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The latest 10 entries, with the newest at the top. TV: It was only a matter of time before the Irish got theirs.
So many shows about criminality. So many, more specifically, about the Mob. Now, with The Black Donnellys, Irish Americans join the gang, so to speak.
It s an above-average drama, very NBC, made effective through pike-sharp writing about four brothers in New York, cinematic sizzle from director Paul Haggis and an attractive, emotionally transparent cast right out of the Law Order franchise (with contributions from Six Feet Under and a score that echoes the post-rock of Friday Night Lights ).
There s something tired about the tit-for-tat violence, but so far, it s worth the investment.
TV2: The Black Donnellys launch benefited from the most compelling Heroes episode of the season as a lead-in.
Finally, the show concentrated on one thread for a whole episode, not only powerful stuff but also explanatory in a way that serials need from time to time.
NBC has always been my favorite channel, going back to the 1960s. Sometimes its intelligence and class when it show those characteristics leave it far behind the trash pack in ratings.
Yet, after a while, you want quality, not just sensation.
My extended family (20+) spends one week per year in Surfside and has been doing so for 33+ years. Every so often one of would either be nearing or just have turned 16 and driving that heart-stoppingly steep Intracoastal Canal bridge was a must-do activity To me your life seems like a Merchant/Ivory movie.
I am scrambling about the country looking for work. I am, though--uncharactaristically for me--reading a novel. I sent you a note about it and I blogged about it today.
Sorry you're getting hate mail Only two dogs? They must be lonely without The Artful Dodger.
Have you seen the curious choice for this year's Zilker musical?
When's the last time they chose a genuine flop?
11:17 p.m.
: I was wrong and I am delighted. The Departed was my favorite movie of the year, so glad it won out. Well, we have more print editions to put out, so farewell.
11:11 p.m.: Three for four Scorcese.
It s been a long time coming.
11:06 p.m.
: Two right, one wrong: Whitaker takes his and is gracious about it.
10:57 p.m.
: Helen Mirren. One right, one wrong on my bets.
10:45 p.
m.: Montages galore: The candid nominees, supple foreign-language films, tingly Ennio Marricone-scored movies, clashing American themes and the real departed.
10:25 p.
m.: The Dreamgirls nominated songs were worth the wait, but oh my, the songs elongate the evening.
10:15 p.
m.: Sorry for the break in reporting was editing stories for our first print edition. There s so many awards to go.
Will it go past 11 p.m.?
9:48 p.m.: An Inconvenient Truth wins.
Not a surprise there. And Gore didn t make a political speech. Good on him.
9:36 p.m.: Oops.
Pan s Labyrinth knocked out of the race by Germany s The Lives of Others. Jennifer Hudson takes her expected supporting-actress prize, and wisely acknowledges Jennifer Holliday, who played Effie on Broadway.
9:04 p.
m.: Oh, it s so easy to give the costume award to a historical palace drama like Marie Antoinette. Should have gone to the haute couture in The Devil Wears Prada.
8:38 p.m.: Never seen that before: The outright and official endorsement by the Oscars of a hot political topic.
Guess global warming must be pretty much a consensus issue now. Al Gore played his joke moment at the end expertly.
8:34 p.
m.: Another planning plus: Grouping the nominated songs together in the middle of the show.
8:26 p.
m.: The first upset of the evening: Alan Arkin beats Eddie Murphy for his dense, outrageous performance as the crusty grandad in Little Miss Sunshine.
7:57 p.
m.: Genius! Having the comic actors mourning their lack of nominations in song.
Loved it.
7:51 p.m.
: What? This was really Ellen DeGeneres first time at the rodeo? The comedian and talk-show star had bantered her way through the Emmys, Grammys and other awards ceremonies, but never the big one.
Stalking the stage in a scarlet velvet tuxedo, open, white blouse and matching white shoes, she employed her signature speed-up-to-pause timing. Her opening jokes drifted around her childhood dream to host the Oscars. Let that be a lesson to you kids out there: Aim lower
She didn t wait long to warm up a little pointed controversy, however, referring to contemporary stereotypes: If not for blacks, Jews or gays, there would be no Oscars.
She even squeezed in a little partisan humor. America didn t vote for Jennifer Hudson, but she s here. America did vote for Al Gore, but he s here.
7:30 p.m.: What a classy opening montage of the nominees talking about their reactions.
Sure beats the traditional long-abandoned musical number. Funniest was Eddie Murphy saying nothing.
7 p.
m.: Thank goodness, we move over to ABC. In comparison, the mindless interviews on this channel are like PBS This Week in Washington compared to those on E!
And all we really need are these quick, edited shots of the fashions.
6:45 p.m.
: Like the Oscars themselves, the DeGeneres show commenced well before the actual ceremony. One E! Channel segment featured her kidding around backstage with red-carpet host Ryan Seacrest, claiming to steal fashion secrets from him.
A behind-the-scenes American Express documentary/commercial showed DeGeneres hosing down an elephant. Parent: Hose your kids off. It s so much easier.
6:30 p.m.: The fashion critics on the E!
Channel are making me sick. Alan Arkin is the first artist to fight back against the idiocy.
6 p.
m.: Ryan Seacrest is a bubble-head. I haven t paid much attention to the red carpet coverage so far.
Maybe in the last 90 minutes before the show.
As I overhear the ninnies on the TV Guide Channel red-carpet team, it feels right to secure my bets on the top awards.
Picture: Should win: The Departed.
Will win: Babel.
