivepiece mod-core outfit out of Athens looking to start a…
Naked City
Austin’s SafePlace has partnered with the U.S. Dept. of Justice on an $850,000 grant project to help crime victims with disabilities. SafePlace’s Disability Services Program is a model for social-service providers around the country; the Austin sexual assault and domestic violence services agency will administer similar pilot programs in 10 other cities nationwide. — M.C.M.…
Getting Their Due
The 2003 Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards
Exhibitionism
Barrio Daze, a series of damn funny and poignant sketches created, woven together, and performed by Adrian Villegas is both absurdly funny and dead-on insightful, not only dissecting stereotypical views other groups hold of Hispanics, but challenging those Hispanics have applied to themselves.
TCB
Are you ready for the fallout?
SXSW Picks and Sleepers
Wednesday Sleepers All showcase times subject to change. Please check official SXSW schedule. MIDLAKE: One of the newer musical forces to emerge from the small North Texas musical mecca of Denton, Midlake is cut in the Radiohead mold, a soundscape of swirling keyboards and detached Julian Casablancas-style vocals. 2001’s Milkmaid Grand Army EP was a…
Naked City
Last week Travis Co. Judge Sam Biscoe swore in two commissioners and the newly elected mayor of Webberville, which incorporated Feb. 1 after a closely divided vote among the fewer than 200 residents. A few days later, new Mayor Hector Gonzales and commissioners Ken Moon and Tom Trantham held their first public meeting. Resolved business…
The Quiet Man
To Kill a Mockingbird screenwriter and Texas Film Hall of Fame inductee Horton Foote reflects on the last 87 years.
Exhibitionism
Should you attend the UT Department of Theatre and Dance production of Heartbreak House, you’ll have to work to keep up with the student cast, which blasts through the wordy script, but your labors will be rewarded by some fine design work and acting, and G.B. Shaw’s timely critique of the leisure classes awakening to…
A Decade Under the Influence
10 Years of SXSW Film
Phases and Stages
Cat PowerYou Are Free (Matador) You Are Free finds Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power) getting comfy in her rock & roll skin. The arrangements are looser, more driven than on past releases. They take more chances. But it’s still Cat Power: simple, spacious, overwhelmingly affecting. Marshall has a voice as distinctive and enchanting as Billie…
Naked City
Plenty of anti-war activism to keep you busy. On Friday, March 7, at 5pm, protesters will stage a “weapons inspection” at the CSC complex, 200 E. Cesar Chavez, to protest the firm’s merger with controversial defense contractor DynCorp (see p.20). Saturday, March 8, at 7pm will see an Another Woman for Peace candlelight vigil (men…
The Merry Hempsters Hit the Road
In 2001, actor and activist Woody Harrelson rang friend and filmmaker Ron Mann up and invited him to tag along on an environmental whistle-stop trip in a hemp-fueled bus — “The Organic Living Tour.” Two years later, Mann’s digital video-shot doc Go Further is all but in the can.
Exhibitionism
The Bedlam Faction is as smart a bunch of actors as you’ll find, and they take the Jacobean tragedy ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore and make its extra-dense language crystal clear and its characters comprehensible, and the story relatively easy to follow, but the production suffers from a flatness born of a lack of specificity.
Screens Strung
What to see, when to see it, at SXSW Film 2003.
Phases and Stages
Grant-Lee PhillipsLadies’ Love Oracle (Rounder) Some musicians are born with an innate sense of how to zero in on the tenderest parts of a listener’s heart. Grant-Lee Phillips is one of those musicians, and on Ladies’ Love Oracle he homes in on the heartstrings with surgical precision and plucks them, not cruelly, but gently, as…
Naked City
A coalition of seven environmental groups from here to San Antonio has called on local, regional, and state leaders to overhaul existing measures in place to protect the Edwards Aquifer — the sole source of drinking water for an estimated 1.5 million people in more than a dozen communities. At a press conference held at…
The Camera Is Mightier Than the …
Documentarians Kim Bartley and Donnacha O’Briain were right in the belly of the beast when the Venezuelan coup began — specifically, in the Presidential Palace, right as the opposition stormed it.
News/Print
Talk amongst yourselves.
After a Fashion
Stephen makes the party rounds this week and finds out which celeb made an appearance at Flipnotics.
