The third annual Fantastic Fest opened last night with a big outdoor party, George A. Romero at a screening of his new film Diary of the Dead, and other fun films and events. The above photo is one of the attractions from the party, which stuck around after the party ended and into the night -- Ruben's Tubes, in which fire is controlled by sound waves from music. This was one of several exhibitions contributed by Dorkbot Austin for the party.

The opening-night party actually took place during the day, before the movies started, which was a great idea -- we could all meet people and chat and hang out without having to miss any of the films. The badge pickup was outside too, so when I showed up at Alamo on South Lamar, I encountered a lively setup:

One of the films I've been looking forward to seeing at Fantastic Fest this year is Finishing The Game, a mock-documentary based on the real-life premise of finding stand-ins for Bruce Lee so his final movie, The Game of Death, could be completed. The Justin Lin film sounds like lots of fun, but leave it to Fantastic Fest to find a way to add even more fun to the mix.

Austinist is teaming up with the festival to host a Bruce Lee lookalike contest, with a grand finale planned during the festival screenings of the film. You can read all the details on Austinist. The contest is essentially in two parts -- the first contest takes place now, and you send your photo/video to Austinist, with voting to occur on the Austinist site. Prizes include Fantastic Fest badges or passes to see Finishing the Game.

The second contest takes place live in person at the actual Finishing the Game screenings, with a grand prize of a month's free kung fu classes and some pretty nifty runners-up prizes too. Tim League posted on the Fantastic Fest site that even if you don't think you can win the contest, he'd love to see as many festival attendees as possible dressed up in "Brucewear." He writes, "Let's get as much Bruce as we can in one theater for the Brucinest event in theatrical history!" Now I'm wondering if we'll see Mr. League dressed up as Bruce Lee, too. This screening should be an event to remember.

I don't have any kids, but I think this is pretty cool. Alamo Drafthouse Village and Body Business (a gym in the same shopping center as Alamo) are starting a new event called Parents Night Out. I just found out about this and I'm too late for you to actually go -- the first one takes place tonight and no more childcare is available. Next time hopefully I'll find out about the event sooner, so you can have advance notice and, you know, actually take advantage of the event.

Parents Night Out works like this: Parents can have dinner and a movie at Alamo Village, while their kids are babysat at Body Business's childcare. (The gym has done childcare for years and has a nice setup, separate from the gym facilities, in the same shopping center.) You would buy a child-care voucher on the Alamo Village website for each child (you have to buy the voucher 24 hours in advance, so they know how many kids to plan for), and then you would buy your tickets for whichever movie you want to see. Details for tonight's event are here, if you want to read more about how it works.

I think this is a fabulous idea and I hope it succeeds and continues. I know several parents who would appreciate the chance to have dinner and a movie together without having to track down a babysitter. If anyone is actually doing this tonight, please post a comment and let us know how well it works.

Now that Slackerwood is back up and running smoothly, there's no reason why we shouldn't have a Movies This Week, and the sooner the better. Let's look at some of the special screenings and events you can catch around town this week:

• Screen Door Film and B-Side Entertainment are partnering to show us some great films you probably haven't seen outside of festivals yet ... and really should. Four-Eyed Monsters (which played SXSW in 2005) is playing on Wednesday, Pirate Radio USA (one of my favorites from AFF last year) on Thursday, and The Outdoorsmen: Blood, Sweat and Beers (a favorite from AFF 2005) on Friday. All screenings are at Salvage Vanguard Theater on Manor Rd.
• Nueva Onda is showing a feature-length film at the restaurant's Movie Night this Thursday: Lasting Images. Admission is free. The movie starts at 8 pm, but get there early for a good seat on the patio. (More movies after the jump.)

If you're a film geek, September and October are pretty great months to live in Austin. Within the space of five weeks there will be nearly five hundred different features and shorts on display, many of them well outside the mainstream and which won't be screening again in Austin for months -- if ever. Here's a quick guide to the three big festivals of the Fall in the capital of Texas.

Fantastic Fest (Sept. 20-27)

In their words: "Fantastic Fest is a week-long festival featuring the best in new science-fiction, fantasy, horror, animation, crime, Asian, and all around badass cinema."

What they play: Fantastic Fest has tighter focus than its cousins and (potentially) more bang for the buck if you're into genre film. Fantastic Fest is the place to see the weird, the wonderful, the what-the-eff-was-that movies of the yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Claim to fame: Organized by Tim and Karrie League of the Alamo Drafthouse and programmed by such guiding lights as Matt Dentler (SxSW), Lars Nilsen (Weird Wednesday), and Harry Knowles (Ain't It Cool News), Fantastic Fest has geek cred coming out the wazoo. The Leagues pull out all the stops to get the festival's filmmakers into town for the show. If the names Bruce Campbell and Shusuke Kaneko aren't familiar, however, you might not care about the celebrity-types wandering the Alamo halls during this festival. Though I guess Mel Gibson did pull a surprise appearance last year, so who knows?