Director: Should win: Martin Scorcese. Will win: Martin Scorcese.
Actor: Should win: Peter O Toole. Will win: Forest Whitaker.
Actress: Should win: Helen Mirren or Judi Dench.
Will win: Helen Mirren.
It actually was a very good year for motion pictures. My only disappointment: So few honors for United 93.
I ll update this all evening. Also see our for timely Oscar news.
Travel: Back to terra firma.
Austin. Ready for the Oscars, then New York City, then SXSW. But first, a comforting meal at the Woodland and a dinner party with dear friends.
Home: More than East Texas or Louisiana or Michigan, where I spent my earliest years, or the many places in and around Houston where I lived save a brief break in NYC for more than 20 years, or even Austin, which I have embraced as my own for the past 22 years, Surfside is my hometown, my continuity. Although it s always in danger of receding in a storm, we ve been going to this funky village on the Gulf for more than 40 years. May it always be so.
Stress: I can t escape it. Even at the beach, after all but one guest had departed, I felt the urge to accomplish things, to check things off to-do lists. My subconscious pricked me with anxiety dreams.
No doubt about it: Stress is my Enemy No. 1. Anything I can do to combat it
Books: Ian McEwan s novel Saturday is Murdochian to its teeth idyllic domestic situation threatened by a charismatic spurt of evil; dense, almost impossible to consume first 100 pages, leading briskly to a harrowing climax and a somewhat obscured denouement.
More than any other novel I know, it dealt with 9/11 and the subsequent cultural questions, at least for the West, with the sharpest acuity.
Friends: More than 50 friends have spent time with us during the 14 years of the Reading Week which started as a weekend, inspired by Murdoch s The Book and the Brotherhood and the stream is refreshed each year. Jeff, Nick, Robert and Christine blessed us with their presences for the first time; Steven and Eugene returned after a six-year absence; Joan and Rick, after only two trips down from Cincinnati, have adapted to the beach culture quicker than any other guests.
Some 10 to 20 friends or acquaintances have drifted away; almost all of them are welcome to return. No question, we ll have a full house next year.
Travel: Almost nothing happened today.
Perfection.
Reading Roger Lewis Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez, and Decolonization, Iris Murdoch s The Red and the Green, V.S.
Naipaul s The Writer and the World and John Julius Norwich s A History of Venice in a sensuously bound Folio Society edition.
The best weather yet. Not too warm.
Not too cool. Doors open all day.
Beach variations.
Blast from the past. (This was where the surfers hung out in the late 1960s.) One boy, I remember, asked, with a touch of menace in his voice, if I was a surfer or a kicker.
I said, neither. But, despite my lack of balance, I was closer to the former.
Canals and marshes ideal for bird watching, crabbing.
Multitudes of herons and egrets in the backwaters this time of year.
The big bridge over the Intracoastal Canal. Its predecessor, with its low railing and steep incline, terrified me as a first-time driver.
| Tuesday, February 20, 2007, 07:23 PM Travel: The tide of guests withdraws. I finish Ian McEwan s Saturday. By mid-afternoon Tuesday, it s just Paul, Kip and I.
And the readers of this blog, some of whom have posted the most puerile comments, which have not, mercifully, been published in the ascribed box.
Food: I notice that Dale Rice s review of Sazon was among the most e-mailed from the Austin360.com site today.
No wonder the place was sizzling when we dropped by in the early evening. Here, it s all about the food. Everything that we ordered was prepared, seasoned and executed at least one step beyond other interior Mexican restaurants in its class.
Music: It s coming out soon: The new Future Clouds and Radar CD is complex on a level that few Austin area acts have ever accomplished. Wait for it.
TV: Sad that San Marcos Jimmy didn t make further it on American Idol.
It s strange how one gets caught up in ups and downs of these contestants. Not like Project Runway but still compelling in a spotty way. Pasadena Civic Auditorium looks a bit like Hogg, doesn t it?
Just please, please stop the melismas.
Travel: We re off to the beach for our annual Reading Week. So we ll switch to the low-impact photo blog every day.
Movies: Idealistic white teacher. Tough black teen. Drugs, danger, street life, struggling schools.
Half-Nelson carries with so much familiar baggage, one is tempted to pop out the DVD after the first 15 minutes. That would be a mistake.
The teacher, not the teen, is an uredeemable crack head.
Yet mostly sympathetic. The teen might be tough, but her smile would melt an iceberg, and she quickly learns to balance the street and the classroom. Where is this film going?
Nowhere, slowly, for the most part, which is good, because Half-Nelson (2006) tracks life more accurately than the formulaic melodramas about failing schools that clot our small and large screens.
Does ex-Young-Hercules Ryan Gosling deserve his Academy Award nomination? You bet.
Almost everything he does as the scruffy, dialectics-driven teacher surprises you.
Oh, and ex-Austinite Starla Benford, also seen in United 93 in 2006, enjoys two brief scenes as the bristling school principal. You might remember her from roles at Cap City Playhouse and other theaters during the 1980s and 90s.
She s always deserved a bigger career.
Digital: It s good to have something to live for.
I purchased my first Apple product in 1985 to write my master s thesis.
I never looked back. So intuitive. So right for my mathematically-challenged brain.
An iBook got me through my doctoral dissertation. Reporters, editors and designers in the newsroom all use Macs.
We have a massive Mac on our desk at home, and a snow-white 12 laptop that serves me on the couch, in the gym (otherwise known as our un-air-conditioned garage) and on the road.
