Awards

Slackery News Tidbits: Austin Movies Everywhere

SXSW: 'Nerdcore Rising' at ACC

Over the past week, an amazing number of news items have rolled in about distribution for Austin movies or movies that have played in local fests. Check out this list to see if any of the movies you've liked at recent fests will be getting a wider release and a second chance to grab audiences.

  • Richard Linklater's most recent films are both in the news this week. First of all, Me and Orson Welles, which played at SXSW this year, now has U.S. distribution through Cinemax. As Linklater told us during the Extract red carpet, the movie will hit theaters around Thanksgiving. Jette thinks it's the best Zac Efron movie she's seen to date.
  • In addition, Linklater's documentary about Longhorn baseball and coach Augie Garrido, Inning by Inning, is now available on iTunes. The movie was released on DVD in May. Jette doesn't like baseball much, but liked this movie a lot anyway.
  • Speaking of movies you can watch from a computer or other device, the locally shot feature For Love & Stacie, written and directed by Raymond Schlogel, is now available for viewing online at Underground Planet

TFPF Grants Provide a Sneak Peek into Austin Film

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Zellner BrothersAustin Film Society has just released the list of grant recipients for the Texas Filmmakers Production Fund grants this year. The total amount to be awarded in grant money and products/services is $102,000, with an additional $10,000 in travel grants for Texas filmmakers who travel to major film festivals.

The list includes a number of familiar names on the list as well as some interesting new filmmakers. And the really cool thing about this list? It's a tantalizing sneak peek at what we might be seeing from Texas filmmakers in the next year or two. For example, I've been wondering what Kyle Henry's been doing after his film Room, which premiered at Sundance in 2005, and now I know he's working on Fourplay, a four-shorts-in-one feature ... for which he received a $7,000 grant.

Zombie Girl: The Movie, the documentary about young filmmaker Emily Hagins, is available on SnagFilms for free this week ... and the doc's co-director Eric Mauck just received a $7K grant for his next film, The Road to Livingston, about family members visiting death-row inmates. He and Chelsea Hernandez are co-directing The Road to Livingston and received the award together.

Lights. Camera. Help. Fest Announces Winners

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Layton Blaylock and Rich Vazquez by Debbie Cerda

The first annual Lights. Camera. Help. Film Festival featuring non-profit and cause-related films was held this weekend, along with a wrap party Sunday night at the New Movement Theatre where the winning submission was announced.

Congratulations goes out to Layton Blaylock for his winning submission Art from the Streets, a feature-length documentary about a program for homeless artists, also called Art From the Streets. This program was established in Austin in 1991 with the goal of providing a safe and nurturing environment for homeless people to produce art. Program volunteers accomplish this mission by sponsoring twice weekly art "classes" and an annual show where artists sell their work.

The film tracks five of the artists over the course of a year, showing homeless camps, the daily challenges of street life, and the strengths of human character. At the two-day art exhibit held each November here in Austin, the artists' work is sold. There the artists interact with people in a rare but positive environment.

Local Short Doc Wins at Barbara Jordan Media Awards

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BJ Medallion
The Austin-based creators of a short documentary film about children with dyslexia were honored at this year's Barbara Jordan Media Awards, held on June 12 in the new (still under construction) Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

Changing Children's Lives director/co-producer Steve Mims, co-producer Patrick Peyton, and Alice Marsel, Director of Education at the Scottish Rite Learning Center, were honored as the "Special Contribution" award winners for 2008. The film was shot in Austin, and you can view a clip here. The short documentary reflects the experience of young children dealing with variations of dyslexia and the conditions of this learning disability.

After the jump, read more about the Barbara Jordan Media Awards, from the Office of the Governor's website:

Austin Filmmaker in Netflix ‘Find Your Voice’ Competition

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Natural SelectionAn Austin-based filmmaker has made it to the semifinals of the Netflix Find Your Voice film competition sponsored by Netflix and Film Independent.

Robbie Pickering is eligible to win $350,000 to make his feature film Natural Selection. If he wins, Pickering is hoping to shoot the movie in Texas. The premise is that a barren housewife discovers her husband has been making deposits at a sperm bank for nearly 25 years. If that doesn't sound like an Austin sort of weird, I don't know what would.

