Distribution News

The Wild Man of the Navidad, a Texas film with local cast and crew, is getting a DVD release next week.

The indie horror film, co-directed by Justin Meeks and former Texas Film Production Fund recipient Duane Graves, was an official selection at both Tribeca Film Festival and Austin's own Fantastic Fest, and if you're really savvy, you might recognize a certain Alamo staffer in the cast. It's a 1970s style Texas horror story about a "creature so horrifying it remains legend today" with the typical grindhouse gore stylings of 70s horror.

The DVD release is slated for next Tuesday, August 11, following the film's recent availability through IFC Video on Demand. You can pre-order the DVD at Best Buy and Amazon, and it's already available to add to your queue on Netflix. If you're going to buy, right now BestBuy has the better price. But you might want to check out local stores like I Luv Video and Vulcan Video.

I wasn't able to catch The Wild Man of the Navidad at Fantastic Fest, but the reviews have been positive (and nostalgic). What better way to gear up for next month's edition of Fantastic Fest than by supporting one of last year's films?

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.

According to this week's Austin Chronicle, the locally made feature The Cassidy Kids now has a TV and DVD distribution deal. IFC and B-Side will work together as part of their Choice Indies program: The TV division of IFC will broadcast the 2006 film, and B-Side will take care of DVD and video-on-demand through their website. I wrote about this partnership for Cinematical last September if you want details on how it works. I like seeing B-Side offer more films on video-on-demand because their downloads are DRM-free.

The Cassidy Kids was directed by Jacob Vaughan and produced/co-written by Bryan Poyser, who previously collaborated on Dear Pillow. The film was produced by Burnt Orange Productions, and premiered at SXSW 2006 -- you can read my review from that screening. I haven't heard much about The Cassidy Kids since then, apart from a few festival dates. It's an odd movie to sell: a subplot involving teenagers that would appeal to young adults, but the contemporary scenes where the teens are now grown up is very different, and some of the dialogue puts it squarely in R-rated territory.

No info on potential broadcast or DVD release dates yet -- if anyone from IFC or B-Side is reading this and has a press release, could you forward it to me? The Chronicle blurb is the only place I've found this news and I'd like details if they're available.

[Full disclosure: Slackerwood co-contributor Chris Holland works for B-Side, although he's not a source for this story.]

The above photo is from this year's Fantastic Fest, during the Timecrimes Q&A: Tim League and Timecrimes writer-director Nacho Vigalondo are showing off a dance that Nacho popularized during the film fest.

I like to think that Vigalondo is somewhere doing a similar happy dance right now: Magnolia Pictures has bought worldwide distribution rights for Timecrimes (except in Spain, where the film was shot). The film had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest where the buzz was amazing -- just about everyone was gushing over the film and also over Vigalondo's delightful Q&A sessions; in fact it was almost overhyped. Timecrimes won the Best Feature award and the silver audience award at Fantastic Fest, and the only regret was that Vigalondo wasn't there to chug his beer (the awards at the fest are large beer mugs).

The film then played at Sitges, where Blake at Cinema is Dope reports the reception was not nearly so warm. So I like to think that it was the good reviews and warm fuzzies coming out of Fantastic Fest that helped this film find distribution. [ETA: Harry Knowles notes that Magnolia reps did attend Fantastic Fest this year.]

You can read my own review of Timecrimes at Cinematical. I'm pleased that many people will have the opportunity to see this movie in a theater. Magnolia plans to release Timecrimes in 2008; no word yet ­on a specific date. If you're really lucky, you may get the opportunity to see Vigalondo in person at a screening -- maybe he'll even dance a bit.

[via Matt Dentler's Blog]

I was at a party Friday night where somehow I ended up trying to explain what "mumblecore" is (and failing, I suspect) and someone said, "I remember liking this film I saw at Village a few years ago, what was it, Pillow?"

"Dear Pillow," I guessed.

"Yes, what happened to that, is it on DVD?"

"I don't think so," I said. "Too bad, I liked it a lot."

Less than 24 hours after that conversation, Dear Pillow producer Jacob Vaughn posted to his blog, e-Jake, that Dear Pillow will be out on DVD on November 13. How's that for coincidence?

Dear Pillow, which was made in Austin by writer-director Bryan Poyser and producer Vaughan, premiered at Slamdance in 2004, then pla­yed SXSW and a number of other festivals. The filmmakers were nominated for an Independent Spirit Award in the "Someone to Watch" category.

The film sadly never found theatrical distribution (the sexual subject matter might have been a difficult sell), but in the fall of 2004, Alamo Village showed it nightly for about a month, where it built on word-of-mouth.  I remember that my husband and I went to see the film at the end of its run, having to push ourselves because we are not usually 10 pm moviegoers, even though we live around the block from Alamo Village. We were seeing it on the urging of friends (and John Pierson's persuasive article about the film for the Austin Chronicle) and weren't sure what to expect, but the film totally blew me away. I reviewed it later for Celluloid Eyes. [More after the jump.]

Boy, have I been neglecting poor Slackerwood! I'm surprised I remembered the password to login. I've missed telling you all kinds of news: that the locally filmed feature Chalk has found distribution from Morgan Spulock's new company; that Austin filmmaker Bryan Poyser is now working for Austin Film Society as the Director of Artist Services (that reminds me of the "artist" bit in Swimming to Cambodia and I imagine Bryan issuing directions in that same tone); that Idiocracy will be released on DVD in January; and that all kinds of cool film events have been occurring in Austin, nearly all of which I've missed.

Except one. I did manage, by using up all my good luck for the next year, to get in on standby to the Butt-Numb-a-Thon last weekend. You can read the story about how I got into the event on Celluloid Eyes. But if you want all the news on the movies and the fun during BNAT, go read the feature I wrote for Cinematical. I am now hopelessly behind on any type of holiday shopping, preparation, or giftmaking (not to mention posting to various websites like this one), but it was definitely worthwhile.