Austin360 blogs > Austin Movie Blog > Archives > 2009 > July
July 2009
Scott returns to ‘Alien’
We’d heard the murmurs, but now it sounds official. The “Alien” franchise will return, with a prequel directed by none other than original “Alien” helmer Ridley Scott.
Then again, we haven’t been nuts about Scott’s output of late (“Gladiator,” “American Gangster” — really?) But just recall his masterly roll way back when, with dazzlers like “The Duellists,” “Alien,” “Blade Runner” and the sadly underrated, rather majestic “Legend.”
But how we love “Alien.” And “Aliens” for that matter. Speaking of … “Aliens” and David Fincher’s kinda cruddy but interesting “Alien 3” are screening Aug. 5 and 7 at the Paramount. FYI.
Oh, if Scott casts Denzel Washington or Russell Crowe in the new movie, we’re gonna kill him.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Jonah Hill and his Alamo T-shirts
Actor-comedian Jonah Hill loves the Alamo Drafthouse. We’ve noted this before, but it comes up because there he is again sporting one of the Alamo’s signature “Badass Cinema” T-shirts in (the terrific, hilarious) “Funny People,” opening Friday.
Look for it. It’s the kung-fu version of the shirt. We last spotted Hill wearing the Pam Grier version during his junket interviews for “Superbad” in 2007. And he’s also been seen in shirts embossed with Daniel Johnston’s “Hi, how are you?” frog emblem.
Anyway, HERE’s more from the Alamo’s Mondo Tee’s site about Hill’s Alamo-lovin’, with bonus sightings of cool Alamo/Mondo Tees junk.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
The wilder films of Billy Wilder
The Austin Film Society is doing something keen. As usual. Its upcoming Essential Cinema Series focusses on Billy Wilder comedies, with a twist: Instead of the usual fare — “Some Like It Hot,” “The Apartment,” etc. — it presents Wilder’s less celebrated, sometimes controversial late movies, all co-written by the great I.A.L. Diamond.
The series, “Censors, Drop Your Scissors! Billy Wilder’s Later Comedies,” is a rare chance to catch these films on the big screen, specifically that of the Alamo South:
“One, Two, Three” (1961); “Irma La Douce” (1963); “Kiss Me, Stupid” (1964); “The Fortune Cookie” (1966); and “Avanti!” (1972).
Get times and ticket details HERE.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin Film Society
Hog heaven at the Paramount
Get your motor running and head out on the highway that leads to the Paramount Thursday night for a double-feature screening of the 1969 classic “Easy Rider” and the 1953 groundbreaker “The Wild One.”
Director and star Dennis Hopper shook up the movie industry 40 years ago, when “Easy Rider,” his independently financed motorcycle road- trip movie, became one of the year’s biggest successes.
Peter Fonda co-stars as one of the two dopers traveling from Los Angeles to New Orleans in search of a better life. Along the scenic route, they meet plenty of rednecks and end up in jail, only to be freed after meeting an alcoholic lawyer played by Jack Nicholson, who joins them on the way to Mardi Gras.
The Paramount is screening a restored 40th anniversary print of the movie.
In “The Wild One,” Marlon Brando stars as the leader of a pack of trouble-making motorcyclists who invade a small town.
The movie, directed by Laslo Benedek, doesn’t hold up as well as “Easy Rider,” but it helped turn Brando into an iconic symbol of alienated youth, one year before his much-superior, Oscar-winning performance in director Elia Kazan’s “On the Waterfront.”
Mary Murphy, as the sheriff’s daughter, makes life more complicated for all when she becomes Brando’s “love interest.”
“The Wild One” screens at 7 Thursday night, followed by “Easy Rider” at 8:50. On Friday, “Easy Rider” kicks off the double feature at 7:15 p.m., followed by “The Wild One” at 9:25 p.m.
And if you can’t make either show, then you can check out more alienated youths on Saturday, with the two James Dean classics, “East of Eden” and “Rebel Without a Cause.”
Details: www.austintheatre.org. $7 in advance, $8 at the door. 713 Congress Ave.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Linklater’s new project
From today’s Variety:
Richard Linklater (“School of Rock”) is nearing a deal to direct “Liars (A-E)” for Scott Rudin and Miramax.
