Enterprise Premiere
Enterprise Premiere NR. Directed by Various, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . Enterprise, the newest addition to the Star Trek television franchise, will premiere locally on the big screen. Reservations should be made online and are strongly encouraged since the screenings of Voyager’s series finale sold out. All ticket proceeds will be donated…
Claire’s Knee
Claire’s Knee 1970, PG, 106 min. Directed by Eric Rohmer, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Jean-Claude Brialy, Aurora Cornu, Beatrice Romand, Laurence De Monaghan, Michele Montel. “Love and Morality: The Films of Eric Rohmer” is an eight-film survey of films by the cerebral French master. The fifth entry in Rohmer’s Moral Tales, Claire’s…
Joysticks
Joysticks 1983, R, 88 min. Directed by Greydon Clark, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Joe Don Baker, Leif Green, Jim Greenleaf, Scott McGinnis, Jon Gries. Joe Don Baker tries to shut down the video arcade that’s ruining the town’s youth.
Page Two
Acting decently and continuing to live as we’ve always lived are the best acts of revenge in response to recent terrorism; our redesign debuts but will take some time to refine.
Phases and Stages
Joy DivisionHeart & Soul (Rhino) Goth has demonstrated such staying power that its practitioners are convinced they invented the post-punk marriage of rock and gloom. Joy Division fans know better. Both sprang from the burgeoning UK punk scene of the late Seventies, yet in 1977, a year before a black-clad Peter Murphy and his band…
Naked City
Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in Washington, D.C. and New York were wake-up calls to members of the intelligence community — including Stratfor (see “Is Knowledge Power?” p.20). Throughout the day, the Austin-based global intelligence company’s Web site culled together information collected from NPR, international newspapers, and the major networks to provide additional analysis, spin, and even…
The Long and the Short of It
Jan Svankmajer Milos Forman said it best when he famously described Czech filmmaker/ animator/national treasure Jan Svankmajer as “Luis Buñuel + Disney.” It’s a shame that so few among the mainstream recognize the man’s name, and doubly so when you consider that most of them have probably seen more than a few examples of Svankmajer’s…
Day Trips
Helping protect the San Marcos River
Phases and Stages
Bob DylanLove and Theft (Columbia) Bob Dylan can’t fool us, and he knows it. He’s a thief, a con, a 60-year-old with nothing to say. And he continues saying it. “I’m driving in the flats in a Cadillac car,” he tells us in “Summer Days,” perhaps unaware of how old and white he sounds. “The…
Naked City
Sammy Allred may not have picked up many votes for his pending mayoral run during his Wednesday morning Sam and Bob Show broadcast on KVET-FM, but he bravely stuck out from the militaristic media drone coming from many of the other commentators regarding Tuesday’s — well, you know. A string of callers demanded swift military…
The Long and the Short of It
Peter Tscherkassky Austrian avant-gardeist Peter Tscherkassky began his work with “found footage” in the early Eighties, co-opting film from other sources and reinventing it for his own, often startling purposes. These found-footage shorts are often violent — not in the obvious sense, but in a more unnerving way, manifest in the intensity of the jump…
After a Fashion
It’s a new day! “After a Fashion” moves to the front of the Chronicle and to the front of the velvet ropes, as your Style Avatar takes you on a li’l club tour of Austin style.
Phases and Stages
VarnalineSongs in a Northern Key (E-Squared/Artemis) The winter of Anders Parker’s discontent, Sweet Life, chronicled Jan/Feb 1998 in upstate New York, thaws on Varnaline’s first album in three years, but Songs in a Northern Key remains borne of a climate where the days are short and the nights last forever. Ostensibly a solo effort featuring…
Naked City
The Nowar Collective, a local group of pacifist activists, held a “community discussion” on the UT campus last night regarding Tuesday’s terrorist attacks. That’s past our deadline, but we’d like to relate the perspective on “terrorism” they provide in the meeting announcement. It’s one that few media outlets in the United States are likely to…
The Long and the Short of It
Andy Warhol Andy Warhol’s Vinyl, made in 1965, was the first filmed version of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, and it opens with a shot so powerful Stanley Kubrick would later ape it in his 1971 remake: Surrounded by his cronies, our (anti)hero gazes directly into the camera, his face wearing an expression of blank,…
About AIDS
Lipodystrophy and Neuropathy: a Seminar.
