Media South Texas Cinema
News from the greater SA film industry With Texas film action heavy to the north this month, we sat down with Drew Mayer-Oakes, director of the San Antonio Film Commission at the South By Southwest music and film festival in Austin. `Check out John DeFore’s guide to SXSW film, “Bring aspirin and caffeine,” on-line at…
News Party lines
Arts capped After two hours of debate last week, City Council voted to cap City funding for arts organizations, and Councilwoman Patti Radle says it will depend on the generosity of future City Councils to determine whether arts entities in lower funding levels will survive. Council passed the new guidelines by an 8-3 vote, with…
Media Special screenings
European Film Festival The third annual UTSA European Film Festival will highlight 15 contemporary films from France, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Germany, and Spain. Films, shown in their orginal language with English subtitles, include: The Dog in the Manger (Spain), A Hell of a Day (France), and Sergeant Pepper (Germany). The festival also includes three open…
News Prepare for take off
Kinky Friedman begins his ballot-access petition drive A guard wearing a brown uniform and a cowboy hat paced in front of the Alamo. A silhouette of a man slumped on a bench across the street. The trees were still and the block was calm even at Pat O’Brien’s, where at this hour the evening apparently…
Media That’s a wrap
The low-down on this week’s premieres Making a stand against a totalitarian government, a mysterious and masked freedom fighter known only as V (Hugo Weaving) sets out to battle oppression in V for Vendetta. He does this with the help of Evey Hammond (a hairless Natalie Portman), a young female prisoner he saves from the…
Media Armchair cinephile
TV and other kid stuff Not many DVDs get reviewed on the editorial page of The New York Times, so the folks at Shout Company must be jumping for joy over the glowing nostalgia piece about The Best of the Electric Company. Not everyone shares the view expressed there, that this was the high point…
News No coincidence
If you get a traffic ticket, a letter often magically appears in your mailbox promising to fix it Erika refused to divulge her last name last week as she stepped away from a cashier’s window at San Antonio Municipal Court on Frio Street. The young woman had been cited for exceeding the speed limit on…
Food & Drink Aflutter about butter
A short course in European and domestic butters Whether simply adorning a good cracker, smeared quickly on morning toast, or permeating an elaborate French dinner, butter has an undeniably decadent and primal hold on the imagination as well as the palate. Inherently rich and pleasurable, poetic allusions abound. In many of the world’s religious traditions…
News Counterpoint
A river of money runs through it – Andres Andujar’s River North vision is bound by SA’s moguls “`Andres` Andujar says a deep-pocketed investor — he’s not at liberty to identify him or her — has already acquired considerable property in the study area and is interested in redeveloping it in accordance with the River…
Food & Drink Burger and a side of ham
Giddy with grease and Comedia A Go-Go at Sam’s Burger Joint Sometimes critics get cravings, a sudden desire for seared foie gras draped over mashed potatoes spiked with celeriac, or slabs of rare tuna served in a seafood broth studded with clams and shrimp. But there’s also the odd urge for a pizza that’s never…
News Briefs
EPA and Big Tex come to terms District 5 Councilwoman Patti Radle presided over a meeting March 7 between Big Tex property owner James Lifshutz, representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and State Representative Mike Villarreal, where the parties agreed that the EPA would complete an evaluation of…
Food & Drink The bar tab
Making the best of an off night After driving up and down Lexington in search of The Venue, I had both an “ah ha” and an “uh oh” feeling when I finally found it. From the outside, the bar has the look of a windowless warehouse — a dubious indicator of the activities within —…
Feature Green eyes in the sky
Google Earth is starting to look like a killer app that could change the power balance between grassroots environmentalists and their adversaries Imagine yourself in outer space, gazing at the blue and green sphere that is our home. Now zoom in, fast, diving toward continents and oceans. Soon rivers and cities emerge, then individual houses,…
Food & Drink All you can eat
News and notes from the San Antonio food scene What’s really up with Earl Abel’s? Like the ingredients of Salisbury Steak Deluxe, there is a mystery about the future of Earl Abel’s, which is slated to close today, but it’s a super-dooper-tip-top secret. “I’m bound by a confidentiality agreement,” said Nancy Baca of CE Group,…
Culture Some kind of speed-freak heaven
