Slackery and Fantastic News Tidbits, July 21

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You all know what I mean when I say "Fantastic" news tidbits, right? Fantastic Fest is in September and we should be receiving -- and publishing -- regular updates on the lineup, special guests, and whatever other treats the festival has in store for us this year. But there's some other Austin film news, too, so I thought I'd take the lazy way out -- er, I mean the convenient way for readers, that's it -- and combine it all into one nice newsy package.

• As I mentioned, Fantastic Fest announced 13 films in their 2010 festival lineup yesterday. If you are a Fantastic Fest fanatic, you probably already know this. I noticed people on Twitter exclaiming that they'd been constantly refreshing the festival website page while eagerly anticipating the news. Nearly all these films are from other countries: Sweden, France, Serbia, Australia, South Africa, Hong Kong and Japan. I don't know much about most of them -- I saw Ip Man at Cinemapocalypse last year and liked it enough that I'd watch Ip Man 2, and The Violent Kind premiered at Sundance this year. IndieWire has the best discussion of the films so far, which isn't a lot ... but it's been pointed out to me that most of these films are North American premieres so U.S. writers don't know a lot about them yet.
• Speaking of Fantastic Fest, one of my favorite movies from the 2009 festival is now available on DVD and Netflix Watch Instantly: the animated surreal Belgian film A Town Called Panic (Panique au village). Go find this and watch this immediately. Here's my review from Cinematical.
• Jenn Brown and I really enjoyed the locally shot feature The Happy Poet at SXSW this year (Jenn's review). The filmmakers just let us know that they're showing the film in San Antonio this Saturday night at Unit B (with a bike ride downtown afterwards to a Q&A session). Hot dogs are also involved, naturally.
• In addition, The Happy Poet is scheduled for several film fests around the country, including Traverse City Film Festival at the end of the month. I want to single out Traverse City because this festival seems to love Austin movies. Last year, Bob Byington won an award there for "bold and innovative filmmaking" for Harmony and Me and RSO, and Winnebago Man (coming to Austin theaters soon!) won Best Comedy Documentary. This year, the only other Austin-connected film on the list is the delightul Me and Orson Welles (which still isn't on DVD, damn it) (my review), although you can catch glimpses of Houston in the excellent documentary GasLand, which I saw at Marfa Film Festival. Wow, that whole lineup looks pretty good, if you want to travel to Michigan this month.
• Finally, I wanted to mention the TXMPA monthly meetups that have been going on at The Highball -- mixers plus a relevant and interesting speaker or two. This month's mixer is on Sunday, July 25 from 5 to 7 pm and TXMPA wants to celebrate all the Austin-related Emmy nominations recently announced for the HBO movie Temple Grandin (getting a DVD release next month for those of us without cable) and the shot-in-Austin NBC series Friday Night Lights. Two actors from Friday Night Lights will be there to talk about their experiences: Madison Burge and Angela Rawna.