Flicker #five
Flicker #five NR. Directed by Various, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . Flicker No. 5 is the latest installment of the bimonthly film festival that features short films by local and national filmmakers who submit works via mail. Flicker guarantees an array of projects and intriguing juxtapositions at every screening, with linear narratives…
Hairspray
Hairspray 1988, PG, 96 min. Directed by John Waters, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Ricki Lake, Sonny Bono, Divine, Deborah Harry. A “pleasantly plump” teen (Lake) in 1962 Baltimore wants to dance on the local TV dance program in this PG-rated John Waters romp featuring lots of cameos.
The Boogeyman
The Boogeyman 1980, R, 82 min. Directed by Ulli Lommel, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Suzanna Love, Ron James, John Carradine, Nicholas Love. A mirror that witnessed a murder years earlier wreaks havoc when smashed into shards in this film directed by horror master Lommel, who was also a regular Fassbinder actor.
Robert et Robert
Robert et Robert 1978, NR, 105 min. Directed by Claude Lelouch, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Charles Denner, Jacques Villeret, Jean-Claude Brialy. A fussy cab driver and an apprentice traffic cop make for a decidedly French odd couple. More on this monthly series is available at www.alliance-francaise.austin.tx.us. Doors open for snacks and conversation…
Chloe in the Afternoon
Chloe in the Afternoon 1972, NR, 98 min. Directed by Eric Rohmer, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Bernard Verley, Zouzou. “Love and Morality: The Films of Eric Rohmer” is an eight-film survey of films by the cerebral French master. The last of Rohmer’s Moral Tales, Chloe in the Afternoon zeroes in on a…
Letters at 3AM
“New York, the capital of the 20th century” — so Norman Mailer once described his city. The proof is in the architecture. In the 1930s there was no skyline like New York’s. By the 1990s the New York skyline, and the way of life that goes with it, was mirrored by every major city in…
The American Voice
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 528 pp., $25 Frankly, I’m surprised, I’m fucking shocked, that Franzen is this good. He was not a writer I thought capable of this novel. A couple of years ago, Franzen was put on Granta’s “best novelists under 40” list — of which there is no…
Phases and Stages
The YardbirdsUltimate! (Rhino) With 52 tracks running two and a half hours, Rhino’s 2-CD Ultimate! lends ample credence to the supposition that the Yardbirds are the not-so-missing musical link between Sixties pop and Seventies rock. Like their early-Sixties British peers, the Kinks, Who, Beatles, and Stones, the London quintet, which took its name from Jack…
Naked City
This week the city presented at a public hearing preliminary findings and visuals of the Downtown Access and Mobility Plan — known by its delightful acronym, D.A.M.P. The transportation study, executed by consultants at Wilbur Smith Associates, is supposed to examine all modes of transportation used by a diverse population of downtown users and visitors.…
Autumn Tale
Imported Goods Proof that there’s life outside Hollywood: A slew of foreign filmmakers, most of them old pros, are getting their homegrown products shown stateside, some to practically frothing audience anticipation. One of the last vestiges of the French New Wave vanguard, Jacques Rivette is receiving some of the best notices of his uneven career…
Seond Helpings: Mexican Bakeries
A guide to Mexican bakeries
After a Fashion
Stephen gets a new hairdo!
Mini-Review
Food reviewer Mick Vann points out that there’s a reason why the foodie pundits have noticed a similarity between the menus at Hai Ky and Tan Tan Vietnamese restaurants. The two restaurants are owned by brothers, and as good as Tan Tan is, you’ll find that Hai Ky is even better, he says.
