When the lights came up on this program – introduced as unusually heavy on the comedy – an audience member asked if she’d misheard the intro. Let’s just say the humor found in the (intentionally) humorous shorts was not of the ha-ha variety, more like grins generated by the dark mundanity of dysfunctionality. As in an unfulfilled woman’s ill-fated attempt to right herself by going into therapy with a therapist crazier than she is ("Countertransference"), or an unmarried twentysomething’s attempt to please his aging and out-of-it mom by faking a date ("Winter Lilacs"), or director Amylee Belotti’s hilarious, quick and dirty road map to her malfunctioning nuclear family ("Hi Mom"). Then there was "Cochran"'s droll portrait of a moribund working stiff whose life takes a grotesque turn after a serious injury and "That's My Majesty," a silent film about a princess who comes to the Big Apple to crown her people’s new queen. Getting the picture?

Monday, March 16, 1:30pm, Alamo South Lamar; Wednesday, March 18, 11am, Alamo South Lamar

We first meet Robert King in 1993, he's a precocious 23-year-old, for whom the biggest problem in war-torn Sarajevo is his inability to sell his news photos. From this auspicious start, King develops into one of the world's premiere war photogs; his graphic work (and it is graphic) in warzones like Albania, Rwanda, and Kosovo graces international newspapers and magazines. But while his lens brings clarity to chaos, the conflict within King still writhes. Assembled from nerve-rattling documentary footage spanning back 15 years, director Richard Parry (who shot much of the Sarajevo footage) reveals a moving, haunting, and blackly comic window into the dark heart of human conflict, both internal and external. Or "post traumatic stress syndrome on acid," as King calls it. "The wars didn't fuck me up – I was fucked up before I even went," he says. "That's why I was so good at it."

Monday, March 16, 12pm, Alamo Ritz; Wednesday, March 18, 4:30pm, ACC

Alan Kohl's Roadsworth: Crossing the Line is the story of what happens when Peter Gibson, an unassuming waiter-by-day/street-artist-by-night, becomes a political lightning rod for age-old debates over what constitutes art and how “public” public space really is. Gibson, aka Goldsworth, has an affinity for using stencils and spray paint to cover the screetscapes of Montreal in clever visual punch lines (a stenciled owl resting on the shadow of an actual light pole, the yellow line down the middle of a road transformed into a zipper). When he gets caught and charged with 53 counts of “mischief,” fans come out of the woodwork, and suddenly Gibson is a European art-world darling. Ostensibly about the political maelstrom surrounding Gibson as his hearing approaches (will he fight the charges or “sell out”?), the heart and humor of this film lie in Gibson’s journey as a budding artist and unwitting star. Everyone expects something of Goldsworth; the question becomes, what does the understated waiter – accustomed to exploring his raw talent and wry sense of humor in solitude in the dark of night – expect of himself?

Monday, March 16, 10pm, Hideout Theatre

Here's an anthology of, yes, short animated films – some of them in familiar cartoon style, some stop-motion works, some a sequential flurry of complex paintings. The subjects match the compositional diversity, providing narratives like Felix Dufour-Laperrire's gentle and texturally dense "Rosa Rosa," about a pair of lovers making a home together in the midst of a war-torn city; Laurie Hill's "Photograph of Jesus," in which the strange requests made of an historical photography archive are vividly realized; local man Lance Myers' "Here's the Stapler If You Need It," a kooky and ultimately bloody tale involving the paper cutter at a copyshop; and the incredible claymation mindfuck called "Trepan Hole," a wildly inventive choreography of clay, color, and figures in a landscape as otherworldly and simultaneously familiar as the furrows deep within your own brain. The collection's well worth viewing – multiple times, if you skip the SXSWClick winner "Haunted House." Tuesday, March 17, 11am, Alamo South Lamar; Wednesday, March 18, 1:30pm, Alamo South Lamar

Can you say, "train wreck"? Friday night's Larry King Live resounded with the crash of metal when actor Stephen Baldwin took on Texas' own Liberpublican U.S. Rep. Ron Paul and the subject of marijuana legalization. Baldwin -- who claimed cred on the issue because of his parts in movies Half Baked and Bio-Dome -- said he was bringing the "faith-based, conservative perspective" to the question. (Born again Baldwin runs the Breakthrough Ministry and has dubbed his preachin' self, Stevie B.) "It's a very simple reality: Marijuana leads to doing worse things," Baldwin told Joy Behar, who was filling in for Larry (who, apparently, chose a really good night to be off). "That's just a fact," Baldwin continued. "When you smoke marijuana at a young age, it will usually lead to alcohol abuse and harder drugs."