Phases and Stages
AcetoneYork Blvd. (Vapor) On July 23, Richie Lee, vocalist and bassist of L.A.’s Acetone, committed suicide. In a decade of style over substance, Lee and Acetone were the good guys who never got their due — they were all substance: slow-burning harmonies and a gentle twang, with so much fresh, clean air for the music…
Naked City
Environmental and parks matriarch Mary Arnold has been pounding the pavement lately, enlisting a slew of groups to oppose a 180-foot luxury condo planned for the Sand Beach Reserve property on Town Lake’s north shore. Joining Arnold’s effort are sister matriarchs Shudde Fath, Roberta Crenshaw, and Jean Mather, as well as the Zilker Neighborhood Assn.,…
The Long and the Short of It
Far more than just a film festival, Cinematexas has expanded over the years into a cross-genre mélange of film, music, conceptual art, photography, dance, political protest, visual projection, and various permutations thereof. The unifying thread of these events, most of which are grouped into a quartet of festival “sidebars,” is that each work provokes, questions,…
To Your Health
I seem to be getting more and more depressed and lethargic. I notice that it now takes three cups of coffee in the morning to get me going and three to four more cups during the day to stay alert enough to manage a day’s work. I am only 31, and I don’t see why…
Phases and Stages
The White StripesWhite Blood Cells (Sympathy for the Record Industry) One of my hobbies is hitting the magazine racks for a little cover-surfing, and on one recent expedition, I came across this gem: “The White Stripes: Is Detroit the new Seattle?” Thus, rock’s flavor of the month is once again one of the oldest American…
Naked City
Hyde Park Baptist Church is still suing the city, alleging that its rights of religious freedom have been violated by the City Council’s refusal to bless their proposed parking garage. Under the state Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), passed in 1997, and the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLIUPA) passed last year,…
The Long and the Short of It
CinemaTexas Schedule Screenings and events occur at the Hideout, the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema (downtown and north), the Texas Union Theater, and other locations. Tickets are $5 ($4 for students), and are sold 15 minutes prior to screenings. Passes for various combinations of events are also available (an Everything Pass is $45; $35 for students). Passes…
Coach’s Corner
Odds and Ends: NFL referees have an over-inflated view of their own importance; the U.S. Open proved that in tennis, as elsewhere, youth will be served; and if people think Coach ignores UT football, well, there are good reasons for that.
Phases and Stages
Curt Kirkwood @ Cactus CafeSeptember 6 The Brothers Johnson notwithstanding, Curt Kirkwood is all about stomp. Bounding onto the Cactus Cafe’s red-velvet stage with a matching red Gibson acoustic guitar at precisely 9:15pm, no opener, the SSToried punk rocker/Meat Puppet/Austin transplant looked both happy to be there and vaguely ill at ease. Like perhaps he…
Naked City
Since purchasing Boggy Creek Farm nine years ago, organic farmers Carol Ann Sayle and Larry Butler have longed to purchase the land adjacent to their five-acre, East Austin-based spread. If the owners ever decided to sell the land, which encompasses less than an acre, Sayle and Butler had hoped they would get first dibs and…
Bedtime Stories
In Eric Rohmer’s films, there are no camera tricks, no guns, no music. In fact, in Rohmer’s films, nothing much happens. But that nothing happens with a gorgeous, sensual languor, as a moral and intellectual gap between his characters and the immediate world around them slowly and silently widens to a yawning chasm. American critics…
Solid as a Rock
Stone House Grill 6701 Burnet Rd., 452-1400 Monday-Friday, 5-10pm; Saturday, 11am-10pm Sometimes going out to eat is more challenging than dining at home. At the end of a long workday, when the children are cranky and blood-sugar levels low, the last place most people want to visit is a trendy high-toned restaurant with two-hour waits…
Phases and Stages
U2: Into the Heartby Niall Stokes Thunder’s Mouth Press, 184 pp., $23.95 (paper) In Niall Stokes’ U2: Into the Heart, the editor of Dublin music rag Hot Press provides the details behind every song on the band’s 10 studio albums, plus all the B-sides, collaborations, and other curiosities they’ve plucked from the ether in their…
Naked City
The book section of this Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle will feature an essay, “Un Grito de Tejas” (A Cry from Texas) by Austin writer Dagoberto Gilb, on “what it’s like to be a Mexican-American writer these days.” “Naked City” has seen a draft of the “diez y seis de septiembre piece,” in which Gilb recounts…
TFPF Grant Recipients Announced
This year’s Texas Filmmakers’ Production Fund panel awarded a total of $50,000 in grant money to the following Texas filmmakers and their projects: Michael Bayer, Bass Man; Nancy Bless and Andrew Garrison, “Welcome Home”; Sebastian del Castillo, “Untitled”; Rebecca Flores, You’ll Never Walk Alone; Mireille Fornengo, “Concerto for Two Harpsichords”; Ted Gesing, “The Nutria Problem:…
Food-o-File
Cuisines editor Virginia B. Wood explains why the loss of Waterloo Brewing Company has hit her hard — and she’s not even a beer drinker.
