What happens when you throw music, dance, poetry, photography, visual art, theatre, film, and -- why not? -- opera into a great big blue box and shake? You get an explosion of proportions that only the creative geniuses at Refraction Arts can contain. This year's Fuse Box Festival, featuring artists from Brooklyn to Portland and places in between, showcases works you've never seen before and aren't likely to see hence. Things start gearing up this... more ›

SXSW Presents returns to KLRU TV tomorrow for its third season, with four brand new episodes slated to run through the end of February. The critically acclaimed series, hosted by SXSW Film Fest Producer Matt Dentler, showcases some today's finest examples of independent filmmaking, many of which have a local emphasis -- past epiodes have featured Viva Les Amis, 24 Hours on Craigslist, and Witches in Exile. BBQ: A Texas Love Story February 6th,... more ›

It's like attending a film festival in your pajamas. And the popcorn is free. “SXSW Presents” premieres tonight on KLRU. The purpose of the show is to “share festival-circuit gems with television audiences.” Produced by SXSW, in conjunction with Austin-based company, Beef & Pie Productions, the show endeavors to bring the film festival to you. Tonight’s first installment will feature Robert Brinkmann’s film, Stephen Tobolowsky’s Birthday Party. The film is a performance-based documentary that... more ›

Peter Carey’s latest novel, Theft: A Love Story, is occasionally clever, often pretentious, and ultimately unsatisfying. A mish-mash of genres---Hitchcockian how-done-it, art-world satire, high-brow drama---the novel never lives up to its potential. more ›

Oh those beautiful and melancholy French people. They have to go and make a bittersweet love story where everyone sings all the time and yet not one song is hummable. Jacque Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is a film opera with no great musical numbers to try and recreate in your living room when no one else is home. In other words, there's no I Feel Pretty or How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria or All That Jazz. We aren't even certain if you can call Catherine Deneuve's voice good. But there it is. Heartbreaking men and women and their umbrellas singing about lust, love, loss and children named François or Françoise. Happiness is fleeting. Beauty is all around us, intermingled with the ugliness of war and classism and broken dreams. Our significant other thinks it is the most romantic movie ever made (has he not seen Love Story?). Whatever. It's still something to see. Something all its own. more ›