Sound and the Fury
A week on the scene Son jarocho Grupo Mono Blanco returns to Guadalupe’s stage this weekend after a seven-year absence, performing in collaboration with the center’s dance company in El Mundo de las Catrinas, as part of their month-long Dia de los Muertos celebration. Mono Blanco, who formed in 1979, are one of the groups…
Twilight years
Under ‘Friday Night Lights’ young men’s dreams are forced into early retirement In 1988, H. G. Bissinger, an editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, moved himself and his family to Odessa, the town in West Texas, not Ukraine. Like an anthropologist doing field work on tribal customs in the Kalahari, Bissinger spent a year studying the…
Nu flows
Back in 1990, Grand Puba, Sadat X, Lord Jamar, and DJ Alamo united in New Rochelle, New York as Brand Nubian to craft One For All, an early hip-hop masterpiece driven by tight sampling, loose flows, and for better or worse, Five Percenter rhetoric. After Puba bounced to pursue a solo career with DJ Alamo…
The damage done
Vincent Gallo and Chloë Sevigny slowly draw the viewer in, almost too close for comfort, in Brown Bunny, the most reviled film at Cannes in years. Vincent Gallo’s ‘Brown Bunny’ is an excruciating elegy I squirmed more than once while watching Vincent Gallo’s Brown Bunny, now famous for being booed at Cannes: early on from…
Indescribable wow
Sam Phillips In 1996, after releasing three consecutive psychedelic pop classics, singer-songwriter Sam Phillips took a little-noticed tumble from grace with the album Omnipop. With her earlier discs, Phillips had movingly conveyed her spiritual doubts and romantic longing, but by the time of Omnipop Phillips had cast a derisive gaze on the spiritual decay around…
We object
Uncovered rebuts Secretary of State Colin Powell’s pivotal speech to the United Nations in which he presented “evidence” of Saddam Hussein’s weapons program. A little over a month later, a nighttime bomb strike initiated the war in Iraq. ‘Uncovered’ makes a powerful case for impeaching Bush “It’s not just those of us who’ve been privileged…
All politics all the time
John Kerry and President Bush press the flesh in The Choice 2004, Frontline’s two-hour dual biography of the candidates, which will air Tuesday, October 12. If you order your copy today of Fahrenheit 9/11, released on DVD on October 5 and available via Amazon.com among other outlets, you’ll have plenty of time to organize a…
New reviews & Special screens
Don Lino (Robert de Niro) considers his options during the big sit-down in DreamWorks mafia-meets-rap animation, Shark Tale, flanked by his lieutenants Luca (Vincent Pastore) and Don Feinberg (Peter Falk). Shark Tale Dir. Vicky Jensen, Bibo Bergeron, Rob Letterman; writ. David Soren and others; feat. the voices of Will Smith, Robert de Niro, Renée Zellweger,…
From hot tub to stranglehold
Tom DeLay rose to power the old-fashioned way: he grabbed it How did a radical, insignificant backbencher from the Texas Legislature become the most powerful man in the United States Congress? Lou Dubose and Jan Reid set out to answer that question in, The Hammer, Tom DeLay: God, Money, and the Rise of The Republican…
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…
Hemp: the gateway food
Canadian farmers harvest hemp in October, when the flowers are ripe with seeds. It is illegal to grow hemp in the U.S. Hearty, tasty, and nearly illegal In the Dauphin region of Manitoba, the days are growing shorter and colder, and snow will soon be on the ground, where it will linger until March. Across…
Class dismissed
Students could become “urban wanderers,” under No Child Left Behind, says Richard Middleton, North East ISD superintendent. (Photos.com) No Child Left Behind: more harm than good? September 29 was a bad day for Richard Middleton, superintendent of the North East Independent School District. And for the principals, teachers and students in the 25 local schools…
True believer
Mayoral candidate Jay Tope(Photo by Mark Greenberg) Former radio announcer Jay Tope runs with the big dogs in his race for mayor Jay Tope, the latest candidate for mayor, was stationed at Lackland Air Force Base in the early 1990s, when KISS-FM changed its format to oldies music. The radio station launched one of those…
Ch … ch … ch … changes
From front: baby back wild boar ribs with a plum tamarind glaze; maple bread pudding with bourbon hard sauce and chantilly cream; and Ruth’s oven-roasted natural chicken with new potatoes, wilted spinach, carmelized onion, haricot verts, and lemon beurre blanc.(Photo by Mark Greenberg) Anaqua Grill struggles through its adolescence but still shows great potential In…
Moving on
Marlene Cano, left, and Vanessa García participate in CAMP, which provides academic, social, and financial support for students from migrant families. Cano is majoring in biology and chemistry; García, in math and philosophy.(Photos by Joshua Leighton) CAMP helps college students from migrant families navigate academics, social issues, and cultural identity Editor’s Note: This is the…
CAM redux
Margaret Craig explores the territory Between with terrain, craters, and wells created through an etching process in which she employs clear tar gel to make a malleable, transferable image. Her work is on view at Cactus Bra through October 29.(Photo by Mark Greenberg) There’s great local contemporary art on the walls, and it’s not 100…
Coffee, wine, and jazz
Epicurean extravaganza If you’re thinking of starting a diet, this would not be the week. The San Antonio New World Wine & Food Festival runs from Thursday, October 7 through Sunday, October 10 and features all the wonderfully sinful foods and drink you care to eat. (Although the nutritional value of mole is questionable, you…
Artifacts
News and notes from the San Antonio art scene The sun is ris’ the sun is set and we is still in Texas yet It’s small enough to fit in a tote, but it’s far too hefty for your purse: The University of Texas Press has just released Art Guide Texas: Museums, Art Centers, Alternative…
Stone love
Angie Stone: a veteran singer bringing soul to a new generation. Angie Stone brings contemporary hip-hop to classic soul After three successful solo LPs, Angie Stone continues to deconstruct R&B music. Having worked with the likes of D’Angelo, Lenny Kravitz, Mary J. Blige, Ali Shaheed Muhammed, and Raphael Saadiq, Stone knows soul. “I think R&B…
Vamos adelante
Marlene Cano, izquierda, y Vanessa Garcia están en CAMP, que ofrece apoyo académico, social y financiero para estudiantes de familias inmigrantes. Cano estudia biología y quimica; Garcia, matemática y filósofia. (Photos por Joshua Leighton) El programa CAMP ayuda a estudiantes de colegio provenientes de familias inmigrantes a explorar problemas académicos, sociales y de identidad cultural…
Surf’s up
Brian Wilson’s new Smile turns pop’s greatest myth into a reality A few years ago, Billy Corgan described Brian Wilson’s unfinished 1967 Beach Boys opus Smile as an attempt to bring Mark Twain to music. With a pained look of frustration crossing his face, Corgan concluded: “He nearly made it.” Many Wilson devotees have shared…
No light at the end of the tunnel
‘Long Dark Road’ fails to illuminate the motives behind Robert Byrd’s murder By the end of Long Dark Road: Bill King and Murder in Jasper, Texas, University of Texas psychologist and psychoanalyst Ricardo Ainslie seems to have thrown up his hands. Ainslie spends the prior 250 pages ruminating over the troubling aspects of a June…