Project, penned by Emma Forrest, is a romantic comedy about a woman who, on the way to President Obama’s inauguration, retrieves lost items from her ex-boyfriends.
Kat Dennings is set to play the woman’s pal.
Linklater’s most recent directorial effort is “Me and Orson Welles,” which bowed at the Toronto Film Festival last year.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Noteworthy DVDs released 7/28/09
PICK OF THE WEEK
“Repulsion” (Criterion): Roman Polanski made his English-language debut with this classic thriller, set in Swinging London and starring a young Catherine Deneuve. Gorgeous in black-and-white, it’s available on both DVD and Blu-ray.
OTHER TOP PICKS
“Bad Lieutenant” (Lions Gate): Before Werner Herzog’s unlikely “Bad Lieutenant” movie gets to theaters, Lions Gate offers an overdue special edition of the original.
“Harvard Beats Yale 29-29” (Kino): Who’d guess that a tied college football game would make for one of last year’s most praised documentaries?
Offbeat animation: Led off by Bill Plympton’s new film “Dog Days” (Microcinema) is a quartet of new art-animation titles including “The Astonishing Work of Tezuka Osamu,” “Extreme Animation: Films By Phil Mulloy” (Kino), and “The Animation of Alexeieff” (Facets).
NEW ON BLU-RAY
“Bad Boy Bubby” (Blue Underground); “Inglorious Bastards” (Severin); “A River Runs Through It” (Sony); “This is Spinal Tap” (MGM)
FRESH FROM THE MULTIPLEX
“Dragonball Evolution,” “Miss March” (Fox)
BEST OF TV
“Agatha Christie: Poirot & Marple” (A&E); “Battlestar Galactica” Season 4.5 and Complete Series sets (Universal); “Doctor Who: Planet of the Dead” (BBC); “Dollhouse” Season One (Fox); Kyle Chandler in “Early Edition” Season 2, “Krod Mandoon And The Flaming Sword Of Fire” (Paramount); the original “Life On Mars” Series One (Acorn Media): “The Middleman” Complete Series (Shout! Factory); “The Red Hand Gang” Complete Series (Virgil Films); “The Spectacular Spider-Man” Season 1 (Sony); “The Terry Jones Collection,” “Great Artists 2 with Tim Marlow” (Microcinema)
ARTHOUSE/FOREIGN
“The 10th Victim” (Blue Underground) ; “Just Love Me” (Facets)
FROM THE VAULTS “Becoming Charley Chase,” “The Green Hornet,” “The Green Hornet Strikes Again” (VCI)
REISSUE/REPACKAGE
“The Fast & The Furious” (Universal); “Richard Pryor: Live & Smokin’” (Weinstein Co.)
CULT CORNER
“Animalada” (Synapse); “Big Man Japan” (Magnolia); “Torso” (Blue Underground)
DOCUMENTARIES
“Claude Levi-Strauss: In His Own Words” (Facets)
STRAIGHT(ISH) TO VIDEO
“An American Affair” (Universal); “Angel of Death,” “The Fifth Commandment” (Sony); “Green Lantern: First Flight” (Warner Bros.); “The Land That Time Forgot” (2009) (Asylum); “Streets of Blood” (Anchor Bay)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: DVDs
Bicycle Film Festival gears up
Read about next month’s new and expanded Bicycle Film Festival at Jason Whaley’s Austin360 blog Road Rash, HERE and HERE.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Tarantino coming to show ‘Basterds’
Quentin Tarantino, Austin’s adopted son, comes to town Aug. 15 to screen his much-ballyhooed World War II epic “Inglourious Basterds” at the Alamo Ritz.
Now, this is one of those very special screenings put on by the Austin Film Society and Fantastic Fest, so it’s pretty much a first-come, first-served affair for members/badge holders of those two groups. Tickets will be available to them at noon Thursday at the Fantastic Fest site. Expect all tickets to go poof.
Under the banner of Cinemapocalyse, the film will be followed by all-night screenings of two films that influenced “Basterds” with QT as host.