So you can guess that I will be waiting in line for an iPhone come June. Cost be darned. I m so tired of asking my nieces and nephews to program my current cell phone from (company name deleted).
Just go to the page to see what it will do.
Movies: Peter O Toole s Academy Award nomination is not a gesture of sympathy for an aged film veteran with a career of near-losses at the Oscars.
Not by a long shot.
O Toole s turn as an old London actor who falls for a girl perhaps one fourth his age in Venus calls on his most vulnerable, truthful self, as well as the staginess he has always lent his most memorable roles, from Lawrence of Arabia to My Favorite Year.
Yes, he looks like a corpse, which prompts a few laughs, but the movie is really about the disintegration of pleasure and how to put a dignified end to a fully savored life.
Don t be surprised if he sneaks up on Forest Whitaker.
TV + Pets: I promise not to respond to every dog tonight.
Sporting: This is our favorite group, likable, functional, loyal, honorable dogs. Our picks from the night s examples: Nova Scotia, Gordon, Chesapeake Bay, Brittany, Golden, English Springer, Welsh Springer and Vizsla.
The judge didn t quite agree with our picks. Vizla will be hard to beat. OK, the winners are easily supported: English Springer followed by Vizsla.
Hound: Top dogs for us: Basenji, Bloodhound, Borzoi, English Foxhound, Harrier, Norwegian Elkhound, PBGB, Pharaoh and Saluki. Again, the judge doesn t quite agree. Yeah!
The PBGB. At least it wasn t one of the Deerhounds.
Herding: Another group we like a lot, although I ve had some that herded their surroundings to death.
They are indisputably smart. Ours: Australian Cattle Dog, Belgian Malinois, Belgian Sheepdog, Border Collie, Pembroke Welsh Corgi and Sheltland. Judge s lineup not ours, but there are some potential winners.
Please not the Bouvier, even though I ve known some fabulous representatives of the breed. Darn. Won.
Best of Show: The Akita is our first choice. The English Springer is our second. The PBGB would be great.
Come to think of it, the PBGB is a star. Could win it all.
The Springer wins.
That s terrific. Gorgeous dog.
Digital: It was too long coming.
But Omar Gallaga is safely ensconced amongst us he did a honorable stint at Ahora, Si! and, thus, his blog, is back in full swing.
Maybe our No.
1 gamer can convince me to play something other than SimCity.
Somehow I missed Sid Meier s Pirates! when it came out on the PC, then I missed it again when it hit the Xbox.
The PSP version hit my desk, and I could resist the siren call of the sea no longer.
While I m not sure I m playing the game right (most of my adventuring involves randomly attacking ships at sea, talking to lots of governors and trading spices and food haphazardly), I m having a lot of fun. I m not sure if my career choice of a sword-slinging privateer is making the duels a little too easy on me, but other than a few minor quibbles, this one s definitely a keeper.
I ve been bearish on the Sony PSP, but with this game and Rockstar s shipment of The Warriors for Sony s black portable console, it looks like happy times for the PSP.
Movies: The music held the key. Clint Eastwood s Letters from Iwo Jima is a Western.
The devotion to honor, the finality of violence and suffering, set against a harsh, sometimes ravishing environment. Yeah, a Western.
The combination of Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers is without comparison in the film world for its ambitious ethical agenda.
It manages to respect the soldiers without respecting war.
The acting, the narrative focus and the attention to cultural distinctions all make Iwo Jima superior to Flags, but, despite the absorbing, old-fashioned movie-ness of both, I left without lasting residual feelings or thoughts.
TV+ Pets: This is our dogs favorite two nights of the year.
I m lying, it s the human companions who go crazy over the display of dogdom on the Westminster stage at Madison Square Garden.
The Working Group: An honorable crowd. Muscled, hearty, wolflike in many aspects.
Akitas are so handsome, dignified. No. 12 is marked splendidly.
Alaskan Malamute what a sweet boy, massive, but it s misbehaving. Anatolian shepherd dog looks kinda like a Lab, but with a curled tail. The Bernese mountain dog is a big, happy canine, marked to perfection.
I ve never seen a black Russian terrier huge and dominant before in competition
The boxer is among the most noble of all dogs. This brindled one is lively. bull mastiff looks scary.
The milk chocolate Doberman pinscher is exceptionally beautiful. I always prefer the chocolates. German pinscher is another new breed to me.
Impressive. Giant Schnauzer is nothing like my family s miniatures.
The great Dane is like a pony.
Some great Pyrenees live in our neighborhood. They are incredibly lively. I ve known a greater Swiss mountain dog who was a total sweetie.
The Komondor looks like a dust mop. Sorry, can t help it. Don t find that attractive.
Kuvasz looks fierce and not too obedient.
My brother owns a mastiff. They are enormous.
Makes our Labs look like pups. The Neopolitan mastiff is kinda goofy. No wonder it was used in the Harry Potter movies.
Weird gate. The Newfie! It s just a long-haired Lab.
Portuguese water dog, I don t remember this grooming choice. And I don t like it.
Rottweilers.
I don t trust em. St. Bernards always appear to pop out a cartoon.
I knew a Samoyed called Sugar. Showy dog. I can t tell the Siberian husky from the other Arctic dogs, except they are smaller.
This standard Schnauzer has a strange orange mask.
The Akita wins! Fantastic.
I also loved the Newfie and the Kuvasz, who placed in the working group.
Terrier Group: Not inherently as noble as the workers, but
The airdale terrier, for instance, has a kind of Scottish dignity, though it was bred in Yorkshire. The American Staffordshire terrier looks too much like a pit bull.
