Distribution News

It was just yesterday that Jenn Brown and I were plotting our SXSW coverage strategy for Slackerwood (and other outlets) and hoping B-Side would host a Festival Genius site for scheduling SXSW Film. All of us at Slackerwood who have covered film festivals have loved the scheduling application from B-Side and found that it made fest planning vastly easier.

So we were very sad to learn that Austin-based B-Side Entertainment will be closing its doors this week. Filmmaker Magazine's blog is reporting that the company has been unable to find new investors and is out of funds. B-Side employees have all been laid off, many of which we've become familiar with at local film festivals -- including occasional Slackerwood contributor Chris Holland -- and we are obviously personally unhappy about the news as well. Back at SXSW 2007, I interviewed B-Side founder Chris Hyams (pictured at right) for Studio SX (sadly, SXSW no longer seems to have it archived) and his company sounded like an exciting business model.

Here's what Hyams has to say about the closing on the B-Side website: "I am sad to have reached the end of this chapter, but am incredibly proud of what we've achieved. I am confident that our efforts will have a lasting impact on this business. I am also confident that the B-Side team will bring their experience to new ventures that will pick up where B-Side is leaving off."

The soundtrack to Stingray Sam, the Fantastic Fest fave that had people singing for days afterwards, is now on sale. Written and performed by director Cory McAbee and co-produced  with Robert Lurie, it's full of delightful absurd and often deconstructed songs like "Lullaby" or the progeny naming song "Fredward."  

The episodic interplanetary adventure musical is still on the festival circuit, wowing crowds with its old-school serial wrapped in Western sensibilities. Both the soundtrack and the movie itself are available for purchase online at corymcabee.com, as digital media downloads or as discs.

To celebrate, we're giving away DVDs and soundtrack CDs. Find out how to win after the jump.

As we head into Thanksgiving week, Austin-area filmmakers and film fans have a lot to be thankful for. Here are a few reasons:

• The Academy Award shortlist for Best Documentary Feature nominees was released last week. One of the 15 films was SXSW 2009 selection Garbage Dreams. The doc tells the story of the Zaballeen, who live in "garbage villages" made of the city's garbage, and until recently were the only system in place for trash removal. Their livelihood is now being threatened by international outsourcers. 
• Good news for another movie that premiered at SXSW 2009: B-Side Entertainment has picked up now-Austinite filmmaker Alex Karpovsky's latest film: Trust Us, This is All Made Up. Jette caught the movie in March and although it took a few minutes to get going, really enjoyed the long-form, detailed improv performance staged by T.J. Jagodowksi and David Pasquesi.
• One more from SXSW, this time 2008: David and Nathan Zellner's feature film Goliath will be out on DVD on January 12, 2010. You can pre-order it now from Amazon. Jette loved this Austin-made comedy about a guy who just can't live without his cat, which premiered at Sundance in 2008. Slackerwood interviewed the Zellners via email about the film.

Goodness gracious, this is turning into a big week of distribution news about films I've enjoyed at SXSW, some of which have Austin connections. Is it coincidence, or what? That's not the only news I have, but it's certainly news I'm happy to share.

• Medicine for Melancholy, which played SXSW 2008, is now available on DVD. This lovely film is one of my top-ten films from that year, and as soon as I'm finished writing this paragraph, I'm buying a copy. Seriously, this is a lovely film about two people who meet in San Francisco ... find a way to watch it, this weekend. One of the film's stars is Wyatt Cenac, whom you might recognize from The Daily Show.
• Another favorite SXSW film of mine, Gretchen from 2006, has also been released on DVD this week. Gretchen was shot around Central Texas and while its director and stars may not live here now, still seems very Austin-y to me. I'm hoping to get my hands on a copy soon and share the details, but it sounds like an excellent DVD package from Watchmaker (which did a gorgeous job with The Whole Shootin' Match), including several of Steve Collins's short films with actors John Merriman and Courtney Davis. Gretchen is also available on Netflix Watch Instantly.

Over the past week, an amazing number of news items have rolled in about distribution for Austin movies or movies that have played in local fests. Check out this list to see if any of the movies you've liked at recent fests will be getting a wider release and a second chance to grab audiences.

• Richard Linklater's most recent films are both in the news this week. First of all, Me and Orson Welles, which played at SXSW this year, now has U.S. distribution through Cinemax. As Linklater told us during the Extract red carpet, the movie will hit theaters around Thanksgiving. Jette thinks it's the best Zac Efron movie she's seen to date.
• In addition, Linklater's documentary about Longhorn baseball and coach Augie Garrido, Inning by Inning, is now available on iTunes. The movie was released on DVD in May. Jette doesn't like baseball much, but liked this movie a lot anyway.
• Speaking of movies you can watch from a computer or other device, the locally shot feature For Love & Stacie, written and directed by Raymond Schlogel, is now available for viewing online at Underground Planet. 

Austin film-related news does seem to have a definite musical theme going this week. Or maybe I'm just stretching the point to justify the above title? I do have a whole lot of movie news today, some of which has nothing to do whatsoever with music, but you can always sing while you're reading or play some nice show tunes in the background.

