Screens ‘The Passenger’ of time
Michael Antonioni’s ’70s masterpiece proves some things really change In the dark shadows of Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie, Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1975 quasi-thriller The Passenger glows faintly. Or maybe the problem is the tag studios and reviewers stick on the film. The first time I rented the original version, it was to watch a “riveting”…
Screens Armchair cinephile
Pulp fiction As promised a few months ago when the plain-Jane version came out, Robert Rodriguez and crew have just dropped the other shoe with Sin City: Recut / Extended / Unrated (Dimension), which not only contains a new cut of the film, but has all the bonus features fans associate with an RR disc.…
News Alone on the border
Border Patrol neglect may place kids at risk There’s the lanky 16-year-old who wades the Rio Grande and ends up in Border Patrol custody. Or the frightened, wan little girl from Chiapas; she crosses with a coyote, seeking her mom in some mystery city called Topeka. Instead, she lands behind bars in Douglas, Arizona. They…
Screens That’s a wrap
The low-down on this week’s premieres The most anticipated remake of the year, King Kong, opens nationwide Wednesday, December 14. Like the 1933 original starring Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong, Kong follows moviemaker Carl Denham (Jack Black), lead actress Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), and screenwriter Jack Driscoll (Adrian Brody) to the remote Skull Island where…
News Party lines
Diamond shined, mom didn’t Two-year-old Diamond Alexander Washington was a loving child. She liked to play, expressed herself well, and was energetic. She had a loving relationship with her foster parents. All that changed on March 31, 2004, the day she was returned by the state to the custody of her mother, Kimberly Alexander. Witnesses…
Screens Special screenings
Cómo Vives?: John Pilson A Trial is the finished product of a three-month workshop in which video artist and photographer John Pilson collaborated with students from St. Anthony Catholic School and The Circle School. Premiere and reception, 4:30 to 6 p.m., Thursday, December 15, at Artpace, 445 N. Main. Admission is free. For more info,…
News Coal comfort
CPS cuts secret deal with enviros, neighbors Robert Delgado has an obnoxious neighbor, or, more aptly, a noxious neighbor. Delgado lives adjacent to the coal-burning complex operated by CPS Energy at Calaveras Lake. He doesn’t adamantly oppose CPS plans to build an additional $1 billion coal-burning power plant at the site, but he wants the…
Food & Drink Sins of the flesh
SA Prime serves a plain plate of meat The reasons for reviewing restaurants are to promote food awareness, to chart society’s gastronomic progress from the primal to the profound, to provide a primer of restaurants, to establish primacy in various categories, and, oh yes, to occasionally write about that most primeval of foods, red meat.…
News Briefs
FEMA housing deadline extended Hurricane Katrina and Rita evacuees can stay in Texas motels and hotels at FEMA’s expense through January 7, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced December 9. The original deadline was December 15. The extension was approved to accommodate efforts to move all evacuees out of hotels and into apartments and longer-term…
Food & Drink A chef worth her salt
Linda Carucci teaches the basic cooking tips and techniques behind fine cooking The recent trend in cookbooks seems to be easy and quick—a few basic ingredients and 30 minutes and you, too, can create a tasty and impressive meal. That’s certainly a liberating and practical approach, but it’s also refreshing to read Linda Carucci’s new…
News Speed reads
Diversity Center trying to raise funds The troubled Diversity Center, which for the past two years has been open intermittently because of money woes, is trying to regroup with a December 18 fund-raiser at the Saint, 1400 N. Main. The show will feature “La Cage—One Night Only” with top female impersonators from SA and Austin.…
Food & Drink Bloody merry
Holiday cocktail recipes for those who’d rather deck the halls at home The holidays come but once a year, bringing good cheer and a host of bothersome rituals: scratchy wool sweaters, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and those insipid Jingle Bells. Bah humbug! You need a drink. Well, you know mojito, rompope, martini, and midori, but…
Feature Losing their religion
Members of UTSA’s Atheist Agenda are just like everybody else, except for the sticky issue of God The Atheist Agenda is braced for trouble. Members of the group, UTSA’s newly formed contingent of non-believers, anxiously sit behind a wide table in the middle of the university’s Humanities and Social Sciences building. A large banner proclaiming…
Food & Drink All you can eat
