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Slackery News Tidbits: January 27, 2014

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Here's the latest Austin and Texas film news.

  • Austin-based indie electronica band The Octopus Project won the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Musical Score at this year's Sundance Film Festival for their work on fellow Austinites David and Nathan Zellner's Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter (Debbie's review). This true-to-life drama follows a lonely Japanese woman who travels to America in search of the treasure mentioned in the movie Fargo.
  • The Zellner Brothers discussed their inspiration for Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter, which debuted at Sundance, with The Wall Street Journal
  • Austinite Todd Rohal's Rat Pack Rat (Debbie's dispatch), about a Sammy Davis Jr. impersonator who's hired to visit a Rat Pack fan, won Sundance's Short Film Special Jury Award for Unique Vision. Austin filmmaker Clay Liford (Wuss) produced. 
  • In more Sundance Film Festival news, Austin-based filmmaker David Gordon Green continues to express his appreciation for Iceland (Prince Avalanche was based on the 2011 Icelandic movie Either Way) with his role as executive producer of the Iceland-shot adventure-comedy Land Ho!, which premiered at the festival. Sony Pictures Classics bought worldwide distribution rights to the indie film, directed by Aaron Katz (whose features Cold Weather and Quiet City premiered at SXSW) and Martha Stephens (whose Pilgrim Song also premiered at SXSW).

Scott Harris Brings 'Being Ginger' to Texas

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being ginger still

Three months short of graduating from the University of Edinburgh, The University of Texas at Austin film alumnus Scott P. Harris couldn't find the right subject for a movie. But the color of Harris's hair came up continuously when discussing the theme of his final project with friends three years ago. The former Dallasite said redheads in Scotland have a really hard time because they take the brunt of numerous jokes, like the one that says each freckle on a ginger's face denotes a soul they have stolen.

Harris was cautious of making Being Ginger because he didn't want people to think he was just complaining or whining about the color of his hair, but as he began documenting his experiences as a redhead in 2011 it became therapeutic and a way to exercise past demons. 

Jokes and taunts from bystanders, and a rant from a blonde woman about why she wouldn't date a ginger, are captured onscreen. And Harris himself discusses his own personal biases against redheads that may stem from classroom childhood experiences where fellow students would repeatedly tell him that they hated him based on the color of his hair. 

Slackery News Tidbits: January 20, 2014

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Here's the latest Austin and Texas film news.

  • Austin filmmaker and Hammer to Nail editor Michael Tully is joining with Ion Cinema founder Eric Lavallee to found the American Independent Film Awards, which will honor "micro-budget" indies starting in 2015.
  • Local filmmaker Bob Byington (Somebody Up There Likes Me) is planning to shoot his feature Seven Chinese Brothers in Austin in the next couple of months, according to The Austin Chronicle. The cast will include Jason Schwartzman, Tunde Adebimpe and Olympia Dukakis -- no word yet on whether Bob Schneider will play a wedding singer (as in Byington's previous two movies). Byington says he wrote the script in 2001, and received an Austin Film Society Grant in 2010 for the film.
  • Louis Black, co-founder of SXSW and The Austin Chronicle, will serve as executive producer on Django Lives!, the sequel to the original Spaghetti Western Django. The star of the original film, Franco Nero, will reprise his role as the title character. Django Lives! finds the older Django as a consultant to silent-movie Westerns in 1915 Hollywood, and after getting entangled with racketeers, he fights back with a vengeance.
  • Drafthouse Films has been busy this week. The Austin distribution company acquired the U.S. rights to the Fantastic Fest-2013 screened Mood Indigo. A multi-city theatrical release is scheduled this year for Michel Gondry's movie, which tells the story of two Parisian newlyweds whose romance is tested when a flower begins to grow in the woman's lungs.
  • In addition, Drafthouse Films will re-release The Act of Killing (Elizabeth's review) in theaters on Feb. 7. The documentary, directed by Texan Joshua Oppenheimer, sees former Indonesian death squad leaders reenacting their real-life mass killings. The film has been nominated for a Best Documentary Feature Academy Award.

Slackery News Tidbits: January 13, 2014

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Here's the latest Austin film news.

  • SXSW Film 2014 has announced its first film and programming lineup selections, including former Austinite Rob Thomas's highly-anticipated Veronica Mars; the horror comedy Creep, co-written and starring University of Texas alum Mark Duplass; and "A Conversation with Alejandro Jodorowsky," the subject of the Fantastic Fest 2013-screened documentary, Jodorowsky's Dune. The bulk of the rest of the film-fest lineup will be announced on January 30.
  • In distribution news, the horror flick You're Next (Jordan's review), which screened at Fantastic Fest and SXSW, will be released on DVD, On Demand and Blu-ray Tuesday.
  • Austin-based graphic designer and filmmaker Yen Tan's SXSW 2013-screened Pit Stop is now available On Demand. The drama tells the parallel stories of two gay men living in a small Texas town.
  • Enjoy an evening of the best and worst that Texas westerns have to offer Thursday at 7 pm during the Bullock Texas State History Museum's B Movies and Bad History. Movie clips will be screened while historians, authors and media experts expose the historical facts and inaccuracies portrayed on screen. Former Texas Film Commission Director Tom Copeland, who teaches at Texas State University, and Joe Dishner will also discuss their time on the Walker, Texas Ranger production team while screening clips from the series and the movie that served as its inspiration.