• A small paragraph in the Arts: Casting Call section of the Austin Chronicle provides us with the news that Salvage Vanguard Theater and Doctuh Mistuh Productions are planning to stage Evil Dead: The Musical in Austin in the near future. They're still holding auditions this week, so contact Elle Mahoney at stylelle [at] gmail [dot] com for details. I'm looking forward to seeing this very curious theatrical production when it opens: Ash! He sings, he dances, he uses a chainsaw!
• The celebrity-spotting related to Machete shooting in Austin has already started. Several people, including our own Jenn Brown, spotted Danny Trejo (pictured at right) catching a movie at Alamo Ritz over the weekend. In addition, Austin Metblogs' Tim Trentham got a peek at Tom Savini while at the Paramount watching Forbidden Planet. Obviously if you want to see the coolest cast and crew from Robert Rodriguez's production, you should go to the movies. (I know my audience: I bet most of you would rather see Savini than Lindsay Lohan.)

The Wild Man of the Navidad, a Texas film with local cast and crew, is getting a DVD release next week.

The indie horror film, co-directed by Justin Meeks and former Texas Film Production Fund recipient Duane Graves, was an official selection at both Tribeca Film Festival and Austin's own Fantastic Fest, and if you're really savvy, you might recognize a certain Alamo staffer in the cast. It's a 1970s style Texas horror story about a "creature so horrifying it remains legend today" with the typical grindhouse gore stylings of 70s horror.

The DVD release is slated for next Tuesday, August 11, following the film's recent availability through IFC Video on Demand. You can pre-order the DVD at Best Buy and Amazon, and it's already available to add to your queue on Netflix. If you're going to buy, right now BestBuy has the better price. But you might want to check out local stores like I Luv Video and Vulcan Video.

I wasn't able to catch The Wild Man of the Navidad at Fantastic Fest, but the reviews have been positive (and nostalgic). What better way to gear up for next month's edition of Fantastic Fest than by supporting one of last year's films?

Have you seen Crawford, the documentary about the town where George W. Bush bought a ranch before becoming President? The film, directed by local filmmaker David Modigliani, screened earlier this year at SXSW. You can read my review from the festival, and I also interviewed Modigliani about the documentary.

Now you have the chance to see the film -- even if you don't live in Austin. B-Side Entertainment bought the distribution rights for Crawford, and plans to release the documentary by premiering it on Hulu.com on Tuesday, October 7. This is the first time a feature-length film will have its premiere on Hulu. I don't have details yet on exactly how this will work, but I know that some TV shows and films are available for limited times only on Hulu, so my guess is that the movie can be streamed from the website just for Tuesday. In the meantime, if you visit the Hulu page for Crawford, you can watch a trailer.

After its Hulu premiere, Crawford will be available on the B-Side site for download, streaming, or to purchase on DVD. This is a fairly non-partisan documentary, so if you want to have a politics-themed movie night before the upcoming election, you can watch it with both your liberal and conservative friends and relatives.

According to this week's Austin Chronicle, the locally made feature The Cassidy Kids now has a TV and DVD distribution deal. IFC and B-Side will work together as part of their Choice Indies program: The TV division of IFC will broadcast the 2006 film, and B-Side will take care of DVD and video-on-demand through their website. I wrote about this partnership for Cinematical last September if you want details on how it works. I like seeing B-Side offer more films on video-on-demand because their downloads are DRM-free.

The Cassidy Kids was directed by Jacob Vaughan and produced/co-written by Bryan Poyser, who previously collaborated on Dear Pillow. The film was produced by Burnt Orange Productions, and premiered at SXSW 2006 -- you can read my review from that screening. I haven't heard much about The Cassidy Kids since then, apart from a few festival dates. It's an odd movie to sell: a subplot involving teenagers that would appeal to young adults, but the contemporary scenes where the teens are now grown up is very different, and some of the dialogue puts it squarely in R-rated territory.

No info on potential broadcast or DVD release dates yet -- if anyone from IFC or B-Side is reading this and has a press release, could you forward it to me? The Chronicle blurb is the only place I've found this news and I'd like details if they're available.

[Full disclosure: Slackerwood co-contributor Chris Holland works for B-Side, although he's not a source for this story.]

The above photo is from this year's Fantastic Fest, during the Timecrimes Q&A: Tim League and Timecrimes writer-director Nacho Vigalondo are showing off a dance that Nacho popularized during the film fest.

I like to think that Vigalondo is somewhere doing a similar happy dance right now: Magnolia Pictures has bought worldwide distribution rights for Timecrimes (except in Spain, where the film was shot). The film had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest where the buzz was amazing -- just about everyone was gushing over the film and also over Vigalondo's delightful Q&A sessions; in fact it was almost overhyped. Timecrimes won the Best Feature award and the silver audience award at Fantastic Fest, and the only regret was that Vigalondo wasn't there to chug his beer (the awards at the fest are large beer mugs).

The film then played at Sitges, where Blake at Cinema is Dope reports the reception was not nearly so warm. So I like to think that it was the good reviews and warm fuzzies coming out of Fantastic Fest that helped this film find distribution. [ETA: Harry Knowles notes that Magnolia reps did attend Fantastic Fest this year.]

You can read my own review of Timecrimes at Cinematical. I'm pleased that many people will have the opportunity to see this movie in a theater. Magnolia plans to release Timecrimes in 2008; no word yet ­on a specific date. If you're really lucky, you may get the opportunity to see Vigalondo in person at a screening -- maybe he'll even dance a bit.

[via Matt Dentler's Blog]