Simon Rumley, director of the surreal and memorable The Living and the Dead, as well as the sublimely succinct short Handyman, is returning to Austin this summer to make his next film.

Red, White and Blue, a revenge flick, will be shot in and around town. Rumley is currently looking for extras and locations. Visit the original Alamo blog for details.

The above photo is from Fantastic Fest 2006, when The Living and the Dead won Best Film. Rumley is on the right, about to chug his award in traditional Fantastic Fest fashion.

The happy news:

• The Austin Public Library has started a Reel Independents series this summer, with foreign films screening every month at both the St. John and Ruiz libraries. Free movies!
• The Harry Ransom Center has posted a video showing how they catalogued the new Robert De Niro collection.
• The Two-week Turnaround Tour filmmaking project will be in Austin from May 15-28 and they're looking for local filmmakers to help. They plan to write, shoot, and screen a short film during their time here.

The summer movie season started last Friday, which means most screens will be showing Hollywood's blockbuster hopefuls. Smaller films have to fight for screens, and usually don't last much longer than a week or two. Still, it's possible to see these films locally. Austin is currently the test audience for an Anchor Bay theatrical release -- a thriller currently playing at Dobie that will expand to screens in Los Angeles and Phoenix later this month.

Director Brad Soref and Producer Donald Zuckerman brought Not Forgotten to Austin this weekend, including a special Austin Film Society screening with a Q&A, and at least one sold-out screening on a sunny Saturday when Pecan Street Festival and other summertime events were all competing with each other.

Not Forgotten is a twisted thriller that begins with unsettling images of a murder then cuts to an idyllic small-town softball game. Jack Bishop (Simon Baker, pictured above) is coaching his daughter's team, and everything looks close to postcard perfect. Even Jack's wife, Amaya (Paz Vega) has a great relationship with her stepdaughter, Toby (Chloe Moretz).

After nine days of over 100 films from 18 countries, I now understand why one Austin filmmaker told me Cine Las Americas is her favorite film festival. With a lineup as diverse as any other festival in Austin, Cine Las Americas closed with a complex film that ended the fest with an impact.

The closing-night film, Arrancame la vida (Tear This Heart Out) sold out, to the point where the Alamo had to pull out folding chairs to fit people in the theater. Still, some very disappointed people were turned away.

Director Roberto Sneider attended the screening. You can see him in the above photo surrounded by Cine Las Americas programmer Jean Lauer, CLA Executive Director Eugenio del Bosque, and Francisco Cossio.

It's been about a year since Austin Film Society premiered Inning by Inning, Richard Linklater's documentary about Texas Longhorns baseball coach Augie Garrido, at the Paramount. I wrote about the movie for Cinematical. I'm not a baseball fan, but the profile of Garrido was fascinating. The film played on ESPN a few times, but we haven't heard much about it since.

Fortunately, Inning by Inning will be released on DVD on June 2. To promote the DVD release, Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar will show the film on Monday, June 1. Linklater will be at the screening and will hold a Q&A afterwards. The tickets aren't yet on sale. I hope this is the non-bleeped-out-for-TV version, because some of Garrido's cussing is almost lyrical.

The DVD apparently includes not only Inning by Inning, but a separate documentary about the Longhorn team's 2006 season called A Game of Adversity. I believe this documentary is directed by Inning by Inning producer Brian Franklin, shown above with Linklater. The DVD also has a 60-minute "feature" called Extra Innings with Augie. This is going to be a real treat for Longhorn baseball fans.

[Photo credit: Austin Film Society. Used with permission.]

Recovering from the nine-day Cine Las Americas film festival has taken some time, and it's past time to finish up.

Wednesday night's lineup included Juan Frances: Live, a music mockumentary focused on identity and family. The film takes aim at stereotypes via its main subject, a balding white guy who was raised by a Mexican family. Born Jonathan French, and raised by his nanny after the news that his parents died, Juan was "blessed by the Virgin" with the gift of song. After being discovered at a talent show, he skyrockets to fame and fortune, only to face a crisis of identity.

Director Amy French co-wrote the script with her brother Spencer John French (who played the lead) based on their experiences growing up in the bilingual neighborhood of Echo Park. They were apparently fearless. Some of the humor would be brave for a Mexican-American to pen, but for two white people, it's exceptional. Juan working eight jobs, all classic work for Mexicans in America, is the mildest. When Juan is so far gone he defiles sacred images, instead of losing the audience, the laughs just got louder.

Robert De Niro's cabbage -- what does that have to do with Austin, you may ask? Find out by listening to Slackerwood podcast #8. In addition, Jenn Brown, Chris Holland and Jette Kernion also talk about the new Texas film incentives law, Marfa Film Festival and other film fests that Jette really ought to attend, the great films Jenn's caught at Cine Las Americas, and recommendations for screenings and movie events (Alex Cox!).

Listen to podcast #8 now.

Cine Las Americas began as a showcase of Latino film, and in a border state with a large Latino community, it's not surprising that the fest has established a category for films made in Texas. The Hecho en Tejas category included a shorts showcase and two feature length documentaries this year.

The shorts showcase contained a healthy mix of documentary and narrative, and featured productions by not a few students at UT Austin's Radio-TV-Film program.

Los ojos de Javier (The Eyes of Javier), is directed by Sergio Carvajal. Created for the The Coalition of Texans with Disabilities' Cinema Touching Disabilities festival, Los ojos de Javier is about a young man who wakes up to find his eyes have deserted him. In his quest to find his eyes, Javier encounters three wise men who guide him through his journey. It's an interesting take on experiencing disability and changing perspective. Shot around Austin with a four-man crew who also took on screen roles, with a budget of $50, it's a good example of the creativity afforded by a microbudget. You can read an interview with Carvajal and watch the short yourself on the Short Film Texas site.

This year, Cine Las Americas is starting a guest country retrospective and selected Chile as the inaugural guest country. Focusing on Chilean cinema from 1994-2004, the selection is as diverse as the rest of the festival's programming.

After the 17-year reign of General Augusto Pinochet, democracy was restored to Chile in 1990. The Pinochet era consisted of notorious oppression, censorship and torture. It's not surprising that post-Pinochet Chilean cinema reflects the context of the consequences of their recent history, as seen in Amnesia, directed by Gonzalo Justiniano in 1994.

Written by Justiniano and Gustavo Frias, Amnesia starts as a serious drama, but smoothly transitions into an existential exercise of torturer versus tortured, and to what lengths someone would, or should, go to avenge themselves, and forgive those who trespass against them.

The Paramount Theatre has just released its 2009 schedule for the Summer Film Series, which has been going on for how long? 34 years, according to the website. I remember seeing MASH there in the summer of 1994, even though I had such a bad cold I could barely speak. I had never seen an unedited version of the movie, nor seen it in a theater, and I pretty much forgot about my cold for 2 hours. The print was pink from old age, but that didn't matter.

Over the years, the summer film series has grown bigger and more varied, and the quality of the prints has improved greatly. But they still start every year with Casablanca in late May, and reserve Labor Day weekend for Gone with the Wind.

Some of this year's highlights are a special screening of Buster Keaton's The General with music by Guy Forsyth; a double-feature of Chaplin's City Lights and Modern Times; Hal Ashby's 1970 film The Landlord, which isn't on DVD yet; and the little-seen Frank Capra film American Madness from 1932.