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Picture in Picture
Welcome to the new Chronicle blogs! Stay tuned all this week as we roll out exciting new blog features.

It's all about attitude from here on out
Photo courtesy of UT

Longhorns, It's Time for Your Close-Up 

 Fri Nov 6, 12:41pm
A few days after the Texas Longhorns defense, if not its offense, manhandled Oklahoma State 41-14, I went to the set of the television show The Deep End, an ABC lawyer drama/comedy shooting in Dallas, and it clicked for me: it’s all about attitude from here on out.
 

This Week's Waste of Time 

 Thu Nov 5, 1:21pm
Oh, it's a season thick with time wastability. The Independent Games Festival – set to pop off in March of next year in San Francisco – announced the entrants in the competition category. That means a record 306 video games by indie developers just waiting to be played. This is going to take a few weeks people.
 

AFF Announces Audience Award Winners 

 Thu Nov 5, 11:47am
In what is presumably its last order of business for the 2009 fest, the Austin Film Festival just announced its audience award winners. The envelopes, please...
 

Whatever You Do, Don't Panic 

 Fri Oct 30, 12:20pm
As a promotional tie-in to the Dec. 4 theatrical release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles, Welles' famous, panic-inducing original radio broadcast of War of the Worlds will be streamed on the internets today at 7pm.
 

Austin Film Festival: 'La MISSION' 

 Thu Oct 29, 5:51pm
Benjamin Bratt plays a reformed convict and recovering alcoholic named Che in this film written and directed by his brother Peter Bratt.
 

This Week's Waste of Time 

 Thu Oct 29, 3:08pm
This week's free online game asks the question, what if you had to play the standard run-and-jump video game without realtime visual feedback? Bored already? It's actually more fun than you think. It's more fun than I thought anyway. Does it help that this games title is Rabbit Wants Cake. Cute, right?
 

Austin Film Festival: A 'Precious' Experience 

 Thu Oct 29, 1:56am
The first time I picked up Sapphire’s Push, I had to abandon it. The book is raw and I was too shaken to stay with the story of an overweight, abused, African American teenager with the painfully ironic name Claireece Precious Jones.
 

A Winn-Winn Situation 

 Mon Oct 26, 5:12pm
Tracking down Jack Rebney, that reluctant viral video hero, became something of a passion project for filmmaker Ben Steinbauer, who years ago first saw the infamous leaked outtakes of Rebney's foul-mouthed meltdown on a Winnebago video shoot and has been obsessed ever since. Funny thing about passion projects, though: They don't pay for themselves.
 

Austin Film Festival: 'Tenure' 

 Mon Oct 26, 8:24am
Stuck in a third rate college where he really has no interest in being, Professor Charlie Thurber (Luke Wilson) is doing his best to win the tenure race.
 

Austin Film Festival: 'My Run' 

 Sun Oct 25, 8:13pm
After losing a beloved spouse, it surely must be crushing to find the will to keep going, and to keep raising your family. But Minnesotan Terry Hitchcock did keep going – about 25-30 miles a day, in fact.
 

Austin Film Festival: 'Houston We Have a Problem' 

 Sun Oct 25, 6:00pm
It can be difficult to distinguish between bullshit and wisdom when oil men are talking. That's because, as Houston We Have a Problem makes clear, they're full of both.
 

Austin Film Festival: 'Happy Ending' 

 Sun Oct 25, 4:46pm
Happy Ending is as kawaii -- cute -- as one of Takashi Murakami's manga-derived sculptures, and like Murakami's fire engine-apple red, metal-flake paint gorgeousities, there's a bubble gum heart beating at the center of this supersaturated Charms Blo-Pop of a movie. That heart poses a very serious question, though: To love or not to love?
 

Austin Film Festival: 'Tobruk' 

 Sun Oct 25, 2:45pm
Although the story of the brutal World War II battle of Tobruk has been told on film several times, it has never been told from quite this perspective.
 