Visit the Fantastic Fest website.

If you thought Slackerwood might have vanished into the night, never to return, fear no more. We're back up and ready to share Austin film news. It was an odd combination of circumstances -- I went on a belated honeymoon to Vancouver at the end of August, and I was way too busy enjoying the lovely weather and the sights to care much about Austin film. However, email service has been restored and so have the glories of Slackerwood (and my other websites). I still can't send email from my usual addresses, but that should be fixed this weekend. Many thanks to Chip for putting in a lot of work on the new server.

This website backup is about two weeks old so if you posted a comment in that time, you might want to post it again. (Mostly I think I lost a lot of spam comments, which was a nice silver lining.) The only other thing I lost was an entry in progress (as in, I'd written a single paragraph before realizing I seriously needed to pack suitcases instead) called "Movies This Week: DIY Movies This Week" where I intended to list a bunch of resources you can use to figure out what's playing in Austin in a given week, if you were looking for Movies This Week while I was in Canada. Maybe I'll try that again before the next big trip.

I know Chris has at least one article he's ready to post, so let's get started again. Welcome back!

I missed the Weird Wednesday screening of The Girls from Thunder Strip last week that featured actor/stuntman/filmmaker Gary Kent in attendance (I am too wimpy for weeknight midnight movies, sadly). Fortunately, Anne Heller, who wrote about Kent's film The Pyramid for Slackerwood, was at Alamo on South Lamar that night. She sent me the above photo of Kent, taken by Alamo programmer Lars Nilsen during the Q&A session after the 1966 film, in which Kent plays a rapist named "Teach."

Anne also videotaped the introduction to the film by Lars and Gary Kent. Kent has some delightful stories to tell, especially about Spawn Ranch, where The Girls from Thunder Strip was shot ... and where the mechanic was some guy named Charles Manson. Thanks to Anne and to YouTube, we can all enjoy Kent's stories. (The video is embedded after the jump.)

You've got the weekend to prove yourself a King of Kong on the big screen at the Alamo, this weekend during screenings of The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.The whole contest comes down to a showdown at the 9:15 p.m. Sunday show when Steve Wiebe (the movie's "good guy") will be on hand to crown the winner and give away the Donkey Kong console. Click on the picture at right to see the size of the projection relative to the contestant at bottom left. (Photo credit Joe Boutros.)

The screening times and details of the contest are available now at originalalamo.com, including these tidbits about who will and won't be able to play the machine hooked up to the projector:

We realized that for some of the TRUE Kings of Kong out there, there's no way that they'd be able to finish their game while we all watched it and still started the movie on time. True Kong Kings last for days and days, right? We don't know, but we're going to make it so that we can find out. And so the theater play on the big screen will be your chance to QUALIFY to play on the actual prize machine in our lobby. If you can last for five minutes on our machine in the theater, you'll receive a coupon and a time slot to come back and play on the Official Machine. If you want extra chances to play you'll have to convince your friends to hand over their raffle tickets!

Also note that a ticket to the screening does not guarantee you the chance to play Donkey Kong on our big screen. We'll have free raffle tickets available at the box office for everyone who's interested in playing and for 20 minutes before the movie starts we'll be calling out numbers until we've either worked through everyone who wants to play or run out of time before the film's advertised start time.

Editor's update: Matt Dentler says Wiebe may be trying to set a new Donkey Kong record himself on Sunday night at Alamo. Could be an exciting night!

School is about to start, so the free summer movies for kids are winding down -- most programs have stopped except for Alamo, I believe. However, there are still some good free movies and other interesting events this week around Austin.

• If you're reading this on Tuesday, there may still be time to head down to Hampton Library on Convict Hill Road for a free screening of Muppet Treasure Island at 6 pm. Tim Curry as Long John Silver rivals Johnny Depp as Captain Jack, I promise you.
• Alamo Summer Movie Camp is showing Heavyweights this week, and you can still catch the movie on Wed. and Thurs. at 11 am at the South Lamar location. One of the writers on this summer-camp film was Judd Apatow, who wrote and directed Knocked Up. (More films after the jump.)

The Austin Film Festival crew is doing it again -- calling out into the wilderness for your comedy shorts. You've got until August 16th to submit.

To be crowned the Funniest Filmmaker in Austin, download the entry form and drop it off with your film at the new AFF offices. (No entry fee!) The finalists will be screened at the Cap City Comedy Club on August 20th (semifinals) and 27th (finals). Both nights will feature live comedy as well as the short films.

The winner gets two all access badges to the festival in October and their film will screen at the festival. These days that's one of the easier ways to get into a major film festival, so local filmmakers should be jumping at the chance.

Check it out now at the Austin Film Festival site.