The Evil of Two Lessers
It is not unusual to be a hungry child. You can find hungry children easily, all over the world. If you’re an American, no matter where you live you can find a hungry child a short drive from your home — or on your doorstep. The New York Times reports that 22 percent of American…
Ninotchka
D: Ernst Lubitsch; with Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Bela Lugosi, Ina Claire. VHS Home Video During its original release, the greatest attraction of this 1939 comedy written by Billy Wilder et al., was the fact that Garbo actually laughed in the film, and today that attraction is just as magnetic. Nineties viewers, however, will also…
A Perfect Candidate
A Perfect Candidate 1996, NR, 105 min. Directed by R.j. Cutler, David Van Taylor, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . If you’re not already cynical enough about the American political system this election year, then A Perfect Candidate is the perfect experience to send you right over the edge. Recounting the nasty 1994…
A Bulb and Beyond
by Rebecca Chastenet de G�ry Pick up the menu at just about any local restaurant and you’ll find garlic. In the way that baked potatoes were once served with anything and everything, garlic has become an expected ingredient in a meal. Garlic mashed potatoes, salads laced with it, roasted garlic, and hundreds of variations on…
Online Hit
Just over 75 years ago, the country’s first radio station (KDKA) aired the medium’s first professional baseball broadcast — a game from Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field between the hometown Pirates and the neighboring Philadelphia Phillies. Providing reportage that was nearly live, that revolutionary August 5, 1921 broadcast forever changed the way sports information was to be…
Curdled
Curdled 1996, R, 94 min. Directed by Reb Braddock, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Angela Jones, William Baldwin, Bruce Ramsay, Lois Chiles, Barry Corbin, Mel Gorham, Daisy Fuentes, Kelly Preston. Essentially a one-joke movie, Curdled began life as a 30-minute student film by Reb Braddock and John Maass, and though I haven’t seen…
Garlic on the Web
A single key word search on the Internet produces thousands of sites related to garlic. Here are a few I found most interesting. Visit The Austin Chronicle Website @ / for direct links. *http://www.garliclovers.com/festivals.html Information on garlic festivals from Gilroy, CA, (the garlic capital of the USA) to Washington, DC. *http://www.garliclovers.com/ The “garlic lover’s” home-page,…
‘Arriet
With only two days in Jamaica, I chose to spend eight full hours locked in a tour bus with the poster child for Mad Cow Disease. I thought the tour to Black River and YS Falls would be an efficient way to see something besides the topless Europeans and bloated North Americans broiling away on…
D3: The Mighty Ducks
D3: The Mighty Ducks 1996, PG, 104 min. Directed by Robert Lieberman, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Emilio Estevez, Jeffrey Nordling, David Selby, Heidi Kling, Joss Ackland. Yes, they’re all back, those lovable cut-ups you remember from Mighty Ducks and D2 — Banks, Fulton, the wise-cracking Averman, Connie, even Goldberg, the pudgy, awkward…
Oddballs In the Round
Austin has always been a combination breeding ground and beacon for eccentrics, but of late it seems that things have been somewhat quiet on that front. Well, something must be in the air, because within the last week, I haven’t been able to swing a nutria without slamming into news of activity from some of…
Drawing the Line on Obscenity
by Marc Savlov It’s that desolate strip of Interstate 35 that cuts a swath through the otherwise tedious, unremarkable landscape of Bell County, just north of the Highway 190 jig that takes travelers west to Killeen, Fort Hood, and then Lampasas if they’re so inclined. An overcast Sunday morning, the sky muddy and bruised like…
The Glimmer Man
The Glimmer Man 1996, R, 91 min. Directed by John Gray, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Steven Seagal, Keenan Ivory Wayans, Bob Gunton, Brian Cox, Michelle Johnson. When it comes to Steven Seagal movies, the first question that comes to mind isn’t really “Is it any good?” but rather, “How bad is it?”…
Liveshots
BECK Austin Music Hall, October 1 Surely you’re familiar with America’s latest “lost” generation. Beck is. “Everywhere I look there’s a dead end waitin’,” he sang on “Devil’s Haircut,” his opener. He wouldn’t have sold out the Music Hall on a school night if the audience didn’t feel his pain — and he theirs. Beck…
Coach’s Corner
On the cover of this month’s Esquire magazine is a woman with long legs and a short, tight, mini-dress, photographed from the waist down with a large rottweiler between her legs. He sports a satisfied smile and a fine spiked collar. The cover copy reads: “After 30 years of feminism, the return of the Alpha…
Flirt
Flirt 1996, NR, 85 min. Directed by Hal Hartley, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Bill Sage, Parker Posey, Dwight Ewell, Miho Nikaidoh, Karen Sillas, Elina Löwensohn. I love Hal Hartley’s images. I may not always be as enthusiastic about his films, but with cinematographer Michael Spiller, Hartley never fails to create stunning tableaux…
Also Playing
Friday: Dale Watson, Broken Spoke; Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys, Continental Club Saturday: Satisfact, Another Cup Sunday: Hot Wheels, Jr., Wilt, Superego, Argyles, Hole in the Wall Monday: Royal Crown Revue, Continental Club Tuesday: Scabs, Antone’s Wednesday: Glosso Babel, Ritz Thursday: Eric Johnson, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Adrian Legg, Austin Music Hall
Day Trips
The Port Aransas Birding Center takes advantage of the coastal wetland’s attraction to wildlife to bring more visitors to the island city. The boardwalk at the park on the edge of town takes visitors several hundred feet out over a natural marsh to see a variety of wildlife, including an alligator named “Boots.” “It comes…
