Movies Online

In the days before YouTube or viral Internet videos, people were passing around third-rate copies on videotape of the outtakes of a Winnebago commercial featuring one Jack Rebney, whose gift for colorful profanity under pressure was immense. Hearing his outbursts can be oddly uplifting if you're having a bad day yourself. Local filmmaker Ben Steinbauer, intrigued by the lasting popularity of the "Winnebago Man" video, set out to find Rebney and get the whole story behind the videotape in the documentary Winnebago Man.

Winnebago Man premiered at SXSW in 2009 and has enjoyed a fair amount of popularity since then. Don Clinchy calls it "funny and sometimes poignant" in his review. The movie won several prizes on the film-fest circuit, as well as the Austin Film Critics Association award for Best Austin Film in 2010. One of Rebney's catch phrases from the video, "Will you do me a kindness?" turns up frequently in the oddest places ... apparently one of the characters in the recently released movie Crazy. Stupid. Love says it.

If you haven't yet seen Winnebago Man, now's your chance. SnagFilms is making the documentary available to watch online for free for the next two weeks -- until August 19 -- as part of their SummerFest lineup. You can watch the film from the SnagFilms website, on Hulu, on the SnagFilms iPad app ... and I've embedded it below so you don't even have to leave this page. I especially recommend this movie after a difficult day at the office, where you can hear Rebney say all the things you wish you could, and better.

The big movie news late last week was from Netflix: the company is restructuring its subscriptions to separate DVD rental plans from online streaming. Right now, I pay $9.99/month for one DVD out at a time plus unlimited streaming; under the new plans, I'd pay $7.99/month for unlimited streaming and another $7.99/month to rent one DVD at a time (and that doesn't include an extra fee for Blu-ray rentals).

The decision was easy for my husband and me: we can't remember how long the Netflix DVD has been sitting on top of the TV stand, nor even which movie is actually on that DVD. Therefore, we're going to refuse the DVD-only subscription and subscribe only to online streaming, which we use like crazy. And if we want something that's not on Netflix Watch Instantly, where will we get it? From our neighborhood video store, quite possibly.

I'm wondering how many other people are deciding the same thing, and if this could potentially help Austin video stores. Some people might figure if they're saving $6 a month, they could buy the occasional DVD and still come out ahead. Some might add Hulu Plus, which now has the Criterion Collection movies available for streaming, or rent streaming movies/TV from Amazon. And some might try the increasingly popular Redbox. But I like to think -- okay, I hope -- this change could give our remaining local video rental stores a little boost.

The Iraq war documentary How to Fold a Flag opens with an intriguing quote from German writer and military veteran Ernst Jünger: "We were asked to believe that the war was over. We laughed. For we were the war."

This quote is wholly appropriate for the SXSW 2010 film, which has just become available on cable VOD and online, including Amazon Instant Video. Like much of Jünger's writing, How to Fold a Flag delves into the isolation soldiers feel while fighting wars and after returning to their "normal" lives. (Defining what is "normal" is a recurring theme in the film.) The quote also is appropriate in that Jünger was a conservative German nationalist; How to Fold a Flag presents the American equivalent in all its flag-wrapped glory.

Directors Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker follow up on five soldiers featured in their acclaimed 2004 documentary Gunner Palace. How to Fold a Flag updates us on the civilian lives of four soldiers, while also interviewing the parents of a fifth soldier killed in Iraq. Like its predecessor, the film is an unblinking and often caustic look at the Iraq war's toll.

We interrupt this regular column to bring you something a little different, particularly since no new films are opening in Austin on this last day of the year. Instead, here are some options for streaming movies on Netflix so while you're hungover tomorrow, you can be a couch potato and still catch some great Austin-connected films.

I had no idea how many films connected to the Austin film scene were available online for streaming. Sure, many things appear on video on demand, when you have to pay additional money, but did you know that Netflix alone has many Austin films available for streaming, as well as even more of the selections from our film festivals? It's not just classics like Paris, Texas and Tender Mercies but a wide range of newer and obscure films, or the television critical darling Friday Night Lights that has the first four seasons available on streaming. Several newer locally filmed and produced indies are available, and even more obscure films from local fests.

Here are some selections of note that you can watch right now if you have Netflix: first with Austin and Texas connections, then selected films from various Austin film festivals. 

August Evening -- This Texas Filmmaker Production Fund award winner following an undocumented farm worker and his widowed daughter-in-law was nominated for a Best Actor Spirit Award for Pedro Castaneda and won the John Cassevetes Spirit Award in 2008.

Chalk -- This AFF hit is the bastard love child of The Office and The Real World, as lived by young, new teachers. Written and directed by locals who tried their hand as teachers (Chris Mass and Mike Akel), they also shot most of it in Austin. It's funny, heartbreaking, and a great example of the independent spirit, and if you have any connection to the Austin film viewing scene, several faces will stand out as extras. (Jette's Cinematical review from AFF 2006)

You never know what you might get with film festival bumpers -- the very short films that appear before each fest screening to promote the festival. The problem is, you have to watch the things all week long. You might end up with a horrible earworm that infiltrates your dreams for days, or a slickly done ad from a sponsor that is annoying the second time, much less the twenty-second.