Phases and Stages
Open Sky: Sonny Rollins and His World of Improvisation by Eric Nisenson Da Capo, 288 pp., $15 (paper) “Music is an open sky” is how saxophonist Sonny Rollins refers to the unlimited possibilities inherent in his relentless quest for self-expression through improvisation. Having turned 70 last year, the tenor saxophonist retains his deservedly long-held honor…
Naked City
The City Council approved the $1.8 billion fiscal 2002 budget on Sept. 10 in what most observers think is record time — less than an hour. The actual operating budget, which usually emerges only after three days of frantic dealmaking, was adopted in 19 minutes. Since the city’s fiscal outlook is so dark, the council…
Short Cuts
Call for SXSW entries
Pastaman Vibrations
What Chronicle Cuisines writer MM Pack found unobtrusively nestled in a South Austin strip center was the cutest little pasta manufactory imaginable. Here’s her interview with Bottega della Pasta owner Rino Lanzillotti.
Is Knowledge Power?
A profile of precarious global intelligence firm Stratfor
Naked City
So your neighbors park their rusty wrecker, boat and 10 cars in their front yard, and you don’t like it because sometimes they drive across your lawn to get back on the street. What to do? For now, you can’t do much: Until the city passes a rule against front-lawn parking, many Austinites will invariably…
TV Eye
Belinda Acosta picks Emmy winners.
Second Helpings
Bagels, beignets, and doughnuts in this week’s “Second Helpings”
Juke Joint Madonna
Toni Price comes clean.
Stratfor Staggers?
Stratfor closes Washington bureau; “reorganizes” in D.C. and Austin
Naked City
Perhaps this too was an act of God, but the Rev. Fred Phelps didn’t get to hate anyone at University Baptist Church on Sept. 9. The Christian cult leader from Wichita — perhaps America’s most rabid homophobe — and his followers did not show up as planned to shriek and spew at UBC, whose gay-friendly…
Two Can Play That Game
Two Can Play That Game 2001, R, 90 min. Directed by Mark Brown, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Gabrielle Union, Wendy Raquel Robinson, Tamala Jones, Mo’Nique, Anthony Anderson, Morris Chestnut, Vivica A. Fox. Advertising ace Shanté Smith (Fox) has the world on a string: skyscraper office, tastefully appointed L.A. manse, cute convertible, and…
Man of La Mancha
You may think you know Don Quixote, but did you know that Man of La Mancha made him a hero to the counterculture?
Toni Price Reviewed
Toni PriceMidnight Pumpkin (Antone’s) Can such a thing as a casual Toni Price fan exist? Given the fervid nature of her devoted Hippie Hour following, you wouldn’t think so, but consider new release Midnight Pumpkin evidence to the affirmative. Her fifth studio album, Pumpkin is steeped in Price’s considerable strengths of voice as well as…
Something Stinks
There is a continuing odor over Georgetown’s wastewater treatment plant.
Naked City
Outspoken gay political leader Barney Frank will visit Austin next week to show his support for the local gay and lesbian community (well, at least that part of the community that supports Democratic Party endeavors). Frank, a U.S. Rep. from Massachusetts, comes to Austin to help raise funds for the local and national chapters of…
Adventures of Felix
Adventures of Felix 2000, NR, 95 min. Directed by Jacques Martineau, Olivier Ducastel, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Sami Bouajila, Patachou, Ariane Ascaride, Pierre-Loup Rajot, Charly Sergue, Maurice Bénichou. Recently laid off from his dock worker job in Normandy, Felix (Bouajila) bids farewell to his lover and hits the road, with the plan…
Articulations
In the wake of the horrible tragedy at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, some words of comfort and encouragement from Tuna producer Charles Duggan.