Phases and Stages
Patricia Vonne(Bandolera) Originally from San Antonio, Patricia Vonne spent time in New York City before moving to Austin in early 2001. While in NYC, she honed her craft as a singer-songwriter, putting together a band and generating a local buzz. With that came some label attention, but she ran into the same old “we like…
Naked City
Mayoral candidate Marc Katz on Tuesday announced a federal lawsuit to block enforcement of, and ultimately throw out, Austin’s $100 limit on contributions to city election campaigns. The $100 limit, passed by Austin voters in 1997 and upheld in a repeal effort last year, is the object of much ire for all three leading candidates…
Back in the Saddle Again
Long considered a lost film, Peter Fonda’s The Hired Hand gets its long deserved due at SXSW.
Book Review
“Eden is an important story, not to be categorized by race or gender or region,” Kate Cantrill writes of Olympia Vernon’s debut. “Its truths are universal — its women, all women; its men, all men; its earth, a part of all worlds.” Vernon will be at BookPeople on March 12 at 7pm.
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
According to Isaac Asimov, Stanley Kubrick wanted to get an insurance policy from Lloyd’s of London to protect against losses in case extraterrestrial intelligence was discovered before 2001: A Space Odyssey was released. Lloyd’s wouldn’t insure him.To determine the age of a goby fish, one must count the rings around its tiny ear bones or…
Phases and Stages
The Agenda!Start the Panic (Kindercore) Though Kindercore made its name on twee-pop and thrift-store techno, the Agenda! proves the Athens, Ga.-based label has a nose for garage punk, too. An exclamation point follows the moniker for good reason, but full-throttle frenzy is the hallmark of all competent garage noise. What delineates this quintet is their…
Naked City
Judging from the crowd of people eyeing the only open seat on the City Council, the winner of the Place 5 race could very well be determined in a run-off. So far, six people — five of them men, all of them white — have announced they’d join the contest to succeed mayoral hopeful Will…
Twice as Nice
Nancy Savoca comes with two films tucked under her arms — Dirt and Rebel Without a Pause.
Book Review
“Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is not for everyone,” Rick Whitten-Klaw writes of Cory Doctorow’s debut novel. “If you prefer your literature linear or your ideas staid, then give this one a pass.”
Day Trips
Friday’s Chicken and Pastry in Shiner combines golden-fried chicken and fluffy desserts for a family dining experience. The little restaurant across the tracks from Downtown and a block from the main highway intersection provides great food in a relaxed environment. “We also have a great hamburger,” says Victor Patek, owner of the town’s most popular…
Phases and Stages
ManateeMusic Is Useless Imagine if Jets to Brazil listened to more Tool. That’s a useless way to describe what Manatee approximates on Music Is Useless, the young Austin fourpiece’s first album. Sure, you could call it emo, since there are plenty of stop-start dynamics, hyperpersonal lyrics, and the occasional scream-therapy chorus. The lead singer’s name…
Naked City
Last week ACLU attorney Ann del Llano and Austin Police Association President Mike Sheffield made strange bedfellows as they shared concerns that Police Monitor Iris Jones is violating the city’s contract with the police union by not posting the meetings of her citizen review panel. This week Jones is irked by their assertion and says…
‘Art Should Be Convulsive’
The Austin Film Society and SXSW celebrate the films of Mexican cinema giant Arturo Ripstein.
Page Two
In such intense and crazed times, film and music of soothe and feed the soul; SXSW 2003 provides plenty to feast on.
To Your Health
How do I know if I need a B-vitamin supplement? What does it mean to “balance” the B-vitamins?
Phases and Stages
KinskiAirs Above Your Station (Sub Pop) Methinks it was not the narcotic sound sculptures that attracted Sub Pop Records to Kinski. No, it must’ve been the big fuzz-jam freak-outs that pushed this Seattle quartet onto the Sub Pop roster and to the head of the drone-rock class. Ten-minute opener “Steve’s Basement” quickly reveals Kinski’s m.o.,…
Naked City
Two of the three remaining members of the Brackenridge Hospital Oversight Council resigned unexpectedly Monday night, citing the oft-heard complaint that the BHOC serves no useful purpose. But if Dr. Jim Brand and DeAnn Friedholm had their way, the council would have a much better defined role as the public’s watchdog of Austin’s public hospital.…
‘Willard’ Premiere
Star Crispin Hellion Glover, director Glen Morgan, and producer James Wong all gathered at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown on Sunday to celebrate their new film, Willard, about a vermin-happy outsider who fights back against an unfeeling world via an army of killer rats.
