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Looking for fun today? Try Seguin!

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I forgot to mention in Movies This Week that the Seguin Film and Arts Festival takes place this weekend. In fact, the fun started last night with a screening of Rear Window (for some weird reason, they weren't allowed to announce the title, but I assume that I've guessed the correct "Hitchcock thriller starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly"). If you're looking for some alternative film choices today, you might want to make the drive (it's about the same distance as San Antonio).

Here's the film schedule: Today (Saturday), you can enjoy a number of short films during the day -- I haven't seen any of them myself but they sound entertaining. Most were shot in Texas. Tonight at 9 pm, the festival will screen several classic horror movies: Night of the Living Dead, Reefer Madness (more of a cult film really), and House on Haunted Hill, which will be accompanied by a few locally made horror shorts. The evening event is a fundraiser for a proposed festival award to be given in memory of the late art director and Seguin resident Robert A. Burns (the 1974 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Re-Animator). On Sunday, the festival will show more short films, including a Spanish-language lineup. You can buy a festival pass for $15, which is about as cheap as it gets.

The Seguin festival sounds like fun, and I kind of regret that this year it takes place right at the end of Austin Fall Film Fest Madness, because otherwise it might have been a nice getaway weekend for us. Maybe next year, since I noticed that Austin Film Festival's 2007 dates are a week earlier than 2006 (and I'm wondering how that will affect aGLIFF and other fests ... guess we'll find out next summer).

Movies This Week: The Resurrection

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I know I said I was so happy not to have to write any more weekly columns about movies playing in Austin. I had a couple of blissful weeks of respite -- except they weren't all that blissful, because a voice in my head kept saying, "Look at that movie playing tonight at the Alamo, why didn't you post anything about it? And what about that special screening over at Cafe Mundi?"

More to the point, if I don't write about this stuff, then I forget it and next thing you know, the Tom Waits concert film I wanted to catch is long gone. Damn. (Okay, that happens anyway, but it's happening more often now.) Also, I feel guilty not sharing the news about cool film stuff in town. And finally, someone kept telling me how much they liked the column, and I couldn't disappoint that person.

I'm not promising I'll do this every week, but for your delight and edification, here's some info on Austin's movies this week:

Don't just watch a movie at The Arbor ... be in one!

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Mark and Jay DuplassI was reading a blog entry by Bryan Poyser (aka the Dear Pillow and The Cassidy Kids guy) the other day in which he mentioned helping John Bryant (aka the Oh My God and Momma's Boy guy) and Jay and Mark Duplass (aka the Puffy Chair guys) with the Duplass brothers' film Baghead, which is shooting around Central Texas. I've met all these filmmakers at least once (Nueva Onda screened Bryant's shorts a couple of months ago), and the idea of all three of them working together was intriguing. I wondered if I could find some way to sneak onto the set and, I don't know, take covert photos or hide in a corner and observe.

Now it looks like I could have my chance ... and you can too! The Duplass brothers need volunteer extras for a scene they are shooting this Sunday, Oct. 29, at the Arbor theater. Get there by noon and dress casually, and don't wear anything with a corporate logo on it. The shoot should end around 4:30 pm. You can watch these crazy filmmaking dudes in action, and you'll get the warm fuzzy feeling from helping local filmmaking. Who knows, if I get all my AFF reviews done, maybe I'll be there too. I can't resist helping out fellow New Orleans expatriates.

If you do want to work as an extra on Sunday, be sure to RSVP to the filmmakers via email: bagheadthemovieATyahooDOTcom.

Speaking of which, The Puffy Chair is now available on DVD through Netflix. I wasn't very taken with it the first time I saw it, but I liked the movie a whole lot the second time. I wrote about three-quarters of a review after seeing it the second time, and someday I'll pull that review off my laptop and post it. I promise. (Never try to review a movie the week before your wedding.)

Watch a good movie on TV tonight ... and see me, too

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The KLRU-TV series SXSW Presents is airing the 2005 documentary The Dreams of Sparrows tonight at 9:30 pm. The documentary is shot in Iraq, but should not be dismissed as "yet another documentary about Iraq." A few amateur filmmakers bought a couple of DV cameras and decided to shoot all kinds of everyday scenes in various parts of Iraq -- artists, businessmen, hospitals, kids living in bombed-out buildings, more fortunate kids in private schools, and so forth. Some of the interview subjects are great fans of George Bush, others aren't happy about the U.S. invasion. It's a very different sort of look at contemporary Iraq. You can watch a trailer for the film on the SXSW Presents website.

And after the documentary ends, you can watch me discussing The Dreams of Sparrows with a group of other Austin film people. I haven't seen the finished interview yet, so I'll be watching too (and probably feeling really embarrassed). The interview will be posted to the SXSW Presents website after the show airs, so you can watch it there, but the main attraction is definitely the documentary. Set your TiVo, or VCR, or curl up on the couch tonight at 9:30.

AFF screens Death of a President tonight

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Death of a PresidentThe "TBA screening #2" on Austin Film Festival's schedule has been revealed: the controversial feature Death of a President. The BBC-produced movie uses existing news footage to create a fake documentary in which Bush is assassinated. The movie is having its first U.S. public screening right here in the capital of Texas.

You can see the movie tonight at 7 pm at the IMAX theater -- yes, the one inside the Texas State History Museum, interestingly enough. After festival badgeholders and passholders have been admitted, anyone can buy tickets for the remaining seats. I'm probably going to see Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn myself (Paramount, 7:30 pm) -- it's a tough choice.

