"Karl Anderson is a big ball of passion, energy, and love for the craft and for film," is how Austin School of Film Executive Director Erica Shamaly described the ASoF mainstay-teacher-actor who earlier this week announced his amicable departure from the position of ASoF Programs Director to pursue his exploding acting career. Anyone who's met Anderson over the years he's spent with the ever-expanding ASoF already knows that the auburn-haired, mischievously inclined, thespian-fireball (seriously, where-oh-where does this guy get his energy? He's maniac, maniac on the floorboards...) is one heck of a busy guy, having recently wrapped a lead role in ASoF alumnus Ben Foster's feature debut Strings, done his time in FOX's Prison Break, and played dead and all messed up in Dear Pillow-star Rusty Kelley's upcoming end-of-days-in-Marfa epic Shores of a Distant Sea. We won't even mention -- oh, hell, why not? – his work in videos from the likes of Kacy Crowley (Hand to Mouthville) or Bob Schneider's Blau, or his turns kicking out the jams and/or floorlamps in The Hideout's production of The Zoo Story or the New Haven-based Naked Theater's slam-it-down brain-blurrer Two Shots of Tequila. The list, as they say, goes on. As for the whys and wherefores of his exiting the ASoF, Anderson told us he's not leaving Austin, but instead, that he "just heard every part of me say 'It's time.' I'm going to stay right here in Austin and I'm going to continue making beautiful movies. All the great ones are around me, all the beautiful and true artists, and I couldn't be happier to stay here." Well, shoot, Karl Anderson, we couldn't be happier to have you stick around. Vaya con diablos, señor!

True Colors heroine Cyndi Lauper makes a guest appearance singing her new hit "Into the Nightlife" at Oakdale's Gay Pride today, Thursday, July 3. Oakdale. As in As the World Turns Oakdale. As in CBS ATWT, 1pm on local affiliate KEYE-42. The CBS soap has been lauded for its sensitive portrayal of sensitive fellas Luke & Noah aka Nuke. La Laup is slated to appear for the small town's Gay Pride and as an added bonus to help the young lovers find their "true colors." (Heliotrope? Burnt Sienna? Hopbush? Doubt it. Madang? We can only hope.) Click below for the preview.

The Doorstop Film Project recently sponsored phase one of a short film contest – in which filmmakers tackled such lofty topics as "Love, Freedom, Pain, Energy, Redemption, Greed, or Forgiveness" – and turns out "Freedom" freed some creative firepower from Austinite Jeff Guerrero. Guerrero was recently announced as one of only 15 finalists for the competition, which comes with a $10,000 check and a commission to make a second film, this time on the topic of Hope. Want to show your support? Check out "Therapy," Guerrero's funny, sweet short (in which he also acts), over at Doorpost and let them know what you think.

Our boards have been busy lately with disgruntlement over Josh Rosenblatt's recent pan of Wanted – he called the comic-book adaptation from Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov "so salacious and voyeuristic as to be almost pornographic." Sounds intriguing, no? So I checked it out last night, in part as "research" for next week's online debate, Film Fight, in which Josh and I will spar over comic book movies (see tomorrow's issue for more details). But, really, I'm as much a sucker for pop entertainment as the next guy, and I figured you really couldn't go wrong with three leads like Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, and (sweet delicious) James McAvoy. I mean, if nothing else, at least there'd be some hot, sweaty assassin sex to savor, right? Oh, I stand corrected. How did it suck? Let me count the ways (spoilers after the break):

I was an X-Files fan back in the day, but I have to say, when I heard they were making The X-Files: I Want to Believe – 10 years after the first installment, and 6 years after the TV series closed up shop – I couldn't help but wonder, is anybody really clamoring for another X-Files movie? Last night, at the 9:50pm screening of Wanted at the Alamo Ritz, I got my answer: The sound of one fan clapping after the trailer rolled, followed by someone else whistling the theme song. But I'm pretty sure the second guy was being ironic.

