Cinemaker International Super 8 Film Festival
Cinemaker International Super 8 Film Festival NR. Directed by Various, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . Super-8 and 16mm enthusiasts Cinemaker Co-op (in conjunction with the Cinematexas festival) continue their weekend devoted to small-gauge filmmaking. On tap for Thursday is the International Competition screening at 7pm at the Austin Scottish Rite Theatre; the…
Location, Location, Location
The Y Bar & Grill’s is a great place and has quite the popularity, but what about the food?
Tulia, Too Late
Civil rights advocates and opponents of the “war on drugs” were relieved by the announcement last week that state Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate John Cornyn will initiate a probe into the notorious drug bust in the Panhandle town of Tulia. But is it too late?
World Without End
The Austin Film Society will be screening all-new 35mm prints in an eight-film retrospective of the work of Soviet filmmaker Alexander Dovzhenko.
Food-o-File
Virginia B. Wood says step right up to the “Food-o-File Event-o-Rama”!
History vs. “Progress”
I-35 expansion opponents from Eastside neighborhoods plan to apply for national historic area designation and promise to fight TxDOT along the way to salvage historic structures in their neighborhood.
The Poet as Filmmaker
9/10: Arsenal 9/15: Love Berry & Diplomatic Pouch (2pm) 9/24: Earth 10/1: Ivan 10/8: Zvenigora 10/15: Battle for Soviet Ukraine 10/22: Shchors
Liquid Assets
Wes Marshall briefs you on four great red wines for under $10.
A Forced Confession?
Jurors spent much of week three of the yogurt shop murder trial of Michael Scott watching nearly 20 hours of an exhaustive videotaped confession he gave Austin police in September 1999.
Cinemakids 2002
Watch movies, make movies: It’s all in a weekend’s work at this year’s Cinemakids program, an offshoot of the Cinematexas International Short Film Festival.
Too Tough To Die
The last surviving real Ramone takes us back to the best years of our lives.
Bottom of the Budget Barrel
City Hall scraped to the bone; now it cuts into it.
Dangerzone
Austin’s programming elite tangle Friday night at Mojo’s in a Linux Top Gun contest.
Pleasant Unpleasantries
One day in the early Eighties, I received a phone call from the Ramones’ management informing me, in apologetic tones, that a piece of my art had been inadvertently borrowed to produce a Ramones record cover. The graphics firm M & Company had, according to this manager type, lifted my image from an ad placed…
Naked City
If you thought the Waller Creek tunnel project was dead, you were wrong, say Council Member Will Wynn and other city officials, who plan to discuss their options at an October work session. The project seemed to be a goner after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rejected it last month. City Council members won’t…
Short Cuts
The skies still may not be all that friendly, but at least hanging out at in the airport terminal’s gotten better.
Birthday Cage
Pianist Michelle Schumann celebrates the 90th anniversary of the birth of musical innovator John Cage.
Sugar on the Asphalt
How Jimmy Eat World bleeds teen angst tunefully, responsibly
Naked City
In case anyone was worried, there’ll be no shortage of lawyers at the Save Our Springs Alliance during the yearlong absence of chief counsel Bill Bunch, who leaves this week for the Czech Republic. Melanie Oberlin, a recent UT law school grad, is now on staff, joining new Deputy Director Brad Rockwell, an attorney who…
TV Eye
Fall is falling … or rather, fall TV is falling into our laps. The question is, will it be as welcome as a purring li’l kitty cat digging in for a nap, or as rank as last week’s bong water seeping in to your new chinos?
Articulations
The Austin Museum of Art’s downtown home gets a shot in the arm, and local television devotes more attention to Austin’s arts scene.
Dancing About Architecture
Labor Days ends, people bummed.
Naked City
Texas’s oldest urban rail transit system — the Tandy Subway, aka the M&O, in Fort Worth — made its last run Sunday night. The quarter-mile-long people-mover, built in 1963, carried 3,500 Cowtowners a day into downtown’s Tandy Center from parking lots along the Trinity River. Tandy is building a new Radio Shack “campus” on the…
Video 101
Ralph Bakshi, the animator behind Fritz the Cat, didn’t invent rotoscoping, but he made it poetically epic with 1981’s American Pop.
