Short Cuts

Here Come the Warm Jets Dept: With South by Southwest 2001 rapidly approaching, the list of film festival attendees has begun to balloon like a dead-drunk rock & roller's catheter bag. Among the more notable additions to this year's lineup include none other than Mr. Crowley himself, King Hesher Ozzy Osbourne, who will be attending (alongside wife/manager/Billy Corgan-victim Sharon) as part of Penelope Spheeris' new rocker-doc We Sold Our Souls for Rock 'n' Roll. This being Austin, the event calls into question a couple of possibly problematical opportunities (opportunistic problems?) for the former Geezer Butler nemesis: Mainly, what are the odds he'll wander over to Fourth and Colorado and hose down the other Alamo, and should the local paw of PETA be concerned for the welfare of the Congress Avenue bridge bat population? Ozzy's appetites are legendary, though with an estimated 1.5 million freestyling freetailed fledermaus you'd think even he might be sated this time around. No word yet on whether the Iron Man will straddle the Capitol dome and knock bi-planes out of the sky. Apart from Ozzy, new confirmees include supa-stah DJs Mixmaster Mike and Q-Bert of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, supporting the DJ/hip-hop doc Scratch; blaxploitation legend Melvin Van Peebles (Sweet Sweetback's Badasss Song); Rip Torn; Jeffrey Tambor (The Larry Sanders Show); Bob Odenkirk (Mr. Show); and, tentatively, Ted Demme, Penelope Cruz, and Johnny Depp, of Demme's new film Blow... In other SXSW news, today, Friday, Feb. 9, is the final day to preregister for SXSW Film 2001 for the low, low price of $215. Ditto for the $100 student registration package for. Go, run, now, to www.sxsw.com/2001/attend/index.shtml quick like a bunny... Falling around the same time as SXSW is the first annual Texas Film Hall of Fame induction ceremony, slated for March 9, at Austin Studios. Co-sponsored by -- among others too numerous to list here, trust me -- the Austin Film Society, SXSW, the Chronicle, Texas Monthly, and the Austin Film Festival, the ceremony includes a pre-pomp dinner that segues into SXSW Film's opening night fete. This year's inductees and their categories include Sissy Spacek (Actor/Actress), Robert Benton (Director), Bill Wittliff (Screenwriter), Liz Smith (Media), and Mike Simpson, CAA (Special Contribution to Texas Film). More info (time, price, contact info) will appear here next issue... Although it may not seem like it now, there is more going on apart from SXSW. Austin's small-gauge filmmaking group, the Cinemaker Co-op, is offering an "Introduction to Super-8 Filmmaking" workshop this Sunday, Feb. 11, 12-4pm, at the Hideout (617 Congress). Topics included are camera operation, film stock, processing, editing, projection, and just about anything else you'd need to know to be the next Stan Brakhage. The class is $65 general/$35 Cinemaker members. To sign up, e-mail Jen Proctor at canetoad@mail.utexas.edu or Aaron Valdez at valdezfilm@yahoo.com... Barna Kantor over at the Center for Youth Cinema has sent word that local kidfilm gurus Duncan Knappen and Rusty Kelley have had their short "Toy Car" (profiled in the Chronicle last year) picked up by no less than New York City's famed Guggenheim Museum as part of their new CinéKids ongoing kid's films series. Congrats to both -- more info at www.guggenheim.org/programs/index... Finally, online new media cornucopia Blastro.com has announced a partnership with indie film acting legend Will Keenan (Tromeo and Juliet, Trick, Terror Firmer) to create "15 episodes of original programming" along the lines of MTV's current cult hit Jackass. The show has apparently yet to secure a viable name, and to that end anyone who thinks they might have a worthy suggestion ("Suckjack!" "Whacksmash!" "Asswag!") is cordially invited to submit to benway@texas.net for a chance to "win nowhere near a million dollars."