Our love for X-Men was unceremoniously squashed by Brett Ratner's crap trilogy capper X-Men: The Last Stand, but as far as we can tell, the Ratman doesn't have anything to do with the new stand-alone feature X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It doesn't open in theatres until May 1, but Austin has a shot at hosting the premiere locally. Cities all over the country are vying for the rights (or so the 20th Century Fox press release tells us). Austin was right in the thick of the battle for a while there, but we've since dropped to #5. Would it help if we mentioned Taylor Kitsch (Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights) is in the film? How about if we said that around noon on Wednesday, them's in the downtown and campus areas are urged to look to the sky, where there will be a message from Hugh Jackman? (We suspect it'll be along the lines of, "Get your shit together and vote, Austin. God knows I don't want to have to premiere this thing in Hastings, Nebraska" – maybe slightly abbreviated to fit on a banner trailing a plane, though). You can vote at a special mobile voting station at 7-Eleven (1814 Guadalupe) on Thursday. Or vote online here. Polls close this Friday.

Tickets are still available for tomorrow night’s world premiere of One Peace at a Time, Turk Pipkin’s followup to his doc Nobelity, which tracked down nine Nobel laureates to discuss the world’s biggest problems. One Peace at a Time is more answer-oriented, however; according to the film’s website, “While Nobelity deals with global problems, One Peace at a Time will focus on specific solutions. The goal is to create a virtual roadmap to a better future.” You can view the opening sequence (featuring the thematically apropriate Dylan song “Everything is Broken”) as well as a Willie Nelson P.S.A. for the picture up on The Nobelity blog. The screening takes place at the Paramount Theatre on Tuesday, April 14 at 8pm. Doors open at 7pm for live music by John Pointer and food from El Chilito, Mama Fu’s, and Amy’s Ice Cream. An afterparty follows at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. For more info, go here.

Fancy a good cry? Then watch this clip from Britain's Got Talent, in which a 48-year-old, never-been-kissed Scots lady named Susan Boyle sings Eponine's tearjerker "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Misèrables and brings the house down. NSFW, if you're at all inclined toward weepiness. Happy Monday.

After we learned of the disturbing murder of beloved Austin character actor Lou Perryman last week, we solicited a few remembrances from several people who knew Lou best. First to respond was Watchmaker Films' founder and all-around filmmaker Mark Rance. Here's what he had to say about the late, great Lou: "Lou Perryman was one of the most generous men I have even known. He was generous to his friends and former-friends and not so good friends alike. I met Lou through Eagle Pennell back in 1980 working on Doug Holloway’s Fast Money. I had had just seen him in Eagle’s The Whole Shootin' Match, which was at the Berlin Film Festival that year. Lou and I stayed in touch off and on through the years, but really got back in touch when Eagle Pennell died in 2002.

Did last night really happen or was it just some mass geek hallucination? Were you there? Did you have a Spockgasm, too? Is the Alamo Drafthouse the coolest place in the universe, or what? (Seriously. It's official. The Alamo Drafthouse is the Coolest Place In the Universe.) When the Alamo announced recently that they'd be presenting a free screening of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, followed by a ten-minute clip from the opening of J.J. Abrams forthcoming Star Trek franchise re-boot, Trekkers and laypeople alike rejoiced. And why not? Apart from being a supercool sci-fi classic featuring space battles galore, Ricardo Montalban's rich, Corinthian pecs, and a story line ripped straight from the pages of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, it's also flat-out one of the greatest vengeance movies ever made. Quentin Tarantino, no stranger to the vendetta genre himself, proclaimed it so at his last Alamo appearance at the original Alamo Drafthouse on Fourth and Colorado. And we agree: Khan is a textbook example of badass cinema. So it was to an SRO packed house that Alamo founder Tim League introduced the film and the surprise arrival of the Abrams-Trek's screenwriters, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who duly noted that they were supposed to be at their own premiere down in Sydney, Australia, but had declined in favor of watching Khan-plus with the rabidly appreciative Alamo crowd.