Phases and Stages
Where Dead Voices Gather by Nick Tosches Little, Brown & Co., 330 pp., $24.95 Journalist, novelist, and critic Nick Tosches, that Bardic bad-ass who can skewer high culture and use words like “expiation” in a single sentence, has been thinking about minstrel and jazz man Emmett Miller for 20 years — at least several years…
Naked City
Houston attorney John WorldPeace, Democratic candidate for governor, changed his name from Kenneth Wolter some years ago to indicate his new outlook on life. His Web site, www.johnworldpeace.com, is fully loaded with its host’s extensive writings on the subject of how to bring about world peace, e.g., “How can we manifest peace on earth if…
Autumn Tale
Docs: Even Better Than the Real Thing Previously screened at the Newport International Film Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival, Grateful Dawg chronicles the buddyhood between bluegrass (or, more properly, “dawg music”) prodigy David Grisman and the late Jerry Garcia. The film features stage performances, candid footage, and (what else?) jam sessions, as well…
The Glass House
The Glass House 2001, PG-13, 101 min. Directed by Daniel Sackheim, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Leelee Sobieski, Diane Lane, Stellan Skarsgaard, Trevor Morgan, Bruce Dern, Kathy Baker, Rita Wilson, Michael O’Keefe, Chris Noth. The hokey thriller The Glass House is so full of cracks that it’s a wonder that it remains intact…
The American Voice
Where the Stress Falls by Susan Sontag Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 288 pp., $27 In one of the typically piercing essays in Where the Stress Falls, Susan Sontag enumerates the extent to which Latin American writer Machado de Assis experienced just about everything: He was a poet, playwright, essayist, novelist, champion for other writers, “a…
Day Trips
Rose Hill Manor is more than just another B&B.
Node Exit
What ails singers
Matter Over Mind
The proposed Cypress Realty Development in Dripping Springs
Naked City
Efforts to secure a federal Empowerment Zone designation for East Austin move into the final stages next week, as the city of Austin tries to meet an application deadline of Sept. 28 with the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development. Janet Blake, who lives and owns a business in East Austin, where she is…
Autumn Tale
Fall Film Schedule The following lists national release dates as of press time. Because Austin ranks only slightly above the sticks as far as distribution goes, some of these films won’t get to us on the same day they open in New York or L.A. Also, in light of the recent terrorist attacks, studios are…
The American Voice
Fury by Salman Rushdie Random House, 259 pp., $24.95 It is a trick of the mind, Salman Rushdie writes in his new novel Fury, to see human life made small, reduced to doll size. So there’s his grand metaphor for the phenomenon of literature, one might suppose. Cast a wide net and make your catch…
Mr. Smarty Pants
Signposts on the Road to Know-where
West Texas Hell
Disc jockey, performer, and record producer Joe Gracey thought his life was over when, in the late Seventies, he was diagnosed with oral cancer. Indeed, Gracey remembers walking out of the doctor’s office “determined to die.” The Fort Worth-born former DJ for legendary Austin freeform station KOKE writes via e-mail, “I loved to tell stories,…
There Goes the Neighborhood?
Statistics on Hays County expansion
Austin @ Large: Austin At Large
An Austin political response to the New York bombing
Two Weeks in Another Town
The Toronto Film Festival was bifurcated by news of crisis; festival attendees reacted with the rest of the world and questioned the relevance of film in the face of events.
The American Voice
Interesting Monsters: Fictions by Aldo Alvarez Graywolf Press, 192 pp., $14 (paper) The pieces in Aldo Alvarez’s collection of “fictions” — what writers call stories when they’re feeling edgy — try their damnedest to be playful and experimental and heartbreaking all at once, but they succeed only when the author tones down his metafictional exercises…
To Your Health
It seems like everyone has a bad back, but my backache has been going on for four years now, and I need some relief. A chiropractor helped some, but I still suffer if I make a sudden move or lift anything more than a heavy book. It started when I was pregnant but hasn’t yet…
Dancing About Architecture
Texas musicians report from NYC and D.C., Nick Cave and others cancel shows, and the Trail of Dead headline a Red Cross benefit at the Mercury
An Alliance of Friends
An Alliance of Dripping Springs residents forms to defend itself against unregulated development.
Capitol Chronicle
Farewell to Phil Gramm, the journalist’s best friend.
Short Cuts
Cinematexas marches on, while local movie theatre attendance takes a hit.
