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Gettin’ Busy

It’s been a hectic past few weeks here at the Chronicle offices, as we’ve been anxiously screening and assigning and drafting and editing to prepare this, the 2013 SXSW Film preview issue. There are 135 full-length films awaiting your exploration, and yet only 15 features in the following pages; obviously we had to winnow somehow.…

by Monica Riese

Mr. Smarty Pants Knows

They say male dogs make good psychologists for female cheetahs who are skittish and less likely to mate in captivity. Wheeled garbage pails are called “wheelie bins” in England, Australia, and New Zealand. In 1965, on his 20th birthday, The Who’s Pete Townshend wrote “My Generation” while riding a train from London to Southampton. Of…

by Mr. Smarty Pants

Oz the Great and Powerful

Neither a besmirching nor a instant classic, this sometimes clunky prequel in which James Franco plays the Wizard when he was a mere, young huckster also has Sam Raimi’s ravishing visuals.

by Marjorie Baumgarten

Emperor

Tommy Lee Jones is Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Matthew Fox his adviser in this historical drama set in postwar Japan in which the general must decide the fate of the Japanese emperor.

by Louis Black

SXSW Interview: Crooked Bangs

Electronic giants M83, Air, and Phoenix all hail from France, translated into English for the benefit of international audiences. Back in Austin, post-punk trio Crooked Bangs makes the French connection in reverse, barking its songs out en français. “I’ve always been into the rhythm of French music without ever seeking it out,” says guitarist Samantha…

by Abby Johnston

Lore

A German girl at the end of World War II leads her four siblings to safety while also confronting a world more complex than her Nazi upbringing equipped her for.

by Marjorie Baumgarten

Hacking Food

Weight management and Big Food are on the menu for food and health-related panels at SXSW Interactive

by Jessi Cape

To Your Health!

Diet, health, and fitness concerns are a weighty topic at this year’s Interactive Festival, particularly the various iterations of boutique diets of affluence. In Biology of Weight: What Men Need to Lose the Gut, physician and trained chef John La Puma forwards the argument that men need to approach weight loss differently than women in…

by Melanie Haupt

SXSW Interview: Elle King

Elle King’s brassy, brazen voice turned heads with the release of last summer’s eponymous EP. With four songs, the 23-year-old Brooklyn songwriter inhabited an eclectic sweep of styles and moods, from the defiant growl of “Playing for Keeps” and twanged, banjo-backed “Good to Be a Man” to the sparsely mournful “No One Can Save You”…

by Doug Freeman

Civics 101

Thursday 07 PLANNED PARENTHOOD RAL­LY Join guest speaker Stephanie March of Law & Order at this lobby day to ask legislators to stop playing politics with women’s health. 9am. Texas State Capitol. $10. www.ppaction.org. SHOP FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY A portion of your purchases goes to nonprofits serving the fairer sex. Events and speakers will…

by Chronicle Staff

LegeLines

Supplemental Spending Hits a Speed Bump. The Senate and House are convening a conference committee to sort out their different drafts of House Bill 10 – the supplemental appropriations bill required to balance the current biennium’s spending before the chambers can move on with the budget for the next two years. However, that may not…

by Chronicle Staff

Food Events

� Wine Dinner & Metaphysical Lecture Restaurant Jezebel teams up with renegade winery Scholium Project this weekend, starting with a five-course dinner with wine pairings. $250. Sat., March 9, 6:30pm. The next night features a wine tasting and lecture on the topic “Eating Animals.” $50. Sun., March 10, 7pm. Reserve by phone. Restaurant Jezebel, 800…

by Virginia B. Wood

Quote of the Week

“The foremost goal of every elected official … should be to do better by our schools, not simply to make them a little less worse off.” – State Sen. Kirk Watson, on the Senate’s passage last week of about $1.4 billion in education funding

by Chronicle Staff

Headlines

› City Council meets today (March 7) with a few high-profile items on the agenda: a public hearing and possible vote on the economic incentive proposal for National Instru­ments Corp., how to facilitate historic building moves from Rainey Street, and just how much mandatory parking we need Downtown. › Austin’s long-awaited single-use bag ban began…

by Chronicle Staff

SXSW Showcase: K-Pop Night Out

Thanks to a couple strong years of Seoulsonic label promotion, Gangnam style will be in short supply here. Breaking with past years’ guitar-rock hegemony, f(x) could teach the ubiquitous PSY a thing or two about bringing sexy back. These five women look like Seoul’s answer to the Spice Girls, a diverse outfit with Korean, Korean-American,…

by Dan Oko

SXSW Showcase: City of Austin

Even the city of Austin showcases at SXSW, handpicking its own potential breakouts. Wild Child leads the pack, an energetic, lush folk sextet led by the interplay of Alexander Beggins and fiddle/vocal powerhouse Kelsey Wilson. 2010 debut Pillow Talk earned them a 2012 ACL Music Festival slot, with sophomore effort The Runaround (helmed by Ben…

by Doug Freeman

Exhibitionism

With a gripping turn by Andrew Bosworth, this City Theatre production of Shakespeare’s tragedy belongs to Iago

by Jillian Owens

SXSW Showcase: Fathers & Sons

Perhaps the sleeper showcase of SXSW takes place in South Austin at the home of a knight of the round table. A single grouping with four of the best songwriters this state ever produced tallies its own raisons d’etre, particularly when it stars two Flatlanders (Butch Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and even money Joe Ely…

by Raoul Hernandez

SXSW Showcase: Sounds From Chile

As with any talent from South America, there’s likely an assumption you’re getting Latin dance music here, but Sounds From Chile presents a much wider range of music. Caravana, from Las Achupallas, Valparaiso, gives a taste of the country’s roots, with an acoustic sound rooted in its culture’s folk music. Singer-songwriter Diego Peralta shares a…

by Michael Toland

Soccer Watch

The Houston Dynamo dominated the first leg of their CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinal against Mexico’s Santos Laguna, but had to wait till the 89th minute for a Brad Davis goal to give them the 1-0 win. The return leg is next Wednesday in Torreon, where Santos has won 20 of 21 CONCACAF games. The L.A.…

by Nick Barbaro

SXSW Showcase: People of Letters

Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire founded Women of Letters, a literary salon in Melbourne, Australia, in 2010 to celebrate the art of the epistolary tradition in an age of 140-character missives. The bestselling series presents a collection of notable female authors, musicians, and actors writing and reading a carefully composed letter following the predetermined theme…

by Melanie Haupt

The Luv Doc: To Band or Not to Band?

Dear LuvDoc, SXSW is coming up and I can’t decide if I should buy a wristband or just wing it and RSVP to a bunch of day parties? Please advise. – Taylor Goddamn it, Taylor, dispensing advice on whether or not to buy a wristband around here is risky business. I know you’re probably blissfully…

by The Luv Doc

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