picture in picture

Our love for X-Men was unceremoniously squashed by Brett Ratner's crap trilogy capper X-Men: The Last Stand, but as far as we can tell, the Ratman doesn't have anything to do with the new stand-alone feature X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It doesn't open in theatres until May 1, but Austin has a shot at hosting the premiere locally. Cities all over the country are vying for the rights (or so the 20th Century Fox press release tells us). Austin was right in the thick of the battle for a while there, but we've since dropped to #5. Would it help if we mentioned Taylor Kitsch (Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights) is in the film? How about if we said that around noon on Wednesday, them's in the downtown and campus areas are urged to look to the sky, where there will be a message from Hugh Jackman? (We suspect it'll be along the lines of, "Get your shit together and vote, Austin. God knows I don't want to have to premiere this thing in Hastings, Nebraska" – maybe slightly abbreviated to fit on a banner trailing a plane, though). You can vote at a special mobile voting station at 7-Eleven (1814 Guadalupe) on Thursday. Or vote online here. Polls close this Friday. Read More | Comment »

Tickets are still available for tomorrow night’s world premiere of One Peace at a Time, Turk Pipkin’s followup to his doc Nobelity, which tracked down nine Nobel laureates to discuss the world’s biggest problems. One Peace at a Time is more answer-oriented, however; according to the film’s website, “While Nobelity deals with global problems, One Peace at a Time will focus on specific solutions. The goal is to create a virtual roadmap to a better future.” You can view the opening sequence (featuring the thematically apropriate Dylan song “Everything is Broken”) as well as a Willie Nelson P.S.A. for the picture up on The Nobelity blog. The screening takes place at the Paramount Theatre on Tuesday, April 14 at 8pm. Doors open at 7pm for live music by John Pointer and food from El Chilito, Mama Fu’s, and Amy’s Ice Cream. An afterparty follows at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. For more info, go here. Read More | Comment »

After we learned of the disturbing murder of beloved Austin character actor Lou Perryman last week, we solicited a few remembrances from several people who knew Lou best. First to respond was Watchmaker Films' founder and all-around filmmaker Mark Rance. Here's what he had to say about the late, great Lou: "Lou Perryman was one of the most generous men I have even known. He was generous to his friends and former-friends and not so good friends alike. I met Lou through Eagle Pennell back in 1980 working on Doug Holloway’s Fast Money. I had had just seen him in Eagle’s The Whole Shootin' Match, which was at the Berlin Film Festival that year. Lou and I stayed in touch off and on through the years, but really got back in touch when Eagle Pennell died in 2002. Read More | Comment »

Did last night really happen or was it just some mass geek hallucination? Were you there? Did you have a Spockgasm, too? Is the Alamo Drafthouse the coolest place in the universe, or what? (Seriously. It's official. The Alamo Drafthouse is the Coolest Place In the Universe.) When the Alamo announced recently that they'd be presenting a free screening of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, followed by a ten-minute clip from the opening of J.J. Abrams forthcoming Star Trek franchise re-boot, Trekkers and laypeople alike rejoiced. And why not? Apart from being a supercool sci-fi classic featuring space battles galore, Ricardo Montalban's rich, Corinthian pecs, and a story line ripped straight from the pages of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, it's also flat-out one of the greatest vengeance movies ever made. Quentin Tarantino, no stranger to the vendetta genre himself, proclaimed it so at his last Alamo appearance at the original Alamo Drafthouse on Fourth and Colorado. And we agree: Khan is a textbook example of badass cinema. So it was to an SRO packed house that Alamo founder Tim League introduced the film and the surprise arrival of the Abrams-Trek's screenwriters, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who duly noted that they were supposed to be at their own premiere down in Sydney, Australia, but had declined in favor of watching Khan-plus with the rabidly appreciative Alamo crowd. Read More | Comment »

The Alamo Ritz will screen selections tomorrow from the second annual G.I. Joe Fest, a stop-motion animation festival staring G.I Joes and other similarly sized action figures. In last year’s touring selections, Snake Eyes broke his life of silence and regaled partygoers at an impromptu dance party, while in another short a hodge-podge of super heroes and Joes found new uses for their coveted kung fu grip. The films screening tomorrow are special selections and award-winning submissions from the 2008 animation festival, originally founded by Gio Toninelo of the online series Pond Patrol. The screening will also include a collection of international shorts and a special preview of Austin-based animators Paul Hanley and Kieran Healy’s upcoming feature-length animated film. Gio Toninelo started the animation festival as a way to commemorate the conclusion of his online drama, Pond Patrol — a series of blogs, letters, and photographs cataloging the adventures of Corporal John U. Harris and his reconnaissance team, Pond Patrol Third Force Recon, as they surveyed the dangerously mutated Mulberry Ridge Pond (also known as the small turtle pond in Toninelo’s backyard.) Festival organizers are now accepting submissions in three categories (Stop-motion 3¾” Action Figures, Stop-motion 8” Action Figures, and Stop-motion 12” Action Figures) for the 3rd annual festival, the winners of which will tour in 2010. Deadline is July 20, 2009. For those making it out to Wednesday-night screening: costumes are encouraged. And I wouldn’t worry about anyone judging you for owning an adult-sized Cobra Commander costume. You’ll be among friends. Read More | Comment »