I m sure their owners love them. The Australian terrier is keener than the previous samples in his group.
Oh, the Bedlington terrier is just a stuffed animal.
I ve always hated its cut. The border terrier looks tough, but not pretty. Bull terriers will never get over the beer commercials and yes, they have personality.
The Cairn terriers will always be among the cutest.
The dandie Dinmont terrier bounces around like a bobble-headed toy. Not to my tastes.
I ve always liked the alert, elegant fox terriers, although I ve rarely seen any in Austin. Have you ever heard of the Glen of Imaal terrier? Not me.
The Irish terrier is as like an airdale, but a red head. The Kerry blue was bred in Italy? Doesn t really make sense.
That dog move really well.
The Lakeland is a gay little terrier, according to the announcer. Whatever.
Kip had a Manchester when he was young. He called him Peso, a Chihuahua name. He s a little prancer.
The miniature bull terrier is acting up. I love Norfolks. Tough little dogs.
And Norwiches.
We had Scotties in the neighborhood growing up. They may be dour, but we loved the puppies.
The Skeys are too soft, but the soft coated Wheaton is gorgeous, showy. I like the Welshie too. The Westie, however, is getting out of hand.
The Fox was robbed. I am so over the big-eyed dandie.
Toy Group: So Kip s about to leave the room.
He has no tolerance for toys. I kid him that I want one. Most of them are mutants.
Affenpincher is Tribble. Brussels Griffon shows attitude. cavalier King Charleses are everywhere in Austin.
Is the Chihuahua really so mysterious in its origins. Butch! This is a wolf?
The Chinese crested is a real show dog.
The English toy spaniel is intensely ugly. I ve encountered some Havanese in Austin.
They are extremely rare, if popular these days. The Italian greyhound is not the one from Austin. I don t care how aristocratic they are, the Chin is smash-face ugly.
I m not fond of Maltese as well.
The toy Manchester retains some dignity. Min-Pin is alert.
I m actually fond of papillons, who have gorgeous coats. The Pekingese are the most intensely ugly dogs alive. These are wolves?
More like Cartman from South Park. Pomeranians keep their self-assurance.
I know, I know, people love poodles and they can be smart, convivial.
Never liked them as a group. Like a few as individuals. We have packs of pugs in our hood.
Neighbors love em. Shih tzu competes with the Pekingese for non-dog-ness. The toy fox is cute, easily mixed up with the Jack Russell.
I m not fond of the excessive look on show Yorkies.
Not the toy poodle. Ick.
Even the runners-up are not attractive.
Non-Sporting Group: More upright than the toys.
American Eskimo dog looks smart.
I ve known some tolerable bichons. Bostons are increasingly popular in our neighborhood, as are French bull dogs. Every bulldog I ve known has been affectionate.
Shar-peis look sweet. (Yes, Miss Adventure.) Fewer chows in our hood than 10 years ago.
This one is adorable.
The Dalmatian does show well. The foxy Finnish spitz could find a place in our home.
I don t like poodles, except the ones I know. On the other hand, I love Schipperkes. They may be the most utilitarian tiny dog.
I can t believe it s the poodle won. The Dalmatian should have won. I promise not to go on and on tomorrow.
TV: Top 10 most Tivoed shows in our household during the past few weeks.
6. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
8.
Law Order: Criminal Intent
9. Law Order: SVU
TV: This is sad. So sad that a pet owner might not want to read it.
ESPN reports that a prize whippet went missing after last year s big competition at the . Although there have been reported sightings, it still has not returned.
If she d been hit by a car or shot on the tarmac, at least we d know what happened.
I know that sounds bad. But not knowing, that s the worst part. Jil Walton, Vivi s owner
10:27: It s late, but worth it.
Dixie Chicks win five golden gramophones. As they play Not Ready to Make Nice over the credits, it finally hits me, they ve made it back, and by staying themselves. Can t argue with free speech.
10:11: Don t do heroine. Case: Red Hot Chili Peppers used to be the most exciting band in the world.
10:00: Dixie Chicks land Record of the Year.
One away from a sweep. Album on the year coming up.
9:41: Big-band hip-hop, complete with kiddie choir.
That s new.
9:28: Snore: Music education. We all know it s important.
Stiff Grammy tributes don t help.
9:15: (Expletive.) What is this.
Oh, it s Chris Brown, a phenomenal dancer, who started his bit with some masked step dancing, the skyrocketed into the evening s most physical performance.
9:03: American Idol strikes again: Carrie Underwood is New Artist of the Year.
8:54: Don Henley s been hitting the doughnuts?
Don Henley is a doughut. Look at his moon-pie face. No, that s the kid from Rascal Flatts.
8:38: Dixie Chicks again, this time for Country Album. Yes, they are an act without a genre, but they ve got fans across the board.
8:38: Blige.
Man. Thanks for the absence of vocal runs known as melismas.
8:25: Ludacris wins for rap.
That was unexpected. Now he s thanking everybody
8:13: Dixie Chicks score Song of the Year. That s news even aside from the politics.
In Austin, part-time home of the Chicks, gracious in the winner s circle.
8:10: South Asia and the Middle East have contributed mightily to Western pop music recently you hear it all over the radio so it was fitting that the evening s biggest production number looked like a Hollywood (Bollywood?) version of a hareem dance.
7:55: Did the producers deliberately seek the three most boring, least developed contemporary R B songs for special performance? Even John Mayer s bluesy guitar didn t enliven this insipid trio.
