Short Cuts

They Went to a Land Down Under, Hobbits, Faeries Aghast Dept.: In case you haven't heard the news, as part of their initial foray into the global domination market, the Alamo Drafthouse's Tim and Karrie League, along with Alamo head tech Andrew McEathron, are currently down in the land of backward-spiraling toilets and Randy Newman's diminutive nemeses, aka New Zealand. As part of the Alamo's outreach program to various and sundry backwaters previously untouched by the glory of that all-American cinematic revelation, the drive-in movie, the pair have shipped both themselves and their gigantic Rolling Roadshow inflate-a-screen south of the equator and have set up shop in Auckland with plans to tour the country bringing classic Roadshow productions to those in need. Among the features they'll be inflicting on the drive-in-starved Kiwis will be The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Russ Meyers' Faster, Pussycat, Kill! Kill!, Donnie Darko, and UK import Hypnotic. All of this is being done with the able assistance of our man in Auckland, the Incredibly Strange Film Festival's Anthony Timpson, who regularly savages the natives via an ongoing blitz of cutting-edge and guerrilla film events that have consistently landed him in scalding water with his country's more conservative elements. Here's what Tim League has to say about their NZ adventures so far, via zombie carrier pigeon: "The country is lovely, except all we have seen so far is Anthony's driveway. We've been working non-stop on a rebuild of the system that we shipped down. We've had a few problems with power conversion with the American gear we brought down and blew up a motor (had a devil of a time replacing it) and had to do some major overhauls. New Zealand has never had a drive-in, so there is some very distinct buzz about the event. The religious right is also trying to shut the whole thing down on the basis that it's being run by a known social deviant [Timpson], who showed us a newspaper front page of him being led away in handcuffs below the headline, "I will go to jail to bring you banned movie!" from when he had [inflammatory French film] Baise-Moi programmed for his festival two years ago." It remains to be seen if Timpson and the Leagues will be burned at the stake or welcomed as cultural heroes, but one thing's for sure: New Zealand is in for an interesting month. More on this as the chaos down under ignites... If you're in San Antonio Wednesday, March 3, through Saturday, March 6, check out the 27th annual CineFestival en San Antonio at the Guadalupe Theater, 1301 Guadalupe St. This year's fest is titled Many Roads, Un Destino: Chicano/Latino/ Indigenous Perspectives on Immigration, and features a wealth of documentaries on related subjects. Ticket/pass information is online at www.guadalupeculturalarts.org... Now out on DVD is former Chronicle cover-story filmmaker Marcy Garriott's documentary, Split Decision (Decision Dividida), which chronicles the rise of Chicano superfeatherweight boxer Jesus "El Matador" Chavez. This excellent doc is the first release in First Run Features' new Spanish-language series and is one of the best boxing-meets-cultural-warfare docs we've ever seen.