Just across the river from downtown, the broad expanse of South Congress Avenue is the main artery of a dynamic city neighborhood and a microcosm of what we like best about Austin

BY VIRGINIA B. WOOD

Food-o-File

Small farmers, ranchers, horse owners, and backyard livestock hobbyists have a problem with the National Animal Identification System.

BY VIRGINIA B. WOOD

music

TCB

A brief guide to SXSW panels and interviews. Plus Sigur Rós, Single Frame, or Van Morrison: Who's weirder?

BY CHRISTOPHER GRAY

SXSW Records

SXSW INTERACTIVE

South by Southwest Interactive 06

March 10-14, Austin Convention Center

BY SHAWN BADGLEY

Reciprocal Demand

Ladies, what has the gaming business done for you, lately?

BY JAMES RENOVITCH

The Consequences of Getting Personal

BlogHer founders Elisa Camahort, Jory Des Jardins, and Lisa Stone

BY MARRIT INGMAN

Don't Fear the Interface

Web designers are wielding the coolest new tools for the greater good

BY KATE X MESSER

The New Reliable

With Dooce.com, pro blogger and crazy Utah housewife Heather Armstrong stands by her brand

BY MARRIT INGMAN

Come in From the Old

Warming up to folksonomies, recommendation systems, and glocalized environments

BY JOSH ROSENBLATT

We asked some of the loudest, clearest, and leading voices in Cyberspace why they're coming to SXSW Interactive, what they bring to the proceedings, and who they want to encounter. Here are their responses.

Redemption Song

Dick Rude on 'Let's Rock Again!' and the legacy of Joe Strummer

BY MARC SAVLOV

Felipe Cazals

Presented by the Austin Film Society and Cine Las Americas

TV Eye

News blast

BY BELINDA ACOSTA

Screens Reviews

The Best of Youth

Film Reviews

Aquamarine

Based on a young adult novel by Alice Hoffman, the film is about two best girlfriends who meet up with … a mermaid!

Dave Chappelle's Block Party

Although the film hasn't the distinctive fingerprints of Eternal Sunshine director Michel Gondry, Chappelle's party is nevertheless a fun blast of impromptu musicmaking, filmmaking, and comedy.

Doogal

A clunker if there ever was one, Doogal is so mind-numbingly incoherent that parents and children alike will stare dazedly at the movie screen wondering what the heck is going on.

Madea's Family Reunion

In this sequel to last year’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Tyler Perry ups the ante and includes Cicely Tyson and Maya Angelou in his coffee klatch.

Night Watch

Russia's highest box-office grosser (until the release of its sequel) is a stylish sci-fi thriller that's filled with adrenaline-fueled pacing, an abundance of gory effects, a death metal soundtrack, and a convoluted narrative that puts The Matrix to shame.

Running Scared

Wayne Kramer's follow-up to his crime drama The Cooler has no moral compass, and swings wildly out of control while blanketed in hyper-violent digital gore effects and a thick, black nausea of the soul.

16 Blocks

Richard Donner still has it. 16 Blocks may be a formulaic good-cops/bad-cops actioner, but it’s rarely stereotypical.

Three Days of Rain

A drama by debut filmmaker Michael Meredith is a Chekhov-inspired collection of semi-intertwined vignettes about a half-dozen or so depressed people living in Cleveland, and features an impressive cast.

arts & culture

Idea Man for the Future

Ian Cion is out to build a better world, through public art

BY RACHEL KOPER

Not Clown

Physical Plant Theater becomes the latest Austin company to get a run in New York City when it takes its darkly comic political play 'Not Clown' to Soho Rep

BY BARRY PINEO

Ballet Austin

Before revving up the jackhammers to renovate its downtown dance center, Ballet Austin is inviting the public to go Dancin' in the District

BY ROBERT FAIRES

Culture Flash!

Big honors for a local portraitist, a pianist, and two high school seniors, plus Austin Books raises $2K for First Amendment protection

BY ROBERT FAIRES

Arts Reviews

Twelfth Night

What the State Theatre Company's handsome but curiously reserved production of Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night' lacks is that liberating light-headedness of intoxication

The Shape of Things

Neil LaBute's 'The Shape of Things,' staged by a chick and a dude productions, destroys the kind of cutesy relationships usually reserved for melodramatic chick flicks

Wondrous Journey

At Conspirare's concert Wondrous Journey, the sheer pleasure that this choral ensemble's members take in singing shone through even more resplendently than usual

columns

Page Two: Altered States

The new right's ever-loosening grip on reality

BY LOUIS BLACK

Postmarks

Our readers talk back.

Letters at 3AM

When we say, "This is Nature, and this is not," we're just picking and choosing according to our ideologies, desires, and needs – in other words, a power play to make life behave as we wish. That it never does is life's answer to our machinations.