Get more details, including those about $100 VIP seats, HERE.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Fantastic Fest
Calling all youth filmmakers
The Austin Film Festival is taking submissions for its Young Filmmakers Competition, which it calls “an amazing opportunity for students hoping to pursue a career in the industry and to showcase their work.”
Winners will get a host of prizes. Everything you need to know HERE.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin Film Festival 2009
Mike Judge’s new one gets the Austin treatment
Smack on the heels of the big Austin premiere of Robert Rodriguez’s new movie “Shorts” at the Paramount Theatre on Aug. 16 comes the big Austin premiere of Mike Judge’s new comedy “Extract” at the Paramount on Aug. 18.
That’s a lot of Austin film power for a three-day stretch.
Judge and his star Jason Bateman will present the Miramax flick for a show that benefits the Austin Film Society’s Texas Filmmakers’ Production Fund.
Film society members get first crack at tickets at noon Tuesday HERE. General tickets go on sale at noon Aug. 3 at the Paramount box office and HERE.
Prices: $100 VIP seating and official after-party with Judge and Bateman; $30 mezzanine and $17 upper balcony.
The comedy co-stars Kristen Wiig, Mila Kunis and Ben Affleck. It officially opens Sept. 4. More about it and the trailer HERE.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin Film Society
Production fund panelists screen their work
Filmmakers Sam Green (“The Weather Underground”) and So Yong Kim (“Treeless Mountain”) and Mike Plante, director of the CineVegas Film Festival, make up this year’s panel that will select recipients of the annual Texas Filmmakers’ Production Fund.
The panelists/jurors will choose what film and video artists will get $100,000 in cash, goods and services based on their work and works-in-progress. The Austin Film Society received 244 applicants this year, the most in its 14-year history.
Per tradition, the panelists will screen one of their films while they’re in Austin:
So Yong Kim shows her drama “Treeless Mountain” at 7 p.m. Aug. 12 at the Alamo South.
Sam Green screens his Oscar-nominated doc “The Weather Underground” at 9:25 p.m. Aug. 12 at the Alamo South.
Mike Plante shows his in-progress doc “Be Like an Ant” at 7 p.m. Aug. 13 at the Austin Studios Screening Room.
The shows are free, but reservations are recommended HERE.
Recipients of this year’s grants will be announced Aug. 17.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin Film Society
Noteworthy DVDs released 7/21/09
“The Mighty Boosh” Seasons 1 through 3 (BBC): Another quirky Britcom ripe for Stateside rediscovery, this winner involves a pair of misfits who work for a shoestring-budgeted zoo when not having surreal musical daydreams.
“Robot Chicken Star Wars: Episode II” (Warner Bros.): Like all good (and bad, and very bad) “Star Wars”-related efforts, the incredibly funny “Robot Chicken” parody now has a sequel.
“2 or 3 Things I Know About Her” and “Made in U.S.A.” (Criterion): Criterion goes ga-ga for Godard, with two newly restored mid-’60s titles.
“Watchmen: Director’s Cut” and “300: The Complete Experience” (Warner Bros.): For all those fanboys who think that director Zack Snyder’s epic-sized, computer-enhanced comic book adaptations weren’t long enough in the theaters…
NEW ON BLU-RAY
“I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” (Universal); “Midnight Express” (Sony)
ARTHOUSE/FOREIGN
“An Empress and the Warriors” (Weinstein Co.); “The Unknown Woman” (Image)
FROM THE VAULTS
“A Dog of Flanders” (E1 Entertainment)
DOCUMENTARIES
“American Outrage,” “Human Rights Watch” Box Set (First Run Pictures); “Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer” (RED); “Carmen & Geoffrey” (First Run Pictures); “A Life Among Whales” (Indiepix)
BEST OF TV
“Charlie’s Angels” Season 4 (Sony); “The Donna Reed Show” Season 2 (Virgil Films); “The Lucy Show” Season 1, “This American Life” Season 2 (Paramount); “Monk” Season 7, “Psych” Season 3 (Universal); “Prison Break: The Final Break” (Fox); “Pushing Daisies” Season 2 (Warner Bros.); “Spongebob Squarepants: To Squarepants or Not To Squarepants” (Nickelodeon); “Stargate SG-1: Children of the Gods” (MGM); “Wire in the Blood” Season 6 (E1 Entertainment); “Wolverine & the X-Men” Vol. 2 (Lions Gate)
STRAIGHT(ISH) TO VIDEO
“Echelon Conspiracy” (Paramount); “Explicit Ills” (Phase 4); “The Great Buck Howard” (Magnolia); “Messengers 2: The Scarecrow” (Sony)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: DVDs
Reviews of ‘The Merry Gentleman’
Click here for “The Merry Gentleman” showtimes in Austin.