Last night I watched Special, which so far is my favorite film of the festival. Michael Rapoport plays a mild-mannered meter maid who participates in a trial experiment for a new antidepressant, with bizarre results. The movie plays again on Wednesday night at Alamo Lake Creek, and I'd recommend it to festivalgoers. I also caught the midnight screening of Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror, which I thought would be good cheesy late-night fun, but which didn't quite deliver.

AFF is underway!

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It's the second night of the Austin Film Festival, and the first night I've had time to post. Yesterday I saw The TV Set and Pirate Radio USA, and tonight I watched Catch and Release. I keep running into people I know and having a great time. Even the in-house festival trailers are making me laugh.

Chris probably won't be posting much this week, since he actually works for AFF and every time I've seen him, he's been busy snapping pictures, collecting audience award ballots, or doing other important festival stuff. It's nice to know people involved with the festival because I get the latest scoop on schedule changes, and then I can pass them on to you.

For example, two movies that are premiering at AFF on Saturday had to move their time and venue: Run Robot Run will play at the Dobie at 3 pm, and Military Intelligence and You will play at the Texas Spirit theater (part of the TX History Museum) at 4:45 pm. Run Robot Run sounds like lots of fun and I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Other movies I'm hoping to catch: Rescue Dawn, the latest from Werner Herzog; Special, which stars Michael Rapaport; Snoop Dogg's House of Horror, which will have actor Danny Trejo in attendance; the documentary Third Monday in October; and other stuff I'm too tired to remember right now. Attendance seems to be quite good but I am noticing a few empty seats in theaters, so it's probably easy to buy tickets at the door for any of these films.

Idiocracy just won't leave Austin

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IdiocracyAlamo on South Lamar is showing Idiocracy nightly for one more week. I've got to find time this weekend to see it again, because who knows when in the world Twentieth Century Fox will release it on DVD. I realize there are lots of films in local theaters that I haven't seen for the first time and really should prioritize over Idiocracy (The U.S. vs. John Lennon, Jesus Camp, Matador, and a bunch of other titles that I just realized have left theaters, damn it), but I'd like to see if the Mike Judge movie makes me laugh as hard as it did when we saw it on opening night.

Meanwhile, Movie City Indie has linked to an alleged pre-production copy of the Idiocracy script. The date on the cover page reads August 2003. I haven't read the whole script yet, but I tend to agree with Movie City Indie's assessment that the script is closer to the released film that you'd think. There's voice-over narration, although not as much as in the finished film. And the script is 110 pages long, which at a page a minute is rather longer than the 84-minute running time. However, there's no proof whatsoever that this script is genuine, so take it with a grain of salt.

Updated: After reading the whole script -- if it is the actual script, my guess is that there wasn't enough money in the budget for the National Fart Museum, the Liberry of Congress, or the Extreme Court. Too bad.

And ScreenGrab found an extra still. That makes three, wow!

Austin Film Festival: getting closer

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Have you checked out the Austin Film Festival film schedule? The lineup includes a bunch of marquee films (Tenacious D!), some super-secret sneak previews, and an interesting variety of independent narrative and documentary shorts and features. Filmmakers/actors from some of the movies are scheduled to do Q&As, such as Sydney Pollack, Shane Black, Janine Turner, and Kevin Smith. (Imagine them all involved with the same film.) The AFF News blog has the most current details on last-minute changes and additions.

I haven't yet decided which films I'm going to see and/or review -- I keep changing my mind every time I look at the schedule. Being from Louisiana, I'm drawn towards anything shot or set there, like Little Chenier and A Place to Dance. Whatever I pick, I will be covering AFF both here and at Cinematical, just like Fantastic Fest.

The film festival takes place from Oct. 19-26, and venues include The Hideout, Dobie, Paramount, IMAX ... and outside of downtown, the Arbor and Alamo Lake Creek. I'm hoping I don't have to find out how long it takes to drive from Dobie to Alamo Lake Creek. Yeesh. Film passes are only $35 for eight days of movies.

Terror Thursday: Raw Force! and October film festivals

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Raw ForceIf anyone ever asks you what's so special about the Austin film community, take them to one of the free midnight screenings at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown. Terror Thursday is a good choice for horror fans, though Weird Wednesday is usually a better choice for those looking for the cinematically absurd as a form of entertainment. This week's Terror Thursday, however, was pure gold: Raw Force is a tour de force that combines cannibalism, the undead, kung-fu, and the '80s sex comedy in a way that can't help but delight. You can read my full review over at Blue Glow.

Slackerwood: There can be only one

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My News from Slackerwood post for Cinematical is now available online and you can read all about the many exciting film events going on in Austin next week. (And that's not even all of them.)

The above-linked entry is the last News from Slackerwood column for Cinematical. The column is being discontinued -- Cinematical no longer has any other regional columns, so it doesn't quite fit in the site. I'll continue to post any notable news about Austin there, of course, including local festival coverage.

I started writing News from Slackerwood almost exactly a year ago. (There are 52 entries posted to the site and I never skipped a week.) Before News from Slackerwood, I used to post Movies This Week for Celluloid Eyes. I started that weekly Austin film roundup in July 2004 after Omar stopped writing his Movies This Week. So I've been writing weekly Austin film roundups for more than two years.

The good news is that instead of rushing around to churn out a weekly column about Austin screenings, I'll post as much info here as I can -- so will Chris and any other fellow bloggers we might recruit. Consider this site an ongoing, extended Movies This Week, News from Slackerwood, or whatever you want to call it. It's the only place where I'm likely to use the term "Slackerwood" anymore, anyway.

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