Red River's Holy Mountain and Red 7 are successful live music venues that draw big acts and regular crowds. Why, then, are the two venues in danger of closing?
The same reason that many locals complain about living in Austin: rising rent prices.
The Austin Chroniclesaysthat Holy Mountain and Red 7 "being forced to close when their leases end October 1 remains a very real possibility," because of rent increases. Monthly rent for Holy Mountain and Red 7 is currently $5,500 and $9,000 a month, respectively. However, the rent prices for the next lease term have increased to $8,000 and $14,000 a month, figures that don't include real estate taxes, insurance and maintenance costs, reports the Chronicle.
Holy Mountain opened in the former Beauty Bar space in October 2012, and Red 7 has been a fixture of the downtown music scene for nearly a decade. They are part of the Red River Cultural District, which is also home to the Mohawk, Stubb's, Cheer Up Charlies, Beerland and Red Eyed Fly.
"These are great stewards of Austin music and also good, rent-paying tenants, so we want them to stay," James Moody of Mohawk and Transmission Events told the Chronicle.
The loss of these high-profile venues would be a huge blow not only to the area, but to Austin's entire music scene.
"It's long overdue for the city to take a hard look at the risks to the larger local economy if those who made us the Live Music Capital of the World are forced to pack up their talents and head for a more hospitable environment," said Jennifer Houlihan, executive director of Austin Music People, in a statement.
Robert Pattinson and Zendaya will be seen together a lot at the movies in 2026, with mega-films like The Odyssey and Dune: Part Three coming out later in the year. But fans can get a much more intimate look at the two stars in a film that offers a unique take on relationship struggles, The Drama.
Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Pattinson) are a New York couple who are engaged to be married. After a quick-but-effective montage of their courtship, the story joins them as they are just days away from their wedding. As they get all the details like music, flowers, and food finalized, a visit to the caterer with married friends Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie) proves fateful.
A few too many drinks leads to each member of the group deciding to divulge the worst thing they’ve ever done. While each story is slightly shocking, Emma’s takes the cake, so much so that Charlie starts to question their relationship. As they get closer to the wedding date, Charlie finds it increasingly difficult to get beyond Emma’s revelation, with each real or imagined conversation threatening to derail their previously tight bond.
Written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli, the film is provocative, funny, and cringey as it tries to get to the center of human dynamics. Charlie, Rachel, and Mike have starkly different reactions to Emma’s story, and the way those play out over the course of the film provides, well, the drama. The harder Charlie tries to justify Emma’s past, the more his underlying feelings start to eat at him, causing friction not just between him and Emma, but in other parts of his life, as well.
Strangely, especially for a character played by Zendaya, Emma recedes more than expected. Her explanations for her previous actions are timid at best, and she mostly seems to be waiting for Charlie to forgive her instead of questioning why she needs forgiveness. Borgli favors the male side of the equation, and in so doing he doesn’t dig as deep into the root of the issue as he could have.
Still, the downward spiral at the center of the story has a propulsive nature to it, and each successive step proves to be both hard to watch and impossible to turn away from. It also helps that Borgli manages the tone well, keeping interactions between characters relatively light so that the film doesn’t turn into one like Marriage Story.
Pattinson, who gets to use his own British accent for once, put on an interesting performance that is much better than his last two roles in Mickey 17 and Die My Love. He has good chemistry with Zendaya, who manages to shine despite being laden with a role that doesn’t play entirely to her strengths. Haim and Athie do good work in small roles, while Hailey Grace and Hannah Gross make an impact in brief appearances.
The situation in which Emma and Charlie find themselves in The Drama is not one to be wished on anyone, but it’s presented well by Borgli, keeping tensions high for the bulk of the film. Despite the two main characters not beinggiven completely equal footing, the story finds a way to get to a satisfactory ending.
