"What we do is negotiate, demonstrate, resist."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma

Director Ava DuVernay and a combination of other talent create in Selma a deeply emotional, standout work about a short moment in history: the early months of 1965. The historical drama, attributed to screenwriter Paul Webb although DuVernay herself rewrote most of it, revolves around Martin Luther King, Jr. (British actor David Oyelowo, Lincoln, Middle of Nowhere) and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as they plan nonviolent protest in Selma, Alabama.

At this point in history, segregation had been outlawed, but county clerks continued to turn away black Southerners who attempted to register to vote through "literacy" tests and other deceptive means. In the movie, activist and preacher King pleads with President Lyndon Baines Johnson (British actor Tom Wilkinson, Belle, Michael Clayton) to enact voting rights legislation.

Last month, current and alumni volunteer staff of 91.7 KVRX, the University of Texas at Austin's student-run radio station, gathered for a reunion to celebrate 20 years the station began broadcasting on the FM dial. Part of Texas Student Media, KVRX streams online 24/7 and is on the air from 7 pm-9 am weekdays and 10 pm-9 am on weekends, sharing the frequency with KOOP community radio.

Over the years, KVRX has provided opportunities for students to receive practical experience in radio news, sports and entertainment programming and in broadcast management, and served as a source of campus information for students, faculty and staff as well as an outlet for alternative programming unavailable in the Austin market. Any UT student can volunteer at the station.

Quite a few KVRX alumni have gone on to careers in television and film industry. The reunion provided the perfect opportunity for me to chat with them about how their student-radio experiences impacted their careers.

In 2011, Garry Marshall directed the all-star holiday comedy New Year's Eve (2011), a film so shamelessly sentimental (although I still think the Michelle Pfeiffer/Zac Efron storyline was charming and deserved a movie of its own) that it's destined to be played every December 31 for many years to come. Though it wasn't a critics' favorite, enough people liked New Year's Eve to think it the ultimate film about the holiday. Not so.

Its true that Christmas movies may be a dime a dozen, while movies celebrating New Year's tend to be given the short end of the stick. As someone who loves seeing people during this time of year, but enjoys holiday movie marathons just as much, I've always been rather let down by the slim cinematic offerings available for this particular holiday. Therefore, for the movie lover celebrating New Year's at home this time around, here are a few titles to help ring in 2015.

The Apartment (1960)

A bit racy for its day (especially considering its two leading men), The Apartment tells the story of a mid-level businessman (Jack Lemmon) who lets his coworkers and bosses use his bachelor apartment for romantic dalliances. It's not long before an encounter with a quirky elevator girl (Shirley MacLaine) however, changes his outlook on life and love.

Welcome to Holiday Favorites, a series in which Slackerwood contributors and our friends talk about the movies we watch during the holiday season, holiday-related or otherwise.

Today's pick is from seasoned sound designer turned writer/director Steven DeGennaro, whose short film First Date premiered during the AFS ShortCase at the 2013 SXSW Film Festival. DeGennaro successfully wrapped a crowdfunding campaign and raised over $35,000 for his first feature, Found Footage 3D. Here's his holiday favorite:

There’s only one holiday movie in my family, and that’s 29th Street. The movie tells the sort-of, almost, but not-really "true" story of the first winner of the New York State Lottery, Frank Pesce (who wrote the film and plays a supporting role). Danny Aiello plays the domineering father of the clan, whose son, played by Anthony LaPaglia, is supposedly the luckiest man alive. So lucky, in fact, that it turns out to be a curse. It’s funny with just a touch of schmaltz, as every good Christmas movie should be.

Twenty years after his only other biopic (Ed Wood), director Tim Burton returns to the genre with the movie Big Eyes. Co-writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (who also wrote Ed Wood) combine elements of the fantastical with the all-too-real story of a man taking credit for a woman's work. Amy Adams (American Hustle, The Muppets) stars as Margaret Keane, whose paintings of haunted-looking children were all the rage in 1960s America ... but her husband Walter (Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained) passed them off as his own.

