Cover Story
How the American Genre Film Archive Is Saving Movies One Reel at a Time
Austin nonprofit preserves cinema’s underseen and underappreciated
Crowdfunding Austin Music Venues
Mayor Adler announces new mini-bond plan to preserve at-risk venues
The Gospel According to Kanye
Rapper levitates the Frank Erwin Center
Fantastic Fest: Zoology
Director Ivan Tverdovsky on the tale of a tail
SBOE Member Wants to “Deny Hispanics” Vote on Racist Mexican-American Textbooks
Education watchdog reveals e-mail exchange after public info request
ACL Fest Official Late Night Shows Venue Guide
Because after the show it’s the afterparty
ACL Fest Transportation Guide
Minimize the hassle of getting to and from the fest
Bullock Premieres Laser Projector
Classic films help showcase the theatre’s new tech
Into the Capsule
Cold War space thriller gets Texas premiere
No Headline
September 21-28, 2017 Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar www.fantasticfest.com Horror. Fantasy. Sci-fi. Action. Check one, or check all. The largest genre film festival in the U.S., Fantastic Fest has something for everyone – well, except, maybe, for the faint of heart.
Tom “Smitty” Smith Announces Retirement
Public Citizen director to remain during search for new director
The Q&A Hole: How Does Something Get “Overrated”?
With Lauren Weinstein, Tim Doyle, Pat Dean, Mark Finn, and more
Norwood Trial: Retracing the Morton Murder
Testimony admitted, attorneys begin deliberations on second killing
Let Them Eat BBQ
Texans levitate the French
Norwood Trial: Morton Murder at Stake Monday
Judge to determine whether or not to allow testimony of second killing
Q&A With Kurt Braunohler
The absurdist comic has a seriously bright future
Zimmerman and Flannigan Face-Off in Candidate Forum
Zimmerman doubles down on opposing climate change, living wage
Summoning the Blair Witch
Into the woods with Simon Barrett and Adam Wingard
Rio Rita Moves to Badlands
Was Chicon venue pushed, or did they jump?
The French Connection
Golden moments at Austin Week in Angers, France
Norwood Trial: Breaking Down the DNA
Accused killer’s ex-wife takes the stand
Starving the Beast
Doc exposes big money on campus
Kicks
A boy and his Air Jordans
Other People
A writer returns home to care for his sick mother
White Girl
Sex, drugs, and privilege
When the Bough Breaks
A surrogate mother goes psycho
The Land
Teen skaters get caught up in the drug world
The Disappointments Room
Kate Beckinsale moves into a haunted house
The Vessel
Faith-based art film is simple and eloquent
Snowden
Oliver Stone tackles the famous whistleblower
Hillsong: Let Hope Rise
Christian rock group takes over the world
Blair Witch
Stay out of the (noisy) woods
Bridget Jones’s Baby
Third time’s a charm, if a bit forgettable
The Hollars
Domestic dramedy has flashes of magic
Author: The JT LeRoy Story
Infamous literary scandal comes to life
Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four
Doc chronicles a shameful chapter in San Antonio history
The Luv Doc: Beware the Righteous
Way worse than robots
Mozart Requiem Undead Receives an Encore
This Austin-generated reinvention comes to Bass Concert Hall
The Hightower Report: Rampaging Debt Collectors Are Committing Highway Robbery
Corporate souls achieve “truly evil” status
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
The Chicago River is the world’s only river that flows backward. Instead of flowing into Lake Michigan, it flows upstream toward the Mississippi River. According to CityLab.com, Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas, is the 10th most income-segregated metro area in America. The Nazis’ Theresienstadt concentration camp gave prisoners a modest degree of freedom that included the…
Theatre en Bloc’s The Totalitarians
This ridiculous but smart satire about a Nebraska political race may be the only political play that can deliver laughs this election season
Beside the Point: Failing Our Teachers
Why won’t we fund our schools?