We have too much cool stuff. In fact, we have so much that, as the late George Carlin noted, "if we didn't have so much stuff we wouldn't need a house, 'cause that's all a house really is: a place to put our stuff." The blame for ravening, omnivorous consumerism and the ties that have bound it to the once-American and now-Global Dream can be laid before various entities: Madison Avenue, Capitalism, and the ever-popular Joneses, of Next Door, Anytown, USA. But what is it that drives us to purchase that tenth iteration of a potato peeler when our kitchen drawers are already crammed full of perfectly functional (if a tad blunt, or dinged) peelers, graters, and, god help us, sharkily serrated grapefruit spoons? Seriously: Enough stuff, already.

OK, so that nine or so hours we just spent online on thousands of MySpace queer band pages trying to cull this list for THE PEOPLE could have been condensed down to the 30 seconds or so it took for that email that Koonce just sent out, but either way, the GayBiGayGay line-up is here! Without further ado: GAYBIGAYGAY Sunday, March 22 1-1:20 Agent Ribbons
1:30-1:50 Dangerous Ponies
2-2:20 Polka Dotdotdot
2:30-2:55 Gretchen Phillips
3:05-3:15 Christeene
3:25-3:50 Butch County
4-4:20 Dave End
4:30-4:50 Storm Shelter
5-5:25 Purple Rhinestone Eagle
5:35-6 Maple Rabbit (maybe later for projection reasons)
6:10-6:35 Excuses for Skipping
6:45-7:10 Romanteek
7:20-7:45 Big Freedia (Sissy Bounce) Watch this space over the next few days for even more details.

A few years ago, a fellow journalist mused that the difference between a war reporter and a war photographer was that writers try to keep their heads down. Photographers want to see the incoming fire. Blood Trail director Richard Parry probably knows about that. In the Q&A after his documentary's US debut at the SXSW Film Festival on Friday, his fellow war photographer (and the film's subject) Robert King mentioned that Parry once lost a camera when it took a bullet. With the cameras that didn't get shot, he produced a cinematic kin to war photographer Anthony Loyd's groundbreaking autobiography My War Gone By, I Miss It So. It could also have served as an obituary for either himself or King. Taking pictures doesn't make you bulletproof, and the closing credits name eight reporters, all friends and colleagues, who died in the 15 years since the project began. King, who described himself as "the victim of Blood Trail, not the subject," explained, "When we met, it was eight minutes and it was for a short news piece." Over the years, as the two crossed paths in some of the world's bloodiest conflicts, Parry got more and more footage of King.

Although narrative competition film Artois the Goat – a nutty, spry, altogether charming picture about love and artisanal cheese-making – very much stands on its own merits, the fact that it was made by fresh-faced UT grads for a pittance of money certainly sweetens the story. Brothers Cliff and Kyle Bogart took the stage at the Alamo Ritz this afternoon for a post-premiere Q&A, surrounded by cast and crew and practically pelted with love from an enthusiastic audience. Brian Satterwhite’s terrific, Frenchie-inflected original score received special applause, as did the cast, which was plucked from UT’s MFA acting program. Questions were fielded about the film’s many allusions (which ran the gamut from All That Heaven Allows to The Never-Ending Story) and the source name for the titular goat – Kyle was inspired by the beer he used to sling at the Alamo Drafthouse as a server. We suggest Stella Artois give the Bogarts a call – and maybe a fat check for their next production.

Artois the Goat screens again Monday, March 16, 5pm, at the Alamo South Lamar, and Friday, March 20, 7pm, at the Alamo Ritz.