Premieres

Character actor Danny Trejo is in town for the filming of Robert Rodriguez's new grindhouse flick, Machete, and I've spotted him twice this weekend. He attended the special screening of Inglourious Basterds at Cinemapocalyse last night, and was sitting in the row behind me several seats down. He graciously let me take the above photo during a break between films.

I also saw Danny today at the Austin premiere of Robert Rodriguez's family film Shorts. It was quite amusing to hear young children say, "I've seen ALL your movies!" I was able to ask him a few questions this weekend. Here's what he had to say, short yet enthusiastic:

On filming in Austin: "I love it, I love Austin!"

On Texas weather: "I was in Miami recently, with all the humidity. Austin is much better."

On working with Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino: "They are my boys, I LOVE working with them."

The last week or so has been crazy with announcements for red-carpet film events in Austin, so much so that keeping them all straight is enough to keep your eyes crossed. Count 'em, no less than three in four days in August:

• Saturday, August 15: Cinemapocalypse kicks off with Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds
• Sunday, August 16: Austin premiere of Robert Rodriguez's Shorts
• Tuesday, August 18: World premiere of Mike Judge's Extract

To ease the vertigo and help you schedule your ticket buying, we've compiled the relevant information below. You will notice that there are benefits to membership, as AFS members and Fantastic Fest 2009 badgeholders have an advantage over the general public.

The splashy movie premieres that the Paramount sometimes hosts are rarely for family films. However, you now have an opportunity to take your children to a kid-friendly gala premiere, when Robert Rodriguez's upcoming film Shorts gets the red-carpet treatment.

Tickets just went on sale this morning (10 am) for the Sunday, August 16 regional premiere of Shorts at the Paramount. Tickets are $30 plus service charges, and include not only the movie but a children's carnival nearby on Congress Ave. afterwards. There are also VIP badges you can buy ($125), but I don't know what extra perks they provide apart from better seats. Proceeds from ticket sales benefit a local nonprofit, Thoughtful House Center for Children.

Shorts, written and directed by Rodriguez and produced by Elizabeth Avellan, was shot here in Austin. The PG-rated film is about a mysterious Rainbow Rock that falls from the sky and grants people unlikely wishes. The cast includes Rebel Rodriguez (Robert Rodriguez and Elizabeth Avellan's son), Kat Dennings, Jon Cryer, William H. Macy, Leslie Mann, and James Spader.

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.]

Unless you're completely disconnected from the Internet, in which case you're not reading this, you're probably aware of the contest to bring the X-Men Origins: Wolverine premiere to your city.

Austin has been doing very well in the votes, and the Twittersphere has exploded with tweets encouraging voting, along with Facebook and blogs. As of last night, Austin was ranked #4, but the top city information seems to have disappeared from the site.

There is a petition drive at The University of Texas today from noon until 5 pm, being run by the Texas Student TV group. They're going to give away screening passes and coupons as well.

And to make things really interesting, there is going to be some sort of "message" from Hugh Jackman delivered today around noon, around downtown. If you're in the area and see it, we'd love to hear from you.

If you're interested in seeing Austin host yet another world premiere, click on the petition link to vote, or the Texas Student TV group link on where to vote in person.

EDIT: Apparently the message was a plane with the banner to go vote at the site. Not all that exciting, and apparently not low enough for some people to make out the message. But the thought counts.

In 2006, local actor/author/interesting person Turk Pipkin released his first feature-length film, the documentary Nobelity. You can read my Cinematical review here. In the film, Pipkin interviewed Nobel Prize winners about how we can make the world a better place. Turk and Christy Pipkin then established The Nobelity Project, a non-profit organization, to promote ideas from the film about working to solve global problems. They worked with schools and community groups to host do-it-yourself Nobelity screenings around the country, with proceeds funding The Nobelity Project.

Three years later, Turk Pipkin is premiering a follow-up film to Nobelity, One Peace at a Time. As in the previous documentary, Pipkin travels around the world ... this time, he talks with various people who are helping to ensure basic human rights for children, and promotes their efforts. The film also includes Willie Nelson, which should automatically be a draw for many Austinites. As with the first film, this is part of The Nobelity Project and will probably be distributed in the same way.

