Short Cuts

We'll Sleep When We're Dead Dept.: This is getting ridiculous. September used to be the month during which we'd all gear up for October, the coolest 31-day stretch of the year. This year, however, there's so much going on in September that October, with the upcoming Austin Film Festival and the usual spooky trappings of the Halloween season already jockeying for position in our gobsmacked to-do calendars, ought to be a time of rest, or at the very least slightly fewer unmissable events. Such is life in the big city, I suppose, and, frankly, we wouldn't have it any other way. First up, and going on as you read this, is the eighth annual Cinematexas International Short Film Festival, which kicked off last Tuesday and runs through Sunday, Sept. 21, at various locations around town. If you're not already registered, passes and tickets are available at www.cinematexas.org, Vulcan Video, Thirty Three Degrees, and Waterloo Records, and run from $50 for the fabled "everything" pass to $10 tickets for speakers and $5-6 tickets for single films and events. Anyway you edit it, it's a bargain, with this year's speakers, screeners, and all around cineastic heroes including Todd Haynes, Oskar Fischinger, Red Vs. Blue, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Mark Dery (keynoting Cinematexas' first "Games Without Borders" sidebar event), and loads more. See? Your week is full, and we haven't even made it to the Austin City Limits Fest yet... In addition (and in conjunction) to Cinematexas is the Loud & Clear Youth Film Festival, part of the Motion Media Arts Center's Center for Young Cinema program, which kicks out the jams this Saturday, Sept. 20, at the Alamo Drafthouse Village (2700 W. Anderson), and features "different and daring" films made by teens from all over the country, as well as a panel discussion on media literacy by film and media educators, screenings galore, and ultimately an awards ceremony. Highly recommended even if your puberty occurred sometime last century. Check out www.motionmac.org for more info, or the Cinematexas site above... Good gawd, but we hope you don't already have anything planned for Saturday, Sept. 27. As fate would have it, there are not one but two major regional premieres that evening, and missing either one of them is going to make you the laughingstock of your peers, who, let's face it, already think you're pretty funny to begin with. First up is Richard Linklater's School of Rock, 5pm, at the Paramount Theatre. Linklater and star Jack Black will be on hand to help you bask in the reflected glow of rock & roll and übergoddess Sarah Silverman, who also stars. Tickets are available (and extremely limited, so act now if not sooner) from the Austin Film Society by calling 322-0145, or through the Paramount box office. More info at www.austinfilm.org... Later that evening, and buddy we hope you've got a fast car for this one, is the premiere of the locally shot remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, sponsored by the Alamo Drafthouse and Ain't It Cool News, at the Travis State School for the Criminally Insane (or, as we like to call it, the School of Shock/Schlock/Beef Stock)! That's about seven miles east of Austin proper, hence the need for speed. In attendance for the Marcus Nispel-directed film will be military badass and crusty cantankulator R. Lee Ermey, who, if you ask him what a chainsaw does, will show you in ways too awful for even this jaded scribe to describe. Following the premiere will also be a screening of Peter Jackson's The Frighteners, with Ermey starring yet again, only deader. Proceeds from the event benefit the AFS. Doors at 5:30pm, movies at 8:30pm, so wear your seatbelts -- I'll be topping out at 120 mph in an effort to get there post-Rockschoolin'. All other info, not including how to fashion the official Brundlefly teleportation pod necessary to hit both events on time and in one piece (but genetically compromised), are online at www.drafthouse.com. "The saw is family."