Here's a roundup of recent Austin film news:

• The Central Region of TXMPA is holding a meeting Monday, June 8, at 6:30 pm at Mother Egan's. If you are a member, you can participate in the election for Central Region board representative and alternate.
• If you haven't seen P.J. Raval and Jay Hodges's film Trinidad, check it out on Showtime this month (or if you're me, find a friend with Showtime). The documentary about a Colorado town known as "the sex-change capital of the world" will screen on Showtime channels this week and then be available on Showtime On Demand until the end of June.

The first annual "Lights. Camera. Help." film festival, scheduled for July 31 here in Austin, is soliciting entries from non-profit and grassroots organizations. The deadline for entry is June 30, less than a month away.

The event organizers say:

This festival is the first of its kind in the nation and reflects the spirit of Austin, a prominent city in the non-profit, grassroots and activism communities. These organizations, along with filmmakers, will use the festival to spread the word about their cause, develop a community of followers, and expand the film-for-a-cause genre.

In a recent blog post, organizers highlighted some of the submissions received so far. They include a short doc entitled Prostitution: Beyond the Myths, a training video to help cancer patients, and a video showing a day in the life of a Nicaraguan musician.

You can keep an eye on this event at the festival's website, www.lightscamerahelp.com.

John Fiege's documentary about the Latin immigrant experience, Mississippi Chicken, has recently been released on DVD. The 2007 documentary, which served as Fiege's MFA thesis film in Radio-Television-Film at UT Austin, was nominated for a "Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You" Gotham Award. You may have seen it locally in 2007 at Austin Film Festival.

The Deep South is not a place most people associate with Latino workers, but apparently the poultry factories in Mississippi have been trying to entice immigrant workers for decades. In the 1990s, they even began to bus workers in from border towns. Mississippi Chicken evocatively puts real faces to the exploitations of South and Central American immigrants and the obstacles they face, whether they are legal residents or not. These are people who feel it's a step up to work for the money available at a poultry processing plant, and the plants want them because they'll work there at least for awhile.

Editor's Note: The following report is from Aaron Zern and James Curry, who went to one of the first screenings of Terminator Salvation in Austin and sat in the new D-Box seats, the ones that Chris Holland tried out. I was interested to hear how the seats felt during a whole feature film, and thought I'd share their discoveries. (Thanks, guys!)

D-Box seats are billed as "The next Dimension of your cinematic experience. Taking you literally inside the movie" and the promotional material explains that "Using advanced proprietary robotics and commercial-grade motion technology, D-BOX Motion Code immerses theatregoers into the heart of the action. The experience is nothing short of stunning." Rhetoric so dramatic that it would lead you to opine that D-Box represents an advance akin to that between going to see a moving picture, and going to see one of those fabulous new talking pictures with sound. Common sense, on the other hand, would lend itself to suggesting that a gyrating seat in a darkened theater is more likely a leap between going to see a moving picture and going to see a moving picture while being made to feel slightly queasy.

At Galaxy Highland, we were ushered into the theater a little ahead of those with regular tickets and invited to take our seats in the D-Box section, 22 seats spanning two rows about halfway up from the screen.

When it comes to things digital, we like to think of Austin as a national leader. And we mean "leader" in the good way. That's why it's so surprising that according to a report by Nielsen published last week, Austin is the fourth least prepared city in the nation for the upcoming digital television transition.

On Friday, June 12, 2009 – less than two weeks from now! – all full-power television stations will cease "analog" transmissions and will broadcast only a "digital" television signal. This affects all households that receive over-the-air television via rabbit ears or rooftop antenna. Preparing for DTV is usually pretty easy. Older televisions can receive digital signals with the addition of a low-cost digital converter box.

As it currently stands, 30,000 central Texas households could lose their television reception when the transition occurs. The City of Austin regards this as a serious public safety concern. Rondella Hawkins, Manager of the City's Office of Telecommunications and Regulatory Affairs noted, "Television is a primary source for news, weather and public safety information for many Austinites."

To help remaining residents across the digital television divide, the city has scheduled a Walk-In DTV Help Clinic that will be open June 3-12.

Time is running short, but it's not too late. For more information about the DTV transition, visit http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/telecom/dtv.htm or http://www.dtv.gov/.
 