What's more fun than watching legendarily insane snowboard/skateboarder Dave England and former Johnny Knoxville accoutrement make an omelette out of his own vomit on MTV's Jackass? Watching him sucker two foolhardy audience members at his Sunday night Alamo Ritz appearance into doing Tequila death shots with him onstage. Rad, dude! "Tequila Death Shots?" we hear you cry, "That sounds like more fun than when he pooped his pants on Jackass!" Well, duh. Less stank, more, um, excrutiatingly pain, and with the added entertainment value of England's complete and utter wasted-nicity. So what goes into these self-inflicted, sado-masochisitic, so-called Death Shots (a Bam Margera invention if ever there was one)? Ha! Ingeniousness and a high tolerance for ocular and nasal agony: Step one: Get a glassful of Tequila rimmed with kosher salt and a lime-wedge. Step two: In rapid succession, squeeze the lime juice into your eyeball (either one will do, but try to hit the one you use the least), snort the salt off the rim of the glass, and slam that Tequila down the hatch like you were dying of dehydration in the desert and it was, like, magic cactus nectar or something equally radical! Step three: (Also in rapid succession, or combine for even more entertainment value.) Scream in agony, double over in horrific, gut-churning agony, fall to ground and writhe, pray to an unresponsive god for a quick death. Fun right? Dude. Totally. F**king. Awesome. -ly. Idiotic. On a lighter, presumably less alcohol-fueled note, England stopped by the Austin School of Film earlier in the day and taught some kids how to make a short film in two hours with nothing but their own imaginations and a f**kload of sweet HD gear (courtesy of the ASF's Director of Awesome Shizznat and resident hottie/longtime England pal Jennifer Brandon). Check it out! FINDERS KEEPERS- Austin School of Film from Austin School of Film on Vimeo. Read More | Comment »

François Truffaut died young, with his heart on his sleeve, and his best films still exude that youth from every angle. It's a precocious sort of youth, wise and heartachey and gracefully melacholic, yet still vital and ready to fight for l'amour, come what may. Auteur theory or not, François Truffaut's often bleak world view never fully hardened into anything approaching the sensual cynicism of his nouvelle vague contemporary Jean-Luc Godard. Watching The 400 Blows, Jules and Jim, or The Last Metro (his final truly outstanding film) remains an emotionally embracive experience. Watching Godard's anything keeps on feeling abrasive, although if you're lucky it's the provocative, violent abrading of politicized sensuality: Pierrot's heart makes him le fou, and the Pope hated Hail Mary. Not so with Truffaut, or at least not so often. The Last Metro, which was nominated for an Oscar (it lost to Vladimir Menshov's Moscow Does Not Believe In Tears if you can believe it) and swept the French Césars, is a riot of big time sensuality, and Criterion's impeccable dual-DVD release, fully restored from a high definition digital transfer looks and sounds impeccable. Read More | Comment »

Sad news for fans of Austin film and stage: The body of local actor Lou Perryman was discovered in his home on Thursday by Austin police, working off of information provided by a man who is now being held in custody. According to News 8 Austin, 36-year-old Seth Christopher Tatum turned himself in Thursday morning, confessing to attacking Perryman and also stealing his car: "He basically made the statement that, 'By the way, that's a stolen car, and I'm pretty sure I killed the owner of the car,'" Sgt. Joseph Chacon said. "We found out the owner of the car, went to address on a 'check welfare' call. That's where we found Mr. Perryman." Perryman is perhaps best known for his work with Eagle Pennell in the films The Whole Shootin' Match (1978) and Last Night at the Alamo (1983), although he continued to work steadily in TV and film. He was also a member of the Austin theatre company Big State Productions and took part in their now-legendary production In the West. More details as they come in. And here's Perryman talking to the Chronicle in 2007 with his Shootin' Match costar Sonny Carl Davis on the occasion of the film's DVD release by Watchmaker Films. Read More | Comment »

