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.

Big day for the Travis County delegation and Rep. Dawnna Dukes, D-Austin, as she coaxed the 81st legislature into actually passing a bill. "First bill of the session, first bill on the calendar, first major state bill, and it is House Bill 873, the film incentives," she said. The only group that has come out against the bill is the Libertarian Party of Texas, which put out a press release demanding the abolition of the Governor's Music, Film, Television, and Multimedia Office. However, Dukes said she had to stave off a last-minute attempt on the floor to derail the bill as corporate welfare but, as she pointed out, "even the conservative coalition supported the concept of the bill because of its potential for creating 4,000 jobs."

It may be seem like an eternity of tinnitus and day parties ago, but during the interactive component of SXSW, the annual ScreenBurn Arcade had some serious buzz moments. There was a lot of player interest in the Nvidia GeForce 3D Vision system, which uses the built-in depth information in games to create a stereoscopic 3D image (How good is it? Well, it's sure no Virtual Boy.) SXSWi even had its own little Metallica moment, with a hands-on demo of Bionic Commando, developer GRIN's reboot of the classic Capcom franchise from the '80s. The game, being developed for PC, XBox 360 and PS3, doesn't ship until May, but the multi-player deathmatch mode demoed was smooth and intuitive. [video-1]

So the loudest part of SXSW has arrived in full force with the music component unfurling. But the film festival is still here as well, and could teach these guitar-wielding whipper-snappers a thing or too about shocking the public. What could be more rock and roll than a film star, stark naked, on all fours, being stroked by strangers and urinating in the street? OK, so the stars of Artois the Goat had a very good excuse for such behavior when they turned up for the film's world premiere last Sunday: They are goats. Artois the Goat has its final SXSW screening tonight, March 20, at the Alamo Ritz at 7pm.

Psychiatrist Keely Kolmes and writer Thomas Roche presented this Tuesday afternoon core conversation, which felt much like sitting in an AA meeting or other group therapy session. One after another, for almost an hour, audience members described their experiences with a relatively new category of neurosis – Information Anxiety caused by information overload. One young woman said she feels she has lost the capacity for solitude and she wonders if it is gone forever. She recently noticed that it has become extremely unusual for her to take a walk or drive the car without checking email and twitter during the walk or drive. She feels that she doesn't have a sense of wholeness unless someone else is validating her experience fairly constantly throughout the day. Others talked about feeling terrible guilt when they didn't electronically check in constantly, about sitting and tweeting in the same room with people they could be talking to. One man felt that the increased capacity to understand comes with responsibility, which feels like a great weight. Several people spoke of boundaries – how technology helps us hide and gives us a false sense of intimacy which can cause problems in online relationships.