Slackery News Tidbits, November 10

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Here's the latest Austin and Central Texas movie news.

  • Drafthouse Films, the distribution arm of the Alamo Drafthouse franchise, recently announced the company has entered a U.S. distribution deal with Image Entertainment, Inc. This will make it easier for Drafthouse Films to release new movies and repertory films via a number of platforms (home video, TV, etc.). The California-based company is considered a leading licensee and distributor of North American independent entertainment programming. Image Entertainment's library of licensed movie titles includes the Criterion Collection, various horror movies (they're releasing SXSW 2011 selection Little Deaths soon) and classic films like 12 Angry Men and Design for Living.
  • In addition, Drafthouse Films has acquired the North American rights to a pair of movies that played Fantastic Fest this year: the Oscar-nominated Belgian drama, Bullhead (Debbie's review), and the international hit comedy, Clown: The Movie. While Bullhead concerns itself with a shady deal between a young cattle farmer and a West Flemish beef trader, Clown is about two relatives and their wild adventure through the Danish countryside. Drafthouse Films' acquisition of the North American rights for the 1980s 3D cult film Comin' At Ya is a third Fantastic Fest 2011 selection the company will release next year.
  • The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum will host a Les Blank retrospective from 6-10 pm on Friday, Nov. 18 and Sunday, Nov. 20 at the museum's Texas Spirit Theater. The event, co-sponsored by the Austin Music Film Festival, will showcase award-winning documentarian Blank's films about music and musicians. Live music performances will be held each evening
  • The latest issue of Wholphin, a quarterly DVD magazine published by McSweeney's, features short films by several Texas directors: Amy Grappell, David Lowery, and David and Nathan Zellner. The DVD includes Grappell's Quadrangle, a documentary about her parents' relationship with the couple next door; Lowery's Pioneer, about a father's epic bedtime story told to his son (starring Will Oldham), and the Zellner brothers' short but unforgettable Sasquatch Birth Journal 2.
  • Austin's only monthly adult feature film series, Smut City, returns with a rare screening of the infamous, "acid-fried" 1974 documentary, Sex Freaks at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 20 at The New Movement Theater. Sex Freaks is director M.C. Von Hellen's follow-up to the pornographic film, Sexual Freedom in Denmark. To avoid censorship, Von Hellen and contemporaries disguised their films as sexually explicit documentaries. Smut City-hosted screenings occur the last Saturday of the month. Screenings vary from post-apocalyptic surrealist cult films to erotica.
  • Keep Dallas Weirder Than Austin? Official Dallas City Archivist and actor John Slate, reprised his role as the conspiracy theorist in Richard Linklater's 1991 film Slacker ... sort of. The scene, shot and re-imagined by Dallas-based director Ryan Hartsell for the 24th Annual Dallas Video Festival, involves Slate once again annoying customers in a bookstore. This time, however, the conspiracy theory concerns acclaimed puppeteer Jim Henson. The scene is an unofficial addition to AFS's Slacker 2011, which kicked off the five-day festival in September. We're wondering if Lone Star International Film Festival in Ft. Worth will show the short when screening Slacker 2011 this weekend. The short is now on Vimeo and we've embedded it below.

SLACKER 2011 (Bookstore Scene) from Ryan Hartsell on Vimeo.

Slacker 2011 returns to Dallas

At the Texas Theatre, Saturday Feb 11th at 7 PM along with Slackers Dallas Style
http://dallasvideofest25.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/slackers-2011/