Media : That’s a wrap
The low-down on this week’s premieres A remake of the 1972 disaster film The Poseidon Adventure, Poseidon follows a group of passengers, including Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell), who attempt to escape a watery grave after a massive wave capsizes their luxury liner. The film is directed by Wolfgang Petersen, who previously confronted Mother Nature’s oceanic…
Media : Armchair Cinephile
Night of the auteur Squalor, self-pity, sexual tension. And, above all, sweat — welcome to the world of Tennessee Williams, the playwright and sometime screenwriter who provided some of the plummest roles for a generation of young actors and invented an image of the American South that the region has yet to live down. The…
News : Tilting at transit buses
The Public Transit Users’ Association (membership: 4) takes VIA to court “Pro se,” reads the phrase following Alfred Ehm’s name. “For oneself.” In thepresent context, the words suggest, “without aid of attorney,” or, “on one’s own behalf.” Apt descriptions all for Ehm, who just might be the most visibly steadfast — and most polite —…
Media : Special screenings
The 800 Lb. Film Festival Northeast School of the Arts’ annual screening featuring student works. 7 p.m. May 11, Robert E. Lee High School Theatre, 1400 Jackson-Keller. $5. 442-2505 for info. Slab Cinema The 1955 classic Tarantula, with giant, radioactive spiders. 9 p.m. May 11, at the slab across from La Tuna at Probandt &…
News : Party lines
Cowboys and immmigrants Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones caused quite a stir with City Council and the local press last week when Mayor Phil Hardberger introduced him in the Council chamber. Jones and his son, Stephen, presented a No. 7 Cowboys jersey to the mayor, which he promptly donned over his shirt and tie (his…
Food & Drink : Catch the rays
Texas is hot, but is it hot enough to bake a potato? For good reason, I am rarely allowed near a stove. During previous cooking attempts, I boiled rice at such high heat that starchy effluent spewed from beneath the pan lid and poured down the hole where the blue gas flames come from. (See,…
News : Devil horns for Councilman Flores?
San Antonio City Council relied on the City Clerk’s ability to count votes back in March 2004. If a councilmember whispered his or her vote to the clerk, the audience was hard put to hear it. Nowadays it’s much easier since a voting tote board was installed later in 2004. A councilmember now has to…
Food & Drink : All you can eat
News and notes from the San Antonio food scene This week Earl Abel’s begins its northward trek to Austin Highway, beginning with the Broadway restaurant closing its doors for real and forever on Sunday, May 14. According to a recent press release, the new digs will feature not only the fabulous neon sign we all…
News : Climb this
Citing undocumented workers and homeland security, Congress wants to put a Big Brother in charge of human resources Anyone convinced that America is suffering from excessive diversity should troll through the seven immigration bills now floating around the Capitol. Traversing the conceptual distance, roughly, between the minds of Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly, Congressmen on…
Music : Family way
Max Baca and Los TexManiacs find the middle ground between conjunto and rock In 1994, Max Baca was welcomed into the inner sanctum of a Rolling Stones recording session. Baca, leader of the conjunto-rock trio Los TexManiacs, and his friend/mentor Flaco Jimenez, had been hired to bring some Latino flavor to the breezy love song…
News : Counterpoint
C*I*A – Hayden’s appointment would put our spooks firmly in the military’s pocket It’s possible that Air Force General Michael Hayden is the nicest guy on the planet* — Mother Teresa in fatigues — but that doesn’t make him the right man to head up the Central Intelligence Agency. Time reports in its May 15…
Music : Sound and the Fury
A week on the scene Do the collapse Since its inception six years ago, Exponential has provided a home for many of San Antonio’s most adventurous sonic auteurs. This week, the label — founded and run by producer/DJ Ernest Gonzales (aka Theory of Everything) — will unveil its latest offering, a 20-track, collaborative CD entitled…
Feature Bad Monkey Business
Two chimps are dead and a capuchin monkey is missing. What’s going on at SA’s Primarily Primates? There’s an old photo of Bobby the chimpanzee in which he’s sitting on the lawn, beside an overturned folding lawn chair and a red, white, and blue plastic go-cart. The photo caption reads: “Bobby with his first hat.”…
Music : Aussie Ambience
