Short Cuts

It's an Alamo Drafthouse World -- You Just Live in It Dept.: Sometimes I feel like a broken record declaring, time and again, how great cinephiles have it here in Austin, but the truth is it's going to get even better this summer, when Alamo Drafthouse owners Tim and Karrie League unveil Alamo Version 3.0 in their ever-expanding global domination scheme ("You mean the 75-Year Plan," says Tim League). The new location will be housed in the former Lake Creek Festival Theatre on 183 North near Cedar Park in the Lake Creek Festival Mall and will be called the Alamo Drafthouse North (the Alamo currently bearing that name, in the Village Shopping Center on Anderson Lane, will be rechristened the Alamo Drafthouse Village). "The owner of the Lake Creek shopping center dropped by our Village location seven months ago and tried to sell us on the idea of opening a theatre in Lake Creek, and at the time we weren't terribly interested," explains League. "In the interim, however, we've hired more people, and we feel more comfortable adding another project. So we've been slowly percolating negotiations for a long time now, waiting to make sure everything's perfect." The Lake Creek location -- formerly a Presidio, then Act III, then Regal -- has, according to League, splendid plumbing facilities and delightful electrical wiring, but little else since the interior has been stripped of anything remotely resembling a theatre, requiring the Leagues to design the interior from the ground up. Expect, as always, the unexpected (and lots of good food and beer, that Alamo trademark). League says the new Alamo will be presenting mostly first-run features with scattered eclectic programming, depending on the location's demographics, which, as League notes, is made up of more families and less Dario Argento and Jess Franco fans. "I'm probably the least family-conscious guy there is, but our programming is certainly going to reflect what the neighborhood wants. That area around Highway 183 is such a hellhole, traffic-wise, that people go up there who live up there and just never come back down to Austin. But obviously, there's a big community up there for us to serve." Next week: Austin drive-in theatre rumors revealed! (Maybe.)