November 10 • 2000

Nov 10-16, 2000 / Vol. 20 / No. 11

Wonderwall

Wonderwall 1968, NR, 75 min. Directed by Joe Massot, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Jane Birkin, Jack Macgowran, Iain Quarrier, Irene Handl, Richard Wattis. Recently restored and remastered, this 1968 relic features music by sitar-era George Harrison, who performs with Eric Clapton, Ravi Shankar, and Ringo Starr. Wonderwall played town during the past…

Good Men, Good Women

Good Men, Good Women 1995, NR, 108 min. Directed by Hou Hsiou-Hsien, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Annie Shizuka Inoh, Jack Kao. In this concluding (and entirely self-sufficient) chapter of Hou’s trilogy about the history of Taiwan in the 20th century, the director uses history and art to show their relationship to the…

Women With Rank

Women With Rank NR. Directed by Various, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . Women With Rank is a film about female officers in the Zapatista National Liberation Army.

Animated Films by the Brothers Quay

Animated Films by the Brothers Quay NR. Directed by Brothers Quay, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . Animated Films by the Brothers Quay includes video screenings of Street of Crocodiles (1986, 21 min.); De Artificiali Perspectivas or Anamorphosis (1991, 15 min); Stille Nacht I (1998, 1 min); and, Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (1987,…

Gates and Erik’s Movie

Gates and Erik’s Movie NR. Directed by Gates Bradley, Erik Horn, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . To quote from their Web site, Gates and Erik, who wrote, directed, and star in this feature, are “two high school punks from Birmingham, Alabama, trying to do what every self respecting human being wants to…

World of Books

Ha Jin Since Ha Jin’s novel Waiting won the National Book Award last year, he finds himself in high demand. He sometimes wishes he weren’t. Although Waiting has been published for over a year, Jin still juggles a number of requests for interviews and readings. The success is exciting, but also overwhelming, especially since Jin…

Mr. Smarty Pants

Genghis Kahn’s mother was a Christian.Ethiopia still follows the Julian calendar (introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 B.C.). Consequently, in Ethiopia, it is now 1993. New Year’s Day 1993, 1 Meskerem 1993, fell on Sept. 11, 2000.The Greek National Anthem has 158 verses.Horseshoe crabs are neither decopod nor crustacean, but rather grouped in their own…

Record Reviews

Richard BucknerThe Hill (Overcoat) Northern California native Richard Buckner’s fourth album is an unwitting collaboration of sorts between the uncompromising singer-songwriter and Edgar Lee Masters. For The Hill, Buckner took pieces from Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, set them to music, and strung them together into one complete thought, if you will, in 18 parts; the…

Election 2000

Nov. 7 General Election Results Travis County Statewide Nationwide President/ Vice President R: George W. Bush/ Dick Cheney 141,142 (46.9%) 3,794,661 (59.3%) 48,609,640 (48.5%) D: Al Gore/ Joe Lieberman 125,422 (41.7%) 2,426,643 (37.9%) 48,707,413 (48.6%) G: Ralph Nader/ Winona LaDuke 31,219 (10.4%) 137,681 (2.2%) 2,655,916 (2.6%) L: Harry Browne/ Art Olivier 2,680 (0.9%) 23,417 (0.4%)…

Dark Days

Dark Days 2000, NR, 84 min. Directed by Marc Singer, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . It’s easy to see why Dark Days picked up not one, not two, but three major awards at Sundance 2000 (as well as an honorable mention at SXSW 2000) — it’s the kind of compelling, relentless cinema…

World of Books

Stanley Crouch It is not surprising that after publishing three collections of essays in a dozen years, Stanley Crouch’s spacious, long-awaited first novel Don’t the Moon Look Lonesome showcases his erudition alongside his fascination with the way real people live. He is a high-powered intellectual who operates in rarefied circles (he is a contributing editor…

Record Reviews

U2All That You Can’t Leave Behind (Interscope) No U2 album is complete without Bono writing a song about the wind. At least that’s one of the things you can say about “Kite”; another would be that it’s as affecting as “One.” All That You Can’t Leave Behind is about all kinds of things, really, but…