Los Angeles Times: “A dark and lovely drama about the complications of human connections that is Michael Keaton’s impressive directing debut.” Click here for full review.
The New York Times: “The film’s title, needless to say, has an ironic bite. One of the pleasures of The Merry Gentleman is Mr. Keaton’s commitment to that bite, which never registers as cruel or gratuitous, just honest, weary, sad.” Click here for full review.
Chicago Tribune: “It’s a very small film, undermined by a puttering rhythm and Pinter-worthy pauses in the second half and a resolution neither satisfyingly oblique nor conventionally pleasing.” Click here for full review.
Washington Post: “It’s too bad the filmmakers didn’t take a breath, look at the rushes and see what a comedic gem they had. With just a few tweaks, The Merry Gentleman could have made a wickedly funny parody of the over-earnest, lyrically hard-edged indie movie. But it’s too late for do-overs.” Click here for full review.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Reviews
Austin animator named one to watch
Filmmaker Magazine (“The Magazine of Independent Film”) puts Austin’s own Geoff Marslett on its annual “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in its summer ‘09 issue, which features Quentin Tarantino as the cover-boy.
“This year’s crop of 25 New Faces consists, as always, of new film artists whose work we feel passionately about but also, in this year of change, people who are redefining the notion of a career in film,” writes Filmmaker‘s editor Scott Macaulay.
Marslett is one of those local guys you see at movie events and parties, but he’s mostly busy working on his animated feature “Mars,” a romantic comedy featuring astronauts going to Mars. The film features live action, too, including former Austinite and “Humpday” co-star Mark Duplass. He’s also an animation instructor at UT, and some of his former students are helping out on the big film.
Read about Geoff and some of his fellow up and comers HERE.
Geoff Marslett (photo: Filmmaker Magazine)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin Movies Inc.
Michael Moore gives props to Austin films
Filmmaker-provocateur Michael Moore has handpicked a trio of Austin-made movies to screen at his annual Traverse City Film Festival, running July 28 through Aug. 2 in the Michigan town of Traverse City.
Declaring Austin (rather belatedly) “the new hotbed of American independent cinema,” Moore will screen Ben Steinbauer’s funny and culturally probing doc “Winnebago Man” and Bob Byington’s twin low-fi comedies “Registered Sex Offender” and “Harmony and Me” for the Straight Outta Austin program.
Nice exposure for the home team. More about the festival HERE.
Read Shannon McGarvey’s recent interview with Byington HERE.
Ben Steinbauer’s ‘Winnebago Man’
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin Movies Inc.
What I’m watching
Wherein our movie critic periodically shares what DVDs he’s been viewing in his spare time …
- “Near Dark” (1987; Kathryn Bigelow): Bigelow’s Texas vampire road movie holds up well, with its wily humor and sun-baked vampire lore forging a tangy twist on a hoary genre. Bill Paxton has particular joy eating up flesh — and the desert and roadhouse scenery. Bloody fun.
- “The Tin Drum” (1979; Volker Schlondorff): A visually sumptuous and thrillingly imaginative adaptation of the famous Gunter Grass novel set in Nazi Germany. To protest the cruel absurdities of humankind — including Nazism — a 3-year-old boy decides to stop growing. A political fable told in broad but colorful and damning strokes.
- “A Song is Born” (Howard Hawks; 1948): Hawks remade his superb comedy “Ball of Fire” into a so-so musical, with the bendy Danny Kaye assuming the stuffy Gary Cooper role. Perky Virginia Mayo fills the firecracker Barbara Stanwyck part, but it’s hardly the same. Still, some crack jazz, with Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong et al, and puff-pastry enjoyments.