It's one thing to laugh and groan and gag at the many filthy antics of the jackass crew from the relative safety of your couch. It's comedy, right? But what about when you take away the divider, between antic and audience? What if one of the original jackasses was right there – right in front of you – unleashing his special brand of jackassery in real time and in spitting distance? Is it still comedy? Or is it performance art? Or simply an invitation to get puked on? Actually, Dave England is known more as the poo guy in the crew (although he does a pretty neat trick involving the regurgitated raw contents of an omelette – bon appetit!). He also knows something about digital filmmaking and viral marketing, which is why he'll be teaching a workshop on those very subjects at the Austin School of Film on Sunday afternoon (4/5). Then later that night, the so-called Lord Supreme of Self-Destruction will take the stage at the Alamo Ritz to screen some of his very favorite moments in masochism from the jackass franchise. After that... well, after that, we're promised "Live Self-Destruction." Details are fuzzy, but you can bet it won't be pretty. On the other hand, it'll probably be pretty fucking funny. Tickets are still available. Go here for the workshop and here for the Alamo event. Read More | Comment »

Happy birthday, Serge. Gitanes: Smoke 'em if you've got 'em. Read More | Comment »

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the publication of Billy Lee Brammer's The Gay Place, the Chronicle's own Michael Ventura wrote this: "It is still the finest novel written by a Texan, and with Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men it gracefully holds its place as one of the two great political novels in American literature." And on the occasion of what would have been the 80th birthday of Brammer, who died in 1978, ACC's annual Carnival ah! program will feature a panel called Austin in the '50s: The Political and Literary Landscapes of Billy Lee Brammer. The panel kicks off with the premiere screening of "The Flea Circus," a short film based on an excerpt from The Gay Place, directed and produced by his daughters Shelby and Sidney Brammer. Next up is a panel discussion, and if you know the first thing about Texas letters, you know the lineup is an impressive one: Longtime Texas Monthly columnist (and one of Brammer's Mad Dog pals) Gary Cartwright; Brammer's first wife, Nadine Eckhardt, whose memoir Duchess of Palms was just published by UT Press; legendary curmudgeon Don Graham, who's perhaps the leading authority on Texas literature; Kaye Northcott, former editor of The Texas Observer; Texas Monthly senior editor Jan Reid (The Bullet Meant for Me); and former state legislator A.R. "Babe" Schwartz, who helped lead the Killer Bees in its Senate quorum-busting move in 1979. The Chron's Film News columnist Joe O'Connell will moderate. The event is free and open to the public. It takes place this Friday, April 3, at 5pm on the Mainstage Theatre, 2nd floor of the Rio Grande Campus of Austin Community College (1212 Rio Grande). Refreshments and birthday cake in the lobby post-panel. Read More | Comment »

So the loudest part of SXSW has arrived in full force with the music component unfurling. But the film festival is still here as well, and could teach these guitar-wielding whipper-snappers a thing or too about shocking the public. What could be more rock and roll than a film star, stark naked, on all fours, being stroked by strangers and urinating in the street? OK, so the stars of Artois the Goat had a very good excuse for such behavior when they turned up for the film's world premiere last Sunday: They are goats. Artois the Goat has its final SXSW screening tonight, March 20, at the Alamo Ritz at 7pm. Read More | 1 Comment »

A new screen day and time has been added for The Big Squeeze, Austin filmmaker Hector Galan's newest documentary about the annual accordion festival. Check it out Friday, 3:30pm, at the Paramount Theater. Read More | Comment »

It was a thrill to catch the world premiere of The Promised Land: A Swamp Pop Journey, about Louisiana supergroup L'il Band o Gold at the Alamo last night. At the film's conclusion the filmmaker and members of the band got up to answer questions. At one point the audience asked the subjects in attendance for a song: [video-1] "What key ya in man, whisKey?" And yes, that's LBoG founder C.C. Adcock against the backdrop. The film shows one more time: Tomorrow, Thursday, March 19, 3pm at the Austin Convention Center. Read More | Comment »

Paul Solet, director and screenwriter of the post-natal splatterpunk shocker Grace, obviously knows what he want an audience to take home with them after seeing his film: nightmares. And not just any nightmares, either, but the pre-partum sort that can derail an impressionable couple's decision to procreate, or trust a midwife, and which pretty much calls into question the whole of the American birthing process in all its gory glory. Jordan Ladd is Madeline Matheson, an upper middle class wife with an upper middle class husband, Michael (Stephen Park) who, after years of trying, finally conceives. Having already determined to usher her little miracle into the world with the assistance of M.D.'d midwife Patricia (Samantha Ferris), Madeline's once-upon-a-time Univeristy mentor-cum-lover, the expectant mom foresees nothing but the joy of impending motherfun. Nevermind that her shrewish mother-in-law Vivian (Gabrielle Rose) is violently opposed to this non-traditional route, or that her husband has his own, vague, misgivings. No one ever said childbirth was ever anything other than painful, bloody, and -- to men, at least -- often downright horrific. The point is moot, however, as a tragic automobile accident leaves both Michael and his wife's in utero offspring dead on arrival. Madeline survives, though, and amidst the madness of the hospital's natal-trauma unit, she makes the ultimately unwise decision to birth the stillborn tot at Vivian's holistic midwife center. There, the dead infant -- christened Grace -- miraculously returns to cooing, drooling life, to the hysterical delight of its mother. Slow-burning horror ensues. Read More | Comment »