Burton tells Keane's story using a bright palette, giving a smooth look to his 1960s San Francisco setting, growing even bolder in color when the setting moves to Hawaii. There's a blithe feeling to Big Eyes, even as the movie tackles serious issues of the male-dominated mid-century canon of modern art and this female artist's loss of power in the face of her smooth operator/con artist husband. Adams as Margaret speaks with a soft Southern cadence opposite a strident Waltz, whose own bizarro accent here signals that he can't decide which part of the States his character is supposed to be from. 

Fairy tales may appeal to young and old alike, but before the contemporary sanitized versions many of these stories, deeply rooted in centuries old folklore, were quite grim and complex with both obvious and not-so-obvious meaning.

In the 1976 book Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, psychologist Bruno Bettelheim analyzed the symbolic motifs and emotional importance of fairy tales, including those collected and published by the Brothers Grimm. He opined that the darkness and brutality of abandonment and death gave children the ability to process their fears and learn from the moral of each story.

The film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim 1987 musical Into the Woods weaves several favorite tales into one complex story for adults with many of our favorite characters. The base story created for this production is that of "The Baker and his Wife," a barren couple (James Corden and Emily Blunt) who desperately want to have a child.

Six new releases are now vying for attention in the marketplace for Christmas. It was down to five, but now that Sony has authorized a last-minute limited release for The Interview, area theaters are absolutely packed with options. In terms of holiday titles, quite a few specialty screenings that were scheduled for Alamo Drafthouse Ritz have been scrapped because they added The Interview to Theater 1, but you can catch free daily Kid's Club screenings of Muppet Christmas Carol at the Alamo Slaughter Lane, Ernest Saves Christmas at South Lamar and Arthur Christmas (2D) at Alamo Lakeline each morning through New Year's Eve. 

Aside from that, there aren't many rep screenings happening until the new year. The Ritz will still be offering Monday night's "Homo Arigato!" screening of Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, an award-winning 2008 documentary about the queer musician and are hosting their annual New Year's Eve feast for The Apartment in 35mm if you're willing to brave 6th Street.

Movies We've Seen

Big Eyes - Even at his worst, Tim Burton's films usually have a great visual flair and interesting characters. For this true story, he teamed up again with the screenwriters from Ed Wood to tell the story of Margaret Keane (Amy Adams), an artist from the Sixties whose paintings were claimed by her husband Walter (Christoph Waltz) as his own. Elizabeth says "Burton's strong fascination and dedication to the artist's work is obvious, making Big Eyes one of his most deeply-felt films in years." Look for her review on Friday. (wide) 

Although working at this year's Austin Film Festival had many great perks, one of the not-so-great parts was missing out on some of the highly-anticipated marquee films.  This is why I jumped at the chance to see The Imitation Game, though I now see that maybe I didn't need to jump so quickly.

It's clear that Benedict Cumberbatch (famously known for his role on Sherlock) carries this film -- not just because the story focuses on his role as Alan Turing, but because his performance stands out amongst all of his famous castmates, including Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode and Charles Dance.  

That said, it seems that Cumberbatch's snarky demeanor as Sherlock Holmes is what got him cast in this role. The Imitation Game seems a fitting title because his performance is not unlike the role he's portrayed for the last three seasons on Sherlock. If you're unfamiliar with the show, then perhaps you will not notice this similarity; being a big fan myself, it stood out almost instantly. In fact, most of the cast seemed to be cookie-cutter replicas of characters they have played before: stale, expired and certainly not fresh.

The story is strong, yet it doesn't know which theme it relies on.  Focusing on Turing's famous crack of the Enigma coding machine during WWII, the film stays on course -- until it takes a few pit stops to reflect on Turing's struggle with homosexuality. Although it's a powerful performance, I felt confused on what emotion to resonate with throughout. It seems as if the filmmakers were taking on some sort of studio note to try and make Turing more sympathetic. Although it does achieve this, it feels forced.

