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.

It's one thing to laugh and groan and gag at the many filthy antics of the jackass crew from the relative safety of your couch. It's comedy, right? But what about when you take away the divider, between antic and audience? What if one of the original jackasses was right there – right in front of you – unleashing his special brand of jackassery in real time and in spitting distance? Is it still comedy? Or is it performance art? Or simply an invitation to get puked on? Actually, Dave England is known more as the poo guy in the crew (although he does a pretty neat trick involving the regurgitated raw contents of an omelette – bon appetit!). He also knows something about digital filmmaking and viral marketing, which is why he'll be teaching a workshop on those very subjects at the Austin School of Film on Sunday afternoon (4/5). Then later that night, the so-called Lord Supreme of Self-Destruction will take the stage at the Alamo Ritz to screen some of his very favorite moments in masochism from the jackass franchise. After that... well, after that, we're promised "Live Self-Destruction." Details are fuzzy, but you can bet it won't be pretty. On the other hand, it'll probably be pretty fucking funny. Tickets are still available. Go here for the workshop and here for the Alamo event.

Happy birthday, Serge. Gitanes: Smoke 'em if you've got 'em.

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the publication of Billy Lee Brammer's The Gay Place, the Chronicle's own Michael Ventura wrote this: "It is still the finest novel written by a Texan, and with Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men it gracefully holds its place as one of the two great political novels in American literature." And on the occasion of what would have been the 80th birthday of Brammer, who died in 1978, ACC's annual Carnival ah! program will feature a panel called Austin in the '50s: The Political and Literary Landscapes of Billy Lee Brammer. The panel kicks off with the premiere screening of "The Flea Circus," a short film based on an excerpt from The Gay Place, directed and produced by his daughters Shelby and Sidney Brammer. Next up is a panel discussion, and if you know the first thing about Texas letters, you know the lineup is an impressive one: Longtime Texas Monthly columnist (and one of Brammer's Mad Dog pals) Gary Cartwright; Brammer's first wife, Nadine Eckhardt, whose memoir Duchess of Palms was just published by UT Press; legendary curmudgeon Don Graham, who's perhaps the leading authority on Texas literature; Kaye Northcott, former editor of The Texas Observer; Texas Monthly senior editor Jan Reid (The Bullet Meant for Me); and former state legislator A.R. "Babe" Schwartz, who helped lead the Killer Bees in its Senate quorum-busting move in 1979. The Chron's Film News columnist Joe O'Connell will moderate. The event is free and open to the public. It takes place this Friday, April 3, at 5pm on the Mainstage Theatre, 2nd floor of the Rio Grande Campus of Austin Community College (1212 Rio Grande). Refreshments and birthday cake in the lobby post-panel.