7:47: Early candidate for Worst Fashion Award.
7:40: Justin Timberlake once a boy-toy joke with pretty eyes continues to expand his reach as an artist, sometimes with hip-now, now with slow-build pop. Do I buy his intermitant tough-guy personality traits? Nope.
Blige wins again! Ths time she won t have to thank everybody I can possibly think of.
7:25: Beyonce was smooth as sateen performing her own contribution to Dreamgirls.
Yes! Mary J. Blige the voice of the 21st century wins R B album.
Is she really a first-time winner?
7:15: The Dixie Chicks looked and performed in a fairly reserved manner for an audience more than primed for their Not Ready to Make Nice.
Earlier in the evening, they on for Best Country Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal, which is ironic since the country music industry has sent them to the outer darkness.
7:04: OK, the re-enlisted Police weren t that arresting. But they are holding up exceedingly well. Jamie Foxx s introduction fell flat.
That joke would kill on BET, he complained.
Oh, my man, Tony Bennett wins for his collaboration with Stevie Wonder (who wrote For Once In My Life at age 17. I guess age counts.
6:45: So far, so bad for Texas artists in the Grammy race. You ve already seen in Jeanne Claire van Ryzin s blog that Conspirare, Austin s professional choir, lost in two categories to the Estonians.
T-Bone Burnett lost Producer of the Year to Rick Rubin.
Comedian Ron White s You Can t Fix Stupid lost Best Comedy Album to Lewis Black s The Carnegie Hall Performance.
Trout Fishing in America lost Best Musical Album for Children to Dan Zanes Catch That Train!
Guy Clark s Workbench Songs lost the Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album to Bob Dylan s Modern Times.
Theater: When the Austin theater season is over, the one performance everyone will remember with pleasure will be Jamie Goodwin s as the vain, hammy star of Present Laughter.
Oh, we are grateful for professional turns by Barbara Chisholm, Elizabeth Dodds, Helen Merino and Meredith McCall the male supporting cast is given little to do yet Goodwin turns Zachary Scott Theatre upside down with laughter in Noel Coward s farce.
Coward is the kind of material Zach Scott trotted out regularly during its first 50 or so years.
And why not? The humor is brittle, the characters charming monsters and Coward knew the theater inside out, so he wrote with a impeccable sensitivity to its formulas.
Director Dave Steakley has rarely ventured into this territory, and he s added cabaret interludes before, during and after scenes.
Three problems with this: It lengthens an already long play, slows down the comic momentum and conflates Cole Porter with Coward, something I think neither artist would have appreciated.
Otherwise, Steakley keeps the machine running smoothly, interrupted only by a few shaky accents. But back to Goodwin, who looks a bit like actor David Stokey and who camped it up ever so slightly as the policeman/narrator in Urinetown.
Here, he firmly, fluently builds the star s childish eccentricities to several flamboyant climaxes. I was utterly in awe of his technique and timing.
Cliff Simon and Susan Branch iced the cake with layers of Belgravia (or nearly so) in the scenery and costumes.
The show continues through at least March 11 at .
Music: If I don t write about show tunes and cabaret CDs, who would?
Spring Awakening (Decca) Four stars out of five.
Haven t seen this hot musical, based on the Wedekind play, on Broadway, but the score is as fevered as the young angst it depicts. My only reservation: Sounds a bit too much like Rent in places. (But I ve been told I m wrong on that score by the show s biggest fans.
)
Happy End (Ghostlight) Four stars. The secondary works of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht are making a comeback. (The last big revival was in the 1970s.
) This cynical look at power includes greats such as The Bilbao Song and Surabaya Johnny, given pungent renditions by the American Conservatory Theatre cast.
Lush Life: The Untold Story of Billy Strayhorn (Blue Note) Four stars. Contemporary jazz musicians put their spins on the great composer who sometimes teamed with Duke Ellington or Johnny Mercer.
I always suspected that whoever wrote the lyric too many through-the-day 12-o clock-tails was gay. The iterations here are lush indeed.
Dream True (PS Classics) Three stars.
A quirky musical about a friendship between two boys that takes several unexpected twists and turns. I resisted Ricky Ian Gordon s heartfelt music and Tina Landau s lyrics, but not for long.
Tony DeSare: Last Kiss First (Telarc) Three stars.
OK, he s cute in a dark-eyed, faux-scruffy way. But he also possesses a splendid cabaret instrument which soars through a baker s dozen of romantic songs. I swooned appropriately.
Meredith McCall: The Joy in Your Heart (self-released) Three stars. Oh, how I wish this Austin diva had the money and the producer to really showcase her fantastic vocal stylings, here devoted to standards, show tunes and some pop pieces. I kept waiting for the CD to hit me like her live performances.
I Love You Because (PS Classics) Two stars. This Modern Day Musical Love Story is really about 30 years out of date. It s funny, though, tracing the awful stories of dating and friendship.
Light, but listenable score.
Charlotte Rae: Songs I Taught My Mother (PS Classics) Two stars. As vaudeville and off-Broadway fed the hungry maw of television with talent during the 1950s, comic singers like Rae thrived on novelty songs, mostly contrasting her plain looks with outsized ambitions or sexuality.
If I Sing (PS Classics) Two stars. Jamie de Roy pullled together, over course of six years, songwriters Stephen Schwartz, Lucy Simon, Maury Yeston vocalizing their own songs. The results are predictably uneven, but some gems shine through.
