Special Screenings and Events

You know, if I wait around long enough, eventually my laziness saves me time and energy. I attended John Pierson's Master Classes at UT earlier this year -- you remember me sharing photos from the Steve Buscemi class. I had an entry started here on Slackerwood about the last class of the year, with South Park co-creator Matt Stone. But I never had time to write up my notes on the actual session -- all I had were links to the photos. (Procrastinator. Yep. That's me.)

Now KUT is saving my butt and letting me share my favorite photo (above) from the class with Matt Stone. The local radio station will start airing the show "Master Class with John Pierson," in which each class is pared down to its best 30 minutes and aired for your enjoyment. The shows will air monthly on Sundays at 11 am as part of KUT's "Best of Public Radio" programming, starting on June 29.

Here's the schedule:

June 29: Steve Buscemi, David Simon
July 27: Lauren Zalaznick, Matt Stone
August 31: Charles Burnett, Chris Smith

The Austin Chronicle has an article with additional info about the show, and the Statesman has more details too. But I think I've got the best photo of John Pierson and Matt Stone. On the other hand, I wish I took notes like Austin Kleon, because his doodles and observations from the Matt Stone class are amazing.

One more photo after the jump, because I love taking pictures in the ACL studio and will be sad when it moves off-campus (I used to work as an intern for ACL, but that's a story for another day).

One of my favorite films from the 2007 Austin Film Festival, Blood Car, returns to Austin for an encore screening at the Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek courtesy of AFF. If your butt isn't planted in a seat at the Lake Creek tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m. you're going to be sorry. Really, really sorry.

In the near future gas prices have reached astronomical highs nearing $40 a gallon. One man, Archie Andrews, an environmentalist elementary school teacher, is trying to discover an alternate fuel source. While experimenting with wheat grass, Archie accidentally stumbles upon a solution. That solution turns out to be blood. HUMAN BLOOD!

The screening is free for members and $4 to the general public. It may be the best $4 you ever spend at the movie theater. Would I lie about a film named Blood Car?

Find out more at the AFF web site.

Woe be unto you, comedy lovers, if you were not Austin Film Festival members this last week and you therefore missed the Festival's sneak preview of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and the subsequent concert by the title character himself.

Director Jake Kasdan (who co-wrote the film with Judd Apatow) showed up at the Highland Galaxy 10 Theaters to introduce the film, which is even more hilarious than one could have hoped. I enjoyed Knocked Up and Superbad, but this is a high point for the Apatow collective, due in no small part to a script that never lets up and of course to the performance of John C. Reilly. Reilly has been a powerful supporting character (Talladega Nights, Tenacious D) until this point but given center stage he is stunningly, achingly funny.

The story is a satiric biopic of a moronic rock star with a tragic past, a way with lyrics, and the inability to say no to drugs or sex. Trying desperately to make up for the accidental death of his talented brother, Dewey strikes out into the world to make something of his musical career. Cox's first wife, Edith (Kristen Wiig), believes in him but thinks he's destined to fail (as she puts it). Dewey finds solace in drugs and in the arms of Darlene (a vamped-up Jenna Fischer, no trace of "Pam" here), a new backup singer. We follow Dewey through the decades of his life and his eventual realization of his life's true purpose. (More about the film and some concert video after the jump.)

The documentary What Would Jesus Buy? had its world premiere earlier this year at SXSW. I am still regretting that I didn't get a chance to see the mo­vie in March. The film's subject, Reverend Billy, was at SXSW with his Church of Stop Shopping Choir, and apparently they were quite the hit. YouTube has a clip of Rev. Billy holding an impromptu protest at/around the Austin Convention Center during the festival. Morgan Spurlock's distribution company picked up the rights to the anti-consumer-greed film, and it's currently getting a limited theatrical release.

What Would Jesus Buy? returns to Austin this weekend for a run at the Arbor Great Hills, just in time to fight the frenzied shopping characteristic of the Christmas season. The Arbor has teamed up with Responsible Growth for Northcross (RG4N) to offer some special screenings and discounts as part of RG4N's fundraising efforts. Tonight (Friday), you can see the 7:30 pm screening of the doc for only $5 admission, with proceeds going to R­G4N. You also can visit the RG4N website for a coupon that gets you a discounted admission to the movie at any screening this weekend. RG4N has all the details here.

[Full disclosure: My husband is on the board of RG4N and we live in walking distance of the proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter development at Northcross.]­

­I'm not sure I understand what this is, but it's free, outdoors, involves music and sounds mega freaky—­so it's got to be worth a look.

Experimental film artist Luke Savisky will present "Film Actions VI". Includes music by Graham Reynolds. It will be outdoors at Woolridge Square Park on Friday, Oct 26 at 8pm.

­Here is a writeup I found on the Austin Parks Foundation calendar:

On Friday, Octob­er 26, 2007, experimental film artist Luke Savisky will bring Wooldridge Square alive with projected film images and lighting accompanied by live music from composer Graham Reynolds and recorded music by Stars of the Lid. Using more than twelve projectors, Savisky will float a montage of images on to existing trees and translucent scrims placed around the park’s gazebo. Savisky will construct a non-traditional screen made of fog with intermittent sprays of water and projected imagery from Barton Springs and other natural areas of Austin. Transposed recorded music by Stars of Lid will interchange with live music and original compostions by award-winning composer Graham Reynolds and the Tosca String Quartet. This project is a large scale film projection installation/performance and is the latest in Savisky's series of "Film Actions" that have been performed at The Sundance Film Festival and The Dallas Museum of Art. The event will involve 35mm film, 16mm film and digital video installations in and around the grounds of Wooldridge Square involving the natural features of the park. The event is FREE to the community. Bring blankets and chairs for seating. A second performance by Luke Savisky is scheduled for Monday, December 31 as part of H-E-B Presents First Night Austin 2008.

