Cover Story
Crackpot Crackdown
Joining a long East Texas tradition, Jackson County DA Bobby Bell has convicted 28 black people on drug charges via manufactured evidence and railroaded trials. One small-town exile, her family, and a few neighbors are finally fighting back.
Austin Symphony: Everything Old Is New Again
The Austin Symphony’s local premiere of Kevin Puts’ ‘Symphony No. 2’: ‘Island of Innocence,’ evokes the cultural shift after 9/11 in a dramatic score
Oops!
In last week’s “Council Notes: FEMA Makes Good – So Far,” we incorrectly stated that a forthcoming FEMA payment of approximately $5.4 million went toward reimbursement of $1 million in lost revenue from convention cancellations and $1.2 million in previously budgeted employee costs. See this week’s Council Notes, for further explanation. The Chronicle regrets the…
‘Crackdown’ Becomes ‘Shutdown’
Although District Attorney Bell described Rick Patterson as Jackson County’s kingpin dealer, Patterson’s incarceration has apparently done little to curb Edna’s drug problem – at least officially. On Sunday, Oct. 9, Edna police arrested 13 more people in connection with another undercover drug sting, this one code-named “Operation Shutdown.” Bell has so far indicted 25…
Lead-Laced Garbage Case Back in Court
Texas Disposal Systems owner still fighting to get hazardous waste out of his landfill
Kids in America
High-schoolers protest when the principal outlaws their freedom of speech.
Fidencio Durán: Painting the Known World
This fall, Fidencio Durán’s 20 years of painting have earned him a midcareer retrospective at Mexic-Arte Museum
What Does Business During the Day and Doesn’t Suck?
Drakula’s Romanian cuisine is all treats and no tricks
Operation Crackdown Convictions
All of the Edna defendants were charged with at least one count of delivery of less than one gram of crack cocaine. Seventeen were charged with delivery inside a Drug-Free Zone (near a school), which allowed the state to seek a longer sentence; 12 defendants had their charges “enhanced” based on prior charges – in…
Commissioners Court Gets Trashy
Commissioner Davis fights further landfill expansion in eastern Travis County
Stay
With a script by David Benioff (25th Hour) and direction by Marc Forster of Monster’s Ball fame, Stay is an ambitious experiment that never quite jells.
AMOA’s Symposium on Austin Art: How Deep Is Our Love?
The Austin Museum of Art symposium Self Portrait: Austin Art in Local, National, and International Contexts was a positive day of critical dialog and amazingly open-minded community work
Paggi House
The new Paggi House’s model is ‘Nothing you expect, everything you want.’ Um …
Who’s the Hog in This Circle C Water Fight?
Fight between golf course and LCRA shows it’s not easy being green
The Future of Shoal Creek Boulevard
Area residents, bicyclists mull options
The Roost
Basically a story about four young people whose car breaks down in the boondocks and the wretched things that befall them while first seeking help and then escape, this bare-bones horror film takes the hoary formula and runs wild.
Arts Review
In ‘American Fiesta,’ Steven Tomlinson’s quest for a set of Fiestaware leads him to embrace his past, imperfections, and those who are different
NG House
NG House is a blessing to Chinese food aficionados in Austin, especially South Austin
Will Towering Condos Spring to City Approval?
Developers tout proposed high-rise as perfect fit for Downtown; neighbors aren’t so sure
Point Austin: Jobs to Go
The sunny side of the state’s assault on social services
The Work and the Glory: American Zion
Volume two of this fictional representation of the Mormons’ migration West.
