The Year 2008 in Film, Culture, Uprising: Speculation

This week, my fellow Chronicle Film critics and I looked back at 2007 and came up with our list of the 10 best movies of the year. After many long days and nights spent deliberating, arguing, and soul-searching in local diners and strip clubs, we came to the consensus that 1) the Coen Brothers are as good as they’ve ever been, 2) Juno star Ellen Page has a long career ahead of her, and 3) you should never eat breakfast at a strip club.

Now that we’ve looked back at 2007, I would like to take a few moments to look forward to 2008. Below are my month-by-month predictions for the world of film and television, both nationally and here in Texas. Please remember these are just my speculations, my sense of what might happen, so if it doesn’t work out the way I say it will, don’t come up to me next January all a-grin and rub it in my face that I was wrong. Any jackass can make fun of someone for being wrong in his predictions about the future; it takes a special kind of jackass to make those predictions in the first place. That being said, if I’m right about all this, each and every Chronic reader owes me $1, which, if my math is correct, means I will be $137 richer come Jan. 1, 2009.

Anyway, without further ado, my month-by-month predictions for the coming year. Let me just say that there is quite a bit of sex and violence in the following piece, so young children and people who are easily offended are advised to begin reading now.

It's the second day of the new year, so it must be time to talk South by Southwest 2008 (T minus two months and counting!). The gang across the way (seriously – they live on the other side of the beach volleyball court) has just announced their opening-night Festival film, 21, about the true-life adventures of a group of card-counting MIT students who take Vegas by storm.

Normally I don't go in for the swag, but this one isn't half bad. To promote the DVD release of The Simpsons Movie, a "team of Simpson Elves will be everywhere giving out free yellow Simpson's Santa Hats" on Saturday, Dec. 15, from noon to 4pm. I know, I know: "Everywhere" doesn't exactly narrow the field, but a further hint from the publicist says something about readers having to swim up "creek" ... which leads us to believe that Barton Creek Mall is the place to be. Happy hunting.

Anyone visiting the Original Alamo website last Wednesday would have seen a last-minute addition to the schedule at the Alamo Downtown at the Ritz. An extra early-evening (well, 10pm) Weird Wednesday impromptu screening of the gloriously mad Black Devil Doll From Hell. Rather than being a surprise screen-filler, this kind of quick addition to the listings could become commonplace.

In what booker Lars Nilsen calls a "nascent idea," the Ritz will be adding a little more flexibility to its scheduling. Trying to book the theater two months in advance for the brochure could create problems. For example, the opportunity to host Vincent Gallo's RRIICCEE was comparatively last-minute. So rather than publicize a schedule it can't always keep up with, they'll be taking a more innovative approach. "With the first two months of the Ritz we have already started leaving holes in the calendar," said Nilsen. "This lets us make on the fly decisions about programming based on developing availability and audience demand."

More good news from Sundance: Local filmmaker PJ Raval –- who seems to lens about half the films that get shot in this town, and beautifully -- did camera duties on Katrina doc Trouble the Water (directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal), which screens in the Documentary Feature Competition. Hats off to PJ.

Any other 'Dancers out there -- that's Sun or Slam -- don't be shy. Let us know you got in. Honestly, we thought we'd be your first call after Mom and Dad.

The season of Sundance, that is, with the granddaddy of indie film fests announcing over the past two days its 2008 lineup. Austin continues its presence in Park City, kicking off with Sundance's website copy: "In a coffee shop at the edge of Austin … Every year, groundbreaking stories being in places far away from [Sundance]" The "edge" of Austin? Because Central Austin is too establishment?.

More significantly, Austin gets some serious representation by way of three filmmakers – er, make that five: Two pairs of brothers, the Zellners (Goliath) and former locals the Duplasses (Baghead) made the cut in the Spectrum narrative sidebar, and doc maker Margaret Brown (The Order of Myths) will show in the Documentary Competition. Congrats to all and see you on the slopes.

My first taste of Vincent Gallo came in Emir Kusturica's Arizona Dream, where he ordered, all googly-eyed, "two beers, two shots" (surprisingly, obsessively quotable). He was intriguing then, and Buffalo '66, his debut as a writer/director (plus leading man and composer and about a gazillion other things), cemented it: This guy's got the goods. There's also a good chance he's certifiable.

Desperate for a Jon Stewart fix since the writers' strike struck? Here's a hilarious newscast from The Daily Show writers on the picket lines, which does an excellent job spelling out the issues and hypocrisy at the heart of the strike. Watch out for John J. Viacom Jr. III!

Two months later than founders Tim and Karrie League had originally hoped, the new Alamo Ritz finally opened last night (see Marc Savlov's excellent article about the move here). There had been concerns that the shift from the old Alamo Downtown would lose some of the boisterous DIY charm that defined the old cinema. But when the footage was shown of Tim's valiant defeat when he tried to christen the building with a bottle of champagne (score: unbroken bottle 1, cracked wall 0), it felt like the Alamo.

The capacity crowd and the lengthy stand-by cue that spilled out into the street found a cinema that takes full advantage of the Ritz' golden age picture palace dimensions and the opportunities for a bigger screen and new sound system, without sacrificing the communal spirit the old site engendered (for anyone worried that it would be a big-box generic cineplex product, Tim did note the only way onto the newly finished stage was by clambering up a stack of milk crates). Speaking in the gap between the opening movie, 1963 Japanese killer-fungus classic Matango, and a sneak preview of the Coen Brother's nihilist masterpiece No Country For Old Men, League paid tribute to the hard work of his staff and the history of both the Alamo and the Ritz.