It surprises me that The Imitation Game is making its debut on Christmas Day.  Perhaps a marketing team felt that Cumberbatch and Knightly would draw in ticket sales, but the film itself doesn't have that grandiose feel most holiday releases have.  It does seem that this role will probably draw some Oscar buzz for Cumberbatch -- it already seems to have drawn an 8.4 rating out of a scale of 10 on IMDb. Maybe I'm just a holiday release Scrooge; maybe a box-office Christmas miracle will happen after all.

The great The Interview saga of 2014 has reached its apex. After the film was publicized, parent studio Sony Pictures found itself victim to the largest, most destructive and costly computer hacking operation in history. Emails, personal information of employees including social security numbers, and untold other secrets were not only stolen, but partially released by the culprits with a threat to do more damage if the movie was released. Last week, Sony caved to the major theater chains and cancelled the release, spawning innumerable conversations about free speech in the digital age.

And just before that, I got to see it along with 200-ish other attendees at Butt-numb-a-thon, the annual birthday party for AICN founder Harry Knowles where vintage films are celebrated alongside big Hollywood premieres and sneak peeks. The Interview played fifth in the lineup of 12 films, immediately after Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice. Directors Evan Goldberg (This is the End) and Seth Rogen apologized during their introduction, saying they didn't expect to follow a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. In fact, the madcap hilarity was the perfect pick-me-up following the dark and low-key Inherent Vice as we approached the halfway mark of 24 hours of movie watching.

The Interview asks a question many have probably pondered: When a journalist is given an opportunity to interview one of the most hated dictators on the planet, wouldn't the U.S. government become involved to attempt an assassination? And would the journalist want to go through with it? Of course, if you've seen the previous work of those involved in this comedy, you know what to expect. Rogen and costar James Franco are this century's version of The Three Stooges, minus Moe (or perhaps replacing Moe with "Mo," the near-homosexual bro-fessional screen relationship they have together).

In the midst of their antics, I realized The Interview, like many great comedies, doesn't just lampoon its subject. It paints Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un as a caricature, a spoiled man-child twisted by his father into a creature that loves American culture but responds to criticism with extreme force and explosions of rage. But, it also pokes fun at the U.S. government, the traditional news media, and the American public's gluttonous fascination with info-tainment.

Earlier this year, Louie Zamperini died at the age of 97. He was the son of Italian immigrants, born in 1917 in New York state. His family relocated to Torrance, California where he was on the verge of becoming a hooligan until his older brother Pete got him involved with the school track team. By the time he was 19, he had qualified for the 1936 Berlin Olympics in the 5000-meter race. 

An entire feature-length film could probably be made just about his career as a runner, but the full scope of the man's endurance is told here in Angelina Jolie's second directorial effort. Unbroken really feels like three movies in one, weaving in the story of Zamperini's Olympic success, his time in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II and his eventual struggles as a prisoner of war in a Japanese camp. In the film, British actor Jack O'Connell (Starred Up) gives an emotionally raw and physically demanding career-making performance as Zamperini. 

Joel and Ethan Coen adapated Laura Hillenbrand's 2010 book (with screenplay assistance from Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson) and I think that the first half of the film truly shines as it shifts through time from Zamperini's childhood to the plane crash in 1943 over the Pacific Ocean that found him and two other fellow soldiers (Finn Wittrock, Noah and Domhnall Gleeson, About Time) stuck in a life boat for 47 days. 

There is an intensity to the film's air combat sequences that really make you feel as though you're in the plane with these young men, despite the fact that the quality on some of the effects is limited. As the story unfolds, it truly makes you wonder how anybody could stay so strong for so long. Zamperini never gave up hope, no matter what happened to him, that he would survive. It was difficult inititally for me during the scenes where the men where stranded in the Pacific Ocean to not recall last year's All Is Lost, but that was a fleeting feeling. As days turn to weeks, the desperation between the men becomes palpable and I began to forget that we hadn't even gotten to the worst part of Zamperini's life.