Results tagged “film”

Are you still feeling a little bit, or a lotta bit, of the holiday hangover? Not quite ready to step back into the work shoes (even though you probably already have)? Already starting to count the remaining 320 some-odd days until we get to start the season of glee all over again? We are too, and what better way to accept our current state of mid-January gloom than by revisiting a film that shares the familiar cold of happy memories, imagination, and fairy-tale fantasy, making way for our eventual ingestion into ‘the real world.’ Tonight you can shed your tears with a film that shares your sentiments, as the Paramount Theater screens Edward Scissorhands as part of the Tim Burton Winter Film Series.

We would all like for our lives to be harmonious—that each individual part would arrange itself in such a way that it is pleasing and complimentary to everything else—but the wish and the reality are most often found to be incongruous. Harmony (Justin Rice, lead singer of Bishop Allen and star of another indie flick, Mutual Appreciation), the eponymous character in Robert Byington's new film Harmony and Me, is a study in that schism, finding his life pitched into discord when he is summarily dismissed by his girlfriend, Jessica (the knockout Kristen Tucker).

In Collapse, Director Chris Smith (who also helmed one of our favorite docs ever, American Movie) lets conspiracy theorist Michael Ruppert tell his own story. Like a bizarro Spalding Gray broadcasting from a dank warehouse basement, Ruppert soberly recounts his career as a subversive journalist, and confidently warns of the coming energy crisis and its inevitable repercussions.

• Newsweek predicts that Democrat Bill White will beat Perry in the governor's race in 2010.


• Thom Yorke at Copenhagen climate summit: "The Americans...don't seem to be coming in offering anything new."


• US border agents who work for drug traffickers.

• A sex-offender who was sentenced to life in prison escaped near Baytown this afternoon. He fled wearing a guard’s uniform!
• UT Football player arrested for DWI over the weekend. Mack Brown doesn’t seem too pleased with the turn of events.
• Yes, Virginia, there really is an independent record store in San Marcos.

• Story about the A&M; student who barely survived the tragic bonfire collapse in 1999.
• When we learned that the mayors of College Station and Austin were wagering live trees on the outcome of Thursday's Longhorn/ Aggie pigskin kerfuffle all we could think of was the vintage Belly song “Feed The Tree.”
• Dallas Cowboys who were real turkeys. A.k.a. “Serious Cowboy FAIL.”

• If you thought you saw a Viking Boat on the street on Saturday, it wasn’t your imagination. It was on the way to be part of the East Austin Studio Tour!
• The Blue October show at Stubb's on Friday was kind of a big deal. People even flew in from out-of-town to see the band play.
• The Austin Film Society's current film series features the work of a modern Finnish filmmaker. Watching some of the films might make you very glad that you don’t live in Finland!

• Doh! Don’t rob the mayor of a small town! He won’t be happy about it, and he’ll really want the cops to catch you.
• Do you know a real, no-nonsense girl who rides horses, and who is between the ages of 12 and 16? If so, you might want to tell her about this casting call for the lead role in a Coen Brothers movie. Squee!
• Pitchfork covers Fun Fun Fun Fest! (They liked it, they really liked it!)

Almost completely unadaptable for the silver screen, David Foster Wallace's work has been something that most screenwriters wouldn't dare touch, what with the monolithic footnotes and the complicated structure of his prose. This precedent, however, was not enough to deter a young John Krasinski (who you may know as Jim from The Office or from this spring's Away We Go), who began adapting the 336 page collection of unbridaled male-mind ruminations when he was in his early 20s. Over seven years later, Krasinski's passion project Brief Interviews with Hideous Men will be hitting the theaters this weekend, with several already-sold-out live appearances by Krasinski tonight and tomorrow at Austin's own Alamo Drafthouse Ritz. SInce not everyone will be able to attend those particular screenings (but there are still plenty screenings of the film without the writer/director/actor for you to check out), we decided to chat with Krasinski about his motivations behind this project, the value of truth and honesty, and what it feels like to step inside the mind of one of America's finest literary treasures.

