Covering Music, Film and Pop Culture
The screenings for the 14th annual Austin Film Festival started last night at Austin’s historic and glamorous Paramount Theatre. Before the evening got properly underway, I spent some time staring up at the painted...
Dressed in jeans and a black hoodie– and clutching a beer– film director Quentin Tarantino paced in the spotlight of the small stage of the Alamo Drafthouse theater in downtown Austin, Texas. He told...
At the 13th Annual South by Southwest Film Festival, science fiction, supernatural and horror films comprised an increasingly larger proportion of the festival’s 600 plus films, according to SXSW film programmer Matt Dentler, 27. Among the events at the spring festival was the “Grindhouse 101” panel where “GRINDHOUSE” director Robert Rodriguez and Harry Knowles of Aintitcoolnews.com discussed their appreciation of the vintage low-budget films with shocking gimmicks that were played in the old theaters known as grindhouses.
Earlier this month, I was standing at the bar at the Hole in the Wall with JoDee Purkeypile, lead singer/songwriter/lead guitarist of Austin’s quintet the Alice Rose. The band was playing the club near...
For the last year, my husband has spent his Saturdays helping friends build a 9-foot copy of the TARDIS time-traveling spaceship from the BBC’s “Doctor Who” TV series. To the uninitiated, it looks like...
Back in elementary school, I remember entertaining myself by mentally recounting the complete prime time schedule. Tuning out tedious teaching, I finally recalled exactly what aired opposite Fantasy Island. Bored elementary kids certainly aren’t...
We live in a culture of abundance, a society drowning in stuff. Off-site storage units are a growth industry, while houses keep getting bigger to contain the avalanche of possessions. Magazines such as Real...
We’re quickly approaching “Turkey Day.” That’s shorthand for Thanksgiving, and it emphasizes the meat-centric-ness of the holiday. These days, the Pilgrims are mere Yankee window-dressing to the “Festival of Turkey.” Thanksgiving is just one...
A version of this ran in the French magazine L’Ecran Fantastique under the byline Anna Hanks Sicard No matter what you think of Mel Gibson’s religion and politics— especially following The Passion of the...
Swag from the premiere of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING I think that a version of this was published–in French– in L’Ecran Fantastique in 2006, as I remember getting paid for it. For the...