The American Voice
Political Fictions by Joan Didion Knopf, 352 pp., $25 Joan Didion’s Political Fictions gives a wry, astute look at the American political process — how it’s run by a highly insular group of politicial insiders and the Washington media. According to Didion, the result is “a self-created and self-referring class” and a process that reflects…
About AIDS
Minority HIV Services Meeting
Adds and Drops
Added by KGSR this week for inspirational/patriotic purposes: “Fragile,” Sting “Love Me Like a Soldier,” Darden Smith “New York, New York,” Ryan Adams “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of,” U2 “Rockin’ in the Free World,” Neil Young “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace Love and Understanding,” Nick Lowe Dropped by 101X as “not…
Old School Pool
The newly formed Friends of Deep Eddy Pool hope to raise awareness of the history of the municipal swimming pool — and private and public money to improve the pool and restore the historic bath house (now partly abandoned). To that end, the group has drafted a proposal, under consideration by the Parks and Recreation…
The Hightower Lowdown
Microsoft and Sara Lee buy justice; Americans work too much.
Users Find Back Roads During Internet Traffic Jam
While the mainstream Internet news sites faltered during Tuesday’s attacks, people picked up the slack.
The American Voice
Another City: Writing From Los Angeles edited by David L. Ulin City Lights Books, 273 pp., $16.95 (paper) Sprawling, impossible to pin down, by turns annoying and epiphany-inducing, animated and dull, inspired and empty-headed, Another City: Writing From Los Angeles is a collection of short prose and poetry much like the city from which it…
Coach’s Corner
Odds and Ends: NFL referees have an overinflated 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.
Behind the Desk
Al Barlow, At Home With Al Barlow Catherine Berry, Geography Explosions in the Sky, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die… Robert Earl Keen, Gravitational Forces Mad Anthony Wayne, Exhausting the Competition Madcow, Cattle Prodigy Slim Ranch, Slim Ranch Texas Eastside Kings, s/t Wild Seeds, I’m Sorry, I Can’t Rock You All Night Long (1984-1989)
KXAN’s Aluminum Siding
KXAN does publicity work for Alcoa, disguised as news reporting.
Autumn Tale
Fall film preview
TV to Air Simulcast Celbrity Benefit
The Big Four networks announce decision to air a simulcast celebrity benefit to aid victims of the terrorist attacks.
The American Voice
Sentimental, Heartbroken Rednecks: Stories by Greg Bottoms Context Books, 235 pp., $21.95 There is far more heartbreak than sentimentalism in this important young writer’s important second effort (Angelhead), and there is, to his credit, an absolute lack of compromise. Bottoms’ is an erratic, barren prose-poetry aching with the consequence of each word used and left…
A Wink and a Smile
As Food editor Virginia B. Wood relates in a review of Wink, a new restaurant on North Lamar, two of Austin’s longtime chefs are busy operating the restaurant of their dreams.
SXSW 2002
South by Southwest has announced that applications are now being accepted from bands who wish to showcase at the next music conference and festival, March 13-17, 2002 in Austin, Texas. To apply, enclose in one package a completed showcase application, CD or cassette of original materials (at least three songs), photo, biography, press kit, and…
TradeMark of the Beast
Microsoft. What did you think when you read that? If it was unprintable, you may have already heard that the city of Austin is currently negotiating with the Beast from Redmond for an MS Enterprise Agreement — the software giant’s most exhaustive and expensive flavor of site license, allowing the city to run many, many…
Autumn Tale
Funny Bones I can see it now: two studio suits, yakking into their cells as they merrily skip down the corridors of power at 20th Century Fox. “We haven’t pillaged Mark Twain lately!” “So true. How about Martin Lawrence in an edgy, urbanized version of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court?” “Hey! Let’s call…
Hollywood Scrambles to Sensitize its Fall Slate
In the wake of last week’s tragedies, not only have several films depicting terrorism been shelved, but anything even featuring the World Trade Center in the NYC skyline is being examined for possible alteration.