With its lustrous score for Somersault, Decoder Ring emerges from Down Under “Our job wasn’t to represent what was on screen, but to represent what wasn’t on the screen, which was the innocence and the beauty in the character,” guitarist Matt Fitzgerald says of the award-winning score he and his electro-rock band, Decoder Ring, whipped…
Culture : What Anna Nicole’s Supreme Court slam-dunk means to you
(Squat, probably, which makes it no less entertaining) There are certain people, situations, and isolated moments within the collective American consciousness that, by chance of oversight or misstep, leave themselves unwittingly susceptible to, and become tantalizingly fecund ground for, those devilishly razor-tongued sisters Parody and Satire (and, on occasion, their grubby-faced, pigtailed, mud-pie-eating step-niece, Public…
Food & Drink : Grist for the mill
It’s hard to find a French baguette in SA, but the local variety has its charms Looking back on it, there were some advantages to growing up in a small-town environment. One was that we ground our own wheat — honest. The wheat itself came from the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains, in Washington…
Arts : Used workers, cheap
The global economy has left more than a few losers in its wake Unlike puffy hair, broad lapels, and risk-taking Hollywood films, the practice of mass layoffs didn’t die out with so many hallmarks of the late 1970s. In fact, the phenomenon of large corporations radically shrinking their rosters, pension plans, and benefit packages —…
Food & Drink : Value vino
Wine dance These days, it seems as though anyone with a couple million extra bucks to rub together wants to get into the wine business. The industry is full of fallen-away attorneys and captains of both airplanes and industry. Rodney Strong, on the other hand, was a dancer, and trained with the likes of Martha…
Arts : In the state of ennui
With his latest story collection, In Persuasion Nation, Saunders probes the spiritual emptiness that lurks behind our gadget economy. One story, “I Can Speak,” describes a Velcro mask that can be attached to a baby’s head, allowing the infant to speak (and ask for products, of course). Another, “Jon,” portrays a world in which orphans…
Music : Current choice
Soul mates Between the two of them, indie-rap supa-producer RJD2 and stalwart emcee Blueprint have unleashed their share of noteworthy sonic material. RJ established his rep as the rap nerd’s Dr. Dre with the much-acclaimed albums Deadringer and Since We Last Spoke, and has even crafted beats for the NBA. Blueprint recently garnered positive attention…
Arts : Of interrogation and empathy
One for the Road’s Rick Frederick talks about Pinter and politics “The man that I play thinks that he’s doing the right thing,” says Rick Frederick, who starred in the Attic Repertory Theatre’s production of Nobel Prize-winner Harold Pinter’s One For the Road. “I think that’s something to consider in a world where we have…
Music : CD Spotlight
‘Mirror’ star Alejandro Escovedo’s current bio begins with a quote from critic David Fricke inquiring how it’s possible that Escovedo is not yet a star. The answers aren’t too hard to come by: Escovedo is a middle-aged man in an industry that glorifies youth, he’s not a particularly imaginative tunesmith, his songs don’t overflow with…
Arts : Artifacts
News and notes from the San Antonio art scene The red carpet and paparazzi packed off to some other celebrity lovefest, I headed down to Blue Star Contemporary Art Center to see Terra Nostra: Solamente Salma, a tribute to the actress Salma Hayek by George Yepes and filmmaker Robert Rodriguez. One advantage of San Antonio’s…
Arts : Framed
New talent travels in packs Ever since the thrilling days of Raw magazine, when Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly realized that an unusual format could get work by cartoonists into the hands of art-world hipsters, anthology titles have been an invaluable way to discover new talent. A good comic store may offer more unfamiliar titles…
Media : Friend of a friend of the devil
A chronicler of Austin music phenom Daniel Johnston runs into the enigma of madness He’s a singer-songwriter who not only can’t sing but can’t really play his guitar, either. For most of his life, this performer has believed that he’s Casper the Friendly Ghost, and he now lives with his elderly parents because of extreme…
Media : Art that goes thud
Terry Zwigoff’s latest venture is twisted by a strangler Two things about Terry Zwigoff: One (widely observed), he’s got a thing for the outsider, the shunned, frequently brilliant fringe-dweller — two-parts detached observer to one-part borderline misanthrope. Two (personally observed), his films seem to be getting worse. Max Minghella (right) plays the artist Jerome in…