Record Reviews

Arab StrapElephant Shoe (Jetset)Arab StrapMad for Sadness (Jetset) One of the lingering images of SXSW 98 was Aidan Moffett, lead mumbler of Arab Strap, with his back to the Electric Lounge crowd at that year’s Matador showcase, head bowed in a disconsolate, drunken stupor. Behind him, his Glaswegian compadres were jamming on an extended skull-thumping…

The Fantasticks

Deep in your heart, you should “follow.” Released just a few years ago, this film version of the Off Broadway workhorse captures the feeling of the innocent and bygone era of movie musicals. But it differs from the original work’s romantic minimalism as it opens up the play cinematically.

World of Books

Barry Lopez “It’s possible to be a monk and a dedicated surfer,” Barry Lopez says. “These are not antithetical states.” Lopez is speaking about a story from his new fiction collection Light Action in the Caribbean, a story about a man who seeks solace at a seaside monastery and discovers that the brothers “are onto…

Record Reviews

PJ HarveyStories From the City, Stories From the Sea (Island) Stories From the City, Stories from the Sea features a return to the three-piece format found on PJ Harvey’s first two studio efforts, and it’s the album’s stripped down, hard-driving sound that recalls those early days. Well, sort of — sometimes. Polly Jean has never…

Record Reviews

FSKInternational (Catamount) FSK is a German band that originally formed in 1980. Their early sound was an art/punk hybrid, which quickly deteriorated into a bastardized version of oompah-laden Bavarian roots music mixed with good old American country & western. These days, they have an affinity for lo-fi electronica, which explains the brief keyboard-heavy interludes on…

World of Books

T.C. Boyle “I have a fascination with worst-case scenarios,” says T.C. Boyle. He is dealing with one as we speak: Water has started leaking into his 109-year-old house as the first storm to hit Santa Barbara, Calif., in six months rages outside. So while he contemplates knotty lit-crit questions about why the themes of celebrity…

Record Reviews

Doug SahmThe Return of Wayne Douglas (Texas Tornado) When the first word on an album is “bluebonnets” and the last word is “adios,” you just know it’s gonna be full-tilt Texas, and the long-awaited/delayed The Return of Wayne Douglas won’t disappoint. Doug Sahm’s final project before his death last November, The Return of Wayne Douglas…

Record Reviews

GlueciferTender Is the Savage (Sub Pop) Thankfully, there’s never been a star-studded AC/DC tribute album. It’s not that they don’t deserve it, because their influence stretches far beyond the credit they’ve been given. Instead, it’s a case that there’s no need for overpriced amateurs to try their hand at what so many hardworking pros have…

Naked City

City Council announces that it will buy land for a proposed homeless shelter outright, after the Salvation Army placed stipulations on the sale of the downtown land which the city said it was unable to meet. Also, other council news.

World of Books

Ted Koppel By design, ABC’s Nightline isn’t the place to catch a candid moment with host Ted Koppel. Coming from an era when reporters and interviewers probed for the truth without offering personal commentary, Koppel has spent much of Nightline’s 20-year run being careful not to turn his Washington news desk into a pulpit for…

Good Taste

You spontaneously slow down and breathe easier when you enter

Basil’s, Barbara Chisholm writes. This is not a hipster hot spot that is

peopled with folks checking the door to see if someone more interesting

than their current partner has entered. People come here to concentrate

on…

Record Reviews

Merle HaggardI Wish I Could Fly (Anti/Epitaph) Merle Haggard on Epitaph? Well, don’t look for him to be touring with Bad Religion or Pennywise anytime soon, but it makes sense when you think about it. After all, he’s made a career of being an outlaw, and god knows Haggard and many of his contemporaries have…

World of Books

Goodbye to a River: Behind the Scenes When Austin Barnes & Noble executive Dave Hamrick announced that he was leaving the bookstore chain back in August, Texas writers paid attention. For years Hamrick had worked hard celebrating their work, always going a step further for them than anyone else in the book business. Attending an…