The American Voice
Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold Hyperion, 483 pp., $24.95 Summer is over, and the folks at Hyperion missed their chance to publish what must be one of the best seasonal reads of the past decade. But Glen David Gold’s novel is a walloping, exuberant read at any time, and deserves to pivot…
Food-o-File
Last week’s events, Virginia B. Wood writes, have made it almost impossible to focus on such mundane things as newsy tidbits, interviews, and deadlines. I finally realized the only way I’d get through a column was to look for good news and upbeat stories to fill this space.
Phases and Stages
KLBJ Freedom Fest @Auditorium Shores September 16 Freedom was much on the minds of those assembled Sunday at KLBJ’s Shore Thang — renamed, in fact, Freedom Fest — and much in evidence. The freedom to drink beer from a tube longer than Shaquille O’Neal’s femur, and as Joan Jett noted from the stage, the freedom…
Brotherly Lovin’
Last February, the Kappa Alpha fraternity chapter at Southwestern University in Georgetown was suspended from campus for a host of violations, ranging from allegedly parking a car affixed with a sign that read “Old People Die!” outside the entrance to the Del Webb Sun City retirement community to using racial slurs in front of both…
Autumn Tale
In the Family Way The Coens, the Wachowskis, the Farrellys: Today’s rash of dual fraternal auteurs may seem like something new, but it’s actually as old as the cinématographe, history’s first portable movie camera, invented in 1895 by filmmaking brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière. In keeping with cinema’s family tradition, this fall offers films from…
TV Eye
“TV Eye” reflects on television’s coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The American Voice
Ava’s Man by Rick Bragg Knopf, 258 pp., $25 With Ava’s Man — a sequel of sorts to his masterful bestseller All Over But the Shoutin’ — Rick Bragg has accepted a daunting challenge. He conjures up a memoir of a man he never met (his maternal grandfather, Charlie Bundrum) whose life and accomplishments were…
Mini-Review
Tree House Italian Grill is unpretentious, familiar, and gorgeous, Food reviewer Barbara Chisholm writes. It’s just off the über-trendy South Congress boulevard of hipster heaven, but it’s miles away in sensibilities.
Phases and Stages
Ben Folds Rockin’ the Suburbs (Sony) Ben Folds’ second solo effort is a jewel, a masterpiece, better than Cats. All the elements comprising great art are here: poignancy, depth, humor, and sarcasm. You laugh, you cry, you are made human. On paper, anyway. It’s obvious on Rockin’ the Suburbs that Folds has matured as a…
Molded by Insurance
On Tuesday, Texas Dept. of Insurance staff presented Insurance Commissioner Jose Montemayor with a recommendation that attempts a long-awaited compromise between the weird world of fungus and the equally weird world of homeowners’ insurance. TDI’s recommendation would cap mold-damage claims at $5,000 in standard homeowners insurance policies and would give policyholders the option of buying…
Autumn Tale
Novel Ideas I’ll go out on a withered, leafless limb here and say this season’s big-screen book club is gonna be crowded. We’ll call the club Three Classics and a Maybe, though no matter what you call it, people will line up and people will discuss. They’re discussing already, actually, and how couldn’t you with…
Happy Accidents
Happy Accidents 2001, R, 110 min. Directed by Brad Anderson, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Marisa Tomei, Vincent D’Onofrio, Tovah Feldshuh, Holland Taylor, Nadia Dajani, Sean Gullette, Bronson Dudley. With Vincent D’Onofrio in full-on goofball mode and Marisa Tomei apparently so ill-fed she can’t stop gnawing on her lower lip in a futile…
The American Voice
Eva Moves the Furniture by Margot Livesey Holt, 234 pp., $23 Margot Livesey’s previous novels (Homework, Criminals, and last year’s The Missing World) have been about the everyday terrors that sneak up on ordinary people — a baby is kidnapped in Criminals and a boyfriend hides his dark past to his amnesiac girlfriend in The…
Suspendered Animation
The Umbilical Brothers are like cartoon characters come to life, like toons in living breathing 3-D, with pratfalls and spit-takes and near-impossible contortions — all accompanied by sound effects that an entire army of foley artists might pull off on a lucky day.