Charles Sings Strauss (PS Classics) One star. This trend of releasing recordings of composers no matter the quality of their voices singing their material, often in audition circumstances, is strictly for completists. Here the man behind Annie and dozens of hit songs breathes too heavily into his thin voice to make this album pleasurable except in an academic sense.
Theater: The subjects of tolerance, imagination, sexuality and kinship are pretty thoroughly debated in Edward Albee s quick, 90-minute family squall, The Goat or Who s Sylvia, which, thanks to Different Stages, has finally made its Austin debut. (Closes this weekend at the much-improved Play Theatre.)
Stevie (Rebecca Robinson) and Martin (Tom Chamberlain) in this scene from Edward Albee s The Goat or Who is Sylvia.
Photo by Bret Brookshire.
It s not full-gale-force Albee, but, then again, what except Who s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? really is?
Goat matches the chilly, ruminative dramas of A Delicate Balance, Seascape and Three Tall Women.
The staging is above average for DS, better at the biting humor and word play than the soul-shattering gravity, the set functional for the home of a Pritzker-Prize winner (if he shopped at Ikea). Tom Chamberlain, Frank Benge and Trey Deason make considerable contributions, but it s Rebecca Robinson s blazing, vengeful and winningly sarcastic wife that elevates the production to memorable status.
Sports + The Gay Life: You don t see these two Out About subject heads bumping together very often, at least not regarding the high-pressure world of American professional sports.
Yet John Amaechi, who played in the NBA for Orlando, Utah and Cleveland, comes out in a book entitled Man in the Middle to be released later this month.
The jolting story was buried in most sports sections, but Amaechi joins a small club of big-time athletes coming out.
Advance reports about his book reveal duh! poisonous levels of unabashed homophobia in American sports.
Take note, next month, Zachary Scott Theatre opens Take Me Out, which concerns the aftermath of a major-league baseball player coming out.
TV: Why do I like Dirt, the Fox FX series about celebrity tabloids?
Certainly not because of Courteney Cox, the former Friends star and co-producer of the series. I thought her emotional range would expand with each episode, but she continues to bounce between Grade-B witch and slightly distracted observer of her own shortcomings.
I still hold out hope for a Vanessa Williams-like evolution.
Not because of the writing, although the segments on the schizophrenic photographer remain clever. This is no Rescue Me or even The Shield, two other FX shows.
Maybe it s the blunt sensationalism the sodomized basketball player, the beheaded hip-hopper, the Sean Penn stand-in s wormy throw-up plus the frank sexual language you hardly ever hear on TV.
The thing I like the most about Dirt is Cox s character in editorial mode. I d never imitate her management style, but she insists on interesting, eye-grabbing cover stories.
It strikes me that my work with XL has been too classy, genteel. That s OK for old-school journalism, but will it survive the shorter and shorter attention spans of American readers?
There s a place for both, but I could learn a lot of Dirt.
TV: Singing Cupid confidently in the last contestant spot, Texas State University-San Marcos student Jimmy McNeal nabbed his golden ticket to Hollywood on American Idol on Tuesday night.
Well done, Jimbo, Simon Cowell said. You re like a little fun Ruben, aren t you?
It s good, authentic, I think you re very likeable.
Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, Paula Abdul said. Keep that voice smooth.
Welcome to Hollywood from the mighty state of Texas, Randy Jackson said. Work it out, baby, work it out.
Amazingly beautiful, McNeal, 23 and originally from Waxahachie, told host Ryan Seacrest in the San Antonio hallway Aug.
11 when asked how it felt to be chosen.
When McNeal leaned over to tell a unimpressed young family member: I m going to Hollywood, she replied So?
Movies: To break the Angelina Jolie suspense, we know that she slept at the Four Seasons (where Brad and Jennifer were first spotted as a couple), and she was on location out at the Onion Creek Country Club area (off Interstate 35 South).
Nobody has sent us a candid yet.
Movies: Entering the final Oscar stretch, it looks like Judi Dench could pass Helen Mirren for the Best Actress statuette.
Her performance as a lesbian stalker in Notes on a Scandal is just as disciplined and carefully shaded as Mirren s as the slow-to-adapt QE2 in The Queen.
The difference? Dench is given latitude to show emotional extremes, and Academy voters do love a good set chewing.
Don t let me give you the wrong idea: Dench is fantastic, and the movie appeals to someone with a theatrical background (it plays like a drama, and most of the artists are borrowed from the London stage).
Mirren or Dench? I d be delighted if either won.
City Life: My friend and fellow blogger has written cogently about quality of life in New York City, where he lives, in response to our report that Austin had only 20 homicides in 2006.
(NYC clocked close to 600.) The question: Which is the safest big city in America?
New York s progress from the edge of chaos in the 1970s when I lived there is astonishing and widely imitated.
One wonders if anything can be learned from Austin s experience?
Music: Savored the new 11-CD Tony Bennett box set over the weekend. Many recordings we already owned, and the listener must not mind multiple repetitions of Fly Me to the Moon, The Good Life, I Left My Heart in San Francisco, etc.
Yet paying attention to the overall arc, it was interesting to notice that Bennett started in the early 1950s with a high, burnished tenor almost totally absent of emotional content, moved to a lower register in the late 50s for his Frank-like swinger period, then even lower in the late 60s and 70s as he worked with some of the great pianists and trios of the serious jazz world.
Strangely, his most comfortable key rose back to a high-tenor realm during the MTV acoustic and duet age. At the same time, it acquired that slight frazzle which, like worn leather, conferred authority and melancholy to his basic jazz stylings.
