‘Til the cows come home
Release Date: 2002-09-05 With a cattle hide on his office wall, leather chair under his butt, and a half-smoked cigar in an ashtray, Mike McElreath gives off the impression that he has been around cattle since birth. Truth be told, he’s more familiar with cooking beef than raising it: Before buying the Stock Yards Cafe,…
PEOPLE 1, DOW 0
When former Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson pulled his silver Cadillac into the circular driveway at his Bridgehampton, New York mansion, Greenpeace activist Casey Harrell was waiting. While three gardeners worked in the yard — just 200 feet from the Atlantic Ocean — Anderson got out of his car and rinsed the gravel from it.…
ALL EARS
Duke Ellington had been jazz royalty for decades before the ’60s. Although his perceived relevance had seen ups and downs, a 1956 Newport Jazz Festival appearance produced his best-selling record and firmly established his preeminence. He wasn’t trying to ride anyone’s coattails when, within two months in 1962, he had three separate historic recording sessions…
FUTURE NOW
Oh, the grunting and panting, the gnashing of teeth: The cattle call for a backstage meet-and-greet with Dokken was rowdier than a sale barn — and sweatier, too. In the queue quivered coquettes who had claimed this coveted plum from their fav-o-rite radio station, Q95, and others who, like a dream, had been plucked from…
FACING A GHOST OF SEPTEMBER 11
I am on the dark street in the rain with Horst Hamann, a cinematographer, who is making a short movie of a column I did about a young woman I always saw in the early morning and suddenly in September I did not see her. Horst has me remember and re-enact the whole story, the…
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CUT UP 9/11
I grew up in the hum-whee-hum of low flying aircraft, their mission in 1951 to blow Manhattan to smithereens, off the map. It’s just a city darling. Great New Yorkers shack up, include, identify, embrace me. The liberty bells are ringing. And that’s when it happened . The fucking enemy shows up. All these people…
CELEBRATING FOTOSEPTIEMBRE
Ephemeral moments that have been frozen mark the San Antonio cityscape this September in a celebratory display of photographers and their art. Known as Fotoseptiembre USA — inspired by Fotoseptiembre Internacional, the photography festival that originated in Mexico City — it has become the second-largest event of its kind in the U.S. From amateurs to…
THE OUTSIDER: BASTIENNE SCHMIDT AT UNAM
Memory is a fickle thing — marred by ego, happenstance, and the desire to make sense of the countless tableaus that flicker in and out of our consciousness. With the exhibit Fremde Heimat, German-born photographer Bastienne Schmidt has attempted to rerecord such illusive images; consequently, the series reflects a bittersweet sense of personal loss and…
THE LONG VIEW
The panoramic photograph as a compositional tool has been around nearly as long as photography itself. From the birth of the medium, there has been a strong desire to see outside the normal scope of our vision — beyond the bounds of the conventional photographic frame. Armed with a 360-degree, digital panoramic camera of his…
DEAD POET’S IMPROPRIETY
If possession is nine points of the law, it is also, according to A.S. Byatt, one of the fine points of love. Possession, the 1990 novel by which the author acquired Britain’s Booker Prize, is the aptly titled story of academic turf wars and struggles over ownership of precious manuscripts. Dead poets take control of…
NEW REVIEWS
feardotcom “Log on and suffer — for an hour and a half” Dir. William Malone; writ. Moshe Diamant, Josephine Coyle; feat. Stephen Dorff, Natascha McElhone, Stephen Rea (R) There is a great deal of difference between horror and horrible. A proper horror movie arouses tension, trepidation, and — although it typically won’t instill any real…
NEW REVIEWS
Has The Crying Game’s Stephen Rea really lowered his standards so miserably? Did William Malone really not have enough foresight to license the name “fear.com” — and, rather than maneuver something comparable, did he really think it acceptable to use the redundantly ridiculous Web address “feardotcom.com”? Have I really just wasted $7.75 and 98 minutes…
SPECIAL SCREENS
8 1/2 “A still-controversial masterpiece” Dir. Federico Fellini; writ. Fellini, Tullio Pinelli; feat., Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée, Sandra Milo, Guido Alberti (UNRATED) In the long-running genre of self-referential works of art, Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 is one of the most enigmatic. It’s easy to get wrong, and right, on a number of levels.…
WHEN I DREAM DREAMS
When I Dream Dreams begins and ends with Tafolla’s voice summoning schoolgirl memories, while the camera tracks the streets of San Antonio’s West Side. But most of this 20-minute documentary consists of talking heads. The graying heads belong to Tafolla, UT Pan American professor Ernesto Bernal, retired teacher Arcadia Lopez, Texas Board of Education Vice…
SCREENING HUMAN RIGHTS AT TRINITY
Henry Kissinger, the Machiavellian secretary of state under Richard Nixon, is no Mother Teresa. But, according to Christopher Hitchens, who in a 1996 book raked muck over the career of the revered missionary born Agnes Boxha Bojaxhiu, neither was Mother Teresa. In The Trials of Henry Kissinger, Hitchens accuses the man who won the Nobel…
THE BOTTOM RUNG
Nancy Lund spends her days at the Edgewood School District stirring steaming vats of Sloppy Joe mix, lugging pans of sizzling Tater Tots, and carving cobbler into small squares for about 500 kids at Gardendale Elementary School. She is one of only three cafeteria workers at the school who feed the masses everyday (“I put…
UNTIL THINGS ARE BRIGHTER
Outside on the streets of San Antonio, the water is two feet high and rising. But that don’t matter much now, because Johnny Cash is sick. The Man In Black is 70 this year, and if his health doesn’t hold up, he won’t make 71. His music, though, will outlive us all. Well, we’re doin’…
