Slackery News Tidbits: December 2, 2013
By Jordan Gass-Poore' on December 2, 2013 - 11:00am
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Here's the latest Austin and Texas film news.
- The Houston Film Critics Society has chosen five nominees for its second annual Texas Independent Film Award: Comedy Warriors, which premiered at this year's San Antonio Film Festival; the German drama Houston, from Austinite Bastian Gunther; the Central Texas-shot Prince Avalanche (Elizabeth's review), directed by Austinite David Gordon Green; An Unreal Dream: The Michael Morton Story (Jette's review), a documentary from Houston filmmaker Al Reinert, which premiered at SXSW 2013; and the Austin-shot feature Zero Charisma (Jette's review). The winner of the award, given to a film which is primarily financed and filmed in Texas, will be announced on Jan. 6 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. (via HFCS member Alan Cerny on Twitter)
- Drafthouse Films release The Act of Killing (Elizabeth's review), a documentary that sees former Indonesian death squad leaders reenacting their real-life mass killings, and Dallas native Shane Carruth's Upstream Color (J.C.'s review), about a couple brought together by forces of nature, made Britain's Sight & Sound list of the top 10 movies of the year, according to IndieWire.
- Austin Public Library celebrates the holiday season with a free screening of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians at 6:30 pm on Dec. 10 at the Carver Branch (1161 Angelina St.). There will also be 16mm screenings of Mickey's Christmas Carol, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Snowman as well as Elf on Dec. 20. The 1980s film Gremlins will be screened the following day and again on Dec. 23 during the library's Holiday Movie Marathon, which also includes The Santa Clause, Home Alone, Christmas Vacation and The Muppet Christmas Carol.
- Local filmmaker/instructor Geoff Marslett's animated movie Mars, which played SXSW in 2010, is now available on DVD. Read our review and interview with Marslett about the film, which stars University of Texas alum Mark Duplass as a NASA astronaut on the first manned mission to the red planet.
- At CultureMap Austin, John Egan reminds us about the late actor Paul Walker's Austin ties and his role in Varsity Blues. The article also reminded us at Slackerwood that Elizabeth wrote about the 1999 movie as well, last year.
- Finally, the black metal comedy Necronomica from Austin filmmaking siblings Kyle and Cliff Bogart was recently chosen as a Vimeo Staff Pick, The Austin Chronicle reports. The short debuted at this year's SXSW and screened at the Housecore Horror Film Festival.