Record Reviews

The V-RoysAre You Through Yet? (E-Squared) This is the epitaph of a coulda-been American treasure that instead died young. After a mere two studio albums — the blazing Just Add Ice and disappointingly bland All About Town — the pride of Knoxville, Tennessee, disbanded, leaving only this live album as a farewell. It’s pretty standard…

Election 2000

Fear and Loathing in Austin It was about 1:45 in the morning, and Mark McKinnon was soaring high above the rain-sodden crowd of journalists and George W. Bush supporters gathered at 10th and Congress to hear the election results tallied. About 30 minutes earlier, CNN had declared Bush the winner of Florida. That declaration gave…

Image of a First Lady

Based on her physical appearance alone, Jean Stapleton is a natural to

portray Eleanor. But it turns out that the accomplished actress’

resemblance to the first lady doesn’t end there. It extends to her idealism,

her feminism, and even her awakening to activism.

Liquid Assets

Chilean Sauvignon Blancs Chile’s wine-producing area is getting lots of attention from some of the world’s great winemakers. Because the climate is similar to California’s, and since land and labor are inexpensive, they see potential for soaring profits. But they won’t be able to jack up the prices until they build a reputation through consistently…

Record Reviews

Dwight YoakamTomorrow’s Sounds Today (Reprise) No one would have guessed when Dwight Yoakam hit the music scene in the mid-Eighties that not only would he still being making music at the turn of the century, but that he would be making music as fresh and vital as any made in its day. Yet he is,…

Election 2000

Light Rail Never? It was one of only a handful of real races on the local ballot, and surely the most closely watched of all. Of course, when the fate of the free world depends on a few apartment buildings in Fort Lauderdale, a 2,004-vote margin of defeat doesn’t seem all that close. And so…

Dark Days

Six years ago, Marc Singer wasn’t homeless, and he wasn’t a filmmaker.

With Dark Days, he became both.

Jean Stapleton: On Theatre

When Jean Stapleton talks about “the series,” there’s no need to ask her which series she’s talking about. She was part of the amazing ensemble in All in the Family, and her work in it not only earned her three Emmys and three Golden Globes, it ensured her Edith Bunker an enduring place in television…

Off the Bookshelf

Only the Wicked An Ivan Monk Mystery by Gary Phillips Write Way Publishing, 352 pp., $24.95 Gary Phillips is the creator of one of the few great modern literary private eye characters, Ivan Monk, an African-American donut shop operator and private detective in South Central post-Rodney King Los Angeles. Phillips himself has family ties in…

Record Reviews

Matthew RyanEast Autumn Grin (A&M) Matthew Ryan’s second album extends directly from his 1997 debut Mayday. He could probably shuffle a few tracks from one to the other and no one would ever notice. If they did notice, they probably wouldn’t think it changed the landscape of either album very much. That’s because Ryan has…

Election 2000

Kitchen Heats Up While the Republicans shivered at what must have increasingly seemed an ill-conceived outdoor party at the other end of Congress, the Democrats partied snugly at the south end of downtown, at the Town Lake Hyatt Regency. And while the night’s cliffhanger races dragged on into the morning, the only contested state legislative…

Short Cuts

Austin Film Festival 2000’s Sundance Channel / Time Warner Cable

Audience Award winners and upcoming events and workshops of

interest to the Austin film community

Off the Bookshelf

Ten Texas Feuds by C. L. Sonnichsen University of New Mexico Press, 248 pp., $16.95 (paper) When Charles Leland “Doc” Sonnichsen died in 1991 at the age of 89, he left a legacy of books about the Southwest and inherited the “Mr. Southwest” mantle that J. Frank Dobie wore for years. Doc’s Southwestern ties were…

The JFKonspiracy

Kathy McCarty wants to know “Why?” Why is wanting to know more

about the Kennedy Assassination such social suicide?