It's possible that you could call writer/director Brant Sersen a cultural anthropologist. With a knack for exploring various subcultures, albeit in a ficticious way, he has created two feature length films now that ingratiate themselves into not often profiled communities. The first, Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story, which won the Narrative Feature Audience Award at SXSW 2004, chronicled the rise and fall of a paintballing icon. Sersen's second, Splinterheads, is opening this weekend in Austin at the Regal Arbor Cinema, and brings us the story of a manchild townie who's life is suddenly swept up in the absurd world of a traveling carnival as he is enchanted by one of its minions: a beautiful, geocache enthusiast con artist. We had the pleasure of exchanging an email dialogue with Sersen this week, wherein we talked about discovering things you may not have had the opportunity to ever see, the inspiration behind his storytelling and the publicity benefits of being linked with the Montauk Monster. Sersen's second, Splinterheads, is opening this weekend in Austin, and brings us the story of a manchild townie who's life is suddenly swept up in the absurd world of a traveling carnival as he is enchanted by one of its minions: a beautiful, geocache enthusiast con artist. We had the pleasure of exchanging an email dialogue with Sersen this week, wherein we talked about discovering things you may not have had the opportunity to ever see, the inspiration behind his storytelling and the publicity benefits of being linked with the Montauk Monster.

The number nerds at Miller-McCune recently took a stab at crunching all the aggregated film data on Metacritic.com. The result is a series of charts illustrating how movie stars tend to rate with the critics, and, in turn, which of the nation's top 25 most prolific reviewers tend to be more or less favorable when it comes to doling out scores.

On Wednesday, the Austin chapter of the American Institute of Architects will be hosting the screening of a film that celebrates a motley crew of unconventional, untrained architects and builders. Filmmaker Zachary Godshall's documentary, God's Architects, chronicles five builders who have created (and in many cases, are still building) impressive structures all in the name of their Creator. Their monuments include two hand-built castles, an old school bus converted into an ornate chapel, a sculpture garden, and a sprawling adobe mountain built out of the desert. Each builder has his own story and motivation for creating his version of God's temple - some of the rational is hard to fully understand, but each creation is magical and truly impressive. Even us non-believers would consider ourselves lucky to be so inspired and dedicated to a project.

• This is the 20th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the event that signaled the end of the Cold War. The “Wall of Change” project at UT marks this historic moment.
• President Obama to attend a memorial service at Fort Hood on Tuesday.
• The New York Times has a detailed story about the background of the Fort Hood shooter. It’s part of their larger package on the tragedy.

For our third, and final installment of Halloween at the Movies we pay tribute to those individuals who just want to throw on some sweatpants and a t-shirt, pop some popcorn, stock a bowl of candy, and then turn out the lights with something festive in the DVD player. Something with dead people, or living people with masks; often times both. After the jump, allow us to suggest some wonderful and available titles that may have flown under your radar, but are worthy of a Halloween night viewing.

It's been a long and glorious eight days, eight days during which we saw some extremely memorable and well crafted films, got to listen to talented, engaging filmmakers and screenwriters, and enjoyed the company of other cinemaphiles at the Austin Film Festival. But the show's not over yet, and tonight you have one final chance to catch some brilliant flicks that have already received some great buzz.

Today's second offering in our three part series Halloween at the Movies presents you with a list of the different horror features currently (and by currently we mean as of Friday, October 30) playing at one of our many fine theaters around town. If you don't feel like staying home Saturday night (Halloween night), but aren't feeling the social vibe, then we suggest taking a peek at one of the films below so you can successfully avoid trick-or-treaters, and enjoy the spirit of the holiday.

What would you do if you had Saddam Hussein laid up in the shed behind your house? What would you ask him, and how would you imagine he'd answer? We can think of a handful of good questions right off the bat, so it's unfortunate that the characters in Baghdad Texas can't think of anything to ask one of the world's most famous dictators in the middle of the Iraq War.

If you're like a good deal of us you may not have any kind of clue what you'll be doing for Halloween this year. Or, maybe it is just us. Regardless, over the the next few days we'd like to provide you with a hefty dose of options for you to partake around town that combines the wonderful world of film with a thematic relation to our country's greatest holiday that we don't get off from work.

Happily, Mike Million’s script shows innovation and admirable restraint, resulting in a finished film that only vaguely resembles a standard commercial comedy. Charlie Thurber (played by Wilson) is trying his best to earn tenure at Grey College, where he is a well-liked but professionally underachieving English instructor. When a whipsmart new hire from Yale (Gretchen Mol) enters the mix, threatening his chances at a job for life, Charlie’s pal, anthropology professor Jay Hadley ( David Koechner) eagerly steps in to help sabotage her career.