The Alamo Ritz will screen selections tomorrow from the second annual G.I. Joe Fest, a stop-motion animation festival staring G.I Joes and other similarly sized action figures. In last year’s touring selections, Snake Eyes broke his life of silence and regaled partygoers at an impromptu dance party, while in another short a hodge-podge of super heroes and Joes found new uses for their coveted kung fu grip. The films screening tomorrow are special selections and award-winning submissions from the 2008 animation festival, originally founded by Gio Toninelo of the online series Pond Patrol. The screening will also include a collection of international shorts and a special preview of Austin-based animators Paul Hanley and Kieran Healy’s upcoming feature-length animated film. Gio Toninelo started the animation festival as a way to commemorate the conclusion of his online drama, Pond Patrol — a series of blogs, letters, and photographs cataloging the adventures of Corporal John U. Harris and his reconnaissance team, Pond Patrol Third Force Recon, as they surveyed the dangerously mutated Mulberry Ridge Pond (also known as the small turtle pond in Toninelo’s backyard.) Festival organizers are now accepting submissions in three categories (Stop-motion 3¾” Action Figures, Stop-motion 8” Action Figures, and Stop-motion 12” Action Figures) for the 3rd annual festival, the winners of which will tour in 2010. Deadline is July 20, 2009. For those making it out to Wednesday-night screening: costumes are encouraged. And I wouldn’t worry about anyone judging you for owning an adult-sized Cobra Commander costume. You’ll be among friends.

What's more fun than watching legendarily insane snowboard/skateboarder Dave England and former Johnny Knoxville accoutrement make an omelette out of his own vomit on MTV's Jackass? Watching him sucker two foolhardy audience members at his Sunday night Alamo Ritz appearance into doing Tequila death shots with him onstage. Rad, dude! "Tequila Death Shots?" we hear you cry, "That sounds like more fun than when he pooped his pants on Jackass!" Well, duh. Less stank, more, um, excrutiatingly pain, and with the added entertainment value of England's complete and utter wasted-nicity. So what goes into these self-inflicted, sado-masochisitic, so-called Death Shots (a Bam Margera invention if ever there was one)? Ha! Ingeniousness and a high tolerance for ocular and nasal agony: Step one: Get a glassful of Tequila rimmed with kosher salt and a lime-wedge. Step two: In rapid succession, squeeze the lime juice into your eyeball (either one will do, but try to hit the one you use the least), snort the salt off the rim of the glass, and slam that Tequila down the hatch like you were dying of dehydration in the desert and it was, like, magic cactus nectar or something equally radical! Step three: (Also in rapid succession, or combine for even more entertainment value.) Scream in agony, double over in horrific, gut-churning agony, fall to ground and writhe, pray to an unresponsive god for a quick death. Fun right? Dude. Totally. F**king. Awesome. -ly. Idiotic. On a lighter, presumably less alcohol-fueled note, England stopped by the Austin School of Film earlier in the day and taught some kids how to make a short film in two hours with nothing but their own imaginations and a f**kload of sweet HD gear (courtesy of the ASF's Director of Awesome Shizznat and resident hottie/longtime England pal Jennifer Brandon). Check it out! FINDERS KEEPERS- Austin School of Film from Austin School of Film on Vimeo.

François Truffaut died young, with his heart on his sleeve, and his best films still exude that youth from every angle. It's a precocious sort of youth, wise and heartachey and gracefully melacholic, yet still vital and ready to fight for l'amour, come what may. Auteur theory or not, François Truffaut's often bleak world view never fully hardened into anything approaching the sensual cynicism of his nouvelle vague contemporary Jean-Luc Godard. Watching The 400 Blows, Jules and Jim, or The Last Metro (his final truly outstanding film) remains an emotionally embracive experience. Watching Godard's anything keeps on feeling abrasive, although if you're lucky it's the provocative, violent abrading of politicized sensuality: Pierrot's heart makes him le fou, and the Pope hated Hail Mary. Not so with Truffaut, or at least not so often. The Last Metro, which was nominated for an Oscar (it lost to Vladimir Menshov's Moscow Does Not Believe In Tears if you can believe it) and swept the French Césars, is a riot of big time sensuality, and Criterion's impeccable dual-DVD release, fully restored from a high definition digital transfer looks and sounds impeccable.

Sad news for fans of Austin film and stage: The body of local actor Lou Perryman was discovered in his home on Thursday by Austin police, working off of information provided by a man who is now being held in custody. According to News 8 Austin, 36-year-old Seth Christopher Tatum turned himself in Thursday morning, confessing to attacking Perryman and also stealing his car: "He basically made the statement that, 'By the way, that's a stolen car, and I'm pretty sure I killed the owner of the car,'" Sgt. Joseph Chacon said. "We found out the owner of the car, went to address on a 'check welfare' call. That's where we found Mr. Perryman." Perryman is perhaps best known for his work with Eagle Pennell in the films The Whole Shootin' Match (1978) and Last Night at the Alamo (1983), although he continued to work steadily in TV and film. He was also a member of the Austin theatre company Big State Productions and took part in their now-legendary production In the West. More details as they come in. And here's Perryman talking to the Chronicle in 2007 with his Shootin' Match costar Sonny Carl Davis on the occasion of the film's DVD release by Watchmaker Films.