Journey to Persia
Release Date: 2002-08-15 If skewered meats and shimmying midriffs are your idea of a Persian (or Greek or Turkish … ) dining experience, then you’ve come to the right place. And to the wrong one. For though the Friday night belly dancer could bounce with the best of them, and the shish-kabobs of tender beef…
A BOY SHE ONCE KNEW
When teacher Elizabeth Stone received a package several years ago, she wasn’t sure what to do with its contents. Having kept only nominal relations with the sender, Vincent, an introverted middle-school English student of hers during the ’70s, it came as a surprise to Stone that she would be chosen to receive his gift: a…
THE NATURE OF PATRIOTISM
Midway through his memoir, When I Was a Young Man, former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey writes, “When I graduated from college in the spring of 1965, I was very much the sleepwalker.” After stumbling into the living nightmare of Vietnam a few years later, Kerrey, like the rest of America, would be rudely awakened. Like…
IT IS EVAN’S WORLD
The biggest laugh in The Kid Stays in the Picture, which is a pretty funny film, may come when our narrator tells us, deadpan, “The one thing I’m not, is prone to exaggerate.” Whether he has stretched any of the hard facts of his life or not, Hollywood icon Robert Evans has turned the tale…
NEW REVIEWS
Blood Work “Anemic” Dir. Clint Eastwood; writ. Michael Connelly (novel), Brian Helgeland; feat. Eastwood, Wanda De Jesus, Jeff Daniels (R) Since In the Line of Fire, a recurring subplot in Clint Eastwood movies has threatened to upstage the main action: Can Clint make it through the film without collapsing of heart failure? Blood Work answers…
VIDEO ART THAT ACTUALLY MATTERS
On Saturday, August 17, the ONE9ZERO6 Gallery plays host to Houstonite Andrea Grover as she presents the “Best of the Aurora Picture Show” traveling program. San Antonio is the show’s first stop on a tour de force that culminates in Los Angeles with dates scheduled at both the C-Level Space and the Echo Park Film…
TPR SCREENING
Children of Heaven (Bacheha-Ye Aseman) “Lighthearted allegory” Dir. and writ. Majid Majidi; feat. Mohammad Amir Naji, Amir Farrokh Hashemian, Bahare Seddiqi (PG) An Iranian film from 1997, Children of Heaven is in Farsi with English subtitles. Despite this, Roger Ebert claimed in his review that, “Children of Heaven is very nearly a perfect movie for…
Armchair Cinephile
Not long ago, while singing the praises of old Japanese monster movies, Quentin Tarantino talked about how “CGI-ed out” he was, and how much cooler it was back when monsters had cities to wreck and jets to knock around that were physical, hand-made models. British filmmaker Gerry Anderson knows all about that. In the ’60s,…
PORTABLE PERFORMANCE ART
In case you missed Chicano-chilango postmodern performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña during his two visits to San Antonio earlier this year, his recently released Apocalypse Mañana is the next best thing. Based upon a “performance opera” staged in San Francisco last year, the disc incorporates themes and materials recognizable to listeners familiar with Gómez-Peña’s oeuvre, and…
ALL EARS
It’s been more than 10 years since Trompe Le Monde, the last Pixies’ release to arrive before the monstrously influential group disbanded. The last few months have seen as many Pixies-related records as were released during their short lifetime. The most surprising of these is also the most satisfying. After membership shakeups, drug busts, spinoff…
NOW HEAR THIS
The estate of avant-garde composer John Cage (1912-1992) is claiming copyright on silence. Cage’s famous silent composition, “4’33” has been the subject of much derision and admiration since it was first heard — or not heard — in 1952. Mike Batt, a British producer, now finds himself on the end of a lawsuit for a…