- “Zabriskie Point” (Michelangelo Antonioni; 1970): A woolly examination of late-’60s youth culture in America, with languorous hippie interludes, through the eye of the ever-arty Antonioni. Has aged poorly — its points are made in shrieking italics — and, for such a straight-forward message movie, it’s narratively baggy when it really shouldn’t be.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: DVDs
Ron Howard to be feted at Austin Film Festival
Ron Howard — he who needs no introduction — is this year’s recipient of the Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award at the 16th annual Austin Film Festival and Screenwriters Conference. He’ll be handed his trophy Oct. 24 at a special ceremony at the Austin Club.
This means, besides all the unmoored adulation, Howard will speak during the festival and present one of his classic films and discuss it. (What will it be? “Splash”? “Apollo 13”? “The Da Vinci Code”?) It will be all Howard all the time.
Not really. Because the festival, as we’ve reported, has tapped Mitchell Hurwitz, creator of TV’s “Arrested Development,” as the Outstanding Television Writer Award recipient. He gets lovin’ too.
Read about both fellas and the fest HERE.
The Austin Film Festival runs Oct. 22 — 29.
Richie, er, Howie, um … Ron Howard!
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin Film Festival 2009
The forgotten ‘Chinatown’
This article in the Wall Street Journal has me wondering why no one, to the best of my knowledge, has ever released a DVD including a version of ‘Chinatown’ where you can hear Phillip Lambro’s original score, which has been described as ‘dissonant, weird, scratchy.’ Could it really alter the experience of seeing the movie as much as this piece suggests?
Update: Here’s an interesting discussion board about the Lambro score.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: DVDs
Noteworthy DVDs released 7/14/09
OTHER TOP PICKS
“For All Mankind” (Criterion): This documentary drawing on original footage of NASA’s lunar missions gets a welcome upgrade to Blu-ray, the better to convey the inky grandeur of its astronaut interviewees’ experiences.
“Mad Men” Season 2 (Lions Gate): Adman Don Draper smokes and boozes his way through a second season of this critically beloved AMC series.
“Grey Gardens” (2009) (HBO): Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange put their spin on the ineffably strange Beale women in the recent fictionalized adaptation of 1975’s cult-beloved documentary.
“The Human Condition” (Criterion): Stacking up at nearly ten hours, Masaki Kobayashi’s 1959 Japanese epic (adapted from a six-volume novel) follows one idealistic man’s melodramatic travails through WWII.
NEW ON BLU-RAY
Martial Arts 3-fer including “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “House of Flying Daggers,” & “Curse of the Golden Flower”; “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” (Sony); “This is Spinal Tap” (MGM); “The Towering Inferno” (Fox)
ARTHOUSE/FOREIGN
“12” (Sony); Marco Ferreri’s “Bye Bye Monkey” & “Don’t Touch the White Woman,” “Menage” (Koch); “The Edge of Love” (Image); “Eldorado” (Film Movement); “Roselyne and the Lions” (Cinema Libre); “Sorry, You Can’t Get Through!” (Dolce)
FRESH FROM THE MULTIPLEX
“The Haunting in Connecticut” (Lions Gate)
TV ON DVD:
“Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations” Season 4, “Shark Week: Great Bites” (Image); “Bewitched” Season 8 (Sony); “ER” Season 11 (Warner Bros.); “G.I. Joe” Season “1.1” (Shout! Factory); “Leverage” Season 1 (Paramount); “Peyton Place” Part 2 (Shout! Factory); “Red Skelton: America’s Clown Prince” (Timeless); “Tracey Takes On…” Seasons 3 & 4 (Eagle Vision); “Wild Pacific” (BBC)
KIDS’ STUFF
“The Wiggles Go Bananas” (Warner); “Bob the Builder: Built For Fun,” “Thomas & Friends: Percy and the Bandstand” (Lions Gate)
DOCUMENTARIES
“The Beatles Rare And Unseen” (MVD); “A River of Waste: The Hazardous Truth About Factory Farms” (Cinema Libre); “The Unwinking Gaze” (Indiepix)
CULT CORNER
“[Rec]” (Sony); “Night Train” (National Entertainment Media); “Sleepy Eyes of Death” (AnimEigo)
STRAIGHT(ISH) TO VIDEO
A recent appearance by David Carradine in “Break” (Cinema Epoch); “Mad Men“‘s Elisabeth Moss in “El Camino” (Lifesize); the Dennis Quaid thriller “Horsemen” (Lions Gate); “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder: Freshman Year” (Paramount)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: DVDs
Fantastic Fest to launch with ‘Broncos’
Just in: Fantastic Fest — Sept. 24 thru Oct. 1 at the Alamo South — will open with the Jared Hess (“Napoleon Dynamite,” “Nacho Libre”) comedy “Gentlemen Broncos,” starring Michael Angarano and “Flight of the Conchords’” Jemaine Clement.
