This week’s free web-based game is just for kicks. If “kicks” for you is pulling the supports of curiously designed structures and deciding the fate of an insufferably waving child standing unsteadily above the water. Just me? So be it, but I’ve spent hours pouring over which supports can and can’t be removed to keep this brat afloat.

Sometimes I just yank obviously necessary pieces just to watch the kid flounder unhappily (stand down breeders, he has a floatie, besides, it’s not like I’m throwing toddlers in the pool like these parents).

I recommend muting the infernal techno quickly and making your way through the game’s 30 levels by pulling just one support to get to subsequent challenges. After that, go for score and see how many supports can be pulled before the kid’s frown turns right side up.

Click here to play.

If you crave more Newtonian physics based games – making gravity and inertia your enemy, and sharpening your engineering skills – I recommend http://www.physicsgames.net.

Enjoy.

In anticipation of Goran Bregovic & His Wedding and Funeral Orchestra's June 17 show at the Bass Concert Hall, Austin Public Library will be screening five films that have been scored by the Balkan composer, including 1994's Arizona Dream. We haven't seen it in years, but we remember rather loving Emir Kusturica's trippy little comedy, which stars Johnny Depp, Vincent Gallo, Lili Taylor, Faye Dunaway, and Jerry Lee Lewis. The clip below, which combines context-free scenes from the film with Bregovic's "This Is a Film," gives you a pretty good indicator of the film's many surreal charms. That's Iggy Pop, by the way, sounding off about a man and a fish. The film series kicks off tonight at 6pm at APL's Manchaca Road Branch with Time of the Gypsies. Go here for more on the series. Note: The films take place at different branches every week, but all screenings are free.

Trinidad, which screened at last year's aGLIFF, premieres tomorrow night on Showtime. The doc, by PJ Raval and Jay Hodges, is about Trinidad, CO, and its transgendered population (it's called the 'sex change capital of the world'). Go here to read the Chronicle's August '08 interview with PJ and here to check out its airtimes on Showtime. It will also be available On Demand from June 3 to June 30.

If you’re not still trying to transport your way to the elusive cake at the end of the deadly, deadly tunnel that was last week’s waste of time, Portal, then perhaps the four iterations of Shift will keep you busy.

Like Portal, Shift’s controls are easy: left and right keys to move and spacebar to jump. But instead of portals to help you achieve your goals you have the ability to flip the x-axis and turn what was negative space into positive space, in other words the black floor and white space becomes the black space and the white floor. This switch turns chasms into skylights and spiky ceilings into death drops.

The original game shouldn’t be too much of a struggle, but Shift 2 ups the ante by adding the y-axis into the mix making strategies more complex and difficult to visualize. Shift 3 and the recently released Shift 4 do little to improve the game, including a map system that is more frustrating than rewarding.

Click here to play the original and you can go from there.

Let’s hope Shift 5 adds another dimension making for one trippy, interactive M.C. Escher painting.

Enjoy.

Congrats are in order for longtime Austin animator and former Gals Panic frontman Lance "Fever" Myers, whose work on Superdeluxe.com we covered way back in January. At the time, Superdeluxe had been engulfed and devoured by Adult Swim, leaving Myers short series The Ted Zone high and dry. Since then, Myers and co-conspirator L.B. Deyo have been hard at work on their squeaky-new animation webiste, TheVideoTwo.com, which features both animated and live-action shorts scrupulously designed to blow your mind. Now comes word that Myers' short Skip and Lester: Here's the Stapler If You Need It has been chosen to be a part of the Houston Film Commission's 2009 Texas Filmmaker's Showcase, which will include a screening at the L.A. Film Festival on June 26. Woo-hoo, right? As if that weren't enough to make Myers' summer, um, funner, the animator also sends word that he's signed on with London-based online distribution/representation outfit Future Shorts, which bills itself as "the largest short film network in the world." Three of Myers short films -- Skip and Lester, Subsidized Fate, and (our all-time favorite, check it out after the jump) The Astronomer -- will be officially repped and screened by the online giant. Congratulations Mr. Fever!

Certainly it comes at little surprise, given the near-universal harshness of the reviews, that Jim Jarmusch's latest, The Limits of Control, is vacating Austin after a mere one-week run. This Thursday, May 28, will be the last day to catch a screening at the Arbor Theatre. Consider making Limits a priority because I'm here to tell you that all the naysayers are flat-out wrong. Distributor Focus Features has probably already given up on garnering any more business in the hinterlands after the poor showings the film had in its New York and L.A. debut and decided to cut its losses. Since no advance screenings were held in Austin for critics, I caught the movie over the weekend. Yes, the film is dreamy and enigmatic, but is by no means as ponderous and abstruse as many of the reviews have made it out to be.

Hank Hill and company may be taking their final bow in the fall, but no worries: Mike Judge has a new animated clan to cozy up to. The Goode Family finds the fun in one family's attempts to follow a righteous ecological path ("WWAGD?" worries their liberal mom, as in What Would Al Gore Do?). Preview clips are available on ABC's official site: I got a big kick out of Che the vegan dog, who is, as co-creator David Krinsky explains it, "so starved for meat that he's decimating the local pet population." That should quell any fears that Judge has gone warm and fuzzy... The Goode Family premieres on ABC at 7pm tonight.

Fans of musician Robert Earl Keen, one-time (and future?) guv hopeful Kinky Friedman, and former Dallas Cowboy Jay Novacek may have thrilled when they read this week's Film News column in the Chronicle, which reported that all three men would appear at the first ever Texandance Film Festival in New Braunfels this June. Whoops. Turns out we skimmed the press release a wee bit fast – turns out the men all cameo in Palo Pinto Gold, a Western which will screen at the festival. Of course, fans are still encouraged to show up and support their favorite musician/candidate/tight end, and in the process also support the fledgling fest, which takes place June 5-7 at the New Braunfels' historic Brauntex theatre. Go here for more info, including slate, schedule, and ticket prices.

When local microcinema Screen Door Film programmed Eagle Pennell's The Whole Shootin' Match as part of its ongoing Texas Cinema Series, they had no idea it would turn out to be a memorial screening for cast member Lou Perryman, who was was brutally murdered last month. Prior to the screening, a reel highlighting Perryman's prolific career will be screened, and we can only imagine the post-film discussion – with co-star Sonny Carl Davis, composer Chuck Pinnell, and film historian Alison Macor, moderated by the Chronicle's Louis Black – will continue the celebration of his life. The event takes place tonight at 7pm in the Jones Auditorium, Ragsdale Center, 3001 South Congress Ave., on the St. Ed's campus. As with all other Screen Door screenings, the event is free and open to the public. For more info, visit www.screendoorfilm.com.