ALL EARS EXTRA
SENSITIVE, BUT NOT FRAGILE The recent news of Elliott Smith’s death was startling and very sad. Sad enough for Smith’s own sake, of course, but also as another example of what threatens to be seen as a romantic tradition of suicide (deliberate or passive) among some of songwriting’s most quietly beautiful voices. Sitting around thinking…
BUGABOO OF THE AMERICAN LIE
During the 1950s, senators, governors, and labor leaders denounced it as a “fifth column in the Cold War,” outlawed its activities, banned its members from government jobs and from many ordinary trades. Left-wing groups of the 1960s, most of which had more radical programs, derided it as “the tail on the Democratic donkey,” and perhaps…
MOVIES, MANNERS, AND MADNESS
Post provided helpful hints about dealing with one’s chauffeur, and, were she still alive, she would no doubt also be oblivious to drivers who routinely tailgate, ignore stop signs, and refuse to signal their intentions. Except for highways, movie theaters are the most obvious arena of rudeness, a laboratory for studying the decay of public…
WHAT IS THE MATRIX?
Since it neither worked on its own nor lived up to the first film’s elegant sense of invention, you couldn’t buy Reloaded unless you believed the trilogy was a brain-teaser with balls, a rocket-fueled action film with exciting new ideas (or at least a whole lotta old ideas wrapped up in a hot vinyl trenchcoat)…
MAN IN TIGHTS
That claim might seem premature to some readers – but probably not to anyone who got dragged to Old School (the scary-looking fratboy comedy) only to find himself giggling uncontrollably whenever Ferrell was on screen. The movie itself was so-so, but Ferrell was truly memorable, as he was as a goofily sinister fashion designer in…
New Reviews
Dir. & writ. Richard Curtis; feat. Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Billy Bob Thornton (R) Mark (Andrew Linclon) is a Londoner in the grip of love in Love Actually. Courtesy Photo In Love Actually, viewers again sit through a wedding, a funeral, and a school…
Special Screens
Texans would prefer to think of the Tulia incident as a rare occurrence – an unfortunate indication of the bigotry that occasionally haunts the backwater recesses of Southern society. In contrast, Tulia, Texas: Scenes From the Drug War openly explores the incendiary racism employed at every level of American society – from local law enforcement…
Armchair Cinephile
It’s a crying shame that David Gordon Green’s second film, All the Real Girls (Columbia/TriStar), didn’t get a chance to shine in San Antonio when it made the rounds earlier this year. It has the kind of quiet gravitas that really benefits from being seen in a hushed movie theater, but at least its…
Recent Reviews
Casa de Los Babys Dir. & writ. John Sayles; feat. Daryl Hannah, Marcia Gay Harden, Mary Steenburgen, Rita Moreno, Lili Taylor, Maggie Gyllenhall, Susan Lynch (R) Director John Sayles latest film is the story of six North American women who go south to acquire abandoned babies. While enduring the ordeal of official approval, they stay…
TAKE A (RENT) HIKE
RC Gallery, the long-running side project of artists Rhonda Kuhlman and Chris Ake, draws a steady stream of cultural day trippers to the darkened far end of the Blue Star Arts Complex. Like many working artists with exhibition spaces, RC’s co-curators glean funds from their primary business — Recycled Works — to keep the gallery…
ARTIFACTS
“26 San Antonio Artists,” a slick calendar published by artist Gary Sweeney, hits the streets this week. The unblushing, self-promotional project features a balanced sampling of local talent, from Dario Robleto’s delicate cultural deconstructions to Bill FitzGibbons’ industrial art commissions to Lloyd Walsh’s more traditional baroque masterpieces. Sweeney took on the yeoman’s task of corralling…
RAGS TO RICHES
When he was a young, aspiring singer, Tony Bennett’s music teacher encouraged him to emulate instrumentalists, rather than other singers. That way, so the theory went, he would be more likely to develop an original sound. Ask Bennett which musicians made the strongest impression on him, and he will name sax titans like Charlie Parker,…
KIDS ARE ALRIGHT
Good news. Nihilistic rage is officially back in fashion – and not a moment too soon. Honestly, all that clean living, emo-core crap was really starting to work my last nerve. Such music (and its performance) offers no genuine catharsis, just a paltry, shoe-gazing wash of self-indulgent sentimentality that makes people forget how entertaining it…
ELECTRONIC WHATEVER
Shouldn’t a pop group put on a pretty face and make it sound as if they want you to like them? That would be news to Broadcast, a quintet from Birmingham, England, whose new disc Haha Sound (on Warp, it’s their second full-length studio release) starts off as if it were daring you to think…
GENTLE GIANT
At 79, he has outlived his most outspoken critics and several spans of public scorn. Most of those who know his name today are activists or labor liberals — and they have only praise for him, despite his long and entirely public or “open” membership in the Communist Party, USA. “He’s a true organizer, of…
SECOND STROKE
It’s not their fault that the rockcrit hype machine greeted the band’s lightweight, but highly enjoyable 2001 debut album Is This It as a revolutionary, era-defining work. So, by the same token, they don’t deserve the inevitable backlash that follows such overstatement. Even on their first album, you could sense the Strokes were limited, that…