News and notes from the San Antonio food scene Who is nibbling at my little house? Whole Foods Market at the Quarry, 255 E. Basse, invites you to help decorate their Gingerbread House on Saturday, December 17, from noon- 2 p.m. Children of all ages can decorate a gingerbread version of the Whole Foods façade…
Arts Left of center bootstraps
Cinema Libre gives indie (and progressive) movie-making a boost So, you’re an independent filmmaker with a host of unreleased pet projects—intrepidly hammering out the Great American Screenplay between bouts of self-doubt and unemployment, straining red-tendriled eyeballs during murderous late-night editing sessions, hoping against hope this isn’t the night your lead actor chose to pick up…
Arts Angry young men
An indispensable outsider voice returns in two new paperbacks Alienated young men are not new to American literature—they were one of its driving forces in the 20th century, the legions bolstered by Jack Kerouac, J.D. Salinger, Raymond Carver, and Hunter S. Thompson, to name a significant handful. Thompson, who shot himself in the Colorado mountains…
Music Beautiful monster
Bif Naked is Canada’s tattooed, scantily-clad girl next door “It’s something else over here. I’ve never been to this part of the world, to be honest with you,” punk-pop princess Bif Naked says of Hilton Head, South Carolina, where her current tour has landed her. There’s a note of hesitation in her voice as she…
Arts All for one
Kwanzaa is a pan-African-American celebration, but Africa is a panoply Kwanzaa has gained prominence among the multi-cultural holiday expressions and greetings circulating in recent years. It’s not difficult to find “Happy Kwanzaa” cards at your local Hallmark store, and most bookstores carry at least a few titles on the subject. With the release of the…
Music All ears
Year-end odds and ends Before a turn of the calendar makes some of my recent favorites year-old releases, here’s a hodgepodge of records that didn’t quite fit anywhere, however often they sat in my stereo: The Broken Record by Twink (Seeland): Mike Langlie’s new disc fits the profile of hip-hop, bedroom-based, Mad Scientist Of Sound…
Arts If you can’t beat ‘em…
Maybe you should join your loved one’s virtual world Ted, a sophomore chemistry student at Portland State, tells a story that has become increasingly familiar to many Americans. Six months ago, he started playing the game World of Warcraft. His friends had been encouraging him to play for months, but he was worried it would…
Music CD Spotlight
Big & stupid The proof of country music’s conservatism comes not from its tame conformists, but from the acts viewed in Nashville as radical innovators. A decade ago it was the Kentucky Headhunters, a warmed-over Molly Hatchet at least two decades behind the curve in rock terms, but positively cutting-edge to country listeners. These days,…
Arts Social intercourse
The eyes of exes are upon you Something about the holiday season causes me, in the middle of all the hubbub, to plan a party. Maybe it’s a defective gene. Nonetheless, a party is what I planned. One recent Sunday, a cross-section of humanity held court in my house and shared some Christmas cheer: a…
Music Miami heat
Blowfly, Pong, Dj Scuba Gooding Jr, and Dj Donnie D at Sam’s While contemporary pop stars are often celebrated then quickly forgotten, Clarence “Blowfly” Reid’s colorful four-decade journey through the world of soul and hip-hop borders on the iconic. Reid wrote, performed, and/or produced the lion’s share of Miami’s indie soul/R&B output from the late-’60s…
Arts Artifacts
News and notes from the San Antonio art scene I’ll see your plant and raise you a museo The Ford Motor Company will not let Toyota drive all over the Latino truck market. The corporation announced December 9 that it is donating $5.5 million to the Alameda National Center for Latino Arts and Culture. The…
Music Sound and the fury
A week on the scene Holiday fare Pop iconoclasts Buttercup will ring in Winter Solstice with characteristic good cheer when they play a special holiday Grackle Mundy at the Wiggle Room (2301 S. Presa) on December 19. The show, dubbed “Celebration of Annual Gift Man,” will feature a choice selection of secular carols, gift exchanges,…
Screens Fade to black
City Council has delayed its decision about public-access TV, leaving the channel in limbo A giant talking pig. A woman who speaks through creepy puppets. A lounge crooner with a James Taylor fixation. Until the arrival of the internet, public-access television was the most democratic of media, providing a soapbox for soliloquists, a forum for…
Screens Starfucker
Sarah SIlverman’s luster wears off (a little) Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic is full of songs about self-medication and death. There is, for example, the one whose chorus asks, “Do you ever take drugs so you can have sex without crying?” And the cheery ditty Silverman sings at an old folks’ home, which explains to…
