The Real Star of Alamo's "Kindly Rewind" Contest

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.]