Record Reviews

Kid RamosWest Coast House Party (Evidence) The strict 12-bar blues genre has evolved about as far as it’s going to go for the foreseeable future. Influential as the form has been, there’s just so much that can be done with it. The last important blues innovators, such as Magic Sam, came to the fore in…

Election 2000

Seeing Green U.S. presidential races lend themselves easily to sports metaphors, which should tell you a lot about our political thinking. The scene at the Double Dave’s pizza joint on 30th and Duval, where the beer was flowing like water and people broke off conversations to catch the latest numbers on the bigscreen TVs, should…

Video Reviews

With his latest film Bamboozled opening this Friday in Austin, Spike Lee celebrates almost 15 years in Hollywood and just as many feature films. As one of the key figures of the Eighties independent film scene, Lee opened the door for indie filmmakers of today like Darren Aronofsky, born and raised in Brooklyn, whose second…

Articulations

Director Don Toner announces a new theatre company for himself, David

Stevens announces his departure from Chorus Austin, and UT’s

Department of Art & Art History announces a rare meeting of critical

minds.

Off the Bookshelf

Plainsong by Kent Haruf Vintage, 320 pp., $13 (paper) On the plains the sky is bigger and the wind blows harder, and this tends to make people some combination of humble, hearty, and resilient as hell. Plainsong, a finalist for the National Book Award last year and newly in paperback, is set in Holt, Colorado,…

Record Reviews

St. GermainTourist (Blue Note)Erik TrufazzThe Mask (Blue Note) What makes these two Paris-based “acid jazz” albums among the most well-received releases of 2000 is the extraordinary way they use up-to-the-minute grooves and classic reggae riddems, along with more traditional jazz sensibilities, to birth a colorful pastiche of blindingly hip musical derivations. St. Germain, the moniker…

Election 2000

Right Turn The balance of power on the State Board of Education shifted back to the right Tuesday, as professed Christian Cynthia Thornton rode the statewide Republican wave to victory over religious-right watchdog Donna Howard in District 10. That seat was vacated by longtime board member Will Davis, regarded as an important bulwark against the…

TV Eye

Why are this year’s season premieres so darn dull? Also, a goodbye to

Steve Allen and news on a class action suit alleging age discrimination

filed by 28 TV writers.

Exhibitionism

A vague performance at the center of the Public Domain Theatre

Company’s production of Edward Bond’s Bingo diminishes the impact of

Bond’s play, but does not eclipse it. It feels relevant right here, right now.

Off the Bookshelf

Even the Rhinos Were Nymphos by Bruce Jay Friedman University of Chicago Press, 236 pp., $25 After writing screenplays and novels that have garnered storms of praise for decades (Splash, A Mother’s Kisses), author Bruce Jay Friedman seems to be looking back and constructing a myth of his life by compiling some revealing nonfiction in…

Should You Choose to Go …

Thanks-Giving Square Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm; Sat-Sun and holidays, 1-5pm Admission is free. Suggested donation $5 888/305-1205 or 214/969-1977 www.thanksgiving.org AMTRAK Austin-Dallas runs every day. Departing Austin 11:41am. Arriving Dallas 6pm. 800/USA-RAIL www.amtrak.com Reunion Tower of Dallas 300 Reunion Sun-Thu, 10am-10pm; Fri-Sat, 9am-midnight. Admission $2. 214/651-1234 dallas.hyatt.com/dfwrd/indi/indi.html The Sixth Floor 411 Elm @ Dealey Plaza Daily 9am-6pm,…

Record Reviews

UnderworldEverything, Everything (V2) You have to love any DVD that trumpets “Warning: This performance contains strobe lighting throughout!” No unwanted epileptic Pokémon shenanigans for Karl Hyde and Rick Smith, and certainly not for longtime DJ Darren Emerson, who exited the group earlier this year. Still, as a record of the live Underworld experience, this nine-track…

Election 2000

Judgment Day Travis County Democrats retained their overwhelming presence at the courthouse, winning four out of five local judicial contests. But the Dems’ victories stopped just short of the county line, with Republicans flexing greater muscle in the higher-court races. Back home in Austin, one of two George W. Bush-appointed Republican incumbents at the district…

Exhibitionism

Here’s Cyndi Williams’ new play, Fish: an evocation of people and

situations like the psychic furniture of a darker David Lynch film.

