Sound and the Fury
A week on the scene Cumbia eruption When Aniceto Molina took the stage at the Southside club Noche Caliente on Friday, October 8, the dance floor immediately erupted. With all the whirling bodies and flailing limbs, for a moment the scene resembled a mosh pit more than a cumbia circle. Molina was one of the…
Armchair Cinephile
The lasting cinematic pleasure of ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ Recent highlights In addition to having the year’s best title, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Focus) has proven to be one of 2004’s most lasting cinematic pleasures – thrilling and provocative intellectually, but grounded with a deep emotional resonance that’s surprising for those…
Ram tough
Over the years, critics have taken to comparing Austin roots-rock quintet the Gourds to the Band, and it’s not hard to see why. In the spirit of the Band, the Gourds have absorbed so many strains of bedrock American music that they’ve arrived at a synthesis all their own. Like the Band, they’re archaic but…
Vicente Fernandez
Vicente Fernandez Legend has it that the day his father died, a young, unknown Vicente Fernandez performed in Mexico. Over the course of the performance, Fernandez’ emotions so overtook him that he began sobbing in mid-song. The crowd roared at the end of the show and called him back for an encore, at which point…
Out of hiding
Communists weigh in on the November election On a recent Saturday evening, the local Communist Party held a meeting about the upcoming election not in a basement or secret room, but in a Mexican restaurant with big windows that let the setting sun shine in. The 10 attendees included several former and current party members,…
The showdown
(Photos.com) Citizens fight CPS in court over power lines It was within the first hour of the first court hearing in the case of City Public Service versus Bexar County landowners and already there were insinuations that gunfire might erupt, although it was unclear who would do the shooting. “We don’t want people getting excited…
File not found
SA-based Rackspace surrenders two servers to FBI The privacy policy of Rackspace Managed Hosting sounds stern: “Rackspace makes every effort to follow industry standard security measures to prevent the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under our control.” But on October 7, that privacy policy was only as valid as the computer screen it…
Small screen and special film screenings
Austin Film Festival honoree Garry Shandling mocks the narcissistic heart of TV land Self-reflexive one-upmanship Janeane Garofalo is famously sheepish about her own work. While on press junkets for her films, she refuses to make the pretense that she likes what she’s ostensibly promoting, usually volunteering that she hasn’t seen the movie in question. But…
Tough love
Brad Milne as Louis and Rita Crosby as the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, recite Kaddish over the body of Roy Cohn, played by Allen Ross, during the San Pedro Playhouse’s production of Angels in America: Perestroika. (Photo by Mark Greenberg) Tony Kushner’s ‘Angels’ aren’t warm and fuzzy, but don’t kill the messenger We have a…
Recent reviews
Bright Young Things Dir. Stephen Fry; writ. Fry, based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh; feat. Emily Mortimer, Stephen Campbell Moore, James McAvoy, David Tennant, Dan Aykroyd, Jim Broadbent, Simon Callow (R) Evelyn Waugh’s novel Vile Bodies, on which Stephen Fry, in his directorial debut, based Bright Young Things, is the kind of foreign import…
A star is rescued
The delightful, if sometimes crass, Ms. Blanca. Blanca the dog has her day tramping the boards with ‘Oliver!’ In 1976, William Berloni, a budding actor, took an apprenticeship at the Goodspeed Opera House, in Connecticut, during the season they staged the first production of Annie. The producer couldn’t afford a dog trainer, and everyone else…
Saltwater gold
Sherra Thomason of the Texas Historical Foundation bought several boxes of organic Permian Sea Shrimp from proprietor Bart Reid on her way home from a statewide meeting in Fort Davis. Thomason detoured 25 miles off IH-10 to visit the Imperial, Texas store. Reid says that in the future he may open an outlet in Fort…
Ka-pao!
Pad Thai, one of Asia Kitchen’s popular lunch specials, comes with rice, spring rolls, and sesame chicken. (Photos by Laura McKenzie) Knocked out by Asia Kitchen’s Thai cuisine Paper parasols painted with peacocks. Pressed flowers on silver teapots. Shiny black shoes and matching socks. Such are the details at Asia Kitchen, a superb Thai restaurant…
12,000 kilometers in their footsteps
The Motorcycle Diaries captures Ché Guevara (Gael García Bernal) and friend Alberto Granado (Rodrigo de la Serna) in their free-wheeling days of youth. Young Ché Guevara found empathy and an identity on a cross-continent road trip “A considerable part of the power of Ché Guevara, I think, that mysterious energy that far outlives his death…
All You Can Eat
Seafood puffs, an Asian Kitchen appetizer. (Photo by Laura McKenzie) News and notes from the San Antonio food scene Honored: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has named Mad Dogs Pub, 123 Losoya, as restaurant of the month for its vegetarian and vegan offerings. These include Mediterranean red pepper and chili soup topped with…
Holly Golightly does Dr. Zhivago
Stuart Townsend and Charlize Theron find intense pleasure in each other’s company, as well as Penelope Cruz, but it’s not enough to keep Townsend’s character from answering a call to honor and duty during Hitler’s invasion of Europe. The gravitas is missing from John Duigan’s World War II romantic triangle According to Rick Blaine’s frijoles…
Squeeze box weekend
Estaban Jordan is one of the headliners at this year’s International Accordion Festival. International Accordion Festival has more than conjunto on its agenda Any accordion festival in San Antonio that didn’t include a nod to the area’s conjunto heritage wouldn’t be worth attending. Polka Dawgs, relax: Organizers of the Fourth International Accordion Festival, running Saturday…
Lost in the cosmos
Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin play existential detectives, whose duties include breaking bad news to hypocritical Christians and self-indulgent dilettantes, in I Heart Huckabees. Philosophy is funnier than you might think in ‘Huckabees’ After I Heart Huckabees, one wonders why philosophy isn’t a more common subject for comedy. There are few people more vulnerable to…
‘Blood’ brothers
Jedi Mind Tricks lead a tour of respected underground hip-hop duos. Hip-hop “Underground Trifecta” stirs memories of the ol’ boom-bap One one level, the so-called “Underground Trifecta” tour led by Jedi Mind Tricks is a means of promoting the hip-hop duo’s new album, Legacy of Blood. On a deeper level, though, it represents a collective…
New reviews
‘Raise Your Voice’ preaches to the choir of star-struck teenage girls. Raise Your Voice Dir. Sean McNamara; writ. Mitch Rotter, Sam Schreiber; feat. Hilary Duff, Oliver James, James Avery, John Arbett, Dana Davis, Rebecca DeMornay, Kat Dennys, David Keith (PG) Raise Your Voice, the latest film vehicle for teen queen Hilary Duff, is set in…
