Short Cuts

New Kids on the Block (Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh) Dept.: I don't know if this qualifies as "funky" per se, but while you were passed out behind the couch with nothing but a cranberry sauce-eggnog-gravy stain smear between you and the frantic forepaws of Pippin, your nephew's pet hamster, a bunch (okay, a pair) of recent film-related arrivals blew into town under almost everyone's radar. First was the arrival of Keith Garcia in town, who is replacing Kristin Bomstad as the manager of Landmark's Dobie Theatre. Bomstad, who will be missed and leaves with fondest wishes all round, exited the managerial scene on Nov. 14 and returned to her longtime home base in Denver. (Oddly enough, Denver is also the former home of incoming Boss Man Garcia, who managed that city's well-regarded Landmark Mayan Theatre for four and a half years and -- even odder yet -- used to work with Bomstad back in the Mile High City.) More recently, Garcia spent six months in Los Angeles pursuing a filmmaking career that somehow ended up with his being asked by the fine folks at Landmark to head to Austin and get managing, already. As for Garcia's plans for the Dobie, he expects "to grab the bull by the horns and return the theatre to the funky glory that it once was" -- meaning either he's going to shut down two screens and paint everything matte black or he's going to tussle with former Dobie owner Scott Dinger for rights to the World's Best Theatre Manager/Owner title. Garcia scores bonus points in my book for suggesting curious parties read Carol Clover's excellent sociopolitical genderific history of horror -- Men, Women, and Chainsaws -- to figure out where he's coming from. Damn fine book, that. What else? He's a Leo/Virgo cusp, he's 5-foot-11, and he's "sturdy as a football player." Oh, and he's also got "one of the best goddamn staffs in the business today." Hail and farewell!... Austin's second notable arrival is actually an opening, or more to the point, a reopening, of sorts. You may remember General Cinema's Highland 10 theatre on Middle Fiskville Road (over by Taj Palace, for you foodies) shuttering its doors a year or so ago during the height of the theatre industry's (ongoing) slump. The site has been vacant since then, but fresh blood has arrived in the form of a newly refurbished Highland 10, run not by GCC but by the new, Atlanta-based chain Entertainment Film Works. Manager Theresa Jarvise says the company, headed by a handful of ex-GCC players, has 14 theatres nationwide already, with plans for several more by year's end, all of which will be, like the Highland, previously empty GCC properties due for a dust-off. Despite recent economic upheavals and the theatre industry's concurrent woes, Jarvise says that for the moment the Highland has zero competition with closest rival the Lincoln 6 now closed. Personally I'd like to see a merger between the Highland and neighboring Taj Palace, maybe something along the lines of an Alamo Drafthouse-type Bollywood-and-Tandoori combo. But hey, that's just me.