This Week …
The Southwestern Writers Collection’s “The Writer John Graves” symposium at the Alkek Library at Southwest Texas State University will include book signings by Old Man River himself today, Friday, Sept. 6, from 12:30 to 2pm, and Saturday, Sept. 7, from noon to 1pm. Free, open to the public, and highly recommended. Call 512/245-2313 or check…
Tunes Against Terror
After much agonizing over what to do for September 11 — including whether to open at all — the folks at Emo’s decided to team up with other Red River clubs for an extravaganza benefiting Austin firefighters, with the club’s doors opening that evening at 6pm. The other venues involved are Beerland, Elysium, and Room…
Naked City
Last week the city subpoenaed the managing editor of the Austin Police Association’s newsletter, in a move the union condemns as antithetical to freedom of speech and an attempt to silence the APA. According to an APA press release, Shelly Wilkison received word that she must testify during the upcoming arbitration hearing of former APD…
Feardotcom
Feardotcom 2002, R, 98 min. Directed by William Malone, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Stephen Dorff, Natascha McElhone, Amelia Curtis, Stephen Rea, Udo Kier, Jeffrey Combs. What is it about William Malone’s horror knock-offs that makes them so irresistible to big-name actors casting about for a “new direction”? Malone helmed the 1999 remake…
Readings
Michael King examines Rahul Mahajan’s The New Crusade. Mahajan, who happens to be the Green Party’s Texas gubernatorial candidate, will be at BookPeople on Thursday, Sept. 12.
Phases and Stages
SpartaWiretap Scars (DreamWorks)The Fall on Deaf Ears (Post-Parlo) For an instant, At the Drive-In was the most exciting rock band on the planet. Yet the minute their potent buzz-bin cocktail sent them rocketing up the charts, the El Paso group imploded after five years of constant touring, splitting into two camps. The big-hair duo of…
Naked City
As of Sept. 9, it will be officially illegal to park your car in your front or side yard in some, but not all, Austin neighborhoods. The City Council approved the ordinance Aug. 29, after two years of work by the North Austin Civic Association and other neighborhood groups, city staff, and Council Members Danny…
Swimming
Swimming 2000, NR, 98 min. Directed by Robert J. Siegel, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Josh Pais, Jamie Harrold, Joelle Carter, Jennifer Dundas Lowe, Lauren Ambrose. Swimming opens and closes with one summer spent at Myrtle Beach, a summer bookended by what comes before and after in the life of Frankie Wheeler (Ambrose).…
Page Two
Editor in Chief Louis Black reflects on the Chronicle’s 21st anniversary.
Phases and Stages
Queens of the Stone AgeSongs for the Deaf (Interscope) Whatever anyone hands you, QOTSA’s “Feel Good Hit of the Summer” 2000 (sing it: “nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy, and alcohol”), was in reality the brown acid. The dirge drama of the L.A.-based duo’s sophomore full-length, R, was a bad trip compared to the sleek, drive-time…
Naked City
The Texas Dept. of Transportation unlawfully discriminated against the city of Sunset Valley during construction of U.S. 290, an appeals court in Austin ruled last week. In an Aug. 30 decision, the court upheld a trial court’s judgment against TxDOT on two counts. First, the court faulted TxDOT for “intentionally and knowingly” shining bright floodlights…
Read My Lips
In this startling thriller, a mousy but frustrated office worker and an unrepentant thief pull off a heist that depends in equal measures on quick thinking and creative choreography.
Letter at 3AM
While remembering September 11, we owe it to ourselves to remember what its horrors have been shamelessly manipulated to obscure.