301/302
301/302 1995, NR, 100 min. Directed by Chul-Soo Park, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Eun-Jin Bang, Sin-Hye Hwang, Chu-Ryun Kim, Chul-Ho Park, Young-Joo Chang. One cooks, the other doesn’t. 301 and 302 are the numbers of neighboring apartments in this South Korean mystery/comedy. The woman in 301 (Bang) is the one who likes…
Music Amidst Used Furniture
The bar’s gonna be pushed back, and all this is gonna be lounge seating. The bathrooms will be added to the back wall over there. We’re gonna keep the stage under the corner over there….” It’s a warm, late August afternoon, and it’s eerie to be standing inside the ghost of what was once Chances,…
Page Two
Twenty years ago, driving north from McColl, South Carolina to Bartonsville, Vermont, at about 6am, in the deep dark of the early morning, we encountered stop-and-go traffic on the Beltway outside of Washington, D.C. Probably it was to be expected, a traffic jam in the still dark, near D.C., though not that close, but we…
Where Live Music is Dead
There’s a party onstage at Hang ‘Em High. Jerry Jeff Walker? Willie Nelson? Newcomer Jack Ingram? No, it’s 15 guys in business suits celebrating a leveraged buyout. “If it’s a large enough party we’ll set up the stage for ’em,” says the club’s General Manager Bill Beisel. Don’t the bands mind? Usually there aren’t bands…
Public Notice
To streamline the holiday haze we invite any service organizations selling holiday gift items, notions, tchotchkes, what have you… to submit for the “Public Notice” section Blue Lights Anonymous which will run throughout the holiday season. We will also run our Wish List in our Holiday Gift Guide issue, December 13. Send us a list…
Right-Wing Revolution
While your average voter couldn’t tell you squat about what the State Board of Education (SBOE) does, there are plenty of religious right-wingers in Texas who could. The 15-member SBOE board — which has jurisdiction over K-12 public education throughout the state, makes rules to carry out state law, recommends appropriations to the Texas legislature,…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
A pregnant goldfish is called a twit. Among Bart Simpson’s chalkboard exercises shown during the opening credits: “I am not a 32 year old woman,” “I did not see Elvis,” and “Tar is not a plaything.” The oldest humanoid skeleton discovered on the North American continent was found in Leander, TX, nicknamed “Leander Lucy.” According…
Martin on the Road
Austin playwright Marty Martin has a new show on the road, and it may well be the road to Broadway. The Dragon and the Pearl is a solo drama about Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck that Martin has written for Valerie Harper. Harper’s husband, producer Tony Cacciato, thought a solo stage piece would be…
In the Public We Trust
Ronney Reynolds called it a zoo. Daryl Slusher described it as making sausage. And Beverly Griffith, complete with hand gesticulation and a generous “Whoom!” depicted it as a barreling locomotive. All three were waxing descriptive on the haphazard and protracted road the city went down to privatize the Austin Convention & Visitors Bureau (ACVB), a…
Food ‘O File
Texas’ potential as a grape-growing region was first discovered in 1662 when Spanish Franciscan monks observed the ease with which they could produce grapes for sacramental wines. Two centuries later, large quantities of insect-resistant grape cultivars developed in Texas by horticulturist T.V. Munson prevented the destruction of French vineyards during the phylloxera infestation of the…
Perfect Expression
Be careful what you ask for. At last year’s RAT Conference in Seattle, where artists from independent theatres throughout the U.S. gathered to talk about their work and working together, Austin actor Jason Phelps asked Erik Ehn, San Francisco playwright and driving force in the RAT movement, when he was going to write a play…
Over a Troubled Bridge
It was a classic traffic engineer’s presentation. When consultants hired by the city’s Department of Public Works and Transportation outlined options for widening the Lamar Bridge over Town Lake at a public hearing on September 10, their arguments rumbled along with the relentless logic of a bulldozer. Peak-hour traffic on the bridge causes unacceptable delays…
Bonus Tracks
KELLY WILLIS Fading Fast (A&M) It’s so obvious someone should have thought of it sooner. Hook Kelly Willis up with some good bands — Son Volt on the first three tracks and 16 Horsepower on the other — and let her do her thing. It’s just an EP, but Fading Fast is Willis’ best work…
Native Texans
Bob “Daddy-O” Wade & Bert L. Long, Jr. Lyons Matrix Gallery through November 9 If you’ve only seen Bob “Daddy-O” Wade’s well-known work — giant dancing frogs, huge screaming iguanas — you might be surprised to learn that he was formally trained to paint in the traditional Renaissance style. But one look at his work…
Pedestrian Bridge: Separate and Equal
Though the city’s Public Works department paid consultants $340,000 to develop options for the Lamar Bridge, no alternative was considered for attaching bike/pedestrian lanes to the existing bridge that did not also include widening it to six lanes for vehicles. The only no-widening option offered would build an entirely separate bike/ped bridge to the west.…
The Heads
Liberty Lunch Thursday, October 17 The myth of Talking Heads was that David Byrne was the band’s sole visionary; that’s the privilege of a frontman — no matter what, he looks like the leader. What’s so astonishing in the wake of Byrne’s refusal to re-group and subsequent lawsuit against his former bandmates, is how strong…
Pop Goes the Western
Do you worry that alternative media such as books on tape, CD-ROMs, and the Internet are about to kick books (you know, the paper-and-ink kind) down the same road as T. Rex and 8-track tapes? Well, here are three really good reasons not to worry: The Illustrated Life and Times of Wyatt Earp, The Illustrated…
Costly Benefits?