Alison, Rose, and Hetty – 87, 101, and 102 years old respectively – may be ready to “go to sleep for good,” as Hetty puts it, but in the meantime they’re quite adept at entertaining themselves wholeheartedly. As such, they make particularly engaging subjects for Jocelyn Cammack's candid look at life’s final chapter. As residents of a North London assisted living facility, their days are filled with diversions both ordinary (tai chi, crossword puzzles) and extraordinary (anti-war protests). Against this backdrop, they share their views on Tony Blair, religious fanaticism, men, sex, and the quantum soup, all the while taking shots at the vagaries of old age: “I have such disgusting eating habits,” laments Rose. “I either put nothing into my mouth or drop it on the floor, and it’s really quite revolting.” There’s nothing comfortable about the topic of aging, and on screen, it’s generally confined to comedic vehicles of the Grumpy Old Men variety. That’s why this lovely film is a rare treat – and a testament to the power of unflinching documentary-making to be both uncomfortable and comforting at the same time. Wednesday, March 18, 4:30pm, Alamo South Lamar Read More | Comment »

SXSW isn't a marathon, my colleague Kate X Messer recently joked: It's a death march. As the official print sponsor of the festival, the Chronicle gets hit by the South by tsunami around early February, and we don't come up for air until the end of March. But just when we think we're about to collapse from the strain and the sensory overload, along comes that blessed pick-me-up, the Austin Chronicle's SXSW Film Bash. Last night's party at La Zona Rosa, which featured Austin band the Black and White Years, was a blast. Don't believe us? Click on the photo for our gallery of smiling, happy, sloshy faces. Read More | Comment »

"I always wanted to make a movie about bugs," producer/director Jessica Oreck explained after the first SXSW Film Festival screening of her debut documentary Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo on Sunday. Growing up in Louisiana and Colorado ("There's less bugs in Colorado," she lamented), "My parents say that before I could walk, I was always catching cockroaches." These days, her collection includes spiders, millipedes, praying mantises, stick insects, hissing cockroaches and even a rhinoceros beetle. Since Japanese culture shares her obsession with everything with six, eight, or 750 legs, this film was "this perfect project," especially since it allowed her to meet noted author, philosopher, and fellow entomologist Dr. Takeshi Yoro. The only downside was that Japan has so many gorgeous insects. She admitted to wondering, "Everything, I'd say, can I smuggle this back?" Fortunately, she added, cameraman Sean Williams talked her round. So where did the title come from? Williams gave the credit to a poet friend of theirs. When they told him about their film about bugs in Japan, "he presumed it was a monster movie." Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo screens again Tuesday, March 17, 12pm and Saturday, March 21, 3pm, at the Alamo Ritz. Read More | Comment »

There's not much that'll get my tired carcass out to midnight screenings anymore, however last night's SXSW screening of Sam Raimi's work-in-progress print of his new horror film Drag Me to Hell is definitely one of those things. Fans of Darkman and his Evil Dead films have been seriously geeking out over the great director's return (after a near-20 year absence) to the horror genre that kicked his career into gear. Not that movies such as the Spider-Man trilogy and A Simple Plan are chopped liver, nor are most of his other producing and writing credits – but horror fans have longed for the kind of Raimi film that might slice body parts into literal chopped livers, and then maybe dice ’em into mincemeat. The wait is almost over. Raimi definitely delivers the goods with Drag Me to Hell, which is currently scheduled to be released in late May. The story is Read More | Comment »

Austin filmmaker Michael Orion Scott already premiered Over the Hills and Far Away, his moving documentary about autism and its impact on a local family, at the Sundance Film Festival in January, which is when we profiled him in our pages. Here's what Marc Savlov had to say about the film: "Over the Hills and Far Away is a documentary that opens a door to new perceptions of what it means to be autistic, what it means to be the parents of an autistic child, and what Western medical practice too often fails to include in its prescription for wellness of all kinds: the power of the spirit." Go here to read the Chron's interview with Scott. Over the Hills and Far Away screens at SXSW Film tomorrow (March 17), 11am, at the Paramount; Thursday, March 19, 1:30pm, at the Alamo South Lamar; and Friday, March 20, 7pm, at the Austin Convention Center. Read More | Comment »