Austin Film Festival: 'Downtown Calling' 

 Sat Oct 24, 11:55pm
When the New York’s Daily News famously blared “Ford to City: Drop Dead” on its front page in 1975, the paper was only making things official.
 

Austin Film Festival: Film & Screenwriting Awards Announced 

 Sat Oct 24, 10:03pm
The Austin Film Festival announced its filmmaking jury awards today, which included a Special Jury Recognition for Independent Filmmaking for Thor at the Bus Stop (curiously not the "Awesomest Title Combining a Norse God With Public Transport" it had been picked to win).

Winners after the jump...

 

Technical issues and an understandably irate filmmaker mar what should have been a triumphant hometown premiere of 'Harmony and Me'
John Anderson

Austin Film Festival: Awkwardness, Onscreen and Off 

 Sat Oct 24, 3:25pm
Austin-made comedy Harmony and Me finally got its Austin premiere last night, and it played great to the packed audience at the Texas Spirit Theater. Where it didn’t play so great? Up on the screen.
 

Austin Film Festival: 'Simmons On Vinyl' 

 Fri Oct 23, 4:23pm
Let it never be said that director Mark Potts doesn't know his way around a massively accurate and devastatingly comedic pop-cultural metaphor.
 

Austin Film Festival: 'Godspeed' 

 Thu Oct 22, 5:23pm
It's always a relief to kick off a festival (any festival) with a seriously great film, and this tautly wound and even more tightly paced mini-epic of love, loss, and redemption deep in the heart of God's country (aka Alaska) is nothing if not awe-inspiring.
 

Austin Film Festival: 'Calvin Marshall' 

 Thu Oct 22, 4:24pm
Apparently, Alex Frost has the face of a young man in need of deflowering; Calvin Marshall marks the actor’s second virginal role to play in this year’s AFF lineup (see also The Vicious Kind). As CM's titular lead, Frost plays a relentlessly decent guy who wants only to play shortstop for his junior college baseball team.
 

This Week's Waste of Time 

 Thu Oct 22, 11:17am
Still slightly hungover from our SXSW/Chronicle gaming extravaganza last Thursday, I'm going to attempt to make up for lost time with two wastes of time this week. One online game has an old-school vibe and the other is more timely. But not too timely.
 

SXSW Announces First Speakers 

 Wed Oct 14, 3:40pm
So what does an irreverent former Austinite and underground comic artist have in common with an Oscar-winning Argentine composers who could water a lawn or two from the tears shed to his music? Four little letters: SXSW.
 

Game On Austin Rock Band Tournament Rules! 

 Tue Oct 13, 2:59pm
The Game On Austin event this Thursday, Oct 15, is meant to be a friendly affair, but we just can't help ourselves and want to include a competitive element for a few select guests. We're signing up 16 competitors to test their metal in a head to head Rock Band tournament!
 

Watching tape, both football and funny
Photo courtesy of UT

Longhorn Football Season Is a Sitcom in the Making 

 Fri Oct 9, 1:14pm
Like coach Mack Brown, I spent the Longhorns’ bye week watching tape. My TiVo was chock-full of new sitcoms to evaluate. Let’s put them to the tape and see how the season, both football and funny, stacks up:
 

Game On Austin 

 Thu Oct 8, 5:16pm
In case you missed the banner likely hovering above this very blog post, the Chronicle and ScreenBurn at SXSW are hosting a gaming event (Thusday, Oct. 15) to bring developers and gamers together. The two main ingredients are beer (for those of age) and video games, but there are enough components to spice up the recipe. Did I mention it's free?
 

This Week's Waste of Time 

 Thu Oct 8, 12:08pm
So, as you may have noticed, there was no free online game recommendation last week. Even bloggers have to take a vacation once and a while. This week we have another game from Edmund McMillen, the maker of our last weekly waste of time and all-around free-gaming god. This week is the Little Prince inspired Aether.
 


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Photo courtesy of the Houston Texans
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