Transportation consultants hired by the city’s Public Works department say that the benefits of widening Lamar Bridge to six lanes far exceed costs. Their cost/benefits analysis assumes a 48% increase in traffic on the bridge by 2020, and predicts that reducing projected peak-hour delays would save motorists $7 million in time annually, and another $500,000…
Savior of the Soul
Savior of the Soul 1991, NR. Directed by Corey Yuen-Kwai, David Lai, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Andy Lau Tak-Wah, Anitia Mui Yim-Fong, Aaron Kwok Fu-Sheng. As incomprehensible as Akira, and as forcefully stylized as Blade Runner, Saviour of the Soul is a hyperkinetic amalgam of Chinese ultra-violence, creepy twin sisters, flying priestesses,…
Eight-Week Support Group
For over a year, AIDS Services of Austin (ASA) has pioneered in the area of offering support services for HIV-negative gay and bisexual men in and around the AIDS epidemic. The Staying Negative Program of ASA continues to provide support groups for HIV-negative men, supplying a safe place to come together and discuss how we…
CitySlurp
When movies entered the sound era in 1927, several unsettled years of awkwardness ensued. The results look bizarre today: actors clustered around a big plant in which the microphone was hidden, action froze for static dialogue shots, and fluid visual technique generally went into a tailspin. Dashing silent movie stars were exposed as the owners…
Glory Daze
Glory Daze 1996, R, 99 min. Directed by Rich Wilkes, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Ben Affleck, Sam Rockwell, Megan Ward, French Stewart, Vien Hong, Vinnie De Ramus, Alyssa Milano. From the pen of Rich Wilkes, whose less-than-illustrious screenwriting career has thus far given us such execrable comedies as Airheads, Billy Madison, and…
It’s All in There
I hate potpourri. The fact that I can’t smell it doesn’t help. (I’ve no sense of smell. Some say no sense at all.) It boggles my mind how people will pay big bucks for a bag of decorative floor-sweepings, named goofy things like “Mountain Mist Kiss” and “Indonesian Curry Love,” which have been infused with…
Off the Desk:
Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do beginning Oct. 16, the first day of early voting for the November 5 general election. Early voting ends Nov. 1. Call the county clerk, 473-9553, for info on polling places and times, or check the Chronicle election site, /, up as of this Friday, Oct. 11……
The Chamber
The Chamber 1996, R, 113 min. Directed by James Foley, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Chris O’Donnell, Gene Hackman, Faye Dunaway, Lela Rochon, Robert Prosky, Raymond Barry, Bo Jackson. Based on John Grisham’s 1994 bestseller, The Chamber comes to us hot on the heels of another Grisham adaptation, this year’s smash hit A…
Sat 12
5K Trail Run to benefit Austin Metropolitan Trails Council, at Walnut Creek Metropolitan Park, 9:30am. Cost $20. 478-4644. Annual Dia de la Raza Celebration to benefit United East Austin Coalition, at Juan in a Million, 2300 E. Cesar Chavez, 7-11pm. Cost $5. 478-6770. Arts & Crafts Fair to benefit Royal Fam-ily Kids’ Camp for abused…
Austin Heart of Film Festival Schedule
The third annual Austin Heart of Film Festival and Screenwriters Conference takes place this weekend, Oct. 10-13, at the Driskill Hotel and various other screening venues around town. In a very brief amount of time, the conference has grown into one of the most impressive gatherings of screenwriters and working filmmakers anywhere. The daytime panels…
The Long Kiss Goodnight
Davis plays a suburban mom, amnesiac, and trained-to-kill bottle blonde.