The best experience is for a festival to have multiple bumpers -- Fantastic Fest has so many that you rarely see one more than twice -- which should be short, interesting as films rather than as ads and perhaps even quotable. By the end of the fest, people are going to be shouting back at the ads a la Rocky Horror. The SXSW 2008 Burger Hut ads were great for audience participation (I still hear people quoting the Glengarry Glen Ross spoof), for example.

This year's SXSW Film Festival bumpers were generally not quotable -- most were almost silent -- but I never grew tired of them. Four of the five were directed by David Lowery, who brought his feature St. Nick to SXSW last year. Lowery, who hails from the DFW area, also was director of photography for two features at this year's fest, Audrey the Trainwreck and Lovers of Hate.

Hell on Wheels, Bob Ray's documentary about the evolution of Austin roller derby, is now available online for free at SnagFilms ... or check it out below the jump. To learn more about the film, read Jette's review on Cinematical from the film's premiere during SXSW 2007.

We've been remiss in not pointing this out to you sooner, but according to the Texas Rollergirls website, the 2009 championship is on Sunday at the Playland Skate Center, so it seems like the perfect time to highlight a very Austin doc, with a very Austin style event.

So watch Hell on Wheels, then go experience roller derby in person as the Hotrod Honeys take on the Hustlers for first place, and the Hell Marys and Honky Tonk Heartbreakers battle it out for third.

It's not a big week for Austin film news -- most of the movie news this week is coming out of Comic-Con in San Diego. Mike Judge will be there, showing clips from his upcoming movie Extract, and Robert Rodriguez will show footage from his family-friendly film Shorts, which has an Austin premiere in August. In addition, the documentary Zombie Girl, about how horror filmmaker Emily Hagins shot her first feature at age 12, will screen at Comic-Con, with Emily and her mom Megan (shown at right) in attendance.

But I do have a few tidbits to share:

• Alamo Drafthouse has a new blog to track progress on The Highball, the new games/entertainment spot they're planning to open in time for Fantastic Fest this year. One of the bloggers is Afsheen, who gave us such wonderful photos and stories about the renovation and reopening of Alamo Ritz.
• Austin Movie Blog sifted through Filmmaker Magazine's list of "25 New Faces of Independent Film" and found a local connection: animator Geoff Marslett.
• If you didn't read Marc Savlov's article on Austin microcinema in last week's Austin Chronicle, you may be missing info about some of the best "small" film series/fests in town.

Would you like to learn the secret about how I find all the Slackery News Tidbits? Sure, some of them come from press releases I receive and articles I find, but most of them -- okay, I'll confess. I find most of them by reading Twitter posts. Someone links to a cool article or news, I mark the post as a favorite, and then periodically I dig through my favorites and create a list like the one below.

Now you're all thinking that you'll never read Slackery News Tidbits again because you can just check Twitter ... but the first item on the list isn't from Twitter, it's from a press-release email and is news you may not know yet. It's not even on the fest's website yet. So see, you have to keep reading.

• Austin Film Festival has just announced that Ron Howard will be attending this year's screenwriters conference and film fest. AFF is presenting Howard with the Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award, and will also be a featured speaker during the conference. Which films will they show that he's been involved with? Hoping for Splash and Night Shift, myself.

Yes, the title is cheesy this morning. But how else was I going to get a Machete reference in there? And I'll use any excuse to post a photo of Danny Trejo, like the one above. It's from the 2007 Grindhouse premiere, but it's still relevant, as you'll see below. There's other news from Austin and surrounding areas as well.

• While at Cinevegas last week, Danny Trejo told James Wallace from the blog Gordon and the Whale that shooting on Machete, Robert Rodriguez's movie based on a fake trailer in Grindhouse, will start in about five weeks. I wonder if they'll do any location shooting around Austin? [via Cinematical]
• The latest on the Austin Studios proposed sub-lease to Soundcheck Austin: An open letter to the Austin film community from Richard Linklater that explains the situation clearly and calmly. Check it out.

An Austin-based filmmaker has made it to the semifinals of the Netflix Find Your Voice film competition sponsored by Netflix and Film Independent.

Robbie Pickering is eligible to win $350,000 to make his feature film Natural Selection. If he wins, Pickering is hoping to shoot the movie in Texas. The premise is that a barren housewife discovers her husband has been making deposits at a sperm bank for nearly 25 years. If that doesn't sound like an Austin sort of weird, I don't know what would.

For more information about Pickering and the competition, and to watch a clip from his film, go to the Netflix Find Your Voice website. You can vote for him there.