One Peace at a Time will premiere in Austin on Tuesday, April 14 at the Paramount. You can buy tickets to just the film, or get special tickets that also include a reception beforehand for some of the activists in the film.

You can watch the first 10 minutes of One Peace at a Time on The Nobelity Blog.

Updated: Alamo has posted photos and video from the event.

Austin is the film geek town, and everyone knows it. Fantastic Fest goes out of its way to put on special screenings throughout the year and giving priority seating to badgeholders, and they completely topped themselves, even when considering the Hellboy II screening last year. This was supposed to be some "never before seen by the public" footage from the new Star Trek film a few hours before the official world premiere in Australia. Fantastic Fest decided to pair it up with the the second film in the franchise, considered to be the best, The Wrath of Khan. With free popcorn and soda. And rumors of shirts and other goodies.

We didn't get 10 minutes. We got 126. With Leonard Nimoy, producer Damon Lindelof, and writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. Hours before the official world premiere in Australia.

Suspicious minds like mine thought something was up when we saw press seats with personalized seating assignments. Then the intro included the writers and the producer. When The Wrath of Khan started and it was a really bad picture, which quickly burned out, we all knew. The switch was on.

Have you seen Crawford, the documentary about the town where George W. Bush bought a ranch before becoming President? The film, directed by local filmmaker David Modigliani, screened earlier this year at SXSW. You can read my review from the festival, and I also interviewed Modigliani about the documentary.

Now you have the chance to see the film -- even if you don't live in Austin. B-Side Entertainment bought the distribution rights for Crawford, and plans to release the documentary by premiering it on Hulu.com on Tuesday, October 7. This is the first time a feature-length film will have its premiere on Hulu. I don't have details yet on exactly how this will work, but I know that some TV shows and films are available for limited times only on Hulu, so my guess is that the movie can be streamed from the website just for Tuesday. In the meantime, if you visit the Hulu page for Crawford, you can watch a trailer.

After its Hulu premiere, Crawford will be available on the B-Side site for download, streaming, or to purchase on DVD. This is a fairly non-partisan documentary, so if you want to have a politics-themed movie night before the upcoming election, you can watch it with both your liberal and conservative friends and relatives.

Fantastic Fest is finally over, and Austin Film Festival is still a few weeks away. Now's the time for local film-fest geeks to catch up on the mainstream movies they've been missing (pssst ... go see Burn After Reading). Or maybe it's time to look beyond the film festivals and find all kinds of interesting events occurring in the next week or so. Here are a few screenings you might not want to miss.

• Austin Film Society is going outdoors at just the right time of year. On Wednesday, you can watch Dirt Road to Psychedelia for free at Republic Square Park -- live music at 7 pm, movie starts at 8 pm. This documentary about Austin during the 1960s and 1970s sounds like lots of fun.
• In fact, why not make a night of it on Wednesday? After you finish your movie in the park, head over to Alamo at the Ritz at 9:30 pm for a free double-feature from 1960s exploitation filmmaker Joe Sarno: Abigail Lesley is Back and All the Sins of Sodom. Sarno will actually be at the screenings, too.

Photos of Matthew McConaughey, even when he's wearing a shirt, never do grow old, do they? Of course not. That's why I knew you wouldn't mind waiting for me to put together this little photo essay from the Surfer, Dude premiere.

The thing to realize about red-carpet events is that they truly can be a circus, but that this is not always a bad thing. Some people go to giant malls on the day after Thanksgiving, some people go to Mardi Gras in the French Quarter, and some of us go to red-carpet events. I have to wonder -- if they get this crowded and chaotic in Austin, how is it in New York or LA? Or perhaps in those big cities they're a lot more blase about it. This event was called a "green carpet" but it was as red-carpet-y as we get in Central Texas.

I arrived at the Paramount and was assigned a spot not far from the door into the theater, next to Cole and Bobby, who write for (natch) Cole and Bobby at the Movies, as well as Study Breaks magazine. We were joined shortly thereafter by Statesman arts and entertainment editor Michael Barnes, who positioned himself right next to the door, so he could do some short interviews for his Out and About column and blog. This was great for me because I could take photos while the guys were interviewing people.