Slackery News Tidbits: January 6, 2013

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Here's the latest Austin and Texas film news.

  • Scott Harris, UT Radio-Television-Film alumnus and two-time Austin Film Society Grant (formerly the Texas Filmmakers Production Fund) recipient, will screen his debut feature-length documentary, Being Ginger, at 7:30 pm next Monday at AMC Barton Creek in Austin through Tugg. A Q&A with Harris will follow the screening. The documentary, about one redhead's attempt to regain self-confidence by going on a quest to find a woman, was made during Harris's time studying at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. 
  • Meanwhile, out in Fredericksburg, the town's lone movie theater reopened last month. More than a year after the Stagecoach Theater closed, the Fredericksburg Standard reports that the rebranded independent theater Fritztown Cinema will have a small pizzeria and a beer/wine bar. 
  • Fritztown has partnered with the Hill Country Film Festival for a free Indie Screening Series, beginning next Wednesday night. This debut screening will showcase a collection of Texas-made short films provided by the Houston Film Commission
  • Austinite Geoff Marslett's feature Loves Her Gun (Don's review), which won the Lone Star Award at SXSW 2013, will run for a week beginning Friday at the Village Cinema in New York City.

AFS Preview: Godard vs. Truffaut

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"Breathless" movie still

Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, cinema legends and titans of the French New Wave, duke it out for the Austin Film Society's series "Godard vs. Truffaut" from Jan. 3 through Feb. 23 at the Marchesa Hall and Theatre

But there's no need to take sides*, as various seminal works by each filmmaker are spotlighted biweekly. Discover your inner Francophile at 8 pm Fridays and 2 pm Sundays at the Marchesa.

Breathless (1960) -- Friday 1/3 [tickets], Sunday 1/5 [tickets]

The rules of cinematic composition are thrown out the window in Breathless, Godard's first feature-length film and one of the earliest of the French New Wave. A young petty criminal with delusions of grandeur drags his American girlfriend (Jean Seberg, whose haircut alone was influential) into his escape plot after killing a police officer. 

Review: The Wolf of Wall Street

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"The Wolf of Wall Street"

Director Martin Scorsese reunites for the fifth time with actor Leonardo DiCaprio in the true-to-life black comedy The Wolf of Wall Street, based on Jordan Belfort's 2007 unapologetic, if not embellished, memoir of the same name. 

Both the movie and memoir trace the rise and fall of stockbroker Belfort, played by a greasy, dark-haired DiCaprio (when is his hair not greasy?). In the spirit of wolf puns, The Wolf of Wall Street chokes on the metaphorical hairball. 

Belfort begins his foray into the amoral world of Wall Street in 1987, when he starts working at Rothschild. There's an uncomfortably humorous scene in the movie where he's having lunch with his boss, a spraytanned Matthew McConaughey, who gives him hackneyed advice about the industry, one that breaths fantasy and illusion. 

Slackery News Tidbits: December 23, 2013

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Here's the latest Austin and Texas film news.

Slackery News Tidbits: December 16, 2013

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Here's the latest Austin and Texas film news.

  • Austin City Council has approved 99 community places for free access to the high-speed Internet service Google Fiber (Chip's article). Locations include the Austin Film Society, the Austin Theatre Alliance -- which means the Paramount and Stateside Theatres, local film-fest venues like the ZACH Theatre and the Long Center, the Austin Convention Center, channelAustin and 23 Austin Public Library branches. The Google Fiber "Community Connections" program will provide these locations with service through 2023.
  • Austin-based entertainment site Spill is being shut down at the end of this month by its parent company Hollywood.com. As a result, Spill founder Korey Coleman has started a Kickstarter entitled It Ain't Going Down Like That to fund a new site along the same lines. In three days, the campaign has raised more than $75,000, more than doubling its $30K goal. The campaign ends Jan. 12.
  • Lots of Austin and Texas movie release-date info. First of all, DFW-area filmmaker David Lowery's Ain't Them Bodies Saints (Jette's review) will be released on DVD and VOD, including Amazon Instant and iTunes,  on Tuesday.  The movie premiered at Sundance earlier this year.

Slackery News Tidbits: December 9, 2013

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Here's the latest Austin and Texas film news.

  • Congratulations to University of Texas at Austin grads Elizabeth Chatelain and Zachary Heinzerling for their recent International Documentary Association awards. IndieWire reports that Chatelain won the David L. Wolper Student Documentary Award for her movie My Sister Sarah (Jordan's interview), which follows her sister's drug addiction. Heinzerling won the Jacqueline Donnet Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award for his debut Cutie and the Boxer (Jette's review), about the chaotic marriage of famed boxing painter Ushio Shinohara and his wife, Noriko. 
  • The City of Austin invites local filmmakers to submit shorts to its annual "Faces of Austin" competition. Submitted fiction or nonfiction films must be under 10 minutes and must be filmed in Austin or highlight a city topic or organization. Films must be submitted by Tuesday Jan. 21 at 5 pm. Selected films will be screened during the SXSW Film Conference Community Screenings as well as on Channel 6, the city's website and at special screenings throughout 2014. Full submission guidelines and the application can be found can be found on the Faces of Austin website.
  • Austin filmmaker Richard Linklater and native Texan Ethan Hawke discussed their long-awaited movie, Boyhood, with Vulture last week. The movie chronicles the life of a child from age six to 18.   
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