However hard it was for you to make it to your high school each morning, the teen moms at Catherine Ferguson Academy in Detroit likely have it harder. In Grown in Detroit, the principal says that it takes some girls 2 hours and multiple bus routes to get to school (especially since the auto lobby held back any progress on Detroit's mass transit system). Catherine Ferguson Academy is unique in that it is only one of a few schools in the nation geared exclusively towards pregnant teens/teen moms. Another factor that makes this school unique: they have their own urban, organic farm.

Paul Feig, creator of Freaks and Geeks and director of every-other-critically-acclaimed-show-that-the-cool-kids-love, came to bedazzle a number of extremely lucky panels at the Austin Film Festival this weekend. On top of marrying Jim and Pam on The Office a few weeks ago, Feig is currently directing Showtime’s Nurse Jackie and HBO’s Bored to Death in New York. Given that Feig’s X-Men ability is apparently multitasking (have you read his books or figured out that he’s a Twitter connoisseur yet), Austinist tracked the incredibly charismatic man down for a series of questions at the Stephen F. Austin hotel. Note: Paul was kind enough to provide actual detailed answers and anecdotes to each question, so we decided to forgo editing out...pretty much anything. In fact, scratch out interview because this is now deemed Storytime with Paul Feig.

In a roadside diner somewhere in Connecticut, on a snowy afternoon, Caleb Sinclair (Adam Scott) takes a momentary break from his omnipresent cigarettes to tell his younger brother Peter (Alex Frost), whom Caleb is reluctantly chauffeuring home for Thanksgiving holiday, that all women are whores. So begins the misanthropic and misogynistic journey of The Vicious Kind, the new feature by precocious writer/director Lee Toland Krieger (at 24-years-old and two feature-length movies under his belt, precocious may be an understatement).

There are lots of goodies on tap tonight, from the festival's most outrageous documentary to a Chinese historical epic. Docs are definitely on show, starting with Floored, about the traders on Chicago's stock exchange. Already one of the most interesting jobs in America, we're expecting some memorable characters up in here.

The Screenwriter's Conference is over and done with, so now it's just down to the films. Here are our picks for Monday at the Austin Film Festival, including some you may have missed the first time around...

Angela Chase said it best in My So-Called Life: "There's something about Sunday night that really makes you want to kill yourself." Well you know what she didn't have? The 16th Annual Austin Film Festival. Here are our picks for the AFF Sunday happenings that will make you so incredibly thankful to be alive today.

We know it’s a busy time for all the filmmakers this week, and they’re probably getting asked a thousand questions by a million different people, so we just had a quick “speed date” of an interview with Bob Byington, director of Harmony and Me. Of course, Austinist film buffs are busy too, rushing from panel to panel to screening, and you’ve only got a few minutes before the next thing starts anyway. So read on and get a little insight into the mind of an AFF filmmaker. Go ahead—it won’t take long.

In Myna Se Va (Myna Has Gone), the title character is an illegal immigrant who is trying to care for her charge, a young boy who has been seriously injured while his parents are away. Oh, and there's a dog whose leg has been lacerated by a tuna can . . . or so Myna tells the vet before she steals tranquilizers to then use on the boy.

It’s a game they hadn’t played since grade school, everyone holds a beer while they play, and they run the wrong way around the bases. The appeal of a game of kickball is obvious. But somewhere amid all the drinking, swearing, mock brawls, and (oh yeah) the kickball games themselves, this film becomes about something more than kickball.

Hipster death! How many of you already have a heated, passionate response to those two words? Maybe there's an involuntary, guttural groan prepped for release. For some odd reason, "hipster" has become an extremely loaded noun. To lighten things up (or possibly stir them up more and then stab them with a razor before laughing and sprinkling rat poison all over it), you should check out The Scenesters at Austin Film Festival; it's the first film from comedy troupe The Vacationeers and it follows a few desperate documentarians as they try to cash in on the story of a serial killer that's murdering beautiful lady hipsters in East LA.

Excitement and anticipation was thick in the air last night as Austin Film Festival goers began to claim their badges and passes. Today is the first day of AFF 2009, and while it starts a little bit later than all the other days, there is still a lot of content to pack in this afternoon. Here are the things we think you should ink in on your schedule.