Here's the latest Austin and Texas film news.

• Filmmaker Annie Silverstein's student short movie Skunk won the top prize at this year's Cinefondation section of the Cannes Film Festival, according to The Wrap. Along with winning 15,000 Euros, Skunk -- one of 16 films that screened, out of 1,631 student movies submitted worldwide -- gives Silverstein guaranteed entry to the festival for her first feature. She ran a successful crowdfunding campaign last year to finish Skunk, which was her master's thesis movie at The University of Texas at Austin. The movie stars local actress Heather Kafka.
• Native Texan writer-director Matt Muir's Austin-lensed movie Thank You a Lot, which premiered at this year's SXSW, will have its digital/cable VOD release on June 3. The movie will also screen that night at the Angelika in Dallas (through Tugg) to celebrate its digital release. Thank You a Lot tells the story of a struggling manager whose job is threatened if he doesn't sign his dad, a reclusive Texas country-music singer.
• Austin-based Mondo Gallery will present "The Art of Ken Taylor," including prints for the movies Children of Men and Little Shop of Horrors, from Friday, May 30 until June 21. The show's kickoff party takes place Friday at 7 pm at the gallery (4115 Guadalupe). Taylor will be in attendance.

Watching Belle, the refreshingly atypical costume drama released nationwide this weekend, I was reminded of a quote from a book I finished recently. In Jill Lepore's biography of Jane Franklin (Ben's sister), she writes: "History is what is written and can be found; what isn't saved is lost, sunken and rotted, eaten by the earth." [Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin]

If Misan Sagay hadn't seen this portrait in a Scottish castle, we may never have learned about the life of Dido Elizabeth Belle. Based on the limited facts the screenwriter was able to find in her research -- given that Dido was a female in the 18th Century, there's unfortunately not a large amount known about her -- Sagay crafted a tale about this real woman, illegitimately born of a black woman and a white admiral, who was raised by the Murray family.

Dido (Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Touch) is left as a child with her great-uncle Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) after her mother's death. Her father (Matthew Goode, The Good Wife) assures her of his affection. "Know in your heart you are loved, just as I loved your mother," he tells her... then sails off to India. Lord Mansfield, his wife (Emily Watson, Hilary and Jackie) and sister Lady Mary Murray (Penelope Wilton, Downton Abbey, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) rear the child alongside her cousin Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon, Cosmopolis, A Dangerous Method).

Memorial Day weekend used to always usher in the official start of the summer movie season, but over the last few years the blockbusters have been sneaking into multiplexes earlier and earlier in May. Now that we've finally made it to the holiday weekend, the multiplexes are already exploding with big-budget tentpoles and sequels. Luckily for you, Austin theaters offer some legitmately interesting counterprogramming.

The Austin Film Society is starting a brand new series tonight called "Rebel Rebel." Earlier this week, we chatted with Lars Nilsen to find out more about the films being featured over the next few weekends. The first selection is Gillo Pontecorvo's 1969 film Burn! starring Marlon Brando. The movie features a score by Ennio Morricone and will be screening in 35mm at the Marchesa.

You'll want to head over to the AFS Screening Room on Tuesday night for the Avant Cinema presentation of Your Day Is My Night. Co-presented with the Austin Asian American Film Festival, the AFS notes for the film reveal that this "provocative hybrid documentary addresses issues of privacy, intimacy and urban life." Out Of The Blue is the final film in Richard Linklater's current Jewels In The Wasteland series and it screens in 35mm at the Marchesa on Wednesday night. Dennis Hopper transitioned from star to director during the shooting of this 1982 film.

The movie X-Men: Days of Future Past is the best of the X-Franchise and possibly the strongest Marvel Comics screen adaptation to date. This is the summer movie to beat. The story unites two sets of cast members in a time-travel epic in which teams past and future battle to save the world.

The film opens in 2023, when the few remaining mutants are on the run, pursued constantly by sentinels, advanced robots with the ability to absorb and use mutant powers, adapting to everything thrown at them. One of the most appealing features of the X-Men comics has always been the unique interactions between characters who combine powers in new and interesting ways, something that featured strongly in X-Men: First Class. The epic opening battle we see in this movie with a different team of trained, experienced mutants is stunningly choreographed, with lavish visual effects.

The surviving mutants meet up with the principal members of the X-Men: Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellan), Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), and Storm (Halle Berry) and explain they’ve been using a time-travel technique to warn themselves of impending attacks, giving them time to evacuate each location.

Armed with that knowledge, Xavier hatches a plan to travel 50 years back in time and prevent Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), weapons designer and inventor of the sentinels from being assassinated by Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), the trigger that convinced Congress to fund the sentinel program. The ensuing story takes Wolverine -- the only mutant with the healing ability to survive such a trip -- back to the Nixon era on a quest to reunite Xavier and Magneto as they simultaneously battle evil forces 50 years apart.

The following is an open letter to the Hooters restaurant chain.

Dear Hooters:

So, what's with your numerous product placements in the new Adam Sandler film, Blended?

When you agreed to have the film's opening scene set in one of your restaurants -- and even allowed a monkey to be dressed as a Hooters waitress -- had you not gotten the memo that Blended isn't like Sandler's recent movies? Maybe you were expecting Blended to be the latest installment in Sandler's series of exceedingly raunchy and breathtakingly idiotic comedies. I expected it also, assuming that Blended would carry on the maturity-deficient tradition of Grown Ups, Jack and Jill, That's My Boy and the criminally unnecessary Grown Ups 2. Had this been the case, Hooters and Blended would have been a perfect marketing match, because Hooters and its fellow breastaurant chains are criminally unnecessary also. (Just kidding! Hooters may be the number one reason why America is the world's greatest country. You don't see breastaurants in Denmark!)