Phases and Stages
They Might Be Giants Mink Car (Restless) You can tell the age of a music fan by their touchstones; when Dylan went electric, when the brothers Gibb went disco, when They Might Be Giants went “full band.” Okay, so TMBG are no Dylan. For one thing, when you scratch the surface of Dylan’s nonsensical lyrics,…
Hanging Fire
To judge only by published accounts (there weren’t any), not much happened this week in the continuing aftermath of the state Senate firing of three veteran Senate Media Services employees in mid-August (see “Capitol Chronicle: The Senate’s Witch Burning,” Sept. 14). As we reported last week, the three employees, Katherine Staat, Barbara Schlief, and Shelley…
Autumn Tale
Lights! Camera! Action! Testosterone will flow in fall’s bumper crop of brawny (and sometimes brainy) star-driven action flicks. Robert Redford sheds his fuzzy-bunny Horse Whisperer karma in two roles — as a back-in-action CIA operative out to bring down doubling-dealing ex-partner Brad Pitt in Tony Scott’s Spy Game (Nov. 21) and as a three-star general…
Lumumba
Peck’s film is a fine, incendiary portrait of Congo’s first freely elected prime minister, who arrived at his post in 1960 as the Belgians were finally exiting after 80 years of colonialism. – Marc Savlov
The American Voice
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford Random House, 509 pp., $29.95 Reading Nancy Milford’s literary biography, Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, made me really glad not to be a biographer. As Milford herself puts it in her prologue to the 509-page-book: “To be a biographer…
Disaster Relief
In the wake of last week’s terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., Austin theatre artists are doing their part to help out: raising funds for disaster relief from audiences attending their shows.
Phases and Stages
BjorkVespertine (Elektra) Bringing e.e. cummings to a new generation — that’s Icelandic pop-spritester Bjork Gudmundsdottir for you. No one, and I mean no one else could get away with lifting a page out of cummings’ Impressions and gently pasting it atop a lush, minimalist lullaby, as she does in the luxurious, lovely Sun in My…
Naked City
News items
Autumn Tale
Child’s Play Kid flicks are notoriously hard to pull off; for every Spy Kids there’s a handful of preteen time bombs like Curly Sue or Air Bud. This season, however, comes with a full four films aimed at the coveted kidhood demographic, including the bound-to-delight (we hope) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, helmed by…
Jackpot
Jackpot 2001, R, 100 min. Directed by Michael Polish, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Jon Gries, Daryl Hannah, Garrett Morris, Anthony Edwards, Crystal Bernard, Peggy Lipton, Adam Baldwin, Camellia Clouse, Rick Overton, Mac Davis. As his name suggests, Sunny Holiday (Gries) — Jackpot’s central character — is the embodiment of wishful thinking. Sunny…
The American Voice
The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 271 pp., $24 She seems to write in a language that isn’t ours. It’s English, of course, at times ultra-colloquial (“whatever you do, love, whatever happens, hits you, mate, Bra, that’s all right with me”), but it’s elusive, aloof, burning with a command so fierce –…
Articulations
Serious health problems have beset Austin theatre artists Douglas Taylor and Brian Gaston as they are working on upcoming projects.
Phases and Stages
Mercury Rev All Is Dream (V2) In the three years between 1995’s See You on the Other Side and 1998’s breakout Deserter’s Songs, Mercury Rev underwent a metamorphosis. They ditched the psychedelic freakouts of old and all but abandoned rock & roll, crafting instead a sugar-plum fantasia of piano, strings, and singing saw, overseen by…
Naked City
While you may have been relieved that last week’s broadcast coverage of the assaults on New York and Washington, D.C., was commercial-free, those hours of missing ad time add up to thousands of dollars in lost revenues for broadcasters. So far, says LBJ-S Broadcasting general manager Scott Gillmore, almost all advertisers on his stations elected…
Autumn Tale
Thrills and Chills It used to be we could count on fall’s spookshow triumverate — Michael Myers, Jason, and Freddy Krueger — to do their bloody best to scare the bejesus out of us this time of year. These days, however, Jamie Lee Curtis is more likely to be seen padding her pocketbook with tongue-in-cheek…
Arthur the Absurdist
Arthur Bradford is either a master of the absurd or a debut author determined to turn book critics everywhere into tongue-tied nincompoops. Dogwalker (Knopf, $20), his collection of beguiling stories, is impossible to explicate — with a straight face, anyway. In “Mollusks,” the narrator of these alternately whimsical, deadpan tales and his friend Kenneth, who…
Exhibitionism
Art Stripped Naked, Wayne Alan Brenner’s comedy of the relationship between a father and son — augmented by an ongoing discourse of the nature of art — is both sweet and simple, with a heartwarming twist, and its presentation by Hyde Park Theatre makes for a gentle evening on one’s senses.
