Irma Vep & Les Vampires Double Bill
Irma Vep & Les Vampires Double Bill NR. Directed by Olivier Assayas, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Nathalie Richard, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Maggie Cheung. Frenchman Louis Feuillade’s popular silent movie serial of 1915, Les Vampires, inspires and informs countryman Olivier Assayas’ 1996 movie Irma Vep, which stars the ever-spectacular Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung…
Metropolis
Metropolis 1927, NR, 147 min. D: Fritz Lang. One of the great silent classics, Metropolis is a futuristic fantasy about the mechanization of society. The new print of this true cinema classic restores nearly a half hour of footage that was removed from Lang’s original cut in 1927. Although various other versions have been released…
Black Tight Killers
Black Tight Killers 1966, NR, 87 min. Directed by Yasuharu Hasebe, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Akira Kobayashi, Chieko Matsubara. The Black Tight Killers is a group of go-go ninja women assassins who use bublegum and 45rpm records as weapons. They help a combat photographer rescue his stewardess girlfriend from the Japanese yakuza…
UHF
UHF 1989, PG-13, 97 min. Directed by Jay Levey, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring “Weird Al” Yankovic, Victoria Jackson, Kevin McCarthy, Michael Richards, Billy Barty. “Weird Al” plays the manager of a small-time TV station who hits it big with his unconventional programming. Most of the movie is a series of parodic television…
Destroy All Monsters
Destroy All Monsters 1968, G, 88 min. Directed by Ishiro Honda, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Jun Tazaki, Yukiko Kobayashi, Akira Kubo. Japanese monsters run amok.
Enterprise: Shockwave
Enterprise: Shockwave 2002, NR, 60 min. Directed by Allan Kroeker, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Scott Bakula, John Billingsley. The season finale of the fifth Star Trek television spinoff series, Enterprise, will screen as a charity event. 100% of ticket sales will benefit Hospice Austin in a repeat of a similar event held…
White Zombie
White Zombie 1932, NR, 73 min. Directed by Victor Halperin, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Joseph Cawthorn, Madge Bellamy, Bela Lugosi. Straight from concluding its chilling public access season (now showing in reruns on Fridays at 11pm on channel 16), The Midnight Shadow Show takes to the stage with this presentation of the…
Independent Film Night
Independent Film Night NR. Directed by Various, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . A weekly collection of films screening every Saturday night in May.
Not Saving the Salamander
Nearly a year after the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service sounded the alarm over lax federal rules governing development in the Barton Springs watershed, a new Bush Administration official has decided the rules are okay after all. The agency’s about face on its “jeopardy” opinion means no changes are in store for the Environmental Protection…
Summer Fun Introduction
What better time to do a Peter Pan-themed “Summer Fun” issue than in a year when two local companies have presented the J.M. Barrie classic on stage? But the above picture is not from one of these productions. No, that’s my esteemed colleague and Chronicle Arts Editor Robert Faires (as Peter), age 13, in a…
Stories from the Midway
Am I sweaty and nauseous? Then this must be Six Flags … “This will be big fun,” they say. And then into the station wagon for a long, boring ride, perhaps without air conditioning, fighting with the sibs. An inevitable stop by the side of the road: I’m not going one inch further until there’s…
Enigma
Enigma 2001, R, 117 min. Directed by Michael Apted, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, Saffron Burrows, Jeremy Northam, Tom Hollander, Robert Pugh. Jonathan Mostow’s recent U-boat battle film U-571 was a mediocre popcorn picture that seemed — for all the authentic Nazi regalia and scowling sea dogs, blustery sea…
Steve Almond’s Existential Pleasures
In English, there are no non-cheesy manuals on ars amatoria. Not that English literature is devoid of great smut — there’s Henry Miller, there’s D.H. Lawrence when he wasn’t trying to make some chthonic point, there’s Anaïs Nin, and there’s that part of Gravity’s Rainbow where Slothrop actually somehow gets inside his own cock on…
May 4 Election Wrap-up
Aquifer District Gets Greener The Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer Conservation District shifted to a 4-1 environmental majority Saturday with the re-election of the board president and a landslide victory for a political newcomer. Craig Smith won a second four-year term on the board, representing South and Southwest Austin. The Austin attorney easily defeated opponent Felix…
When Is a Threat Not a Threat?
If Lee Sloan gets taken to court any time soon, he presumes it will be for speaking out against Parker Springs, a low-income condo complex currently planned near his neighborhood off East St. Elmo Road in Southeast Austin. On Tuesday night, the Zoning and Platting Commission tried to reach a decision on Sloan’s appeal against…
Never Grow Up
Austin is a town that brings out the “lost boy” in everyone.