Review: Boiler Nine
Three isn’t necessarily a charm for La Corsha’s latest venture
Ethos’ Atlantis: A Puppet Opera
This new musical take on the fall of Atlantis pulls us into an ancient place, powered by myth and ritual
Headlines
City Council has no Thursday meeting scheduled this week, but probably needs the rest after having just slogged through three days of budget reading sessions. They passed the $3.7 billion budget at the last minute on Wednesday. For more, see “Council: Don’t Say I Told You So.” Police Chief Art Acevedo suspended officer Vanessa Jimenez…
Playback: No Fun Fun Fun Fest in 2016
Fun Fun Fun Fest won’t happen this year and here’s the exclusive on why
Texas Platters
On 2013’s The Silver Gymnasium, Will Sheff waxed nostalgic about his 10-year-old self in New Hampshire. Away now follows up with the fallout of having reckoned that past. Assembling an entirely new set of players for album eight, the New York-dwelling Sheff maintains the band name but questions what it all means. The result is…
“Femme National(e): Audrey Brown, Christina Coleman, Kasumi Chow / Desiree Michelle Espada, Emmy Laursen, Juliana Isabel Ramirez”
This group show is messy and a little berserk, but that’s what makes it important and kindles joy in us
Public Notice: Out of the Frying Pan …
Council resumes regular schedule next week
I Like to Watch: Getting Faded With High Maintenance
HBO takes another hit of the popular Vimeo series
Texas Platters
Seven inches of translucent yellow vinyl spin open at 45rpm a towering, twin-engine guitar lurch. Surfed with quicksilver grace by Mike Wiebe, the Riverboat Gamblers’ fearless acrobat chants its title mantra like the evacuation bulletin at an urban panic. The Austin punk elders cover 1980 Dicks blood oath “Hate the Police” on the B-side, which…
Day Trips: Storybook Capital of Texas, Abilene
Whimsical sculptures of children’s book characters enliven downtown Abilene
Quote of the Week
“No one – especially survivors – should have had to come before Council to ask for this basic function of city government.” – City Council Member Greg Casar, after the Austin Police Department agreed to reallocate funds to help clear the city’s rape kit backlog
Austin Author Ed Ward Revisits Rock’s First Guitar Hero, Michael Bloomfield
“When you heard Mike Bloomfield play, you got the sense this was the real shit.”
Texas Platters
“Fuck the People,” aided by members of Leftöver Crack, thrashes to life like a Pantera demo. New ATX punk combo Starving Wolves instead blows a sonically round, burp-gun bubble, compressed hardcore warmed by a rootsy, classic rock guitar lead and attendant tidal bass pluck. Krum Bums rocket launcher David Rodriguez gnashes as if he’s next…
Soccer Watch
The UT Longhorns split a pair of games in Ohio last week, losing a heartbreaker to 19th-ranked Ohio State, 2-1 in overtime, and then shutting out Miami of Ohio, 2-0. Sophomore Alexa Adams scored in both games, and in fact has scored in every game this year for the 4-3 Horns, except their two shutout…
Gay Place
Tegan and Sara fill our pop culture void
Texas Platters
A one-sided, three-song flexi disc shouldn’t match up with a box cutter. Local fivepiece gathered by Ziolkowski bros David and Victor – and counting Residual Kid drummer Ben Redman among the guilty – Skeleton lashes out harder than a flash mob. Produced by OS scholar Orville Neeley, I Hate I Skate grinds a metallic density…
Page Two: Otto Binder Had a Vision
The great science-fiction and comic book writer already had a name for Trump back in the 1950s – Bizarro
Texas Platters
As viewers summer-binged Netflix’s Eighties-riffed series Stranger Things, the sci-fi thriller’s soundtrack grew as prominent as its Goonies 2.0 cast. Episodes hooked fans beginning with the season 1 theme, iconic Stephen King typeface flooding the screen to ominous synthesizer forewarnings. To concoct a 1983-suited score to accompany their VHS-vibed show, directors Matt and Ross Duffer…
Oops
In last week’s News story “Sparks Fly at First ACC Trustee Forum,” we mistakenly referred to ACC board of trustees candidate Jeremy Story’s “commitment to abstinence-only education.” Story only advocates for the inclusion of abstinence in sex education. We regret the error.
