Just another Mexican back home
Vietnam veteran Charley Trujillo holding out the glass eye with which he returned home. Charley Trujillo’s ‘Soldados’ recounts the disappointments and abuse of minority soldiers Soldados: Chicanos in Viet Nam begins not in the rice paddies of southeast Asia, but in the cotton fields of central California. Charley Trujillo, looking directly at the camera, is…
String man
‘Bush’s Brain’ looks at the man behind the manqué politician To anyone attentive to his misstatements (“More and more of our imports come from overseas”) and misdeeds (assaults on the environment, civil liberties, the economy, and Iraq), claims to mental competence by the 43rd president of the United States are bushwah. “Bush” and “brain” alliterate,…
Crouching tiger, hidden politics
Zhang Yimou unleashes Hero, a spectacle of color, swordplay, and storytelling that argues for the moral superiority of empire. Zhang Yimou’s latest spectacle is gorgeous, pro-empire leanings notwithstanding Zhang Yimou’s Hero begins with a scene that would be the ending of many heroic epics: A lone warrior is called in for an audience with the…
Armchair Cinephile
Retracing the ‘Mean Streets’ with Mr. Scorsese Martin Scorsese is an aspiring cinephile’s dream come true, a fantasy guide through cinematic history. No head-over-heels movie lover has more talent for filmmaking, after all, and no greater filmmaker seems to have a more boundless love for, and knowledge of, the medium’s history. As the DVD explosion…
Recent Reviews
Alien vs. Predator Dir. & writ. Paul W.S. Anderson; feat. Sanna Lathan, Raoul Bova, Lance Henriksen (PG-13) Alien vs. Predator is not so much a movie as a cool concept run into the ground, the sort of sci-fi fans’ dream date that, in the hands of hack director/writer Paul W. S. Anderson, should have remained…
Special screenings
A Day Without A Mexican, Cyrano de Bergerac, The Pink Panther, Simon del desierto, Visiones: Latino Art & Culture, and Steven Kellman’s observations on ‘Shaolin Soccer’ A Day Without A Mexican Dir. Sergio Arau; writ. Arau, Yareli Arizmendi; feat. Fernando Arau, Arizmendi, Todd Babcock, Tony Abatemarco, Yeniffer Behrens (R) Sergio Arau, son of famed Mexican…
All You Can Eat
Restaurant developments San Antonio welcomes a newcomer to its array of food chains: Wild Noodles brings a multi-cultural smorgasbord to the city with their variety of meals from Asia, Mexico, Italy, Thailand, Japan, and America. The first location will open in September at the Huebner Commons off I-10, 11703 Huebner. Owner Juan Bueno is planning…
New Mexico blues
Eric Hisaw performs with his band at Casbeers. Hisaw lived in San Antonio in 1995, and has spent the last several years in Austin. (Photos by Mark Greenberg) Eric Hisaw is a literary songwriter who’s content to be a member of the band Singer or musician first? Eric Hisaw doesn’t hesitate before answering. “I think…
Growing up in public
Hanson: all growed up and harmonic as hell Hanson vs. Chronic Future: tale of the tape This is a tale of two bands. Both are from the Southwest. Both bolted out of the blue seven years ago as pubescent rockers with plenty of tweener appeal. Both released follow-up albums in 2000 that were widely ignored.…
Vel-veto power Ro*tel dip, unimpeachable cobbler, and G.O.Peas
A new (waffle-free!) cookbook explains how to eat like a white bread country clubber You are what you eat goes the old saying, and it goes to figure that if you eat food that’s been bleached of any overt foreign- or nature-derived identity, not only will you feel more like a content member of the…
Huevos rancheros with a side of beer
Annette Olivarez, granddaughter of the restaurant’s namesake, MK Davis, shows off a basket of Crispy Dogs, which go down well with a schooner of Shiner. (Photo by Mark Greenberg) Dining like a progressive in the land of cotton One recent morning, we woke at the crack of dawn, rubbed our eyes, washed our ears and…
Raise hell and have fun
Texas’ liberal icons offer some advice for the political season Nationwide, liberal books command best-seller lists, lining the shelves at Barnes & Noble and filling the tables at Borders. There’s a new liberal talk radio network, Air America, and liberals (hey, it’s not a dirty word!) dominate fundraising on the Internet, outpacing conservatives by a…
Sound and the Fury
A week on the scene Reed man For the second consecutive week, local jazz fans mourned the loss of a major force in San Antonio’s musical history. Two weeks ago, it was pianist Joe Piscatelle and last week it was clarinetist/saxophonist Brian Ogilvie, who played with Jim Cullum’s Jazz Band from 1992-95. Ogilvie died on…
One stone (and press) at a time
Le Green (from left) and Kathleen Baker Pittman, directors of StoneMetal Press. (Photo by Mark Greenberg) StoneMetal quietly builds an empire of printmaking arts It never ceases to amaze me how much history lies below the surface of San Antonio’s art spaces. Recently I visited StoneMetal Press in the Blue Star Arts Complex and it…
Silk purse
CUTLINE (Photo by Mark Greenberg) Tin Hat Trio creates scores for films that don’t exist. The post-modern chamber group, which has roots in both New York and San Francisco, excels at setting moods and conjuring up a haunted cinematic dreamworld. On its fourth CD, Book of Silk, the group continues to achieve this effect with…
Man in black
Vincent Valdez’ drawing, “III: Main Event,” from his Stations show at the McNay, demonstrates how the series explores male identity, objectification, commercialization, and martyrdom through a fatalistic lens. Vincent Valdez’ ‘Stations’ lift the artist off the cross When Johnny Cash died almost a year ago, few media outlets missed the chance to mourn the Man…
Moore assured
Ian Moore Over the last decade, Ian Moore has quietly redefined himself Ian Moore is a case study in how easy it is to misjudge a musician. In 1993, when Moore released his self-titled debut album for Capricorn Records, he looked like nothing more than the latest in a tiresome line of aspiring Texas blues-rock…
Word on the street
News and notes from the San Antonio Literary scene Calabaza, camote, piña, y identidad Anel Flores’ Empanada explores “the conflicts of culture, religion, Mexican American identity and lesbian identity,” and how all those different facets come together in the life of the protagonist, a young girl on the cusp of womanhood. There is a lot…
Tune in, turn it off, drop in on your neighbor
‘The Politics of Deceit’ sees the Internet as a ticket to your ‘hood Distraction may be the biggest problem with America. Judging by the lifespan of any particular social cause (The American farmer, anyone? Land mines?), there seems to be ample evidence that television and video games have indeed shortened our attention span. There are…
All Ears
Sound + hi-tech vision prince is back with a vengeance. Purple Rain (Warner Bros.), the movie that established the Little One’s bigness, is finally out in the spiffed-up special edition it always deserved. No, it’s no advance of the cinematic arts (and wouldn’t Prince have made a better commentary track than the flick’s now-forgotten director?),…
