Culture feature Dive in, the water’s great
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Arts Back in over-the-top style
When the Neo-Romantics say life is a tragedy, yours is to question why Art criticism is not so different from philosophy. As Arthur Danto has observed, proponents of a new school of thought are hard pressed to resist discrediting at some level their predecessors. So it goes with Michael Duncan, curator of High Drama: Eugene…
Screens Down with the count
America loves boxing movies’ triumphalism, but in the end, we’re all TKO In 1895 and 1896, the first motion pictures drew curious viewers with short snippets of ordinary life: a train pulling into a station, workers leaving a factory, a baby being fed. But by 1897 director Enoch J. Rector was feeding the public’s new…
Screens Keep tissue in that back pocket
A movie about the perfect fit makes its target audience weep Take a friendship, throw in a few romances, a few hunks, a few untimely deaths, and one pair of oh-my-god flattering jeans, and the end product is a perfectly orchestrated chick flick: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, a movie destined to become a…
Screens Armchair cinephile
Careers – short, long, and stillborn Not sure what took so long, but Warner Brothers has finally released The Complete James Dean Collection to a public that is surely eager to acquire it. The wait is odd both because of Dean’s great fame and because he only left three movies to reissue, two of which…
News Briefs
Reproductive rights update, Federal workers picket labor changes Reproductive rights update As the Texas Legislature winds down, three bills that would have undermined women’s reproductive rights and limited access to health care died in the House due to lack of support for extreme provisions. Yet, two others have passed in both chambers of the legislature…
Screens 20/20 Nostalgia
TPR’s Cinema Tuesdays brings Bergman’s meditation on old age to the Bijou The focus of American cinephilia has shifted somewhat since the late 1950s when Ingmar Bergman made a splash here with The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries. Today, even an educated film buff may be wholly ignorant of this once-lauded master, so a bit…
News Party lines
The world is a ghetto Welcome to San Antonio, the largest “ghetto” in South Texas. Give Zachry Construction Corp. employee Ken Wolf a break. He can’t help but think the nation’s eighth-largest city is nothing more than a “ghetto,” as he wrote in an email to his snuff-dippin’ buddies last week in an effort to…
Screens That’s a wrap
SA Current Online The low-down on this week’s premieres – ‘Cinderella Man, Sisterhood, Lords of Dogtown, Head-On’ Sans the evil stepsisters, glass slipper, and Prince Charming, Cinderella Man is a fairytale-like story all its own. During the Great Depression, boxer Jim Braddock (Russell Crowe) is given another chance to reclaim the premier status he once…
News Speed reads
Freudian slip, last day to vote, high-school angst Freudian slip: We thought John Stanford was the only communist in town until Express-News reporter Greg Jefferson called activist and attorney Amy Kastely one in his coverage of a press conference about the PGA Tour project. The story, posted on the E-N’s website May 23 at 2…
Food & Drink Lay it on thin
The prosciutto pizza from Ciao Lavanderia, with prosciutto, olives, and fresh arugula is a veritable salt lick. Try instead any one of the restaurant’s lovely risottos or gnocchi. The pleasure of Prosciutto di Parma, on pizza or by the slice There is one fundamental rule – well, one rule with two parts – behind great…
Arts Classical attitude
News and notes from San Antonio’s other music scene Is it just me, or is there a trend toward interdisciplinary cooperation? While the proof is always in the pudding, and I am by no means a fan of jamming things together for the hell of it, it is encouraging to see a few organizations making…
Food & Drink The magic flauta
Barbacoa Pasilla’s: Flautas stuffed with roast beef smothered in Pasilla’s sauce and topped with red and green salsas and crumbled cheese; shown here with a cup of consommé con pollo. (Photo by Mark Greenberg) At Pasilla’s the specialty is long, thin, and crisp In its classic translation, an antojito is a little whim, but in…
Editorial Not watchdogs, but lapdogs
Journalism no longer defies the government, but complies with it Journalism has shifted into self-flagellation overdrive since Newsweek acknowledged that its story alleging U.S. interrogators flushed a Koran down the toilet was inaccurate and based on a single, dubious source. Doubtless Newsweek erred in printing a story, no matter how brief, with such shaky sourcing,…
Food & Drink The cultured condiment
Meatless in Steer City – Miso provides protein and can protect against breast cancer If you’ve ever eaten at a Japanese restaurant, you know the pleasure of a steaming hot bowl of miso soup, a deceptively simple, salty broth with tofu, wakame, and, sometimes green onion. When you stir the soup, a light brown cloud…
News Credit where credit is due
Should Phil Hardberger use Government Canyon as his environmental calling card? When talk turns to Government Canyon State Natural Area, people familiar with how the preserve in northwest Bexar County came to be will invariably mention San Antonio Ranch. Envisioned by its developers in the early 1970s as a futuristic community of residential and commercial…