Sad Stories and Steel Guitars

Tear Time, Ted Roddy’s first recording since 1995’s Full Circle and the first under his velveteen-country Tearjoint Troubador guise, is perhaps best appreciated by toting up the numbers. Nine of its 15 songs are set in a bar, honky-tonk, tavern, dive, or establishment where one is likely to hear music with steel guitars and sad…

Record Reviews

Godspeed You Black Emperor!Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (Kranky) Cinematic in its scope and breathtaking in its grandiose beauty, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, the second full-length from this nine-piece instrumental behemoth from Montreal, must be heard to be believed. The double album is divided into four sprawling tracks,…

Election 2000

Crying Shane Despite their GOP opponents’ attempts to paint Travis County’s top two law enforcement officials as inept flops, District Attorney Ronnie Earle and Sheriff Margo Frasier scored what seemed to be all-too-easy re-election victories Tuesday. Earle emerged with more than 55% of the vote over GOP rival Shane Phelps, while Frasier, who made history…

Smiling Fish and Goat On Fire

Smiling Fish and Goat On Fire 2000, R, 90 min. Directed by Kevin Jordan, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Heather Jae Marie, Rosemarie Addeo, Amy Hathaway, Bill Henderson, Christa Miller, Steven Martini, Derick Martini. Did you like The Brothers McMullen, Ed Burns’ romantic comedy from 1995 about three brothers living under the same…

Exhibitionism

The UT Department of Theatre & Dance production of Paula Vogel’s The

Baltimore Waltz is as technically solid as they come, but some of the

performances are all over the map when they should be rooted in a

terrifying reality.

Page Two

Politics Editor Louis DuBose examines the ramifications of the Presidential

and Light Rail votes.

Ted Roddy Reviewed

Ted Roddy’s Tearjoint TroubadorsTear Time (The Music Room) Back in the early Sixties, high-powered producers like Chet Atkins, Billy Sherrill, and Owen Bradley introduced the term “countrypolitan” into the music lexicon, with arrangements that were cleaned up and sweetened considerably. Country purists have scoffed ever since, pointing to the sorry state of current Nashville product…

Record Reviews

Ekova Heaven’s Dust (Six Degrees)EkovaSoft Breeze & Tsunami Breaks (Six Degrees) There’s an upper echelon of singers whose ex-pression is not limited to words found in the dictionary. Instead, these artists — Mimi Goese (Hugo Largo), Marie Daulne (Zap Mama), Lisa Gerrard (Dead Can Dance), and Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins) — create a language of…

Election 2000

Just Off the Green Television ads and the City Council’s endorsement weren’t enough to persuade voters to let go of 400 acres of parkland on the shores of Lake Walter E. Long for a $65 million luxury golf resort. The city was prepared to offer $4 million in incentives to the resort development, hoping to…

Bamboozled

Bamboozled 2000, R, 135 min. Directed by Spike Lee, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Damon Wayans, Savion Glover, Jada Pinkett Smith, Michael Rapaport, Tommy Davidson, Mos Def, Thomas Jefferson Byrd, Paul Mooney. Spike Lee makes movies as though they had the power to communicate things and change lives. As a filmmaker, he is…

World of Books

The Fifth Annual Texas Book Festival takes place this weekend, and,

once again, it should prove to be the best use of the State Capitol all year

long.

Public Notice

Eye of the Tiger, baby! Are you up to it? Up to this week’s public service

challenges? Kate and the Pee En crew takes you there.