If you're looking for something truly unusual to do this Friday night, get yourself down to the Bethany Lutheran Church in South Austin at 8 p.m. for the Austin Wind Symphony's presentation of "Creature Features - A Concert Dedicated to Hollywood's Greatest Creatures." The concert plays it fast and loose with the definition of a "creature feature" (Batman? Star Wars? Psycho?) but you really can't complain about film scores performed live. Actual critter movies featured in the program include:

King Kong vs Godzilla (!)

Jurassic Park

Gremlins

Jaws

Visit the Austin Wind Symphony's web site for more info.

[Via Sci-Fi Japan.]

I think this one pretty much speaks for itself -- either you're Trekkie enough to be into this or you're not, so I'll just quote the press release. Local theaters participating include the Metropolitan 14 on the South side, the Gateway 16 on the North, and the Cinemark way up in Round Rock.

Boldly go where no man has gone before to see two of the most famous "Star Trek: The Original Series" episodes – your local movie theatre! "Star Trek: The Original Series" will be beamed onto the big screen for only one night in select movie theatres nationwide on Tuesday, Nov. 13th at 7:30PM (local). This event features the original Season 1 episodes "The Menagerie" Part 1 and 2, digitally re-mastered in High-Definition and Cinema Surround Sound. Also included is greeting from creator Gene Roddenberry’s son, Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry and an exclusive 30-minute behind-the-scenes look at how the episodes were digitally re-mastered.

Read the full details after the jump.

We're big fans of The Simpsons TV show around here, or at least the earlier seasons. Somewhere around Season 7 or 8 the episodes became less interesting to us, and we have a horror of "New Simpsons." So we approached The Simpsons Movie with trepidation, and decided the best way to ensure our enjoyment was to splurge on Alamo Drafthouse's multi-course Simpsons Feast. Afrer all, even if the movie turned out to suck, at least we'd be enjoying bacon-wrapped pork chops. My husband and I have never tried one of the full-fledged feasts at Alamo, although I've enjoyed some of the smaller movie-and-food events. It would be a challenge for us; the event didn't start until after 8:30, and we tend to be early diners, so we had snacks after work and tried to stay strong until the event. After all, there was that Ultimate Donut dessert to look forward to, even if it did sound a bit scary.

Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar was decorated beautifully for The Simpsons Movie. We didn't see a lot of it on our way into the theater, because the lobby was so crowded. Even on a Wednesday night, Alamo on South Lamar is very popular. But to set the mood, I'll show you the photos we took in the lobby after the movie. The counter where you can buy drinks, etc. was set up to look like a Kwik-E-Mart. Since Austin didn't get one of the Kwik-E-Marts transformed from 7-Eleven, we were happy to see an appromixation in the lobby (photo after the jump):

I've been hearing about a lot of interesting screenings and events around town this week, so I thought I'd share a list of the highlights. If I'm missing anything, feel free to promote your own movie-related event in the comments section.

• Tuesday night, Austin Film Festival kicks off their new seminar series, Conversations in Film, with a panel called "Script to Screen: Making the Short Film." Panelists include Steve Collins (who expanded his short Gretchen and the Night Danger into the LAFF-winning Gretchen), Jenn Garrison (Prizewhores), and Scott Rice (Perils in Nude Modeling and the very funny Script Cops shorts that preceded films at AFF last year). The seminar takes place at Coldtowne Theater at 6 pm, and you can buy tickets from the AFF site, or call the AFF office if you're eligible for the member discount. I'm amused that two of these three panelists have directed shorts that feature the acting talents of AFF Membership Director John Merriman. That's coincidence ... or is it?
• Also on Tuesday, if you are a Filmmaker-level or higher member of Austin Film Society, you can attend the Docs-in-Progress screening of Best Kept Secret, directed by PJ Raval and Jay Hodges. Reserve seats through AFS. Best Kept Secret is about the transformation of Trinidad, Colorado, into the "sex change capital of the world." You might know Raval primarily as a cinematographer, who's photographed a number of local films such as Room, The Cassidy Kids, and the aforementioned Gretchen. Hodges is a book editor who has also worked with the Cinematexas film festival. (I really wish these AFS and AFF events weren't competing with one another -- it would be fabulous to attend both.)

­

If I don't write about it, it didn't happen, right?

If I don't make a big deal about it, next week, I'll stroll up those steps and see all the regulars and we'll all go back into our little attic theatre and watch some messed-up exploitation film and have a blast, right? Then we'll come back the next night for Terror Thursday, right?

Ever since a Weird Wednesday midnight showing of Drum with Warren Oates, the Original Alamo Drafthouse has been a big part of my life. Most Wednesdays you could find me catching the free show having a blast, hanging out with the regulars and having all sorts of fun. Weird Wednesday will continue on at Alamo South Lamar, but most of the regular programs are on hiatus until we get the Ritz going, along with the specialty programming. No Terror Thursdays, Music Mondays, sing-alongs, Foleyvision, etc. Too many shows to list.

It still doesn't feel real. I was at the last show, I watched the sign come down (Pics here), but it still doesn't feel like it was something that happened. I haven't been back to 409 Colorado and seen the empty building yet, so that helps.