Slackery News Tidbits, June 28

It is the kind of week already where I had to go find a calendar so I could put the correct date in the headline. So it seems like a good time to catch up on Austin film news, and refresh my memory about a few recent items. Here's what we've got:

• News 8 Austin broadcast a great story last week on the locally founded American Genre Film Archive, which is working to protect and restore exploitation, horror and action films. Be sure to watch the video.
• The Least of These, which Jenn Brown and I both enjoyed at SXSW 2009, is now available on DVD through IndiePix. This documentary focuses on Texas detention centers for families who are believed to have entered this country illegally. It's an eye-opener, and just writing about this makes me wonder if the conditions have changed at all in the past year. I hope so.
• The SXSW website has started a new weekly feature called Humpday Highlights (no points for guessing on which day this feature will appear), in which they post some video from a past festival event that they feel warrants attention. Their first entry, just in time for the Cyrus opening in Austin last Friday, is video from the 2010 Film panel "The Kids Are Alright," which includes Jay and Mark Duplass, Katie Aselton, Bryan Poyser and Geoff Marslett. There's also a full podcast from the panel you can listen to.
• Local game developer Rodney Gibbs, a UT RTF alum, was profiled in the Austin American-Statesman last week for his new iPhone/Facebook game QRANK. Which I might add is addictive. The first time I played the trivia game, it asked me a question about Billy Wilder, so you know I was hooked. Gibbs is testing a new iteration of the game, where you can play with groups in real time, in various Austin venues. My only complaint is that I want to be able to play it on my phone, which is not an iPhone, but at least I can play it on Facebook.
• I mentioned last week that local filmmaker Emily Hagins is trying to raise funds to finish her latest feature, My Sucky Teen Romance. She now has a fundraising page up and running to make it easy -- with a video pitch from the filmmaker (and I must say, how many times do you see a room with Sin City posters and Care Bears next to one another?). She's also got a spiffy new website for her production company, Cheesy Nuggets.