Film Flam

Maya Perez, the longtime Conference Director at the Austin Film Festival, officially sent word out today that she's left her position.

A vital presence at AFF – not to mention an all-around terrific human being with a wicked laugh and exquisite taste in film – Perez isn't changing zip codes, just career paths. In the fall, she begins a three-year fellowship at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. After nurturing so many other writers during her tenure at AFF, it's about damn time Perez got to devote herself to her own writing. A hearty congrats to her.

Maya Perez (courtesy of austinfilmfestival.com)

Perez will stay on the AFF board; taking over as as conference director will be Erin Hallagan, who's been serving as Film Competition Programmer for the past six months.

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Fantastic Fest 2012 has announced its opening night, and it's a doozy – the world premiere of Tim Burton's Frankenweenie, a stop-motion feature about a boy and his dog. The Chronicle's Marc Savlov has more to say about the film and the original 1984 short it's based on here.

'Frankenweenie'

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Indiewire recently named the "Best Indie Movies of 2012 So Far," and Bob Byington's comedy Somebody Up There Likes Me made the cut. We heartily agree and suspect by the end of the year you can just lop off that "so far." Read the Chron's interview with Byington here.

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Producer/star Mike Wilson dropped us a note to say talk up 4:20 Austin High's great run on VOD: "We just got word from our distributor that it has outperformed every other indie movie on VOD since its release." That said, this is the last weekend that Austinites and other TWC and Cox customers will be able to catch his stoner comedy on Movies on Demand. It'll still be available on Comcast for another month and on iTunes until the Internet finally breaks. Which will probably happen any day now.

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Find us here: filmflam@austinchronicle.com & @ChronKimJones