Film Series

Hey Homo!'s selection for this month's screening is the 1982 John Huston film Annie, adapted from the popular stage musical. If I were to tell you how many times I've seen this thing ... I still have the scars. Personally, I prefer Rob Marshall's more recent adaptation for TV ... except that I cannot resist Tim Curry and Bernadette Peters as Rooster and Lily. And why does everyone always pare down the FDR/New Deal stuff for the screen? Anyway, if you're going to watch this film, watching it at Alamo Ritz with a grown-up audience is definitely the way to go.

The documentary Trimpin: The Sound of Invention played SXSW 2009 and is back in Austin for Music Monday. The film is about reclusive musical artist/sound sculptor Trimpin.

Filmmaker Peter Esmonde will attend the screening and hold a Q&A.

Damn, it's such a good Weird Wednesday this week that I may have to risk screwing up my sleep/work schedule to go: Roger Vadim's 1971 film Pretty Maids All in a Row, starring Rock Hudson and Angie Dickinson, scripted by Gene Roddenberry. Hmm, perhaps if I tell my Star Trek-loving husband about Roddenberry, he'll go with me? Let's take it to Lars and his inimitable descriptions:

"From director Roger Vadim (BARBARELLA) and writer Gene Roddenberry (creator of Star Trek) comes a surprisingly dark, funny, sweet film, saturated with the golden light, color and sexiness of '70s California. Plot-wise, it's a murder mystery - beautiful young girls are turning up dead, the cops (led by Telly Savalas) are investigating, the football coach (Rock Hudson, who's great here) is a suspect. Interwoven is the story of a sexually frustrated male student's dalliance with his hot teacher Angie Dickinson. The story is well structured, the actors are top notch, but what makes this film really special is the French director's merciless insight into American social mores. He also captures some of the poetry of sexual desire in a way that few, if any, American directors can. A real, undeservedly obscure classic."

Here's what Lars has to say about the 1973 film Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon, also known as The Mansion of Madness on IMDb:

"If the experience of watching exploitation movies is like taking drugs, and it certainly is, then watching this movie is the celluloid equivalent of having a polar bear-sized dose of PCP injected directly into your brainstem with an industrial strength compressed air gun. If this sounds like a bunch of exaggerated fanciful talk to you then you haven’t seen DR. TARR’S TORTURE DUNGEON. Based on Poe’s 'The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether', it’s an amazingly baroque, surreal Mexican exploitation film about a vast, isolated asylum that has been taken over by its inmates. The film glides from one absurd, outlandish tableau to another with the logic and pace of an opium dream. Though it was considered too exploitative for arthouses and too artsy for grindhouses at the time of its release, we are happy to give this film the audience it deserves. Note: if you don't like horrifying shrieking chicken women, do us all a favor - STAY HOME!"

I swear, sometimes Zack Carlson's descriptions of Terror Tuesday films are better than the movies themselves. Here's what he has to say about Burial Ground:

"In the last ten years, we've grown sick of zombies. Even my grandma has seen every conceivable variety of scabby deathbag get shanked, gutted, fileted and fried. These days, you can't throw a rock in Hollywood without caving in a walking corpse's dome. But back in untamed '80s Europe, flesh-ripping was uncharted territory, and low/no-rent filmmakers could sharpen their auteurial teeth on half-scripted chronicles of blood-drenched reanimation. Welfare-caliber shambling cadavers found a particularly happy home in Italy, where directors like Lucio Fulci and Bruno Mattei tore the genre open stomach-first. Of their countless cheap productions and cheaper imitators, one film stands tall as the most brain-dead, plot-free, shock-driven maggotstorm in the Halls of Zombie Retardation, chock full of decapitations, dismemberments and incestuous oral mastectomies. Ladies and gentlemen...BURIAL GROUND!"

Austin Film Festival's "Conversations in Film" is with screenwriter Jessica Bendinger this month. At 7:30, you can see the 2000 film Bring It On, which she wrote. At 9:15, she'll participate in a discussion about the film and her career. Tickets are $8 for AFF members and $10 for the general public.

This month's AFS Documentary Tour screening is the German film Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suss. The screening is cosponsored by the Austin Jewish Film Festival. The documentary is about the making of the Nazi propaganda film Jew Suss, which was released in 1940, and its director Viet Harlan. Robert H. Abzug, Director, Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at The University of Texas, will introduce the film.

As part of its Essential Cinema series "Smashing the Rules: Films of Oshida Nagisa," Austin Film Society will show the 1983 film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. Admission is free for AFS members and $6 for the general public. Essential Cinema screenings often sell out so you may want to buy tickets in advance from the AFS website.

As part of its Essential Cinema series "Smashing the Rules: Films of Oshida Nagisa," Austin Film Society will show the 1966 film Violence at Noon. Admission is free for AFS members and $6 for the general public. Essential Cinema screenings often sell out so you may want to buy tickets in advance from the AFS website.

As part of its Essential Cinema series "Smashing the Rules: Films of Oshida Nagisa," Austin Film Society will show the 1965 film The Pleasures of the Flesh. Admission is free for AFS members and $6 for the general public. Essential Cinema screenings often sell out so you may want to buy tickets in advance from the AFS website.