Go fish
Release Date: 2003-04-17 Go Hyang Jib, more familiarly known as Korean B-B-Q House, has recently moved across the street to new quarters – not necessarily news in itself, but the Casey family has taken the occasion to ratchet the operation up a notch. Make that two or three notches. Not only is the new place…
ATTACK OF THE GUTTER POETS
Slap an Arab Strap on it, and make some multi-instrumental music A few years ago, you might have been forgiven for deciding that Arab Strap was a very entertaining one-trick pony. Their main selling point was the way singer (the term is used loosely here) Aidan Moffat depicted one of the saddest, sleaziest social lives…
CANDIDATES TRY TO REPAIR DISTRICT 4’S REPUTATION
CHANGING THE COURSE OF CORRUPTION The Council was considering the Toyota-driven annexation plan known as “the Southside Initiative.” Residents stepped up to complain that their neighborhoods had been denied basic services for years. They worried that annexation would further stretch the city’s already thin resources. To no one’s surprise, the Council approved the annexation plan…
GUITAR GODS AND MONSTERS
Mike Stern has the sound of a rock guitarist and the chops and harmonic concepts of a bebopper In the early ’80s, after five years of musical silence, Miles Davis made a comeback. One stop on the tour was the Paramount Theater in Austin, where, in typical fashion, he barely acknowledged the adoring crowd. He…
REDEFINING DOWNTOWN
What will it take to entice suburbanites to return to the city’s center? Downtowns have long been likened to the hearts of their cities – although in the past 35 years, suburban flight has robbed city centers of their blood supply. To live, work, or regularly wander through the urban core means that you have…
SPECIAL SCREENS
TEACHER’S PET Raleigh, North Carolina resident Skip Elsheimer is part of the latter group, and has carried his childhood enthusiasm way too far. While his colleagues are busy downloading Buffy the Vampire Slayer images, the 36 year old tracks down old 16 mm educational films, finding Skip Elsheimer them in dumpsters and old stock…
SOUND AND THE FURY
a week on the scene EASTER SUNDAY = 420 Although someone named “Nightrocker” is presumptuously touting his 420 Bar-B-Q as “the city’s first-ever 420 event,” there is still something to be said for the public gesture. Will there really be barbeque there? Who knows. Greenery? Your guess is as good anyone’s. But the music should…
Armchair Cinephile
RABBITS AND TIGERS AND DOGS – OH MY! Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Buena Vista) Rabbit-Proof Fence (Buena Vista) Go Tigers! (Docurama) Of Mice and Men (MGM) Straw Dogs (Criterion Collection) My Life as a Dog (Criterion Collection) Amores Perros (Lions Gate) Animation has changed a lot in the 15 years since Who Framed Roger Rabbit?…
NOTHING NEW
In these days of violent invasion, justified in part, in part invoked from the shaky pedestals of an imprecise cultural and ethical superiority, all hope in a different future for this ever smaller world ever more harassed by difficulties falters once more. The ancient drums of the war to death resound around the world; they…
TOO HOT TO HANDLE
Hotel tax leaves many businesses cold Tourism, while no longer San Antonio’s top industry, is still the city’s most visible one. Yet there is an invisible – and contentious – aspect of tourism that affects not only visitors who buy trinkets near the Alamo, but residents as well: the dreaded, unsexy, pain-in-the-ass hotel-motel occupancy tax.…
TORN AND FRAYED
Tourism has unraveled Acapulco’s economy, environment Hard times have befallen Acapulco. In the ’70s, American snowbirds once flocked here; Bob Barker, host of The Price Is Right, regularly awarded an Acapulco vacation package to the lucky contestant who most closely guessed the cost of a refrigerator or box of Rice-A-Roni. But Acapulco’s unmanaged growth demonstrates…
LOVE AND ART
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo photos depict the frail human beings behind the myth “If Frida was alive,” Bernal said, “she’d be on our side – against the war.” Bernal was probably right. It is easy to imagine a modern-day Kahlo marching in protest against the Iraqi war, carrying placards, and getting arrested for acts…
ARTIFACTS
News and notes from the San Antonio art scene Thursday, April 17 is the official San Antonio release of Linda Pace’s Dreaming Red: Creating ArtPace, a lush, 320-page publication chronicling the first six years of the contemporary art foundation. The book includes texts by ArtPace Executive Director Kathryn Kanjo, distinguished art historian and critic Eleanor…
UNDER THE SEA AND IN 3-D
In Ghosts of the Abyss, Cameron is joined by a team of scientists and historians, and by his sometime cast member Bill Paxton, who narrates the film and gives it a human dimension to balance the enormity of the subject. When the explorers descend in claustrophobic In his first film since the Academy Award-winner…
NEW REVIEWS
BULLETPROOF MONK Dir. Paul Hunter; writ. Ethan Reiff; feat. Chow Yun-Fat, Seann William Scott, Jaime King (PG-13) Oh, those National Socialists! Will they never learn? Bulletproof Monk opens in 1941 Nepal with Nazis yet again lusting after a supernaturally endowed object when what they should be worrying about is the futility of waging a ground…
DISTRICT 5 CANDIDATE SLATE RUNS GAMUT FROM EXPERIENCED POLITICO TO THE JESUS TICKET
CHANGING THE COURSE OF CORRUPTION Herrera was appointed on the condition that she would not campaign to be elected, nor endorse any candidates who would canvass the necessary votes to serve in that office. Herrera has remained so true to her word that she could be dubbed the Mute Councilwoman. No returned telephone calls. No…
STILL PLAYING
ADAPTATION Dir. Spike Jonze; writ. Susan Orlean (novel), Charlie Kaufman; feat. Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Maggie Gyllenhaal (R) Yes, it’s a meta-meta-movie in-joke, drooled over by film-buff brainiacs. It’s also a frigging funny movie, with Cage the most entertaining he’s been since he started showing us his biceps, and Streep in…
NO HAY NADA NUEVO
En estos días de invasión violenta, justificada a medias, a medias invocada desde pedestales enclenques de imprecisas superioridades culturales y éticas, vacila una vez más toda esperanza en un futuro diferente para este mundo cada vez más pequeño y más dolido de urgentes necesidades. Los atávicos tambores de la batalla a muerte resuenan en el…
A MAN OF A THOUSAND VOICES
Pitch isn’t the only thing perfect about musician and vocalist Ron Wilkins “I’ll call Ron Wilkins,” the bandleader told me. But Wilkins was a trombonist and these were saxophone parts. He had never played with this band before; and given the musicians’ tight schedules, it was going to be impossible get everybody together to rehearse…
