Special Screenings

The first thing the title Worst in Show brings to mind is the 2000 Christopher Guest mockumentary Best in Show. Like that award-winning entry from the Waiting for Guffman crew, Worst in Show by filmmakers John Beck and Don Lewis is less interesting for the contestants than for the people who actually own the dogs. The documentary, which will have a special benefit screening in Austin this weekend, focuses largely on the officially trademarked World's Ugliest Dog contest hosted by the Sonoma-Marin Fair each year in Petaluma, California. There, the internet sensation Sam (pictured at right), owned by Susie Tautrim, won from 2003-2005.

Mai Tai, Chi Chi, Miss Ellie, Elwood -- all huge names in the ugly dog world (and now all deceased). They are all Chinese Crested, the dog breed you would least want to be reincarnated as. We're talking the Steve Buscemi of dogs, so ugly even John Waters won't make a movie about them. Competing against these, you have various mutts, boxers, bulldogs, chihuahuas, often rescue dogs, sometimes sick or suffering birth defects. At the Petaluma contest, Chinese Cresteds have enjoyed a winning streak from 2002 to 2008. The streak was finally broken in 2009 by Pabst, a boxer mix owned by Miles Egstad.

Austin has a number of special screenings and events coming up in the next week or two, so I thought I'd list some of them here. I also recommend checking the Austin Chronicle's weekly Special Screenings listing (updated online on Friday mornings) as well as Austin Creative Alliance's Now Playing Austin site (which I wish would make film event listings as prominent as the other arts, hint hint).

Don't forget to check our Guide to Free (and Cheap) Summer Movies in Austin for a great listing of film series that will fit your budget.

• It's a Very Joe Swanberg weekend here in Austin. The Chicago indie filmmaker will participate in an AFS Moviemaker Dialogue on Saturday night at Austin Studios. On Sunday, Alamo Drafthouse Ritz hosts two Swanberg movies, Art History and Uncle Kent (both featuring actor Kent Osborne), with Swanberg attending. And on Monday night, he'll stick around when AFS Best of the Fests brings back SXSW 2011 selection Silver Bullets, also at Ritz.
• The Paramount is going all John Hughes on us this weekend with a double-feature of Sixteen Candles and Some Kind of Wonderful on Sunday. If you're one of the first 100 people admitted to the 2 pm screening of Sixteen Candles, you get a free birthday cupcake. On Wednesday night, June 8, the theater is showing a Marlon Brando double of Last Tango in Paris and Burn! ... and no, they are not having any related promotions (would you really want them to?).
• The free Texas Rolling Roadshow starts tomorrow night in Fort Parker with The Searchers. If you don't feel like a long drive, Austinites can see The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in nearby Kingsland on June 4 and Blood Simple in Dessau Hall on June 5. If you want to spend a little money, VIP packages are available for the Chain Saw screening, and an after-party with The Derailers will take place after the Blood Simple screening. Finally, check out the gorgeous posters Jason Munn created for the tour; I really want the Giant one myself.

Anyone who has read my Fantastic Fest 2010 Guide "How to Drink Like an Austinite" will know I'm a craft beer enthusiast, but it goes beyond just drinking great brews -- I also homebrew and volunteer at local brewpubs and breweries. I was extremely excited when Dogfish Head Craft Brewery founder Sam Calagione came to Austin in 2008 to host the Off-Centered Film Fest along with a beer and cheese pairing at the Alamo Lake Creek, and have never missed his annual events. His passion for craft brewing and film is contagious, and his annual rap "East Coast versus West Coast Brews" can't be missed.

Calagione will be back in Austin to host this year's Off-Centered Film Fest starting Thursday, April 14 through Saturday, April 16. He's partnered with the Alamo Drafthouse to expand the beer-meets-film festival to multiple venues and events to please both craft beer and film fans alike. The special screening of Wet Hot American Summer with Joe Lo Troglio sold out quickly, but find out what events are still available after the jump:

I've never thought of Whole Foods as a film distributor, but I may have to think again, as the Austin-based grocery chain has  started a film series that will premiere six documentaries in 70 U.S. cities during April, aka "Earth Month." The Whole Foods Do Something Reel Film Festival, which focuses on movies with environmental themes, starts in Austin tonight at Alamo Drafthouse Village.

The Do Something Reel website includes descriptions and trailers for the half-dozen films, along with screening information for all the cities in which the movies will be shown. Although most of these documentaries have been on the film-fest circuit in the past year or two, as far as I can tell none of them have played Austin yet.

After the jump, check out the schedule for Austin for each film in the series. All screenings in Austin are at Alamo Village.

Filmmaker Kevin Smith is currently doing a national roadshow for his latest movie, Red State. Last night, I had the opportunity to catch the screening here in Austin at the Paramount. This is a must-see movie. The most difficult aspect of this movie is describing it. The movie has elements of a dark comedy mixed with intense action thriller sometimes bordering on horror. For what Smith claims to be his second-to-last movie, he has redefined himself.

Red State opens with three high-school boys setting off for a sexual encounter they've arranged via a swinger's website. This encounter takes them to a trailer in the woods inhabited by Sara Cooper, played by 2010 Academy Award winner Melissa Leo. It doesn't take long to learn that Sara is actually a wolf in sheep's clothing.

After consuming drug-laced beer, the boys find themselves prisoners of ultra conservative preacher Abin Cooper (brilliantly played by Michael Parks). Preacher Cooper is based on the real minister Fred Phelps, of the Westboro Baptist Church (better known as the church that likes to protest funerals). The initial scenes of these kids being imprisoned takes you immediately (almost jarringly) from a happy-go-lucky Porky's type adventure to the realization that these kids are in Deep Bandini.