There’s Something About Shelley
“‘Call of My Heart’ grabbed me and I said, ‘Gimme that!’ That’s what I said, ‘Gimme!'” Toni Price is waxing effusive about local singer-songwriter Shelley King. “I heard her sing ‘Who Needs Tears’ live, but she only had it on a tape from a radio show, so that’s all I had to go on. I’m…
Eyewitness to Terror
Albie Del Favero, Village Voice Media executive vice-president and founding publisher of the Nashville Scene, boarded an American Airlines flight early Tuesday to New York. He was to attend a company board meeting in a Manhattan office. Instead, from the air, he witnessed one of history’s more barbaric events. This is his account, as relayed…
Capitol Chronicle
Three longtime state employees are dismissed — with prejudice — in a witch hunt over sexual harassment allegations.
Hardball
Hardball 2001, PG-13, 102 min. Directed by Brian Robbins, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Keanu Reeves, Diane Lane, Michael Perkins, Julian Griffith, Kristopher Loften, Sterling Elijah Brim, DeWayne Warren, Alexander Telles, Michael B. Jordan, John Hawkes, A. Delon Ellis Jr., Brian Reed. Contrary to what publicity wonks, with their one-line clippy pitches, would…
Exhibitionism
Charles Mee’s Big Love swirls almost madly from brainy discourse to visceral activity to contemplative imagery and back again, like a manic dance or, well, life, and the Rude Mechanicals, who are always up for a good dance, take Mee’s play and tear up the floor with it.
Dancing About Architecture
Terrorist attacks rock America while Frank Kozik drops his own bomb.
EZ Does It?
The city hopes HUD Empowerment Zones will bring in money for East Austin.
The Hightower Lowdown
American CEOs are overpaid; missile defense shield money could be better spent; and art snobs need to not have a cow.
Greenfingers
Greenfingers 2001, R, 91 min. Directed by Joel Hershman, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Clive Owen, Helen Mirren, Adam Fogerty, Danny Dyer, Warren Clarke, David Kelly, Paterson Joseph, Natasha Little. Just into the opening credits, as a forgettably peppy song plays on the soundtrack, the screen spells out a cringe-inducing caveat: “This story…
Exhibitionism
In his new musical, playwright-composer Kirk Smith uses the story of Noah and his wife to look at the seeping, leaking, dripping, pouring inevitability of loss and renewed hope, and the Vortex Repertory Company production makes for a dreamy and wet world, sometimes punctuated with lightning and thunder, but mostly pleasantly adrift in an ocean…
Our Ears Are Burning!
More alt.country Internet feuds
Surgery or Slaughter?
Austin Energy calls it “progressive forestry”; some of their customers call it “tree mutilation.”
Austin @ Large
SOS & Smart Growth, and the candidates
Apocalypse Now Redux
Apocalypse Now Redux 2001, R, 196 min. D: Francis Ford Coppola; with Harrison Ford, Dennis Hopper. The hallucinogenic chuk-chuk-chuk of an unseen gunship’s rotors is the first sound you hear in Coppola’s masterpiece. For filmgoers of a certain age it’s a thrilling, heart-quickening sound; no other film I know of can elicit such a palpable…
The Original Hipster
Chronicle writer Dick Holland on the comeback of Texan Terry Southern, the all-around bad boy of black humor
Across the Desk
Recent releases
Tattoo Coup
A Leander PTA president is forced to resign because of — aaaiiiggghheee — piercings!
The Long and the Short of It
It began as a festival to showcase University of Texas filmmakers, but the Cinematexas International Short Film + Video Festival, now in its sixth year, has exploded into what Filmmaker magazine calls one of the “most pioneering short film festivals in the country.” “The great thing about Cinematexas is the way it manages to do…
Postscripts
Resistencia Bookstore was the victim of a car accident last weekend but vows to move on “come hell or high water.”
Austin Arts & Jazz Festival
“Off” year doesn’t stop the impressive names from coming.
Naked City
City Council Member Beverly Griffith announced Monday that she will not enter the mayor’s race. Meanwhile, 20-year-old UT student Daniel Nazar has not officially entered the mayoral race, but notified the Chronicle that he will be running as an “Independent” — a somewhat redundant declaration, given that City Council races are nonpartisan. In recent months,…
The Long and the Short of It
All the Girls With Cameras in Their Heads This eight-part program brings together seven female filmmakers from three decades of the avant-garde film and video tradition. The gamut is wide, from the post-colonial identity politics of Vietnam-born documentarian Trinh T. Minh-ha — whose “Re-Assemblage,” from 1982, kicks off the program — to the multimedia performance…