Expect Hess and Clement and others in attendance. The film’s meta Web site is HERE.
Also, the fest is honoring heroic pulp-exploitation auteur (and naughty man) Jess Franco with its Lifetime Achievement Award. More HERE.
At the above link you’ll also find the first wave of features and shorts playing Fantastic Fest ‘09.
Jemaine Clement
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Fantastic Fest
Rodriguez chats up ‘Predators’
Scooping us — just a little — the LA Times catches up with Austin’s Robert Rodriguez to discuss his in-progress remake of “Predator,” which he wrote and is producing.
Expect our own report soon with RR, whose kid-friendly “Shorts” comes out in late August.
The story starts like this:
Fifteen years ago, a young-gun filmmaker named Robert Rodriguez was hired to write a new “Predator” film and now, looking back, he can chuckle at the final product he delivered. “It was this crazy, intense off-world story and there was just no way it could be made. The technology wasn’t there yet.”
That was then, but this is now. “Predators,” as it will be called, is happening and Rodriguez is producing. I sat down with him for a pleasant lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel and, as our sons sat together munching French fries and drawing pictures, he explained his plans for the summer 2010 sci-fi release.
“It’s the story from that script I had written way back then,” Rodriguez said. “They had hired me to write a ‘Predator’ story while I was waiting to do ‘Desperado’ back in 1994. It was crazy, this thing I came up with. So then fast-forward to now and, like, six months ago, they found the script and called me up. ‘Hey, we want to redo this franchise and we found your old script. This is where we should have gone with the series! We want to move forward.’ And that’s what we’re doing.”
Read the whole entry HERE.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin Movies Inc.
Paul Newman week at the Paramount
Paramount Summer Film Classics [site]
When: Series continues through Sept. 12.
Where: 713 Congress Ave.
Tickets: $5-$8 single; or FLIX-TIX, a book of 10 admissions for $45
Information: www.austintheatre.org
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
The latest on Rodriguez’s premiere of ‘Shorts’
We mentioned here last week that Robert Rodriguez is throwing a big shindig for the local premiere of his latest family-friendly film “Shorts” on Aug. 16 at the Paramount Theatre. After the screening of the Austin-made, Day-Glo kids fantasy about a magic Rainbow Rock that grants wishes, a full-blown carnival with games and rides will unfold on Congress Avenue outside the Paramount.
The screening happens at 2:30 p.m. Aug. 16 and all proceeds — every cent — go to the Thoughtful House Center for Children. Expect a red-carpet event with the filmmakers and some of the cast, which includes many children — including Rodriguez’s son Rebel Rodriguez — plus James Spader, Jon Cryer, William H. Macy and Leslie Mann.
Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Wednesday at www.GetTix.net and the Paramount box office (713 Congress Ave.). $30 for the movie and carnival. VIP badges, including a VIP lunch and special seating, are $125.
“Shorts” opens in theaters Aug. 21. It’s rated PG.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Austin Movies Inc.
Noteworthy DVDs released 7/7/09
TOP PICKS
“Near Dark” (Lions Gate): Slightly late for the latest vampire craze but just in time for “The Hurt Locker,” Kathryn Bigelow’s fantastically pulpy 1987 take on the undead gets a fresh new edition.
The California Newsreel Collection: A nearly three-decade-old project preserving African cinema for American viewers, California Newsreel is now making 70 or so African films (from 25 countries) available to consumers in addition to the educational market. See www.newsreel.org for more info.