For more information about Pickering and the competition, and to watch a clip from his film, go to the Netflix Find Your Voice website. You can vote for him there.

KLRU to Air Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards

Thomas Haden Church

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.

Red Carpet: 2009 Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards

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Brendan Fraser, Catherine Hardwicke, and Thomas Haden Church

Catching up after SXSW. Tax prep. Allergies. Excuses, excuses. At last, I am going to post some of my favorite photos from the Texas Film Hall of Fame awards. I've already published a photo gallery from the event over at Cinematical, but I didn't include photos of people who are well known locally. Plus, I have to say I prefer an essay format over a gallery, because then I can share stories as well as photos.

The event started with a red carpet. At the Texas Film Hall of Fame awards, everyone walks through the red carpet to enter the event. This is a lot of fun for me because I can take photos of various friends and colleagues (if they'll stand still long enough), as well as any interesting people who are not necessarily honorees that evening. The red carpet was very long this year and structured beautifully so we weren't all fighting one another for space. Plus, I was right next to Stephanie Beasley from Austinist and a friendly photographer from Austin Monthly and between the three of us, we figured out who exactly we were taking pictures of. (They helped me with the Friday Night Lights cast; I helped identify "that guy who looks kind of like Steven Spielberg" as Tobe Hooper.)

Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards: Will You Be There?

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 Dan Rather

In previous years, the Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards took place on the opening night of SXSW, which presented a dilemma for some festgoers. Fortunately, Austin Film Society moved the annual fundraising gala this year to the Thursday night before the SXSW Film Festival begins.

Some other changes are going on with Texas Film Hall of Fame, too. AFS has added "Party in the Red Room," in which attendees can watch the awards as a live simulcast from an "enormous party tent" next to the studio where the award ceremony is held. It sounds like fun and is more affordable than the tables at the in-person awards. The Red Room party (no Shining references, please) is being hosted by Dana Wheeler-Nicholson (Friday Night Lights and fabulous bottle-smasher) and Paul Saucido.

Thomas Haden Church will be the emcee for the actual awards ceremony this year. I've listed the award recipients and presenters after the jump.

Austin Film Critics Awards, from 'The Dark Knight' to 'Crawford'

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The Austin Film Critics Association announced their 2008 awards today. The Dark Knight cleaned up with five awards, including Best Picture. Check out a list of all the awards after the jump.

The last award on the list is most relevant to this site: Best Austin Film went to David Modigliani's documentary Crawford, about the Texas town where President George W. Bush bought a ranch. Crawford premiered here in Austin this year at SXSW, and I interviewed Modigliani beforehand. I also reviewed the film for Cinematical. It's currently available to watch for free on Hulu, and also is on Netflix Watch Instantly.

Speaking of Austin and film festivals, I would venture to guess that if it weren't for Fantastic Fest, a lot of us might not have been exposed to films such as Timecrimes (winner of Best First Film) and Let the Right One In (winner of Best Foreign Language Film).

This is my first year as a member of Austin Film Critics Association, and the process was very exciting. I'm pleased that we picked such an interesting variety of movies, filmmakers and actors.

SXSW 2008: Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards

Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards On the opening night of SXSW this year, I traded an evening of filmgoing for something I hadn't done before: attending the Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards over at Austin Studios. The event is a big fundraiser for Austin Film Society, with tickets and tables going for way more money than I could afford, so I figured that covering the event as press would probably be the only way I'd ever attend.

The evening began with a red carpet setup at the entrance to the event. I was advised to get there early because a lot of celebrities are honored at the awards ceremony, so tons of media would be there, especially video cameras. Video cameras take up a lot of room on a red carpet and still photographers can have trouble squeezing into a good spot where they won't be bonked on the head with a camera or potentially stumble over a tripod. I staked out a spot near the end of the actual carpet, where the long line of video cameras ended. I was right next to the IFC video crew, which was good because any time they started pointing their camera at someone, I figured I should too.

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