Stories from the Midway
For a couple of weeks in late August through early September, the smell of corn dogs and cotton candy would merge with manure, dust, and diesel; the screams of teenagers would fill the air of Stillwater, Okla., and a blaze of light would blossom above a normally darkened patch of prairie. Surrounding this spectacle like…
A Shot at Glory
A Shot at Glory 2001, R, 115 min. Directed by Michael Corrente, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Morag Hood, Kirsty Mitchell, Cole Hauser, Brian Cox, Michael Keaton, Ally McCoist, Robert Duvall. It might sound like a fairly standard sports movie transplanted to the Scottish Highlands — the underdog minor leaguers from the tiny…
Recommended
Austin historian and novelist James Haley has spent 15 years researching the life of Sam Houston. Now we have the finished product: Sam Houston from University of Oklahoma Press. Haley will be at BookPeople on Thursday, May 16, at 7pm to read from the book and to talk about why he finds some recently published…
May 4 Election Wrap-up
No Props Given To Major Props The main message Austin voters sent Saturday was, “We like our elecoral process just fine.” Out of eight propositions on the ballot, only three passed. Council candidates may now file campaign finance reports electronically instead of publishing them in an Austin newspaper, and municipal court judges and other council…
Naked City
Saturday was Election Day. While less than 9% of Austinites bothered to vote this weekend, 80% of registered voters in France turned out for Sunday’s run-off between right-wing xenophobe Jean-Marie Le Pen and conservative President Jacques Chirac. Chirac defeated Le Pen, but many French are still crying in their wine over his victory. “He is…
Putt-Putting to NeverNeverland
‘Capt. Day Trips’ shares his favorite Texas mini-golf hot spots.
Stories from the Midway
“Down the shore” is as much a what as a where. Down the shore is the second part of the compound verb answering the question asked in South Jersey and Philly between Memorial and Labor Days: What are you doing this weekend? Going down the shore. Down the shore is where — after living a…
Readings
Firebreak by Richard Stark Mysterious Press, 288 pp., $23.95 It was back around the time that Beatlemania and James Bond hit America that Donald Westlake first adopted the pseudonym Richard Stark, a name suitable for a film noir anti-hero. Westlake’s alter ego wrote hard-boiled crime caper novels featuring a terse, diamond-tough criminal named Parker, too…
May 4 Election Wrap-up
Did Anti-Prop. 1 Jump the Ethical Gun? Proposition 1, aka the “Austin Fair Elections Act,” is now a dead issue. Voters rejected the attempt to provide a comprehensive system for taxpayer funding of city elections by a 3-1 margin. An important side issue raised during the campaign is still alive, however: whether an anti-Prop. 1…
Naked City
On more than a dozen occasions, Mark Walters says he has nearly been hit by inebriated motorists leaving the Clubhouse, a private hall located in his neighborhood on South Pleasant Valley Road. He also complains about loud music playing into the wee hours and underage drinking. Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission officers confirmed Walters’ latter concern…
Texas Amusements
Adventure Bay 12 acres of fun-filled water adventures featuring a gravity-defying Master Blaster and pirate ship. 13602 Beechnut, Houston. 281/530-5979 x106. www.adventurebay.com Alamo Village Open daily at 9am, this working ranch is also a family recreation center built around the set for John Wayne’s movie The Alamo. 7 miles N. on FM 674, Brackettville. 830/563-2580.…
Stories from the Midway
We decided to have a “Girls’ Night Out.” Not that most of our tomboy Catholic high school nights out weren’t already girls’ nights out by default, but on this one in particular, it was decided to exclude boys — all mention of boys, no slut-wear, no make-up, and eating whatever we wanted. And cigars. Pizza,…
Page Two
Saturday’s election results show that election reform isn’t necessary when you have a thoughtful electorate.
May 4 Election Wrap-up
Election Shorts The online politics newsletter In Fact Daily reports that Place 4 winner Betty Dunkerley still faced hefty campaign debts as of Monday. Dunkerley invested about $60,000 of her own money in her campaign, and sent an e-mail to previous contributors to help recoup those funds. Thanks to activist Linda Curtis’ “A Little Less…
Naked City
The Seaholm District Master Plan is destined to receive mixed reviews today (Thursday, May 9) when it goes before City Council for a public hearing, scheduled for 6pm. The plan leaves a couple of key issues unresolved: the design and direction of the Pfluger Bicycle Pedestrian Bridge extension, and the fate of the Lumbermen’s Investment…
Amusing Ways of Life
Three Central Texas traditions continue to make fun a destination.