In June of 2003, 200 people gathered around a carpet in the rug department of a Manhattan Macy’s, told salespeople that their “commune” was shopping for a “love rug,” then left as quickly as they had arrived. This event would come to be known as the Internet’s firstborn flash mob. Defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a “public gathering of complete strangers, organized via the Internet or mobile phone, who perform a pointless act and then disperse again”, the Macy’s flash mob first took the blogosphere by storm five years ago. Though this anniversary doesn’t merit a “look back,” why not a “where are they now?” Almost as soon as they started, flash mobs have been eulogized as a crested trend. Now used as a tool by marketing companies and protest groups alike, they still make news. Last month, Taco Bell staged one outside of an MLB game in Philadelphia with hired actors in swimwear, “frozen” in place to promote their icy new treat Fruitista Freeze. In Belarus, an ice cream social flash mob was organized to protest the country’s ban on organized public activity. And of course, people are still organizing flash mobs just for the sake of it, like the silent dance party in our Capitol rotunda late last year. Improv Everywhere is a group whose stunts have been compared to flash mobs, though they avoided being pigeonholed by the fad, distancing itself early on. They’re more like the flash mob’s older, funnier cousin. IE has been, to quote their website’s mission statement, “causing scenes” since 2001, and millions now watch their videos.

It's not what you're thinking: Jason Mewes remains clean and sober. However, we received an email from our pal Bob Ray over the weekend with the above subject line and, boy-howdy, he wasn't kidding. This is not the sort of Austin film community gossip you want to try and wrap your mind around on a sleepy Sunday morning – it's just too dang bizarre and, ultimately, depressing. In what may be the worst audition ever caught on tape, Jerry Don Clark, aka "Toe," star of Ray's seminal Austin feature Rock Opera as well as many of Ray's myriad short films, was caught on a video surveillance camera as he knocked over an "adult leisure center" in Bulverde on Friday night in a scene that bizarrely mirrors some of Clark's past work with Ray and Crashcam Films. Clark, who can be clearly seen waving a gun and physically attacking several bystanders, was caught the next day by bicycle police in San Antonio. He has confessed to the crime, as well as being homeless and high at the time. Go here to see the surveillance video. And here to catch the sequel. More on this as information becomes available. But in the meantime, stay off the meth, people. Seriously. We are not kidding.

"I've never seen so many men wasted so badly." -- The Man With No Name "It was a million pounds of fun." -- Austin filmmaker Ron Deutsch "I made the local paper!" -- Austin design shaman Marc English The dust has settled, the six-guns have gone silent, and the sleepy Spanish township of Alméria is once again a sun-drenched seaside paradise, drowsing in the aftermath of what was, by all accounts, the most spectacular Alamo Drafthouse/Rolling Roadshow Summer Tour ever. Alamo founders Tim and Karrie League screened Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly at locations key to Leone's Dollars trilogy in and around Alméria, and the dusters and cheroots showed up from all over Europe to participate in the cinematic bloodbath-by-starlight. Actual Austinite attendance was limited to quatro thanks to the travel involved, but local filmmaker and Chronicle pal Ron Deutsch labeled the event "fucking awesome," while Marc English, who showed up in his trademark full-on Clash-meets-Leone, gunfightin' graphics-master-mondo-muthafucka mode, managed to not only get his picture in the local paper, but also impressed the locals with his genuine Texan charisma [note the newly minted "fan" by his side].

I remember in 2000, during the Bush v. Gore recount debacle, watching with gross car-wrecky fascination, the twistedly taut Katherine "Kitty" Harris, Fla's Secretary of State on TV. Wow, I thought, who's gonna play her in the TV movie? Stuck in a small but charming Texas town this past Memorial Day weekend, I excitedly searched the motel's HBO for airings of the much-a-buzzed Recount. One was already in progress. The film recounts the time between Election Day 2000 and the U.S. Supreme Court's coronation of King George II (paint me donkey and color me biased). Sydney Pollack was originally set to direct, but after his passing, the torch went to Austin Powers' director Jay Roach. Roach was an interesting choice, and under his watch, the film teeters between recent-history docudrama and political farce, a dangerous combo any day of the week, but strangely befitting the Rove-diculous era which marked the nation's hard right turn into the dark ages. Kevin Spacey, Denis Leary, Bob Balaban all deliver thoughtful performances, but the film belongs to Laura Dern (June's Gay Place Crush of the Month). Dern is deliciously pinched and over-the-top in the HBO original, just as Kitty herself was during so many 2000 press conferences.