Website News

To celebrate our new partnership with Austin Film Society, Slackerwood and AFS are having a happy hour tonight and we hope you'll join us.

Date: Wednesday, Feb. 1 (tonight!)
Time: 6-8 pm
Location: Red's Porch, 3508 S. Lamar (in the back)

Many Slackerwood contributors will be there -- I'm not sure so many of us have been in one place at the same time before. We'll have snacks and beer, so get there before we run out. (Sadly, we won't have any Duff, I just thought that would grab your attention.) And a special thank you to Red's Porch and North by Northwest for sponsoring the event.

We have two winners from last week's Simmons on Vinyl contest. Each winner will be able to pick up two pairs of tickets before the Austin Film Festival-sponsored screening at Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek on Thursday night. Winners, I will be emailing you today with the details.

Congratulations to Cecy Correa and Zack Teibloom. Zack's favorite album on vinyl is Led Zeppelin I, and Cecy's is Saturday Night Fever.

For everyone else, you can still buy tickets for Thursday night's screening and they are quite affordable ($4), so check it out. Here's my review again if you need a refresher on what the movie is about.

[Editor's Note: Why yes, I did swap out of the photo accompanying this entry -- apparently some people think a bare butt is NSFW. They are probably correct.]

Last year, I caught the low-budget comedy Simmons on Vinyl at Austin Film Festival. I liked it so much that when I heard AFF was bringing the movie back for an encore screening at Alamo Drafthouse at Lake Creek this month, I asked if Slackerwood could give away a couple of pairs of tickets. The nice AFF folks agreed, so now you have a chance to see this very funny indie for absolutely free.

The film screens on Thursday, May 27 at 7:30 pm at Alamo Lake Creek. Mark Potts, Cole Selix and Brand Rackley -- who between them wrote, directed and acted the three main roles in the film -- will be at the screening. They'll also preview a bit of their new film S&M Lawn Care. They run a pretty funny Q&A, as I recall.

Slackerwood is giving away two pairs of tickets to the May 27 screening. You have two ways to enter the contest -- the fun extroverted way and the easy introverted way:

• The fun way: Post a comment on this entry that tells us what your favorite record (on vinyl) is or was, and why.
• The easy way: Use the Slackerwood content form to send me a message that includes your name, with the subject line "Simmons on Vinyl." I know some of you are shy about posting comments or publicly admitting your favorite record (or that you are too young to have ever owned something on vinyl).

Annnnd the winner of our Crazy Heart DVD giveaway is ... Steve Milner, who shared two entertaining Austin movie-and-music moments with us on our contest page, which I'll repeat here:

"A favorite was being at the premiere for Waking Life at the Paramount. Before the movie, [Richard] Linklater came out and talked about the film and said that we will have a very unique experience while watching that night. It occurred when Wiley Wiggins is floating down Congress Ave. and enters the Paramount. The camera floats through the theater and the screen at the Paramount becomes the screen of the movie and they morph together. It was very cool actually being inside the Paramount as you are watching the inside of the Paramount animated on the screen. BTW, I really enjoyed Guy Forsyth's role in that movie.

I love giving stuff away, especially nice new things that people might actually want. Fortunately, Slackerwood has something to give away this week -- a Crazy Heart DVD. Want a chance at winning it? The details (and fine print) are available after the jump.

If you don't know anything about Crazy Heart, check out my DVD review, or Debbie's review from the film's theatrical release. Jeff Bridges won an Oscar for his performance as Bad Blake, a Texas singer-songwriter on the decline. Local musician Ryan Bingham also won an Oscar for the song he co-wrote with T-Bone Burnett for the film, "The Weary Kind." Fans of Texas music should definitely take a look at this movie, even though it wasn't actually shot in Texas (I believe New Mexico doubled for Houston).

If you want a chance at winning the Crazy Heart DVD, leave a comment on this entry about the following: 

If you were paying close attention to Slackerwood last week, you may have noticed something new in the left sidebar. If you hadn't ... well, that's why I'm telling you now. Slackerwood has created the amazing and awesome Austin Film News Mega-Feed. You have to imagine monster-truck-show echo effects whenever I say it, it is that awesome.

Like many things about Slackerwood, the Austin Film News Mega-Feed (echo, echo) was born out of sheer lazy slackerhood. I was complaining to Chip, who not only performs great technical feats on Slackerwood but also is my husband and often tolerates me fussing about stuff, that I was tired of rewriting the same news items every other local outlet publishes, especially if a) I'm later than they are and b) I have nothing new to say. I sighed and wished that I could just publish one big conglomerate news feed of all these news items on Slackerwood and not have to worry about reporting on every single little bit of news, so I can focus on finding interesting news that isn't available everywhere else.

Chip nodded and sympathized .... and went to his computer and created the Austin Film News Mega-Feed, possibly out of a sense of community, but I suspect also so he wouldn't have to hear me whine anymore. Look over in the left sidebar (you may need to scroll down a bit) and you can see all the headlines from major sources of film-related news in Austin, like the Austin Chronicle's Picture in Picture blog, the Statesman's Austin Movie Blog, and Austinist. We've also added RSS feeds of blogs from local film festivals and theaters.

We held a couple of giveaways on Twitter last night and this morning for passes to a preview screening of The Men Who Stare at Goats on Thursday night, and had a great response. Thanks to everyone who helped retweet and promote the giveaways.

If your Twitter username is on the list of winners after the jump, contact me ASAP with your actual name, so I can put it on the list and avoid imposters. If you didn't win, the movie opens on Friday in Austin and we'll post a review on Slackerwood. We will also retweet the "secret password" for getting one of a limited number of reserved seats for the screening, so keep following Slackerwood on Twitter.

If you heard our most recent podcast (go listen!) or have been paying attention to the changes in the sidebars on this site, you may have noticed that Slackerwood now has an Event Calendar. If you didn't notice ... well, that's why I'm writing this.

We're hoping to include as many local film-related events as possible in the Event Calendar: movies, meetings, festivals, classes, and special events. You can view a list of the events that are just about to happen in the right sidebar, or check out a whole month's worth at a glance.

Please let us know what you think in the comments. Also, I hope you'll contact us if you are hosting or involved with an event you'd like us to include.

Thanks again to Chip Rosenthal, our website developer, who recently installed and configured the Event Calendar as well as our Amazon Store, the marquee graphic in the left sidebar and for those of us writing for this site, a nifty text editor so we can write faster and bring you more, better articles.

Last year, I compiled a list of Austin film-related organizations and film geeks who had Twitter accounts, which turned out to be very popular. I realized last week that the old list is out of date; many new people and groups have started using Twitter to share news and chat. A lot of those tweets are about Austin film.

As a result, I've created a page on Slackerwood to keep track of all the Austin film-related Twitter accounts, whether they're individuals who talk about lots of other things too, or news feeds. Check it out. You'll find a permanent link to the page in the left sidebar. If you think of someone I've missed, just let me know and I'll update the page.