Borderline Vaudeville
Bill Crawford and Gene Fowler go off-off-off Broadway with Border Radio.
Mr. Smarty Pants
The last pope to willingly retire was in 1294.Hollywood Hulk Hogan became a member of NWO shortly after it formed in 1996, but recently left the group to pursue other wrestling interests.What do George Pinker and Marcus Setchell have in common? They have both served as Great Britain’s royal gynecologist.Swedish researchers have discovered acrylamide, a…
Naked City
City Hall gets back to work this week and gets to cross items off the agenda that the election rendered irrelevant (like funding public financing, approving a single-member district map, and calling a run-off). That leaves a smattering of items of interest: Final readings on another ultra-high-density (multi-family-6) zoning case — 500 W. MLK, a…
2002 Summer Camps
Summertime, and the living is easier when your young ones aren’t moping around the house, glued to the PlayStation or the Cartoon Network, or out gallivanting in whatever playground the devil’s built for idle hands this year. Thus, summer camps: organized to provide growing minds and bodies healthy outlets for their energy and imagination when…
This Business Called Show
Talking with Tom
Day Trips
Selah, Bamberger Ranch redux: After a visit to demonstration ranch south of Johnson City last fall (“Day Trips,” Oct. 12, austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2001-10-12/cols_daytrips.html ), a return trip this spring was more than twice the education. What was once the worst piece of land in Blanco County now exemplifies the beauty of the Hill Country. Other than the…
Austin @ Large: Austin at Large
Was this election the end of an era?
Greener Pastures
I don’t want to learn solemn things. No one’s going to catch me and make me a man. I just want to be a little boy and have fun. — Peter Pan Oh wretched misery! Inexorable fate! Emissary of despair! Why hast thou cast me into the pit of ultimate darkness, weeping, wailing, sulking. Was…
Phases and Stages
Belle & SebastianBackyard, April 30 Question one in an audience survey conducted by Stuart Murdoch, Belle & Sebastian frontman: “Hands up — who was in Slacker?” Cowboy hats, Butthole Surfers teases, and Bob Wills covers might sound like a sarcastic poke at Texas cowpoke culture, but the 10-piece Scot pop outfit, in its first journey…
After a Fashion
Wait a polyester minute! What is our Style Avatar doing in Sugar’s, the Showpalace, and Exposé??? You’ll just have to read to find out. Thank goodness Lucinda’s also in there to soften the blow!
Capitol Chronicle
In the battle of the budget, the weakest go to the wall.
Stories from the Midway
So many of our formative years are forever branded by amusement park memories …
Phases and Stages
Long before Kenny G and smooth jazz, there was CTI. Despised by jazz purists of the day for its unabashed commercialization of tried-and-true artists vis-à-vis the inclusion of electric keyboards, syrupy orchestrations, and heavy-handed production, producer Creed Taylor nonetheless found a potent formula for undeniable success. With this first crop of CTI reissues, in hindsight…
Unfaithful
Unfaithful 2002, R, 110 min. Directed by Adrian Lyne, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Dominic Chianese, Erik Per Sullivan, Margaret Colin, Kate Burton, Olivier Martinez, Diane Lane, Richard Gere. Throughout his career, film director Adrian Lyne has gravitated toward the subject of sex and its power to both liberate and compromise the soul.…
To Your Health
After my last Pap test, which came out mildly abnormal, I “spotted” for several days. My doctor’s nurse told me not to worry and I finally did have a normal menstrual period. Why would that happen, and is it worrisome?
The Hightower Lowdown
The Smithsonian gets sold to the highest bidder; a tiny university builds a first-rate baseball stadium; and a common weed killer plays havoc with Mother Nature.