Tear Time, Drop by Steel-Colored Drop

“Hasn’t Happened Yet” — Chapter one in the saga of our sad-sack leading man. He used to “hang out with that honky-tonk crowd downtown,” so his love “put me out like a butt from a cigarette.” “Tearjoint” — The song that inspired the band. Contains the choice couplet, “Won’t you please pour me a tall…

Record Reviews

Rubén GonzálezChanchullo (Nonesuch) Along with Pedro “Peruchin” Juztiz and Luis “Lili” Martinez, Rubén González is credited with being among the major architects of a percussive, highly influential Afro-Cuban piano style of the Forties that featured complex counter-rhythms, both parallel and contrary motion, flashy runs, and splashy chords. González was a child prodigy who graduated from…

Election 2000

House of Representatives Results If Dubya does pull this one out of the Florida swamps, he’ll have at least one chamber of Congress on his side. As of press time, the GOP had a 221-211 advantage in the House, with two independents, one caucusing with each party, and one race — the New Jersey 12th…

Little Nicky

Little Nicky 2000, PG-13, 90 min. Directed by Steven Brill, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Adam Sandler, Patricia Arquette, Harvey Keitel, Rhys Ifans, Blake Clark, Reese Witherspoon, Allen Covert, Jon Lovitz, Robert Smigel, Kevin Nealon, Tommy “Tiny” Lister Jr., Quentin Tarantino, Micahel McKean, Rodney Dangerfield, Dana Carvey. With Little Nicky Adam Sandler can…

World of Books

Mitch Cullin The dusty, empty places Mitch Cullin keeps returning to in his fiction are “huge” and “vast,” he says, as if that settled the matter, as if it were perfectly self-evident that the roominess of rural Texas is reason enough to write about it. But the dust is gritty to a dangerously clichéd degree…

Letters at 3AM

One week before the election, Michael Ventura examines the candidates� campaigns and finds that Nader played to our fear of consequences, Gore to our fear of intelligence, and Bush to our fear of complexity.

Record Reviews

At Home With the Groovebox(Grand Royal) Graphic design/rock merchandise mavens Tannis Root and the gang at Grand Royal do the put-a-dozen-monkeys-in-a-room-for-100-years concept one better, offering this compilation of electronic meanderings by artists using a Roland MC-505 Groovebox, an eight-track synthesizer housing all the vintage tweets and chirps of the noble 808 and 909 drum- and…

Election 2000

Senate Results Ain’t no mandate for either side in the Senate, which right now stands at 50-49 for the Rs. It might be weeks before the one undecided race is called — Washington GOP incumbent Slade Gorton leads former House member and RealNetworks millionaire Maria Cantwell by less than 4,000 votes, with hundreds of thousands…

Venus Beauty Institute

Venus Beauty Institute 1999, NR, 105 min. Directed by Tonie Marshall, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Robert Hossein, Audrey Tautou, Mathilde Seigner, Jacques Bonnaffe, Samuelle Bihan, Bulle Ogier, Nathalie Baye. Venus Beauty Institute has Douglas Sirk’s soapy prints all over it. The César Award-winning French film follows in the footsteps of Sirk’s sudsy…

World of Books

Antonya Nelson Bear with me. I’ve known Antonya Nelson for a while now — she was my teacher and thesis advisor at New Mexico State University — and to disclose that fact and then go on and write some boring article about her as if we’d never met would be, to use one of her…

Record Reviews

Eleventh Dream DayStalled Parade (Thrill Jockey) Though we here in Austin stand an ice cube’s chance in Laredo of ever seeing Eleventh Dream Day play live, which is where the enigmatic trio demonstrates why they’ve been underground figureheads of the Chicago rock world for so many years, the depth and breadth of their recorded catalog…

Election 2000

Texas Legislature Results Nothing could be more dull than the Texas legislative races. No U.S. House race was closer than 10 points, leaving the D.C. delegation 17-13 Democrat. In the state Senate, the supposed squeaker in District 3 turned into a blowout, as GOP state Rep. Todd Staples stomped all over lawyer David Fisher to…

Men of Honor

Men of Honor 2010, R, 128 min. Directed by George Tillman Jr., Narrated by , Voices by , Starring David Keith, Powers Boothe, Michael Rapaport, Hal Holbrook, Aunjanue Ellis, Charlize Theron, Cuba Gooding Jr., Robert De Niro. As a post-title note informs us, the story of Men of Honor is “based on the life of…


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