I ll always prefer Golden Age Frank - he really was an actor, not just a saloon singer, despite his demurrals - but my estimation of Bennett grows and grows.
Food: I d read how Flaco s Mexican Food on South Congress Avenue had, in response to the owner s health condition, eliminated much of the fat from its courses. That sounded antithetical to the ideal Tex-Mex experience.
Yet meeting blogger Jonathan Morgan there for the first time, I had mouth-watering tacos, chalupa, beans and rice.
TV: Whenever a show receives the kind of adulation accorded The Wire music writer Joe Gross gave the DVD of Season 1 an extremely rare 5 stars we remain skeptical.
Watching the HBO series about drug culture on the streets of Baltimore we re deep into Season 3 on DVD it s not at all what we expected.
Sure, violence and rough language erupt at appropriate intervals, but The Wire operates on a level of dramatic sophistication rare for television.
Clarity: Sunday, we had just watched the Season 3.2 opener of Lost on a screener and were forced to backtrack dozens of times to trace what had happened.
Later that night, The Wire, though it juggles many more character and plots, was crystal clear.
Fluency: Scenes flow from scenes, motivations from motivations. The show doesn t use the slam-bam cliffhangers favored by so many serials, including Lost and Heroes, or actioners such as 24.
Precision: I attribute this to the uniformly strong cast and direction/editing that never lets the characters personal developments or the procedural aspects of police work to interrupt the exact representations of the drug war. I m especially impressed by the historical contexts of urban decay, renewal and the gradual integration of gangsters into straight society (antecedent: The Godfather ).
Bravery: How many cities would allow their image to be besmirched like this?
And most other times, howls of protest would have met a series that depicted so many African Americans in such unflattering ways. Yet the show is exquisitely balanced, and by all accounts, accurate to the smallest details.
Note: The police in Baltimore are urged to keep murders under 300 a year.
In Austin, there were just 20 homicides in 2006. Baltimore population: 651,154. Austin population: 656,562.
Culture: Let s say your husband turns his nose up at Project Runway Tim don t abandon us now! or (insert pop reference here).
No problem.
Below find the six stages of his cultural conversion.
The closed door: When your favorite brand of shallowness crops up on TV, he shuts the door of the study, purportedly to work or read, but mainly to avoid soiling his ears with the pop pollution.
The brief visit: He hears you laughing, or you beg him to witness 10 seconds on TiVo rewind, which he acknowledges briefly before fleeing back to the study.
The kitchen peek: He s making a sandwich or drink, and you hear a muffled chuckle from the other room. He s checking in on your show.
The dining room linger: It s critical at this stage that he remains standing, for dignity s sake, but now closer to the TV this may come months into the season.
The couch abandon: He gives up, gives in, sprawling on the sofa for all or part of your preferred trash, adding his observations, commenting on the characters, screaming with laughter at the smallest detail.
The appointment with pop: You come home to find him parked in front of the TV glued to a show that, only a few months before, he couldn t stand. Now he s watching it without you Oh, honey, we can rewind it.
I ll see the whole episode with you. You ll never believe what happened
Gotcha.
Music: One thing I cherish about my friends: They insist on introducing me to new experiences.
Last night, musician Matt Bricker pointed me in the direction of Tacks the Boy Disaster, a intricately pop-ish act witnessed at the up-and-coming artist series at Antone s.
Frontman Evan Jacobs writes beautiful, well-developed songs, plays a mean Moog and meshes well, instrumentally, with his other three bandmates. Evans voice wants control in certain elevations of his range, and I agree with Matt the the group should work on the vocal harmonies, but it s a thrill to catch artists well into the development stage.
Eats: The din from the food prep is deafening, but my apple-y salmon salad sandwich was worth the distraction at Food Head, the casual and catering spot on West 34th Street. (We dropped by after my heart re-charge over at Seton.)
Drinks: Co-writer Parry Gettelman did the reporting on Irie Bean Coffee Coffee Bar for but I couldn t wait to find out what had taken the place of the former Curve caffeine supplier.
I found it comfortable, street-jive friendly, and the coffee was distinctive.
If you drop by the 10,000 Coffee Shops page on Austin360, and many of you have already, you ll read nasty comments about our reporting. One of the most amusing dissed our samplings of decaf, which I must drink because of a heart condition, and, after all, if a barista can make excellent decaf, they can make even better caf.
And did the reader stop to think what it would have been like to tank up on leaded going to 10 shops a day?
TV: 20 reasons why Friday Night Lights is my favorite TV show.
It s the only dramatic representation of our state, other than some Horton Foote plays, that has ever rung true as Texas to my eyes and ears. Down to they way people talk, their body language and the way they eat.
Especially small-town Texas. That s the truth. Truth is hard to come by, especially on TV.
They do stupid things. They are emotionally complex. They respond honestly, if often unwisely.
(Also my former classmate, Brett Cullen, who s been a good friend to Austin, is now part of the team.)
So are the men.
As long as they are being straightforward, let me be.
Doesn t call attention to itself while on location.
I don t care. It s there.
But at least they don t take it for granted.
They back female moguls such as Barbra Streisand and Oprah Winfrey.
It is no accident that Spanish director Pedro Almodovar s most successful movies have depicted communities of women, even if some of those women appear unhinged. In Volver, Almodovar molds a community around violent crimes that we forgive instantly because they involve wayward men crossing righteous women.
Penelope Cruz the second coming of Sophia Loren attempts to hold this community together in what turns out to be a comic gem of a movie.
