Small screen
History by appeasement The History Channel apologizes for ‘The Guilty Men’ with ‘Beyond Conspiracy’ Forget The People’s Court, with its petty squabbles over aging Chevy Impalas and double-dipping husbands. Even as we click restlessly from Law & Order to CSI: Miami, history is being rewritten in the fickle court of public opinion, aided and abetted…
Recent reviews
A Very Long Engagement Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet; writ. Jeunet, Guillaume Laurant, based on the novel by Sébastien Japrisot; feat. Audrey Tatou, Gaspard Ulliel, Jean-Pierre Becker, Dominique Bettenfeld, Clovis Cornillac, Marion Cotillard, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Julie Depardieu, Jean-Claude Dreyfus (R) The film begins in the infamously muddy and claustrophobic French trenches of World War I. Five French…
The adoration of the gelati
The crepe is topped with chocolate sauce and fresh stawberries on the side. (Photo by Mark Greenberg) Bring your sweet tooth to Da Vinci In the grand tradition of “life’s short, eat dessert first,” we’ll leap right into the gelati at Da Vinci. With 32 flavors of frozen dessert in which to luxuriate, there’s bound…
Ga-ga over gluten
In a stir-fry, seitan texture and taste resembles beef. (Photo by Lisa Sorg) Although it sounds like ‘satan,’ seitan is very, very good “Do I have to skin this thing before I cook it?” asked my dining companion, skeptically eyeing a vacuum-sealed package of brown lumps. The DC, a carnivore who prepares all our home-cooked…
Of oenophiles, artists, and artisans
Upcoming local food & drink events Lamb gormeh sabzi, tahdig, and a glass of St. Francis wine at Shiraz Persian restaurant. (Photo by Mark Greenberg) A NEW BLEND The newest kid on the coffee block will mark its grand opening with two special events. Blend, 1502 S. Flores, features coffee, tea, live music, and art.…
Idiot wind
Bob Dylan’s autobiography, Chronicles, the first of three planned volumes, leaves many questions unanswered. Don’t expect the media to fill in the gaps. The press kisses Bob Dylan’s butt, and gets what you might expect “What is this shit?” So began Greil Marcus’ famous review of Bob Dylan’s vomit-inducing album Self-Portrait 34 years ago. It…
Sound and the Fury
A week on the scene Two shows, two styles Versatile guitarist and composer Tyler Phillips, the subject of the Current’s December 16, 2004 cover story, “Making it up as he goes along,” performs at the Cove , 606 W. Cypress, on Saturday, January 22 from 6 p.m. to midnight. On Monday, January 24, Skillet, whose…
Build it and they will come
The American Dream is as varied as the stories of immigrants who struggle to reach it To many, the American Dream is still a vision of a good job, a happy family, and a spacious house in the suburbs conveniently located near shopping. Even once those goals are achieved, the elusive dream can evolve into…
Appeal to unreason
(Photo illustration by Julie Barnett) Hidden Hand’s critique of power leads straight back into the metal primordium Pity poor Tom DeLay. Not only must the House Majority Leader suffer the snipings of Democrats hot to find him guilty of “ethics violations,” he has now become the target of a heavy metal hex. “The Deprogramming of…
Some footsteps can’t be followed
Whether in biography or fiction, the core of an artist’s life is lost to history How exciting it is to heft 630 pages about a much-admired artist, with another 100 pages of footnotes and index to boot. Knopf has just published a full-blown biography of Willem de Kooning, Abstract Expressionist and quintessential 20th-century European immigrant,…
Awkward and beautiful
CD Spotlight Past Freedy, future Rundman Over the years, the sound of Freedy Johnston’s records has grown more normal. He may not have lost any of his songwriting chops, but the weird rough edges of his voice – one of the things that earned him fans in the first place – have been polished. So…
Das booty
Sneering slinky sex sludge Hide your beer and your girlfriends, because the Original Booty Burglars plan to steal them both when the band visits San Antonio next week. The quartet from Huntington Beach, California via Missoula, Montana, welds the sludge-rock of the Stooges to the slinky hip-shake of the Cramps for a set of sexed-up…
Going down in history in flames
Sean Penn plays the would-be Nixon assassin Samuel Bicke as a frustrated Willy Loman, trying to “show the powerful that even the least grain of sand has in him the power to destroy them,” in The Assassination of Richard Nixon. Almost 30 years before 9/11, a desperate tire salesman tried to take out Nixon with…
Aphorism in action
The adaptable Don Cheadle takes a break from heist films to portray Rwandan inn keeper Paul Rusesabagina, who saved more than 1,000 Hutus and Tutsis during the 1994 genocide. ‘Hotel Rwanda’ shows that one man can save part of the world, but he may not be able to change it American movie audiences have seen…
New review
Samuel L. Jackson as the title character in Coach Carter can’t save a drama that sweats predictability. When the team’s former coach retires after another losing season, Ken Carter (Jackson) takes over the misfits of the Richmond High School basketball squad and attempts to show them tough love on the hardwood. The game goes into…
A crazy cat, a golden lasso, and a rogue teenager
Filmmakers have to struggle to put the super in ‘superheroine,’ but sometimes it works wonders Given the renaissance of comics-based movies, why have so few starred female heroes? Take three guesses. That’s right: For generations, most girls who read comics bought stuff like True Love Tales and left the capes and super-villains to the boys.…
Armchair Cinephile
Documania Have you heard? 2004 was the “year of the documentary.” Never mind that the phenomenal box office success of Fahrenheit 9/11 didn’t spill over to worthy titles such as Control Room, or that folks said the same thing about 2003; the important thing is that newspaper columnists had something to write about for a…