Among cable pulleys, fiberglass, and the occasional compound fracture, wakeboarders find nirvana Herein, Zales and Banana Republic outlets cohabitate with RV “resorts,” ostensibly legal fireworks concerns, and an enormous inflatable beaver. (At least I think it’s a beaver.) Texas Ski Ranch sports two man-made lakes, a Motocross track, and a skateboard park on 70 acres.…
Music Harmonic
Chick Corea’s creative vision keeps returning to forever Touchstone (noun): an established standard or principle by which something is judged – Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary Chick Corea’s Selected Recordings: Rarum III has been in repeat mode on my CD changer lately. In two tracks from the first incarnation of Return to Forever, Flora Purim’s vocals…
Arts Too much already
A new Artpace trio hits and misses in a crowded field of dreams You could walk into “Alchemy of Comedy … Stupid,” Edgar Arcenaux’s Artpace installation, eight successive times and each time notice something new. The dark room is crowded with screens: a 3-D triangle, a corner filled with TVs, a larger-than-life wall projection. A…
Music Best in showcase
Jolie Holland (above), Joe Henry, and Lady Sovereign will be among the most intriguing performers at SXSW. Searching for obscure treasures at this year’s SXSW Ah, South By Southwest! That long weekend during which Austin becomes a satellite outpost of the Los Angeles record industry, albeit one in which you can find a chicken-fried steak…
Arts Blind date
Apparattii scores with improvised film and music Since the beginning of moving pictures, music has played an integral role in filmic experience. The transition from silent films, with improvised or arbitrary live musical accompaniment, to “talkies,” with specifically integrated musical ideas, provided filmmakers the ability to control the emotive and narrative direction of their films.…
Music Sound and the fury
A week on the scene Trance syndicate Over the last decade, Paul Oakenfold’s name has become synonymous with trance music and his sound has emerged as a ubiquitous advertising tool, even as his face remains largely unfamiliar to the masses. On June 6, Oakenfold, most often associated with high-profile remix projects, will unleash his latest…
Arts Trigger happy
Hope and Bullets shoots in too many directions at once The creation of new work is the measure of the vitality of any artistic community. In a collaborative (and thus expensive) medium like theater, the barriers to entry are high. Producers want “proven” money-makers, and San Antonio audiences have not tended to reward a theater’s…
Music CD Spotlight
Meta punk It’s hard to think of any rock album that has opened with a better couplet than the debut album by local punk quartet Muldoon: “Concerning the imminent hiatus of Muldoon/I know you’ll all agree that it won’t come too soon.” With one sardonic stroke of his songwriting pen, group frontman Jerid Morris gives…
Arts Artifacts
News and notes from the San Antonio art scene On March 10, City Council approved a new arts-funding process that will be implemented almost immediately, with applications available within the month, says Office of Cultural Affairs Director Felix Padrón. The new process is the result of a year of wrangling by the Cultural Arts Board…
Music Current choice
Leo the lion Ted Leo is to punk rock what the Mercedes Benz is to luxury cars. Sure, he’s punk (equal parts the Jam, Attractions, and Bruce Springsteen), but that doesn’t mean anyone else in his category can stand next to him. Now, that’s not to say the guy is German-made — he’s from Jersey,…
Arts The final frontier
Part One of Latino Odyssey: Space, the Final Frontera, a three-episode, space-age telenovela featuring the Luna family and their galactic firebrand daughter Sol, opened last weekend at Jump-Start Performance Co., 108 Blue Star. Catch parts Two and Three this weekend, or all three episodes March 24-25. Starring Amalia Ortiz, Michael Avila, Janie Saucedo, Mario Falcon,…
Media When the mierda hit the fan
Walkout tells the story of the Chicano students who made history in LA “If no one knows about it, then it never happened.” – Sal Castro Midway through Edward James Olmos’s new film, Walkout, which premieres March 18 on HBO, high-school senior Paula Crisostomo tells her worried mother, “If we don’t stand up now, we…
News Speed reads
What’s new in renewables Energy from wind, the sun, or as Dubya recommended in his State of the Union address, switchgrass: Such is a life without fossil fuels. Russell Smith, executive director of the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association will speak at a meeting of the Sierra Club March 21 at 7 p.m. at the…
Media V is for viable adaptation
The Wachowski brothers deliver Moore’s masterpiece (mostly) unscathed Comic book auteur Alan Moore, one of the two or three most-respected writers in the medium’s recent history, has not been treated very well by the movies. At best (the grim Jack the Ripper tale From Hell, by the Hughes Brothers), adaptations of his work have stripped…