Cradle 2 the Grave
Cradle 2 the Grave 2003, R, 100 min. Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Jet Li, DMX, Mark Dacascos, Anthony Anderson, Kelly Hu, Gabrielle Union, Tom Arnold. “Who’s got the stones?” is the question frequently asked in this gun fu thriller about a jewel heist gone awry. Forget about plot…
About AIDS
AIDS Advances Accompanied by Setbacks Sometimes, AIDS work takes one step backward for every two steps forward. Last week, however, it seemed more like a dance: one forward, one back, and two sideways, as news broke about both vaccines and treatments. On the upside, the new drug Fuzeon (or T-20) is about to be widely…
Phases and Stages
Yuppie PricksInitial Public Offering (Phi Pi) Answering to no one, save maybe Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko, where narcissism, arrogance, and loutishness are concerned, Austin’s Yuppie Pricks are those rare punks giving big ups to the GOP, the NRA, and the Dow Jones. Naturally, it’s all by design, as the Pricks have constructed an elaborate mythology…
Naked City
In a press conference Feb. 26, nonprofit election reformers Campaigns for People released revised numbers showing the insurance industry donated at least $1.3 million to Texas statewide and legislative candidates in the 2002 election cycle. More than $211,000 of that went to lawmakers now sitting on the House and Senate committees now considering insurance reform…
New to DVD
You can turn your back on a drug, but never turn your back on Criterion Collection DVD #175, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, an “eerie trumpet call over a lost battlefield.”
He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not
Colombani’s debut features a finely nuanced and altogether striking performance by Tautou, whose wide eyes adroitly reflect an inner world that ricochets from hopelessly in love to simply hopeless.
A Hundred Years of Shadows
One hundred years after “The Great Train Robbery,” motion pictures have transformed consciousness into a Kingdom of Shadows.
‘We’ve Got Climate Change’
Lee Nichols interviews UT biologist Camille Parmesan about the evidence and consequences of global warming.
Naked City
University of Texas administrators, ordered by Gov. Rick Perry to trim expenses 12.5% — $30 million — have been busy recommending cuts, even to programs not funded by the taxpayers. One such target is The Daily Texan; after two press operators retired, Texas Student Publications was asked to either justify the cost of having its…
Short Cuts
Tim and Karrie League take their genius Drafthouse idea and open two more franchises.
Bringing Down the House
Bringing Down the House 2003, PG-13, 105 min. Directed by Adam Shankman, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Steve Martin, Queen Latifah, Eugene Levy, Joan Plowright, Jean Smart, Kimberly J. Brown, Angus T. Jones, Missi Pyle, Betty White, Steve Harris. Some fine comedy performances bolster this thinly plotted film (the script is by first-timer…
As You Like It
Welcome! The following is our comprehensive Austin guide to the American classic commonly known as the hamburger.
AISD Budget Cuts Roll Toward Trustees
The AISD budget task force closes its deliberations as the Board of Trustees gets ready to act.
Naked City
You’d think that 213 years after the Bill of Rights was written, some things might have been worked out. But Texas Campaign for the Environment Director Robin Schneider had two police confrontations last month for exercising her First Amendment rights — in the wrong place. TCE tried to leaflet outside the doors of the city-owned…
Video Reviews
Over the past 40 years, Sidney Lumet has directed classics such as Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Verdict, works that overshadow the rest of his 41-film career. The Pawnbroker is overlooked now, despite exploring some of the themes that would define Lumet’s later, more recognized films.
Tears of the Sun
Tears of the Sun 2003, R, 118 min. Directed by Antoine Fuqua, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Bruce Willis, Monica Bellucci, Cole Hauser, Eamonn Walker, Johnny Messner, Nick Chinlund, Charles Ingram, Tom Skerritt. The hawkish Bruce Willis finally out-Keatons Buster Keaton in the Great Stone Face department. As Navy SEAL Lt. A.K. Waters,…
