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America Unchained was one of the few docs I got to see in a theater at the Austin Film Festival this past year, but I'm really glad I did. It's one of those movies that might not be so impressive sitting down by yourself with your DVD player, but really takes off when you see it with an audience. So much so that it won the Audience Award at AFF for Best Documentary.

Comedian Dave Gorman’s quest is a simple one: to drive cross country from Los Angeles to the Atlantic Ocean never spending a cent at a chain restaurant, chain hotel or chain gas station – independent businesses only. But in a country where the mom and pop shop is nearing extinction, does the independent spirit of America still thrive enough to go coast to coast? And how do you do it all while being a vegetarian, anyway? Gorman and Devonshire’s insightful film opens up the back roads of the country to find the heart of America.

On some levels the movie is very much a process film -- you spend some time wondering if Gorman isn't manipulating events to make a better picture -- but there are a number of genuine moments that more than make up for those few moments of incredulity. (Seriously, he couldn't have brought along an extra can or two of gas?) Highly recommended, especially for Austin's citizenry who have a mad on for Wal-Mart.

America Unchained shows at the Alamo Lake Creek on Thursday night at 7:30 pm. Admission is $4 or free for AFF members.

[Editor's Note: Jette Kernion would like to shamelessly plug her review of America Unchained written for Cinematical last year as part of Austin Film Festival coverage.]

From February 9 - 11, star of River's Edge and Charlie's Angels Crispin Glover gave several performance readings of his books and screened the first two films of his controversial self-produced and directed It trilogy at the Alamo Ritz. This is what he had to say during the post-screening Q&A about his books, slideshow, self-funding his projects, and his films What Is It? and It is Fine! Everything is Fine.

"I have been performing the slideshow since 1992," Glover said, "after writing and publishing books through my company Volcanic Eruptions. I try to play to the humor in the material which I perform from the books [including excerpts from The Rat Catcher, The Backwards Swing, and Around My House, among others]."

"I started experimenting with old books in the early 1980s, blacking out parts of text by drawing tendrils and such using India ink or writing in the margins. I've always drawn and wrote since I was a child. I was taking an acting class near a bookstore which sold bindings from the 1800s for cheap, so I used books I picked up from there. Around 1985 or 86, I finished my first book Around My House. I have completed 18 books so far and plan to complete several different slide show versions using excerpts from various books.

Everyone's been running around this week predicting Oscars and planning Oscar parties and wondering if Jon Stewart is going to be very funny as this year's host. But that's not the only award show taking place this weekend.

Film Independent's Spirit Awards (which I always call the Indie Spirit awards because I'm lazy) will be held Saturday afternoon, the day before the Oscar broadcast. You can watch the ceremony on IFC starting at 4 pm our time, or tune in early for a red-carpet event beforehand that's televised beginning at 1:30. If you're a Matt Dentler groupie, you're in luck because the SXSW film-fest head is one of this year's red-carpet hosts.

If you don't have cable (like me) or enjoy watching awards with a big group, head over to the Austin Studios screening room on Saturday afternoon for Austin Film Society's viewing party, starting at 4 pm. AFS will have snacks, drinks, and a lot of love for the local filmmakers who are up for awards. A list of Austinites whose films are in the running is on the AFS page. Best of luck!

SXSW Film Fest is only two weeks away, and more news about various aspects of the festival pops up every day. Here are some of the recent highlights:

• The lineup for SXSW Global Doc Days has been announced. This is a new documentary event for SXSW, available to badgeholders with film-fest access. From March 8-11, Global Doc Days will feature screenings of recent nonfiction films from eight countries. It's like a giant buffet for doc lovers. I can't wait.
• Over at Cinematical (where I'm a contributor), Scott Weinberg interviewed SXSW Film Festival head Matt Dentler, pictured at right. Cinematical also has been posting trailers for various SXSW films. Keep an eye on the site's SXSW category this year; at laest five of us will be covering SXSW movies and events, so there should be plenty of interesting writing.
• Speaking of Matt Dentler, if you aren't visiting his blog for your SXSW updates, you're missing all kinds of cool stuff. He'll point you to the SXSW trailers page and the SXSW parties page, plus links to trailers and other news items.
• Over at SpoutBlog, Karina Longworth is doing what I'm hoping you'll start seeing on Slackerwood next week: short e-mail interviews with various SXSW filmmakers. So far she's talked with Brandon Linden (Bootleg Wisconsin), Frank V. Ross (Present Company), and Mary Bronstein (Yeast). Visit the blog's SXSW 2008 category to see the latest previews from the festival.

I'm working on an update of the guide to SXSW movie-theater venues, plus Slackerwood will have lots of other great SXSW stuff. Keep watching our RSS feed, you won't want to miss any of it.

[Photo credit: weevil on Flickr. Original photo here. Used under terms of Creative Commons license.]

I didn't go to the Semi-Pro preview screening at Alamo South Lamar last weekend, and boy did I miss out. Attendees were required to wear outfits resembling the team uniforms from the movie: a singlet for the Flint Tropics, gold shorts and sweatband, and those long athletic knee socks I remember my dad wearing to exercise in the 1970s. I had to wonder how many people would go to the trouble to buy or make such a costume, just for a free movie. Okay, so Will Ferrell would be there too -- that might make a difference.

Photos from the event show a packed theater full of wildly enthusiastic Austinites, with every single one dressed in the requisite gear. Some had groovy Seventies wigs, too. Even Alamo founders Tim and Karrie League were wearing the outfits, although I've seen Tim wear much weirder things in the name of film, so that was no surprise. I suppose it's also no surprise that Alamo South had a basketball goal set up in the lobby and people were playing impromptu games before and after the film.