Stories from the Midway
Enchanted Forest is a quaint fairy-tale-themed park nestled in the foothills of upstate New York’s Adirondack Mountains, which, as a result of an early Eighties identity crisis, added a state-of-the-art water park. The water park featured slides with menacing names like “White Cobra” and “Sawmill.” Most disturbing was the 280-foot vertical drop, ominously named Mount…
Phases and Stages
Quoi? Le memo must have gotten perdu. Four years apres Air French duo’s space breaking Moon Safari — and un after 2001’s short-circuited 10,000HZ Legend — musique Français has broken free of its bad pop Bastille and stormed the international market. In the last six months alone, a boulanger’s dozen releases have crossed mon bureau;…
Spider-Man
Spider-Man 2002, PG-13, 121 min. Directed by Sam Raimi, Starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Willem Dafoe, Cliff Robertson, Rosemary Harris, Bruce Campbell, J.K. Simmons. It must have seemed like a terrific gamble when the suits at Columbia elected to go with director Sam Raimi’s first choice for the role of New York’s finest…
About AIDS
Having Side Effects from Meds? Help Out With Some Research One of the ironies of HIV treatments today is that they prolong life and provide better health for many people, but often at a high cost in side effects from the medications themselves. These toxic substances hold down virus reproduction and retard disease progression, but…
This Old Mouse
Facing accusations of market saturation, cultural homogenization, and unethical labor practices, Disney keeps manufacturing the magic … but for how long?
Stories from the Midway
The air was thick with the early onset of autumn, thick with the salty brine blowing in off the seashore, thick with the hopes and dreams of generations of children, immigrants, and regular American Joes, hopes and dreams and lives all fallen victim to the awesome powers of Father Time, who swept away all the…
Phases and Stages
Fred FrithDigital Wildlife (Winter & Winter) Guitarist Fred Frith, a veteran of New York’s downtown jazz scene, is generally considered a rock musician, but the music on Digital Wildlife is unclassifiable. His group, Miya Masaoka on koto and electronics, Larry Ochs, soprano and tenor saxophones, and Joan Jeanrenaud on cello, is quite an unusual instrumental…
Hell House
Hell House 2001, NR, 84 min. Directed by George Ratliff, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . Any press is good press, right? One suspects that’s why the Dallas-area Trinity Assembly of God Church gave Texan documentarian George Ratliff an all-access pass to the planning and execution of their annual Hell House. Hell House…
Coach’s Corner
Coach is a proud papa; his son Adam graduated from college last week.
A Grouse With the Mouse
How Disney made a lesser duck out of Howard
Stories from the Midway
When I was very young, about 6, my parents took me to the local theme park for some fun. I was hanging out in the kiddie rides section and took a trip on the tiny Ferris wheel for tots. The girl who shared my compartment was wearing a dirty dress and she was covered with…
Phases and Stages
Pedro the LionControl (Jade Tree) Why in God’s name is everybody obsessed with Pedro the Lion’s David Bazan singing about religion? His first EP comes out on Tooth & Nail (a label unfairly snubbed in its own right), and Pedro the Lion is immediately Christian rock. Okay, so Bazan is a spiritual man. If his…
All the Fish in the Sea
Part one of our guide to Austin’s proliferating sushi spots.
Food-o-File
Spring and summer crops mean farmstands and farmer’s markets are opening; Food Editor Virginia B. Wood gives the lowdown.
Treasure Chest
The Vault Disney collection dusts off kid classics from its golden era of live-action films. They still fit — and beautifully.
Stories from the Midway
The thought of running around in the heat with only a Timex and $20 to save me from the sun, $5 bottled water, and spit on the Looping Starship doesn’t just leave me cold, it leaves me clammy with nausea. Ah … but theme parks at night … that’s a whole other bag. I don’t…
Dancing About Architecture
Noise ordinance debate blows over — for now — while Internet radio crisis threatens, and SIMS crisis subsides.
Second Helpings: Indian Restaurants, Part One
We survey some of Austin’s Indian restaurants in this week’s “Second Helpings.”
The Hole Hootenanny
With the number of weeks shrinking before June 30 raises its ugly head, the gang at the Hole in the Wall is becoming increasingly frazzled, and it’s no secret why. The only real question is which is more frustrating — knowing or not knowing. What they do know is that on June 30, the Hole’s…
Babes in Toyland
Put the kids’ summer to good use by taking them to camp, where they learn how to make television, not watch it.
Stories from the Midway
A common adolescent rite of spring in 1980s Houston was the AstroWorld Season Pass. Just $30 got you into the park from March through September. AstroWorld employees called us “Season Pass Pests.” If someone asked what AstroWorld’s best ride was, you knew it was the Texas Cyclone. Patterned after the legendary wooden coaster, the Coney…
The New Guy
The New Guy 2002, PG-13, 93 min. Directed by Ed Decter, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Geoffrey Lewis, M.C. Gainey, Kurt Fuller, Illeana Douglas, Jerod Mixon, Lyle Lovett, Zooey Deschanel, Eliza Dushku, Eddie Griffin, DJ Qualls. Among the touted highlights of this filmed-at-Austin Studios teen movie are cameos by Vanilla Ice, Tommy Lee,…
Childhood’s End
A certain boy whose permanent address is Neverland has been buzzing Austin quite a bit this spring, and here are some thoughts on why Peter Pan is so much in the air these days.