Arts Review
In Austin Playhouse’s ‘A Man for All Seasons,’ David Stahl’s immaculate Sir Thomas More stands his moral ground with humility, humor, and insight
Food-o-File
A Bullington baby; Hoover’s heads north; plus, more Texas on TV
Gay Corporate Texas
When it comes to equality, a surprising number of major Texas companies are downright liberal
The Hightower Report
Heretical entrepreneurs choosing community, quality of life over profits; and Perry comes to the rescue of our poor, hard-up judges, raising their pay to three times the average Texan’s income
Good Night, and Good Luck
Director and co-screenwriter George Clooney strikes just the right tone of gripping entertainment and understated cautionary tale in this thoughtful portrait of newsman Edward R. Murrow’s confrontation with Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
Arts Review
‘Surface/Depth,’ an exhibition of 30-odd wood-fired ceramic vessels by Chris Campbell, is a tantalizing feast of color and form
A Hell of a Year
Kathy McCarty presses Jon Dee Graham about the good and the bad old and new days
Texas Business and the ‘Gay Agenda’
When it comes to equality, a surprising number of major Texas companies are downright liberal. That’s according to the 2005 Corporate Equality Index, the fourth annual report of the Human Rights Campaign, which grades companies on their responses to survey questions. Most of the companies in the report offer domestic partner benefits, and five Texas…
Hammett Meets Hughes
There’s more to life than high school. Except, of course, when you’re in high school. Then, it’s a matter of life and death, and worse. Rian Johnson’s debut feature, Brick, is set in that universe, where bad girls mix it up with brains, jocks and heshers assail all comers, and Sydney Greenstreet droops lazily in…
Doom
Doom is not so much a film as a marketing tie-in, albeit one with some exceptional production values.
Readings
Jay Neugeboren’s ‘News From the New American Diaspora’ travels the world, but more often than not, the most memorable pieces of his third short-story collection capture the grandness of those small, personal epiphanies
Jon Dee Graham Reviewed
‘First Bear on the Moon: Acoustic Tracks From Jon Dee Graham’
Council Notes
Council considers toll study and Mexican-American Cultural Center
2005 Austin Film Festival Schedule
Thursday, Oct. 20, through Thursday, Oct. 27
Readings
When Axl Rose proclaimed, ‘You know where you are? You’re in the jungle baby! You’re gonna diiieee!,’ he was talking about Los Angeles. That’s where Anne Thomas Soffee found herself in the early Nineties on her way to being the ‘next Lester Bangs.’
Jon Dee Graham Reviewed
‘Big Sweet Life: The Songs of Jon Dee Graham’
Endorsements
No on everything. Double no on Proposition 2.
Captive Audience
How a homegrown kidnapping thriller became the most popular film in Venezuela – and angered the Chavez administration in the process
Page Two
“When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez And it’s Eastertime too And your gravity fails And negativity don’t pull you through” – Bob Dylan “It Was 20 Years Ago Today” Part 2 About 15 Years Before (1969): We were living in Brookline. My roommate Michael’s sister, who lived across the river in Cambridge, was…
Phases & Stages
Broken Social Scene(Arts & Crafts) Between millions of voices and noises, harmonies and jangles, clutter and bang, the speakers are hissing. It’s the sound being sucked back into the disc. In fact, the Toronto collective’s third, eponymous long-player doesn’t even exist in this dimension. Opener “Our Faces Split the Coast in Half” is translucent earth,…
Naked City
Headlines and happenings from Austin and beyond
‘SXSW Presents’: High School Shorts Program
High School Shorts Program
After a Fashion
What Stephen did last week and what he’s probably going to do this …
Phases & Stages
MetricLive It Out (Last Gang) While the mothership – Broken Social Scene – disguises its jam act in marching band outfits, orbiting Toronto quartet Metric dons an altogether sexier antecedent: Blondie. They’re tight as Debbie Harry’s dresses circa 1978. 2003 debut Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? was deceptively stiff, Emily Haines’ front chick…
TCRP Honors Rwandan Hero
Subject of ‘Hotel Rwanda’ comes to Texas
Film News
Burnt Orange has been living in a cave, while Texas looks to be trending toward Santos; plus, ‘Ape Shit,’ ‘Chainsaw,’ and ‘The Breakdance Kid’
About AIDS
Seeing the Oscar-nominated South African film Yesterday at the Dobie last week brought to mind how hard it is to get an HIV test in most of the world. That’s not the case in Austin, thank goodness! But where to go? Does your regular doctor even understand the correct procedure? It’s a cinch their test…
Phases & Stages
Children of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the Second Psychedelic Era 1976-1996(Rhino) Lenny Kaye’s 1972 Nuggets compilation embodied the garage-bred, acid-tinged one-hit wonderism of the mid-Sixties, yet the guitarist/author/music scholar didn’t let that stop him from throwing studio creations like Sagittarius into the brew. While the unifying aesthetic of Rhino’s second 4-CD Nuggets spin-off remains just…
Guerrero Colorado River Park Gets Its Day in the Sun
Festival de las Plantas spotlights attempt to reforest Eastside green space
TV Eye
Geena Davis is not really the president, but you might be surprised to learn how many people are riding the coattails of her administration
To Your Health
I sometimes take 5-HTP to help me sleep and am surprised at how it seems to help me with irregularity. Why would it help the GI tract?