But apparently Sandler has pulled a fast one on us. Instead of an exceedingly raunchy and breathtakingly idiotic gross-out comedy, his new film is a tepidly raunchy and boringly dumb family comedy. If I hadn't seen Blended for free, I'd ask for my money back. And so should you, Hooters, for you and your waitresses do not belong in this movie. (The film's other major corporate sponsor, the uncontroversial Dick's Sporting Goods, is a much better fit.)

One of the best antidotes to a cruelly hot Austin summer is to partake of a show at the Paramount (or adjacent Stateside) Theatre. The air is cool, the Milk Duds are never melted and the movies are always great. The schedule for the Paramount Summer Classic Film Series has been released, and we are practically giddy with excitement over a number of the titles screening from late May through September.

The Paramount will be showing movies from various decades in 35mm, and Stateside will offer HD digitally projected titles. If you plan to see more than a couple of these, it's worth it to buy Flix-Tix (10 tickets for $50). Austin Film Society members get $5 off the ticket booklet if you buy at the box office. Becoming a Film Fan is also a great option for repeat customers, as it takes $5 off the GA ticket price -- a silver membership even gets you free garage parking during screenings.

We here at Slackerwood are already busting out the lawn chairs and cold beverages because summer is upon us. This can only mean one thing: free and cheap summer movies around Austin! We're revisiting old favorites and looking into some new ones to give you and your family plenty of activities to do together over summer break.

As usual, some programs are specifically for children, such as the Alamo Kids Camp and Regal Summer Movie Express, and some series are adults-only. Be sure to check out our links for more information on the screenings, and be mindful of what you can and cannot bring with you (such as pets and alcoholic beverages).

We will be on the hunt for new free movie opportunities this year, so if you know of any (or if you don't see a specific one here) let us know in the comments. This page will also be updated as we receive updates on specific events. Happy watching!

I talk in pictures, not in words
-- "And Through the Wire" by Peter Gabriel

Welcome to Sounds Like Film, Slackerwood's new monthly feature on music in local and independent film.

Music plays an integral role in film. Whether it's a well-placed song with lyrics to enhance a mood or scene or a film score that evokes an emotional response, the audience's experience is heightened by music. Studies have demonstrated that music stimulates several areas of the brain: the auditory, limbic and motor regions as well as the less-understood orbitofrontal cortex which is thought to be key in sensory integration.

This concept relates to our movie experience in many ways, as familiar songs or scores can evoke a particular emotion or memory. In my own experience, there are many film-related compositions that can do just that -- Simple Minds "Don't You Forget About Me" in The Breakfast Club, Ennio Morricone's title track "For A Few Dollars More" or "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel in Say Anything. Pan's Labyrinth was released almost eight years ago, yet I can't listen to "Mercedes Lullaby" by Javier Navarrete without tearing up, and often within the first few notes while watching the heartbreaking scene the song is matched to.

The creative forces that deserve recognition for this key element in movies are songwriters, composers and musicians. Within the local and Texas film industry, a number of individuals contribute their talents on a regular basis. One of the main objectives of this new column is to spotlight their talent and work.

This article is the eighth in Slackerwood's second series about the Texas Archive of the Moving Image (TAMI) video library. For an overview of the TAMI site, refer to this article in the first series.

"They say Mary Kay does not play favorites. That's not true. They do. We're all favorites!"
-– Fictional Mary Kay Cosmetics beauty consultant Susan Anderson

It's tempting to mock the subject of this month's TAMI Flashback videos, Mary Kay Cosmetics. After all, Mary Kay epitomizes the beauty-industrial complex, which is built on the absurd and often cruel practice of telling women they aren't attractive unless they conform to conventional standards of beauty.

But this article is not about the way our culture treats women; it's about TAMI videos. So I'll refrain from mocking the Dallas-based cosmetics giant (it will be a challenge) and focus on three of its corporate films from the late Seventies and early Eighties.

Here's the latest Austin and Texas film news.

• Austin City Council unanimously approved a Creative Content Incentive Program late last week, a decision that's expected to increase Austin's advantage for bringing movie, television and digital media industry projects to the city with the goal of creating more employment opportunities. The program will be incentive based, with $250,000 set aside for this fiscal year.
• The PBS series Independent Lens will partner with movie and music distribution company The Orchard to distribute the East Texas-shot documentary Little Hope Was Arson (Elizabeth's interview), which played at Austin Film Festival 2013. The series will broadcast the movie this season, and The Orchard will release it theatrically in several markets as well as across all major digital outlets.
• Acquisition news continues: last year's SXSW world premiere, the dramedy Swim Little Fish Swim (Don's review) has been aquired for distribution in Brazil by Providence Filmes and for distribution in Greece by Mikrokosmos Entertainment. 
• The University of Texas at Austin's Women In Cinema student organization announced its film festival scholarship winners: Leaves on Trees, Ronnie Monsters and Stowaway, and the special mention Evidence of Santa. The three winners will receive waived submission fees to several fests, including Sundance. Award-winning filmmakers Lauren Wolkstein (Social Butterfly) and Heather Courtney (Where Soldiers Come From) and Texas Film Commission representative Laura Kincaid served as judges.