May 4 Election Wrap-up
By the Numbers At the victory party Saturday night, Place 1 incumbent Daryl Slusher speculated that this might be a “realignment election.” He might be right, not just in terms of the public agenda (see “Austin@Large,” p.15) but in the voter behavior that drives it. Some highlights of the May 4 numbers: Turnout The overall…
Short Cuts
The third coast heads over to the West Coast for the Sixth Annual University of Texas at Austin Student Film Showcase, and in case you can’t afford to fly out for the big shindig, they’ll be screening the student works free at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown. Crafty.
Stories from the Midway
Water parks — all youth, false danger, and skin — can’t help but breed urban legends. Remember the one about the woman whose bikini top flew off going down the body chute? Or the one about the kid who fell to his death off the side? My cousin Becky and I were water-park dilettantes. What…
Articulations
A grand operatic production of Turnadot by the Chinese National Opera has been canceled, playwright C. Denby Swanson receives a McKnight Advancement Grant, Davy Crockett gets caught in the Web, and Peter Pan receives his own Amy’s Ice Cream flavor.
May 4 Election Wrap-up
Place 4: How Many Negatives Make a Positive? In the wee hours on Election Night, Betty Dunkerley continued to marvel at her fate. “I have two speeches,” she said, pointing to each pocket, “one for if I came in second, and one for if I came in third. I don’t have a speech for coming…
May 4 Election Wrap-up
Inside the Boxes PLACE 1Daryl Slusher: 161 boxes Kirk Mitchell: 12 boxes Vincent Aldridge: 1 box Tied (Slusher/Mitchell): 1 box Slusher’s top three boxes: 276 (Central – Hyde Park UMC) 78.3% 270 (Central – Austin Rec. Center) 76.0% 278 (Central – Clarksville/St. Luke’s) 70.0% Mitchell’s top three boxes: 274 (Central – NUNA/First English) 46.3% 428…
TV Eye
Summer fun, air-conditioned and remote-controlled: The Discovery Channel airs a triptych of roller coaster specials, and Buffy fans can get their jollies in book form.
Stories from the Midway
We were on a family weekend vacation at Ocean Beach, Md., an excruciatingly embarrassing situation for my sister, nine years my senior. One evening we walked down the boardwalk to the amusement park that resided on a pier all summer long. My sister kept several paces ahead of us to allay suspicion that she was…
Exhibitionism
In The Kindermann Depiction, Physical Plant Theater’s Steve Moore and director Carlos Trevino have created two worlds, one flooded with leaves, one made of cloth, that are full of strange wonders. We wouldn’t want to live there; but our lives are much enriched by having paid a visit.
May 4 Election Wrap-up
Place 1: He’s Still Number Two You’ve got to hand it to Kirk Mitchell. For better or worse, he comes in swinging, he goes down swinging. On Monday morning, the physically exhausted candidate still had enough punch to not only denounce the man who had hammered him at the polls two days earlier, but to…
Forgione Says Follow the Blueprint
Forgione takes his Blueprint on the road, but is everyone buying?
Video Reviews
The Tolkein / D&D brand of sword & sorcery common in Lloyd Alexander’s classic Chronicles of Prydain was a bit dark for the Disney set, but the Mouse factory went ahead and made The Black Cauldron anyway. Too bad they Disneyfied it to death.
Stories from the Midway
Kennywood Park, on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, is probably the only place my entire family ever went to have fun together. It happened in the summer of 1982, between first grade and second. That was before Uncle John and Aunt Robin divorced, and Uncle John transformed from a working-class son of Slovaks into a faceless…
Exhibitionism
In the Second Youth Family Theatre production of the Maurice Sendak-Carole King musical Really Rosie, a cast of young performers brings a gang of rowdy Brooklyn kids to life with a spark and sass that suits their streetwise scrappiness and executes the show’s musical numbers with the polish of much more experienced stage performers.
May 4 Election Wrap-up
Place 3: Goodman Rolls “If a democracy is well-run,” said Place 3 candidate Billy Sifuentes at East Austin restaurant Nuevo Leon on Saturday night, “you don’t just let an incumbent go. Someone has to run against them to at least hold their feet to the fire.” In the end, that was about all challengers Sifuentes…