Phases & Stages
1967’s Festival! (Eagle Rock) is much more than Bob Dylan. Academy Award-winning director Murray Lerner captures the height of the Sixties Folk revival by intertwining scenes from three mid-decade years of the Newport Folk Festival, including fascinating cameos from Johnny Cash, Howlin’ Wolf, Son House, and too many others to list. “Protest music” at its…
Weed Watch
Strict anti-drug hiring laws give the Feds headaches
The Common Law
Child support – putting pressure on deadbeat parents to pay child support
Phases & Stages
Franz FerdinandYou Could Have It So Much Better (Domino/Epic) Leave it to a band named after the man whose death opened the first chapter of the 20th century (World War I) to release a sophomore disc that feels like a sequel. The Scot-rockers’ You Could Have It So Much Better isn’t The Godfather Part II,…
Bell Pushes Ethics Reform
Chris Bell lays out his Don’t Mess With Ethics campaign
The Fog
This hazy remake pales in comparison to John Carpenter’s original fogbanks from 1980.
The Final Four
The artists up for the first Arthouse Texas Prize talk about their work
Day Trips
The Los Ebanos Ferry takes passengers from the U.S. to Mexico and back again with the simple tug of a rope
Phases & Stages
My Morning JacketZ (ATO) Jim James’ Iron John howls are all the “Wordless Chorus” needed on MMJ’s fourth and most concise full-length. His trademark cry mirrors a global moan in the mounting mess of humanity. His earthy, engaging imagery on “Into the Woods” (“a kitten on fire, a baby in a blender, both sound as…
Headline News … or, Ronnie Earle’s Hometown Paper
Statesman attempts countering DeLay’s bias whining with headline spin
Secuestro Express
This Venezuelan film about the kidnappings that are endemic in Caracas bursts with stylish technique and gruesome tension.
TCB
More trees fall victim to the smoking ban back-and-forth, while Austin nurses a huge Sparks hangover and Cowboy Mouth is just glad to be anywhere
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Ingrid Bergman, Planet of the Apes, Carnival Cruise Lines, and Grizzly Adams
Phases & Stages
Neil YoungPrairie Wind (Reprise) Like any artist, Neil Young’s career is defined by craters and peaks. Following 2003’s disjointed Greendale and listless Are You Passionate? before that, Prairie Wind affirms Young’s downhill trend. It’s a return to his melodic country rock, cousin to two of Young’s biggest successes, 1972’s Harvest and 1992’s Harvest Moon. Dedicated…
Top Nonsense and No Nonsense Contributors
Dollars are the ammo in same-sex marriage war
North Country
Charlize Theron stars in this fictionalized, rousing, but nevertheless predictable account of the first class-action sexual discrimination suit.
The Indelibles
What to see at the 2005 Austin Film Festival
Soccer Watch
Saudi Arabia declares a fatwah on soccer
Human Rights? Not at Work
A conference in Austin ponders the odd notion that workers are human beings with rights
Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story
You could call it Seabiscuit Jr., but this horsey heartwarmer does something surprising in spite of its underdog sports-movie formula and shameless emotional manipulation: It manages to be an enjoyable movie about and for girls.
Luv Doc Recommends: Extravagasm Fantasy Ball
If you woke up this morning with the vague feeling that life is getting too monotonous, tedious, and … well … normal, rest easy; the freak season is just around the corner. Pretty soon every frustrated fine arts major with a bag of dyed feathers and a hot glue gun will be whipping up some…
