Short Cuts

South Austin's best-kept video-store secret might not be such a secret for much longer

It's the Chunkiest Dept.: The word on the street is that South Austin's best-kept video-store secret might not be such a secret for much longer. Of course we're talking about Pedazo Chunk, the funky little (and, boy, do we mean little) outfit run by Dannie Knowles and hubby, Jose, at 2101 S. First. Pedazo C's current incarnation manages to cram a veritable zombie orgy of simply kickass titles into less than 400 square feet of space, but while talking to Dannie's brother, Harry (yes, that Harry), the other afternoon, we learned that talks are under way for a possible move into a much more spacious 3,000-plus-square-foot building next door, which, when it happens, means that Dannie and Jose will finally have room to shelve the 6,000 other titles they've kept under wraps due to those pesky space issues. Of course, that also means we'll probably never leave "Short Cuts" HQ again, apart from trips to Pedazo and the occasional midnight foraging mission to Taqueria Arandas for more gooey, cheesy, guacamole goodness. So, what's so special about Pedazo Chunk (apart from the name), you ask? Let's put it this way: Thanks to them, we've spent the past three weeks watching nothing but the excruciatingly cool BBC 4 sitcom Spaced over and over and over, all because Dannie heard we were going to a private screening of Spaced creator Edgar Wright's zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead the other night and mentioned that she had copies of the first two seasons at her shop. Like Wright's feature film, his television work sparkles with clever cinematic gags and in-jokes, some of which are so far off the beaten path even we didn't get them the first time out. It's sheer, glorious geekery, to be sure, but you haven't lived until you're the only person in the room to get an obscure Sergio Leone gag in the midst of a Britwit sitcom marathon. All of this is a roundabout way to plug this wonderful neighborhood video store, which carries all the J-horror and Thai psycho killer flicks (not to mention Mexican wrestling movies) that you've read about in Video Watchdog but have never actually seen. Take our word for it, 'cause we've got a comfy couch, an all-region DVD player, and Dolby Surround 5.1, and brother, we know what we're talking about: Pedazo Chunk is "the fuckest uppest" (to quote Spaced's Tim). And soon even more so, if such a thing is possible... Dept. of Corrections: In last week's column on the recent Robert Rodriguez-Directors' Guild of America dustup, we erroneously implied that Princess of Mars co-producer Harry Knowles' status on the project was "unknown," which was just plain silly of us – Harry's very much onboard and will remain so until we all get to Barsoom and beyond. And, duh, there are 11 volumes in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars series, not the 12 we reported. Sorry – "Short Cuts" never was much good with them there number thingees.

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KEYWORDS FOR THIS STORY

Princess of Mars, Directors' Guild of America, Robert Rodriguez, Pedazo Chunk, Dannie Knowles, Jose Pedazo, Edgar Wright, Spaced, Shaun of the Dead

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