More than 150 photos (including the one above) were taken by David Hill photography, which has a complete set of 168 images from the event. In addition, Sarah of Posh Deluxe has written a terrific entry about the Semi-Pro screening that includes photos. And Austinist interviewed Will Ferrell this weekend, and has photos of the actor from that session.

Next time, I'll go get -- and wear -- the damn outfit. (Especially if I have a better camera by then, since my current camera would never be able to capture the glorious golds of the uniform as well as these photos do.)

[Photo credit: David Hill Photography on Flickr. Original photo here. Used under terms of Creative Commons license.]

I wrote an article for Cinematical today about the Kindly Rewind short-film contest that Alamo Drafthouse and AMD are sponsoring. If you have a few minutes and you want some light entertainment, you can't do better than to head over to the Filmmaking Frenzy site and watch some of the Kindly Rewind entries. You don't have to register on the site unless you want to vote for the entries, but voting is a nice way to support the shorts you like: the winner gets a fancy video-editing computer setup from AMD, and the winning shorts will be shown before Be Kind Rewind at original Alamo theaters.

My husband and I watched at least a half-dozen of the shorts this weekend, and caught the first minute or two of a dozen others. I realized, while watching these, what the real star of Kindly Rewind was: the Frost Bank Tower. This iconic building in Austin showed up in almost every short we saw, whether it was as a futuristic building in Blade Runner or as one of the many downtown Austin sites in March of the Penguins. It was also shown to good effect in Koyaanisqatsi.

Austin landmarks are often the best parts of these shorts. One of my favorites so far has been The Blues Brothers, because the film was transposed entirely to Austin. "Ray" isn't Ray Charles in this movie, but Ray Hennig of Heart of Texas Music (who legend claims sold Stevie Ray Vaughan his favorite Fender Strat in 1973). Bob's Country Bunker becomes the Broken Spoke. Other films also use Austin locations well: Nick Robinson's Beastmaster jumps off the Town Lake bridge, the Cliffs of Insanity in The Princess Bride are on Capitol of Texas Highway, and one version of Jurassic Park involves the Mangia dinosaur.

But it's the Frost Bank Tower that appears again and again. Is this a subtle message about what we consider iconic in Austin? Or does it just look good on film?

[Photo credit: Mr. Wright on Flickr. Original photo here. Used under terms of Creative Commons license.]

Yesterday, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a Texas law that banned the sale of certain kinds of sex toys. Forbidden Fruit will no longer have to mark some items as "educational models" and others as "novelty items."

And today it is Valentine's Day. (You have to wonder if the date of the federal court ruling was coincidence.) To celebrate hearts and flowers and educational models and novelty toys as well as local filmmaking, here's a clip from the 2002 Austin-made documentary Dildo Diaries, which gave the full low-down on the state law. This clip features an explanation from the late great Molly Ivins, whose columns about this law first introduced me to the bizarre concept of being arrested as a "dildo pusher." Eat your heart out, Warren Chisum.

I owe filmmaker and Austin Film Society staffer Bryan Poyser a drink today -- he saved me a lot of time. Normally I would comb through the just-released list of shorts scheduled for SXSW 2008 and try to find all the Austin filmmakers for you. But Bryan did the bulk of the work for me over at his AFS blog: he's published a list of all the Texas Filmmakers Production Fund recipients with shorts playing SXSW. He also notes a new feature-length documentary added to the festival lineup, Writ Writer, from local filmmaker Susanne Mason.

Bryan didn't list any Austin-made shorts that weren't associated with TFPF, so feel free to post comments about any Austin shorts that aren't on that list. (I notice there's a short called X directed by a Josh Brolin ... anyone know if that's this Josh Brolin, who's made a couple of films in Texas in the past few years?)

Again, if you're associated with a SXSW film that has any local ties, we at Slackerwood would like to talk to you. Drop me a line or post a comment. If you have no local ties, contact me anyway ... if time and space permit, we may have room to write about your film too.

The first year I went to SXSW Film Festival, I did it on a film pass, not a badge. The badge is great -- it gets you into the conference and also puts you in the top-priority line for all screenings. Plus you get a nifty canvas bag. But the badge can be a little pricey for some people, especially if you live in Austin and plan to go only to night-and-weekend movies.

I recommend the film pass. It costs $70 this year and gives you second priority for all films. This means you're probably not going to get into any midnight movies with great buzz over at Alamo Ritz. And if you are able to get into a big splashy Paramount premiere, you may be walking a few flights of stairs to your seat. But when I did SXSW on a film pass, I got into every movie I wanted to see -- I just tended not to go to the big premieres. I spent a lot of time at Arbor (no longer a venue) and Dobie. Some of the big movies screen again later in the festival after the conference, and it's a lot easier to see them then. Or you could stick to the smaller, less hyped films, which I like to do anyway. I can see the big-name movie in a few months (or weeks), but who knows if I'll ever get another chance to see that low-budget documentary about cheesemaking?

Waterloo Video is the place to go for SXSW film passes (as in previous years), which are on sale right now. Look at it this way: individual tickets for SXSW movies cost $10, assuming there's even room in the theater for people who want to buy tickets. If you see more than 7 movies (and the festival is 9 days long -- so if you saw one per day), you're coming out ahead. If you see 14 movies, you're paying less per film than you would at a theater. The film passes do sell out so if you're buying one, go sooner rather than later.

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.]