Phases and Stages
Sleater-KinneyOne Beat (Kill Rock Stars) On their sixth full-length, Corin Tucker, along with singer-guitarist Carrie Brownstein and drummer Janet Weiss, chart a journey from fear, heartbreak, and disbelief stemming from the incidents of 9/11, traveling from Point A — “Far Away,” in which Tucker describes nursing her baby while watching the world explode on television…
Naked City
About 15 locals showed up at the Parks and Recreation Dept. conference room Thursday night for a pedestrian safety “roadshow” hosted by transportation nonprofit Trans Texas Alliance and led by consultant Charles Gandy. The Alliance’s slideshow highlighted its successes in holding “pedestrian audits,” workshops that give neighborhoods across Texas tools to calm traffic and increase…
Crop Circles: Quest for Truth
Crop Circles: Quest for Truth 2002, NR, 120 min. Directed by William Gazecki, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . Timed to coincide with the similarly themed M. Night Shyamalan film Signs, this exhaustive (and exhausting) look at the peculiarly British phenomenon of crop circles — those tamped-down geometric patterns that make seemingly random…
Mr. Smarty Pants
Wearing headphones for an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700%.Roman teenage emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (219-222), better known as Elagabalus, was fond of playing jokes with whoopee cushions.Adam Fortunate Eagle Nordwall put a curse on Livermore, California’s sewer system back in the early 1970s after officials mistreated a totem pole he…
Phases and Stages
InterpolTurn on the Bright Lights (Matador) The musical recycle from 25 years ago has finally made its way to the edge of the Eighties, from the southern Zeppelinism of the White Stripes and the fun-but-empty Television conjure of the Strokes, to the edgy emotional juggernaut that was post-punk and that era’s flagship band, Joy Division.…
Naked City
In his Aug. 22 column, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert noted that the U.S. Dept. of Justice has issued conflicting statements on whether it’s investigating possible criminal and civil rights violations related to the Tulia busts, perpetrated by one-man narco buster Tom Coleman. In a letter to American Bar Association President Robert Hirshorn, Lori…
Day Trips
The Oklahoma City National Memorial has taken a horrific event and turned it into a garden of inspiring hope and healing. Encompassing nearly two city blocks, the memorial to the 168 victims is a beautiful tribute to life. In the daytime it is a vibrant park with lots of open space. At night it is…
Phases and Stages
RideBox Set (Ignition) To quote the Damned, “Neat, neat, neat.” This 3-CD overview of shoegazing masterminds Ride is top-flight feedback murk, both long-overdue and frighteningly current. What happened to Brit rock after the demise of Alan McGee’s Creation label (once home to Ride and My Bloody Valentine)? Well, there was that Gallagher Brothers meltdown, followed…
Capitol Chronicle
Cheney’s call to war is as illegitimate as ever.
After a Fashion
Vylette gets the Sex and the City nod from USA Today and we turn four! Happy Birthday to us!
Phases and Stages
Tish HinojosaEl Sol y la Luna, August 28 Who’s bright idea was it to double-book Tish Hinojosa, the darling of Austin’s Tex-Mex scene, with brassy El Sol 104.9 Radio for a live remote at El Sol y La Luna last Wednesday? While El Sol Radio arrived with a snazzy van and speakers to smack Hinojosa…
Austin @ Large: Austin at Large
Is “neighborhood planning” the tool for the job Austin needs done?
To Your Health
I have now made it five years since breast cancer was diagnosed. I consider myself very fortunate and want to do everything I can to stay well and avoid future chemo. Where do I start?
Who’s Texas?
Pete Gallego, the influential state rep from Alpine, recalled in a committee meeting earlier this year that when he was growing up in West Texas, he was sometimes called a “good minority” — the unspoken implication being that, to many Anglo-Texans, blacks are the “bad” minority. There may be some truth in that: The Alamo…
The Hightower Report
Accenture proclaims its Bermudan heritage; Paul O’Neill calls the kettle black.
About AIDS
Early in the epidemic, we saw that HIV-infected people who faced their disease head-on and got involved with an AIDS organization typically did better than those who did not become engaged. A University of Illinois study published recently in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships continues to confirm it: people with HIV who belong…
Enviros for Energy
In a recent analysis titled “What Renewable Energy Means to Texas,” environmental groups announced they’re whole-hog on board with the emerging renewable energy industry, especially wind power.
(Backroom) Journeys With George (and James)
Revisiting The War Room — the electrifying ’92 campaign documentary starring the Lone Ranger and Tonto (Stephanopoulos and Carville) — with executive producer R.J. Cutler.