Photo credit: "Digital TV Coupons" by Gary Hunt. Found on Flickr and used under Creative Commons license.

When I first moved to Austin last millennium, I learned how deeply Austinites and Texans love film. People I worked with talked about going to high school football games because they liked playing "fantasy scout" and predicting which players would become star players in college, and potentially move on the the NFL. Film geeks get to do a variation on that theme with the Oscars, as well as the student filmmaker and shorts categories at film festivals, something that many of the Austin film festivals do.

Austin is a town proud to celebrate film, and Austinites are starting young. AISD is hosting the Austin Student Digital Film Festival, and this year it's on Saturday, May 30 (tomorrow!) at Reagan High School, from 5:30 to 6:30 pm. The showcased films by students from elementary, middle, and high schools around Austin include the following titles:

Lost, The Halls, The Facts on Paper, The Attack of Fire Breathing Lizard, Gone Fishin', Keeping It Real, Ha Ha, The Adventures of Traveling Allie, Brotherly Love, Cubical Cowboys, Frenemies, Rain, Playing Around the Soccer Field, Beauty is Bravery

You can find a map and directions to the theater on the Austin Student Digital Film Festival website. The screenings aren't expected to take longer than 90 minutes, and the event is free. Support Austin's youngest filmmakers, and start deciding which ones are going to the be the next Zombie Girl or Robert Rodriguez, and who is most likely to thank the Academy in the future.

There's a lot going on in Austin for movie fans this weekend. Two big films opening, including Pixar's latest success, Up, which has been wowing audiences at sneak-peek screenings, and Sam Raimi's return to form in Drag Me to Hell. But there are others out there that you might want to check out.

Raimi brought Drag Me to Hell as a work-in-progress to SXSW this March, and wowed the audience at the single sold-out midnight show. The advance screening hosted by AICN proved that the SXSW screening wasn't a fluke. Raimi, best known for the Evil Dead franchise, returns to the style of filmmaking that made him famous, complete with body humor, gross-outs, ridiculousness, and likable characters stuck in impossible situations. If you don't like the style of the Evil Dead franchise, you probably won't like this, either. But Raimi's films are fun, and he's the master of horror comedy. Just don't bring a PETA supporter with you.

Austin Film Society, which is constantly bringing new events to the Austin film community, recently upgraded its website. It's had a complete overhaul over the weekend, and so far, the new site looks much cleaner and more user friendly than the old one. It also means you won't have to keep re-logging in if you navigate around too much, which was an annoyance on the old system.

The minor inconvenience is that you have to create a new login, regardless of an existing login in their website. Once you create your new login, the AFS team will take 1-2 days to link it with your membership.

On the plus side, the administrivia of a complete overhaul and upgrade, Essential Cinema's next program, Love on the Largest Continent: Ten Asian Films, does not start for another week.

And you still have time to sign up for the special Food, Inc. screening and optional four-course organic meal with wine pairings. The movie-only tickets are sold out, but the $60 tickets that include the four-course meal are still available.

This Thursday, May 28, KLRU is going to broadcast highlights from the 2009 Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards from 8 to 9 pm. And if you miss that date, you can catch the broadcast again on KLRU-2 on Wednesday, June 3 at 9 pm. The awards originally took place on March 12, right before SXSW started.

Thomas Haden Church (pictured above) was a wonderfully amusing emcee, and I hope that none of his jokes were considered unsuitable for nighttime public television. More photos from the event are after the jump.

It's Memorial Day, and what a gorgeous day it is. A perfect day to be outside. Yet we'll probably all be in theaters anyway -- or maybe the Mondo Tees rummage sale over at Alamo South Lamar. At any rate, I'm taking the day off from writing.

So it's your turn. Please take a minute and post to the comments section of this entry. Share your favorite story or amusing anecdote about a memorable experience you've had at the Paramount Theatre here in Austin. Movie-related stories are best, but anything entertaining related to the historic theater is welcome.

I've already told my favorite Paramount story, about the time I saw Ann Richards at a screening of Blood Simple during Austin Film Festival. Surely you all can top that? Let's hear 'em. And if you've already written your story elsewhere, as I did, feel free to post a link -- links to photos are fine, too.