Website News

Where I am this week: Moving Image Institute in Film Criticism and Feature Writing, in New York. No bluebonnets, but lots of bagels. I'll be back next week (really Tuesday night, not Wednesday, but I couldn't resist the stupid film joke). In the meantime, visit some of these fabulous sites for your Austin film news.

I've already received a couple of links and an entry to post here for Monday's Alamo Downtown Blog-a-Thon. You don't actually have t­o write or even post your entry on Monday; you've got all weekend to think of your best stories about Alamo Drafthouse Downtown. I've got nearly 10 years worth of stories, from the first time I went to Alamo to that weird night with Russ Meyer to my first date with my husband ... and tons of p­hotos, which I could post here all summer long. (I may do that. Hmmm.)

You can post an entry for the blog-a-thon to your own blog and email me with the link (jette [at] celluloideyes [dot] com), or post the link in the comments section of the Alamo Blog-a-Thon entry when I open it for comments on Monday. Or if you have no blog, send me an email message with your story (and your name) and I'll post it here on Monday. If you've got photos, you can post them to Flickr and tag them with "alamoblogathon" and I'll link to that too.

I'm looking forward to reading and sharing lots of Alamo Downtown stories on Monday. If you can't wait until then, our local papers have some articles you can enjoy. Austin360 (the Statesman's website) has an article by John DeFore about the history of Alamo and plans for the new location at the Ritz; check out the sidebar for links to some other cool material, including a bunch of old in-house trailers that Matthew Odam has found (including the Ann Richards one, which I adore). Over at the Austin Chronicle, Marc Savlov shares some great Alamo anecdotes. (Thanks to Matt Dentler for the links.)

One more link for today: If you're looking for a really big chunk of memorabilia from Alamo that's also useful, check out the Alamo Downtown Kitchen Garage Sale. Now's the chance to get that kegerator you've always wanted.

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.

First of all, my weekly News from Slackerwood entry is now available at Cinematical, in case you're interested in non-Fantastic Fest events going on in Austin. It's hard for me to remember that other film stuff is going on this week, because I'm so involved in seeing FF movies, but there are plenty of good options for this week. After FF ends, I'll dive immediately into aGLIFF, which has some great selections this year. (And after that, I'm going to spend a week reading or vegetating in some non-cinematic fashion.)

In case you hadn't noticed, Slackerwood now has a second contributor: Chris Holland. You may remember Chris from such websites as Stomp Tokyo and Blue Glow; he also posts to the Austin Film Festival blog. I'm very happy he's agreed to post here, so we'll have more and better content on the site.

We're currently in Day Three of Fantastic Fest. So far, FF has been a lot of fun and not tiring. I've seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, Blood Tea and Red String, Tideland, Gamerz, and Frostbite. I'm about to go to Severance, and then hope to get into the super-secret special screening after that. Unlike Chris, I think the secret screenings are fun -- they provide a great topic of conversation with other festgoers ("Do you think it's 300?" "I bet it's The Prestige.") and also add a little excitement, like a wrapped present you get that's a funny shape and could be anything. Since I don't have a VIP pass, I may not get into the movie, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. However (speaking of fingers), if it turns out to be Saw 3, I will probably not stay. One thing I have learned from FF this year is that I don't like movies with long slow gory torture scenes. But I still haven't learned not to eat during horror movies. A word to the wise: Tideland is also a movie during which you don't want to eat. Trust me.