It occurs to me that three of the most memorable movies of the past months this, Babel and Pan s Labyrinth rely significantly on Spanish dialogue. American audiences don t seem to mind, which, to me, is a good sign.
Tuesday night at Westgate theater, they laughed at much at the Spanish-language dialogue as the visual comedy, even before the subtitles hit the screen.
1) I hate Austin Lyric Opera.
2) I hold it to standards presumably imported from New York, Santa Fe, Chicago, San Francisco or Houston impossible for Austin Lyric to achieve.
I plead not guilty on both counts, and Waiting for the Barbarians, seen on its last night Monday, affords me the opportunity to explain why.
On the first charge, I was among the first journalists in town to wholeheartedly celebrate the Lyric Opera and, over the years, have doled out much more praise than criticism.
Replying to the second, the only standards I use are those which the company has set for itself.
Does it really want to be an operatic backwater, as many groups in smaller markets are content to become, or does it want to live up to its stated potential of regional excellence?
As arts critic Jeanne Claire van Ryzin elegantly argued, Barbarians is the finest production Austin Lyric has produced. Critics from The New York Times and Los Angeles Times added their admiration.
I d say the score was not distinguished for Glass, but then again, when you ve written 21 operas, you tend to repeat yourself. Conductor Richard Buckley made up for this with his nuanced musical leadership.
The subject matter, given a literary treatment by Coetzee, and the production, imported from Germany, deserve the high praise.
Torture against real or imagined insurgents, a subject treated in pop culture recently by 24, Battlestar Galactica, Pan s Labyrinth, Babel and elsewhere, is almost more harrowing here because the performance context is so genteel (it s an opera!) and the long dance of billowing instrumental sections and painted sand dunes give you time to reflect on the theme, summed up by the phrase: This is the black flower of civilization. Cruelty corrupts.
But is this kind of production really so groundbreaking for the Lyric Opera? They ve tackled similarly tough subjects with Dead Man Walking and A Streetcar Named Desire, which also included striking sets and costumes. They ve even created imaginative stagings themselves ( Andrea Chenier, Candide, etc.
) It s not just about the money, and yes, the German arts subsidies help, it s about engrossing theater, which Austin Lyric sometimes abjures.
Opera will always be the most satisfying art form for me. Here s to two or 10 more decades of Austin Lyric Opera meeting its own high standards.
Recreation + Books Blissed out on the sunlight, I herded the mega-Labs on two 10K walks this weekend. Central city streets resembled a Eurotrash ski resort, with all the international racers in chic winter wear lounging before and after the 3M Half-Marathon.
After chores, I settled on the front porch with a bottle of white wine and the final novel in Robertson Davies The Salterton Trilogy.
This one really makes the set, following a young Canadian woman as she grows into worldliness studying voice in London, through the premiere of a new opera. A light dusting of Henry James here and there.
Finished it as the light faded, but felt too comfortable to head out for Okkervil River at Hogg Auditorium.
I m fond their sound, so I ll catch a later gig.
Early reviews called the adult fairy tale set during the Spanish Civil War: Childlike but never childish, fabulist but never fantastical, it s a triumph Succeeds both as a spectacular special-effects fantasy and as a psychological drama, with superb actors It s not only one of the great fantasy pictures but one of the great end-of-childhood elegies.
Temporing that enthusiasm, later commentaries didn t buy the connection between the Civil War and the child s underground, or the dark, gooey sexual imagery that did anything more than creep us out.
There s no question that Guillermo Del Toro s movie is entirely original and persisitently beautiful with touches here and there borrowed from Fellini or Bergman.
And certainly no American would attempt this film (David Lynch might try, but the images would not make as much sense; Tim Burton s would be too cute and happy). I mean, when was the last time you saw a child shot point blank in an American movie?
I suppose it boils down to whether you think movies are best perceived as analogs to dreams. If so, Pan makes unshakable syncretic sense. The violence, torture and mutilation ratchet up the adult investment in our own residual vulnerabity to fairy tales.
Urban Life: Could Out About get lost, not hunting coffee shops in northwest Williamson County, but right in the heart of Central East Austin, where he lived for half his 22 years here?
You bet. Last night, with 20 minutes cushion before curtain, I headed toward the Play Theatre to see Edward Albee s The Goat, or Who s Sylvia?
the much-discussed drama receiving its Austin premiere.
Couldn t find it. And I didn t take along an XL to check the address.
How often, in the past 12 years, have I been without an XL in my satchel? Almost never.
Was it off East Seventh?
Eighth? Rosedale? MLK?
Manor?
I drove around for half an hour, cursing my shortsightedness. Then again, I had visited the small former church only once before, and that was during the day.
Still, the search clarified in my mind the fact that I have not been the newspaper s designated theater critic for more than three years, and, as such, don t even know the map of Austin theater.
Despondent, I settled down among the conventioneers, state workers and sports fans to the bontana plate at Serrano s, the Austin mini-chain that lucked into the graceful stone buildings that embrace Sibley Symphony Square on Red River Street.
It turned out to be a congealed mass of overfried, unidentifiable brown food.
The first two margaritas were so weak, I was forced to break a rule and order a third, which was conversely so strong, it knocked a hole in the rest of my Friday evening.
So I wandered over to the Big Dig which is going to be an apartment complex on the site that the Reddi Ice plant formerly occupied and stared. Then I stopped by Club DeVille to visit with Matt Bricker, who watches the door.
The trumpet player for various bands cheered me up, until he said he d set down the horn for two months.
Breaks are fine, but you never want to hear that from a musician.
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