Phases and Stages
The Crystal MethodTweekend (Geffen/Outpost) From the very first track on the Las Vegas techno duo’s latest outing, you know exactly where you stand. Those burbling beeps laid over the trademark roiling basslines, those squealing arpeggios, those come-hither femme-fatale voices lurking in the background — surely this couldn’t be new Crystal Method? Of course not. It’s…
Naked City
The Austin Independent School District quickly offered an official response to the Sept. 11 bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon. In a statement, Supt. Pat Forgione said, “We are naturally shocked at the national tragedy occurring today, but we believe the best approach is to continue with our daily routines on our campuses.”…
Autumn Tale
Yeah, But Can You Dance to It? Pop stars in film: They can sing, but can they act? It might not matter as long as the soundtrack rocks. First up, Mariah Carey stars in Glitter (her first feature film) as an R&B singer who shoots to stardom during the 1980s club scene with the aid…
Postscripts
What’s happening in Austin’s literary life for the upcoming week
Exhibitionism
A few weeks ago, Ronald Harwood’s Taking Sides — about the interrogation of a world-class conductor and possible Nazi sympathizer during WWII — wouldn’t have seemed all that relevant to the world’s headlines. Now, it does, this solid production from ActAustin and the Magnolia Theatre Company may make you consider the characters (and thus the…
Phases and Stages
Silos Laser Beam Next Door (Checkered Past) If ever there was a band that was impossible to pin down, it’s the Silos. The only member who’s been in the band since the beginning of their long and storied career has been former Austinite singer/guitarist/songwriter Walter Salas-Humara. The group of players that have shifted in and…
Naked City
It’s always a bit disorienting when the voice of reason comes from the far right (remember those dizzy spells you suffered when Pat Buchanan attacked NAFTA?). But last week, the Texas League of the South condemned the attempted fire bombing of the Islamic Society in Denton, calling it a “knee-jerk, violent reaction” that “can only…
Autumn Tale
Motion Pictures Targeted at a Female Demographic Aged 18 to — Fine, Whatever: Chick Flicks Break out the Kleenex: John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale star as New Yorkers who, smitten one snowy night, decide to let fate decide if they are meant to be in Serendipity. Ten years pass with no contact, but a lingering…
Page Two
Defending Georgetown, and other political considerations.
Phases and Stages
BR5-49 This Is BR5-49 (Arista) Somebody got to BR5-49. “Boys, you got to work on your image if you want to really get somewhere in this business. We’ll get you guys some new hair, get rid of those vintage clothes (people keep calling you retro), and get you some serious songs.” That’s jumping to conclusions,…
Naked City
In the wake of the terrorist attacks on the U.S., we had expected Statesman editor Rich Oppel to provide readers with a feast of portentous nonsense — but we underestimated the man. His extended Sunday column (Sept. 16) was an instant Readers’ Digest of all the pundit clichés already pounded into our heads by a…
Autumn Tale
All Ethan, All the Time Is Ethan Hawke taking over the world? Nah, but he is making a bid at Planet Hollywood, with the mostly indie artiste’s appearance in commercial cop pic Training Day. Hawke plays a rookie on his first day on narcotics detail, under the tutelage of a possibly crooked captain (Denzel Washington).…