Universal’s “Backlot Series”: As the name suggests, the exotic lands in these vintage pix may actually have been located within driving distance of the Brown Derby. Three titles are being released this week: “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” “Beau Geste,” and “Trail of the Lonesome Pine.”
“The John Barrymore Collection” (Kino): This set of four silents featuring one of cinema’s oldest stars includes the first release — on either VHS or DVD — of Barrymore’s 1922 “Sherlock Holmes.”
“Strongbad Emails Volume 6,” “Strongbad Emails: 50 Greatest Hits” (Microcinema): The internet ‘toon sensation keeps plugging away, with more episodes of cantankerous Q&A occasionally guest-starring Homestar Runner.
FRESH FROM THE MULTIPLEX
“Knowing,” “Push” (Summit); “The Unborn” (2009) (Universal)
NEW ON BLU-RAY
“The Deep” (Sony); “Grumpy Old Men” (Warner Bros.); “The Universe” Season 2 (A&E)
ARTHOUSE/FOREIGN
“Cinemad” (Microcinema)
DOCUMENTARIES
“Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio with the Red Shoes” (Docurama); “The Little Red Truck” (Passion River); “Reclaiming the Blade” (Galatia); “Resolved” (Image)
BEST OF TV
“Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Movie Collection” Set 4 (Acorn Media); Doctor Who: “Attack of the Cybermen” & “The Rescue / The Romans” (BBC); “Matlock” Season 3, “Petticoat Junction” Season 2, “Reno 911!” Season 6 (Paramount); “Coco Chanel,” “Murder, She Wrote” Season 10 (Universal); “Mr. Rock ‘n Roll: The Alan Freed Story” (Eagle Vision); “Peanuts 1960’s Collection,” “Third Watch” Season 2 (Warner Bros.); “Young and Handsome: A Night with Jeff Garlin” (Shout! Factory)
STRAIGHT(ISH) TO VIDEO
“Five Fingers,” “A Day in the Life” (Lions Gate)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: DVDs
Local filmmaking round-up
The feature “Five Time Champion” recently wrapped in Smithville, starring Betty Buckley, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson (“Friday Night Lights”) and John Gries (Uncle Rico in “Napoleon Dynamite”). The drama was written and directed by Berndt Mader, a former Radio-Television-Film student at UT, and some current and former RTF students worked on the film. Mader’s script went through the University of Texas Film Institute’s Script and Production Labs. More about “Five Time Champion” HERE.
We’re told that UTFI’s first feature (without Burnt Orange Productions) “Dance with the One,” which shot in Austin last year, is “locked.” It’s in post-production at UT and the filmmakers hope to have it done by summer’s end. Sundance 2010 is their first target. Read our on-set visit of “Dance with the One” HERE.
Out in lovely Bastrop, Carolyn Banks has wrapped and canned her first feature film “Invicta.” The tagline says it all: “Love, greed and fire ants mix it up in rural Texas.” Learn more about the “horror tra-la,” as the puckish Banks puts it, HERE.
“Invicta”
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin Movies Inc.
Hurwitz to get festival award
As the 16th annual Austin Film Festival and Screenwriters Conference gets into shape, more big names are being attached to the event, happening Oct. 22 — 29.
Mitchell Hurwitz, creator of TV’s “Arrested Development,” has been tapped as this year’s Outstanding Television Writer Award recipient. More about Hurwitz HERE.
Previous recipients of the Outstanding Television Writer Award include Greg Daniels (“The Office”), David Milch (“Deadwood”), Garry Shandling (“The Larry Sanders Show”), David Chase (“The Sopranos”), and Darren Star (“Sex and the City”).
Hurwitz
Read about other ‘09 Screenwriter Conference panelists HERE.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin Film Festival 2009
Karl Malden dies
Great character actor Karl Malden has died at age 97. Known for roles in such Elia Kazan classics as “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “On the Waterfront” and “Baby Doll,” as well as TV’s “The Streets of San Francisco,” Malden was a master craftsman with an unmistakable, almost avuncular mien.