Exposing The Zodiac Killer
True crime and cinema go together like highways and spree killers. But no film has a more bizarre relationship with real-life murder than 1971’s The Zodiac Killer, the first film to be restored by the American Genre Film Archive. The new 4K restoration debuts during Fantastic Fest and comes from AGFA’s new relationship with exploitation…
Texas Platters
When the Byrds reconstituted with Gram Parsons in Nashville to marry hard country with rock & roll in 1968, they named the resultant LP documenting the fusion Sweetheart of the Rodeo. For their similarly titled sophomore effort, Bill and Amanda Ogden and friends have crafted a country disc for those who hang out at Hotel…
Council: Don’t Say I Told You So
FY 2017 budget passes after a three-day marathon
Texas Platters
Grace Park hit her stride as a songwriter in 2013 with the gorgeous pastoral poetry that defined the Deer’s debut album, An Argument for Observation. Third disc Tempest & Rapture now nails down their sonic signature. Enchanting bouquet of dream-folk and earthy indie rock with nocturnal impulses and chamber music complexity, it fuses to the…
Conservancy Groups Split on Grove Flood Control
Common goal is to prevent any added runoff into Shoal Creek
Texas Platters
Dylan Cameron gives listeners just enough to desire more. Son of celebrated Austin psych veteran Lisa Cameron (Roky Erickson, the Lotions, Glass Eye, Squat Thrust) and an in-house producer for local electro imprint Holodeck, he furthers his forefathers’ groundwork with homegrown, digital-age lineage. On the lithe, muscular Infinite Floor, his full-length debut, the cosmic crunch…
The Cost of Clearing the Rape Kit Backlog
APD agrees to fund SAFE kit testing through pre-existing funds
Texas Platters
Noise, as made by Gospel Truth on third album Jealous Fires, hearkens the discordant clash of Gang of Four in Patrick Travis’ guitar figures, Devo’s herky-jerk in the David Petro/Brandon Crowe rhythm section, and the snarling darkness of Australian gloom-mongers the Birthday Party in overall atmosphere. To accuse the locals of ripping any of that…
Charges Against Prado Dropped, for Now
Driver in collision that killed Ofc. Abdul-Khaliq stays hung in the balance
Texas Platters
Harmonicat Walter Daniels and guitarist John Schooley exist at the local nexus of blues and punk, the former in fiery Austinites Jack O’Fire and Big Foot Chester and the latter as a one-man barnburner. Debut of their new vehicle Meet Your Death, the pair’s latest collaboration after a 2014 acoustic collaboration in Dead Mall Blues…
Teaching Truthiness
Activists, lawmakers call on State Board of Education to reject racist Mexican-American textbook
Texas Platters
Chicken Shit Bingo, a Sunday afternoon tradition, hasn’t splat at the Little Longhorn since Dale Watson pulled out of the Burnet Road honky-tonk’s co-ownership recently. Or rather, the original CSB’s not there. For Ms. Ginny herself to sell you a ticket so a yardbird might poop on your number while Watson blasts undiluted hard country,…
Central Health Faces Questions Over Budget Transparency
Commissioners to vote on the health district’s FY 2017 budget on Sept. 20
Elgin Agrarian Community Promises Co-op Living on the Blackland Prairie
“It’s like an urban twist on traditional farming.”
Texas Platters
Equally veteran honky-tonker, guitar punk, Southern soul crooner, and Kinky Friedman acolyte, Jesse Dayton follows an indiscernible muse. The Houston native and longtime local breaks from film to delve autobiographically into his East Texas upbringing, The Revealer revealing itself as characteristically eclectic. Opener “Daddy Was a Badass” spins the wheels of family history, but feels…
Spoilers and Dreamers
Libertarian, Green parties scrap for votes
How the Co-op Works
One of the Elgin Agrarian Community’s calling cards is the cooperative ownership of the residential section and farm. Instead of purchasing the house itself, residents purchase a “membership share” in the cooperative. This includes the exclusive right to live in the house, a vote on co-op matters, and a share in common areas like trails…
Austin Opera Takes Aim at the Election With Its Adaptation of The Manchurian Candidate
Composer Kevin Puts and librettist Mark Campbell shoot to thrill in their opera based on Richard Condon’s Cold War classic
County Commissioner: A Question of Viability
Newly minted Green Party co-chair aims to shake up Commissioners Court