Food & Drink All you can eat
News and notes from the San Antonio food scene National Hunger Awareness Day The San Antonio Food Bank will observe National Hunger Awareness Day June 7, with two events to raise awareness of the problem of hunger in the city and the nation. The event begins at 10 a.m. with a reception and open house…
News The bird is the word
The golden-cheeked warbler is listed on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife’s federal endangered species list. In Bexar County, it breeds and nests in several areas, including the PGA development. How does the golden-cheeked warbler fare in the PGA development? The song of the golden-cheeked warbler is a sweet, shrill trill: three short whistles followed by…
Music feature Kinda fonda Wanda
Rockabilly queen’s career has been bookended by help from two Elvises In 1956, Wanda Jackson made a record that encapsulated the dilemma of her career. At that point Jackson was a seasoned country singer with a couple of hit records to her credit. But she was also a restless 18-year-old kid who’d toured with Elvis…
Arts Counter conception
Inside story on dropping out T. Coraghessan Boyle’s acerbic Drop City, a fictional and cynical take on one of the better-known “hippie” communes, encapsulates much of the current attitude toward the “tune in, turn on, drop out” counterculture and back-to-the-land movement of the ’70s. Kinder revisions tend to play up the excusable naivete of youth.…
Music After sunset
Sonny nights The culture of a place manifests itself in many ways: stylistic displays, chosen icons, and the various conditions of circumstance. I typically choose the places where I like to drink with these things in mind because, like most things I do for pleasure and enlightenment, I like to gain something more from my…
Screens New reviews
‘Cinderella Man’ and ‘Head-On’ Cinderella Man Dir. Ron Howard; writ. Akiva Goldsman and Cliff Hollingsworth; feat. Russell Crowe, Renée Zellweger, Paul Giamatti, Paddy Considine, Craig Bierko (PG-13) Easily the best film of the year thus far, Cinderella Man follows the true story of Jim Braddock (Crowe), a down-and-out boxer who has nothing to live for…
Music CD Spotlight
Southern soul – A new recording from one of the most soulful singers on the planet Shelby Lynne’s new album pointedly begins with about 30 seconds of Lynne casually running through a number with her band. Even before the first song, Lynne makes it clear that this is unadorned, front-porch music, organically conceived and spontaneously…
Screens Special screenings
SA Current Online Instituto shows Gavaldon’s debut film / La Tuna’s cinema on the slab / Boxer up at Alamo Drafthouse Movies at the Instituto La Barraca / The Cabin Dir. Roberto Gavaldon (1944) Gavaldon’s debut film, an adaptation of a popular novel by Spaniard Vicente Blasco Ibañez, won 10 Ariel prizes, including best film…
Music Current choice
David Jacobs-Strain Blues disciple David Jacobs-Strain slides into the Luna Fine Music Club It’s strange how the blues, a form of music long associated with venerable African Americans, produces so many pimply Caucasian wunderkinds. Oregon-based David Jacobs-Strain is the latest, and one of the more promising examples of this phenomenon. The 21-year-old Jacobs-Strain took up…
Feature The bluest town in red Texas
A San Francisco progressive begins her four-month journey through the so-called Red States Editor’s Note: After the 2004 election, Rose Aguilar, like many other progressives, was haunted by the same question: What went wrong and why? She realized that the answer lay not in the liberal bubble of San Francisco but in the vast expanses…
Music Sound and the fury
SA Current Online A week on the scene Metal breakdown For the last two years, the multi-band festival organized by Robb Chavez – host/creator of public-access cult-favorite Robb’s MetalWorks – has been the ultimate slice of headbanging heaven for this metal-obsessed city. Coming off a strong turnout for last year’s event, the 3rd Annual Robb’s…
Arts theFund begins its first campaign
Countywide arts fundraising based on United Way model hopes to raise $400,000 By San Antonio standards, theFund has moved faster than a speeding bullet. The force of Board Chair Bruce Flohr’s easygoing charm is stronger than a locomotive. But only time will tell whether the new county-wide fundraising program for arts organizations can leap the…
Arts Crossing to live
Jorge Ramos Univision journalist examines the forces behind the 2003 Victoria immigrant tragedy When Jorge Ramos speaks, millions of television viewers tune in. His nightly, national, Spanish-language newscast on Univision consistently scores higher Nielsen “sweep” ratings than its English-language counterparts in Los Angeles, Miami, and Houston. An Emmy Award-winning journalist, columnist, and best-selling author, Ramos’…
Culture feature Dive in, the water’s great
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Boxers I have loved
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Screens Down with the count
America loves boxing movies’ triumphalism, but in the end, we’re all TKO In 1895 and 1896, the first motion pictures drew curious viewers with short snippets of ordinary life: a train pulling into a station, workers leaving a factory, a baby being fed. But by 1897 director Enoch J. Rector was feeding the public’s new…