Other Malden films we love include “Patton,” “How the West Was Won,” “Kiss of Death,” “Boomerang,” “Birdman of Alcatraz,” “I Confess” and “The Cincinnati Kid.”
Here’s a partial obit from the Los Angeles Times:
Karl Malden, one of Hollywood’s strongest and most versatile supporting actors, who won an Oscar playing his Broadway-originated role as Mitch in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” died today. He was 97.
Malden starred in the 1970s TV series “The Streets of San Francisco” and was the longtime American Express traveler’s-check spokesman, warning travelers to not leave home without it. He died of natural causes at his home in Brentwood, said his daughter Mila Doerner.
With his unglamorous mug — he broke his bulbous nose twice playing sports as a teenager — the former Indiana steel-mill worker realized early on the course his acting career would take.
“I was so incredibly lucky,” Malden once told The Times. “I knew I wasn’t a leading man. Take a look at this face.” But, he vowed as a young man, he wasn’t going to let his looks hamper his ambition to succeed as an actor.
In a movie career that flourished in the 1950s and ’60s, Malden played a variety of roles in more than 50 films, including the sympathetic priest in “On the Waterfront,” the resentful husband in “Baby Doll,” the warden in “Birdman of Alcatraz,” the outlaw-turned-sheriff in “One-Eyed Jacks,” the pioneer patriarch in “How the West Was Won,” Madame Rose’s suitor in “Gypsy,” the card dealerin “The Cincinnati Kid” and Gen. Omar Bradley in “Patton.”
His varied performances established Malden, former Times film critic Charles Champlin once wrote, “as an Everyman, but one whose range moved easily up and down the levels of society and the IQ scale, from heroes to heavies and ordinary, decent guys just trying to get along.”
Malden was a longtime holdout to television until he agreed to play Lt. Mike Stone on the ABC police drama “The Streets of San Francisco,” with Michael Douglas. The series, which ran from 1972 to 1977, earned Malden four consecutive Emmy nominations as lead actor in a drama series.
When he finally won his sole Emmy, it was for outstanding supporting actor in a limited series or special, as a man who begins to suspect that his daughter was murdered by her husband in the fact-based 1984 miniseries “Fatal Vision.”
Malden also starred in “Skag,” a short-lived 1980 NBC dramatic series in which he played a Serbian family man and union foreman at a Pittsburgh steel mill.
But for all his movie and television roles, it was primarily the series of American Express traveler’s-check commercials Malden made between 1973 and 1994 that gave him his greatest public recognition. (Even Johnny Carson, complete with fake proboscis, dark suit and short-brimmed fedora, spoofed Malden’s sober-faced commercials on “The Tonight Show.”)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Robert Rodriguez premieres his new one, ‘Shorts’
When Robert Rodriguez debuts his family-friendly films in Austin, he likes to go all-out. For his latest Austin-made kids movie “Shorts,” a Day-Glo fantasy, a carnival with rides and games will spill out in front of the Paramount Theatre before the show.
The screening, the film’s local premiere, happens at 2:30 p.m. Aug. 16 at the Paramount. Proceeds go to the Thoughtful House Center for Children. Expect a red-carpet event with the filmmakers and some of the young cast.
Tickets and details HERE.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin Movies Inc.
Modigliani looks beyond ‘Crawford’
Following the success of his doc “Crawford” — enjoying a second life at Hulu and Netflix — Austin filmmaker David Modigliani is working on his second feature doc, “61 Bullets.”
Here’s his pitch for it: “Fiery Louisiana Senator Huey Long was assassinated in 1935 by a young doctor with a 3-month-old baby and no clear motive. Now, 74 years later, that baby is out to clear his father’s name. And the bottom line is that he’s probably right. 61 BULLETS follows Dr. Carl Weiss Jr.’s mission to recover a bullet from Huey Long’s buried body, exonerate his father, and overturn Louisiana history before it’s too late. The quest for exoneration is a unique angle on bona fide whodunit — the biggest American political assassination between McKinley and Kennedy.”
The director has done some shoots in Louisiana and is actively seeking funding and all that other indie filmmaking fun.
Modigliani is also at work on THIS.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin Movies Inc.