Richard Linklater, Robert Rodriguez and other famed Texas filmmakers may be household names now. But like most filmmakers, they launched their careers with low-budget, largely unseen short films.

Despite the later success of these Texas cinematic giants, their early works remain relatively obscure and are rarely screened. So, if you're a Texas movie buff like me, you won't want to miss the upcoming "Texas Legends, Before They Were Legends" program, which presents a collection of first short films from some of Texas' most successful and cherished filmmakers. Presented by the Texas Independent Film Network, Austin Film Society and Screen Door Film, the program includes the following films:

• Bottle Rocket (1992), by Wes Anderson. This short (pictured at right) is the basis for the full-length feature version of Bottle Rocket, released four years later.
• Styx (1976), by Jan Krawitz. This documentary is an impressionistic view of the Philadelphia subway system.
• Woodshock (1985), by Richard Linklater. This documentary captures the mayhem of the 1985 Woodshock Music Festival in Dripping Springs.

I've really enjoyed Austin Film Festival's "Made in Texas" series, in which the fest screens Lone Star-shot films every month, often with the screenwriter or filmmaker in attendance. Now AFF is bringing the series back in 2011 and adding other great programming with help from the Texas Book Festival.

The 2011 Made in Texas series kicks off on Wednesday, Feb. 16 with Hook and one of its screenwriters, James V. Hart. After a 6 pm "Conversations in Film" seminar with Hart at the AT&T Conference Center (on the UT campus), you can cross the street to the Texas Spirit Theater and watch the movie at 7:30 pm. Tickets are available through AFF for the conversation and screening. After the jump, check out a list of the rest of the series offerings scheduled so far.

On March 10, AFF and Texas Book Festival will co-host a special sneak preview of Jane Eyre at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar, with details forthcoming. Director Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre) has been to AFF twice with short films: Kofi in 2003 and Victoria para chino, which won the Best Student Narrative Short, in 2004. AFF and TBF are also teaming up in July for a free screening of How to Eat Fried Worms, as part of AFF's Made in Texas Family Film Series.

I hope this means we'll see more screenings associated with the actual Texas Book Festival in November, too. In the past, the fest would have one or two movie events related to authors -- I had a fine time hearing Joe Bob Briggs talk about Profoundly Disturbing movies back in 2003, for example. In the past few years it seems that these movie-related events have decreased.

If you ever thought it was just the American food industry that was mercenary about marketing and selling food, think again.  Apparently it's no different in Europe. 

Earlier this week Edible Austin and Austin Museum of Art teamed up with Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar for a mini-feast and dialogue on Food Design, a 2009 Austrian documentary about the science behind food marketing and commercial research.  And in under 40 minutes, chefs John Bullington and Chris Kincaid (pictured above) managed to send out three courses with five separate preparations on each, making the film an interactive experience.

Pictured above are the chefs plating the first course; despite the poor quality of the picture you can get a sense of the frenetic pace they kept to keep the food moving.  And while we didn't see any of the courses in full light save the first and most monochromatic,  the fact we couldn't really see the food enhanced the tasting experience. it was quite a learning experience all the sensations of each different preparation.

This year, I was privileged and honored to be in the audience for Harry Knowles's 12th annual 24-hour birthday party and film festival known as Butt-Numb-a-Thon, or BNAT for short. The 24-hour movie marathon took place this year from Saturday morning, Dec. 11 through midday on Sunday, Dec. 12 at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar (mostly).

An audience of approximately 200 people from around the world is chosen personally by Knowles from among thousands of applicants who submit questionnaires to gauge their love of films from all genres but especially those that fit the year's chosen theme -- this year it was "Mandom." Nearly half of those attending submitted a video of their own versions of the 1970s Charles Bronson "Mandom" cologne commercials, singing the Mandom theme song. Even Harry's close friends and family must submit their applications in order to attend.

Participants spend more than 24 hours in a theater (more than one this year, as noted below) and are treated to a lineup of movies -- usually six vintage films and six premieres -- smattered with trailers, commercials, prize giveaways, celebrity guest introductions and early footage of upcoming films.

This year, special guests at BNAT included director Jon Favreau, writer Roberto Orci and producer Ron Howard, who together presented footage from the as-yet-incomplete Cowboys & Aliens. Director Gore Verbinski also taped a video greeting to introduce footage from his upcoming animated feature Rango. Celebrities in the audience included Elijah Wood (a perennial attendee), Joseph Gordon-Levitt, filmmaker Rian Johnson and Meghan McCain.

Last weekend, two very different but quite excellent filmmakers were in town to show some of their latest documentary work. Both were actually here on Sunday so you could dash across town and make a double-feature of it, but I decided to do it the easy way. On Saturday, I went to Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar for a screening of locally shot Boxing Gym with director Frederick Wiseman in attendance, and on Sunday, I was at the LBJ Museum to watch an excerpt from Spike Lee's four-hour documentary for HBO, If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise.

Wiseman was originally only scheduled to be at two Alamo screenings on Sunday: Boxing Gym and his 1967 film Titicut Follies. The Sunday night showing of Boxing Gym, sponsored by Austin Film Society, sold out awfully quickly. Fortunately, he agreed to attend two of the screenings on Saturday, so some friends and I were able to get tickets at almost the last minute.

After the jump, here's a photo of Richard Lord, at whose gym Boxing Gym was shot; documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman; and Alamo programmer Lars Nilsen, who moderated the post-film Q&A.