News from Slackerwood: AFF is not enough
Filed under: News From Slackerwood, Austin
One big film festival in town simply isn't enough for Austin film programmers and filmgoers. Every theater in town has a top-notch schedule this week. Is this because we're close to Halloween, is it because the Texas Book Festival is on the horizon, or is there something in the air? Your guess is as good as mine. All I know is that this would be an excellent weekend to clone myself or get one of those Time-Turners out of the Harry Potter books. Even a fast broomstick would help, so I wouldn't have to hunt for parking downtown.
Austin Film Festival (AFF) is underway and runs through Thursday, Oct. 27. The festival is screening films in six venues around town, from the Arbor Great Hills to the Paramount. I'll be posting more about the festival shortly, but I will note that The Hideout was not even half-full last night for its evening of fun documentaries. The Paramount may sell out, but tickets should be available at most other screenings.
If you are attending the film festival and/or conference, you can put together your own schedule on the AFF Web site. And if you're me, you can put together a very organized, well-balanced schedule and then change everything around at the last minute.
Chris Holland is posting interviews with some of the filmmakers at AFF on Blue Glow. AFF also has its own blog, which includes a link to a fun Houston Press interview with Wedding Crashers writers Steve Faber and Bob Fisher about how to crash AFF parties. This week's Austin Chronicle includes a rundown of recommended AFF selections.
But wait, there's more:
- Good Night, and Good Luck opens in Austin today. After you see the movie, you can discuss it with UT professor Robert Jensen at the Arbor Great Hills theater on Wednesday, Oct. 26 at 7 pm. Jensen will be talking about the historical events that inspired the film.
- I really enjoyed Troop 1500 when I saw it earlier this year at SXSW. (I wrote about it here in my pre-Cinematical days.) Now the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar is bringing it back for a couple of days and I highly recommend seeing it if you can. The documentary about a Girl Scout troop made up of girls whose mothers are in prison will screen on Monday and Tuesday, Oct. 24-25, at 7 pm.
- Austin Film Society (AFS) continues its monthly 20th anniversary screenings this week with a well-matched double-feature: Imitation of Life, the 1959 Douglas Sirk melodrama with Lana Turner; and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, the 1974 Rainer Werner Fassbinder film based on another Sirk film, All That Heaven Allows. Should be a great combination, although perhaps not the most uplifting evening. The movies screen on Wednesday, Oct. 26 at Alamo Downtown; tickets are available on the Austin Film Society site.
- The weekly AFS series "Southern Uprising: Recent Korean Cinema" also continues on Tuesday, Oct. 25 with Nowhere to Hide, a 1999 film about a pair of police detectives tracking a drug-war criminal. Tickets are available on the AFS site.
- Nueva Onda's last movie night of the year is this Saturday, Oct. 22. The weather's getting a little cool for free movies out on the restaurant's patio, I guess. The documentary Something's Brewing in Shiner is a great way to finish the year, and of course Nueva Onda has a special on Shiner to go with the movie.
- The Texas Book Festival takes place next weekend and always sponsors a few screenings with live appearances from filmmakers and actors who also have a book to promote. Eli Wallach will be one of them, and Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar has planned a Spaghetti Western feast around Wallach's appearance for a screening of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly on Friday,. Oct. 28.
- Chris Elliott also will be in town for the Texas Book Festival and he'll appear at Alamo Downtown on Saturday,. Oct. 29 for a screening of Cabin Boy. Alan Zweibel will be there too but I'm not sure what he had to do with Cabin Boy. And if he did have something to do with the film, I am surprised he is admitting to it.
I listed a bunch of upcoming Halloween screenings last week. Here are a few more I've found since then:
- "100 Best Kills" is a collection of notorious and memorable death scenes from movies. The description on the Alamo Village site advertises "shocking kills, heart-breaking kills, wacky kills, graphic kills, understated kills, beautiful kills, vintage kills, and every other freaking kind of kill you can imagine." The show screens at midnight tonight and Saturday, Oct. 21-22 at Alamo Village, and again at Alamo Downtown next Saturday,. Oct. 30. You'll sleep well afterwards.
- More midnight horror: Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek is showing The Exorcist, the original 1973 version, next Thursday through Saturday, Oct. 27-29. Alamo is advertising free exorcisms at every screening. The first time I saw this movie, it was in my parents' living room and during one of the big exorcism scenes, a light bulb from a nearby lamp popped and burned out. The movie has never seemed as scary to me since then.
- If the recently released The Fog makes you long for John Carpenter, check out Alamo Downtown next week. The theater is showing the original 1980 The Fog on Sunday Oct. 23, Tuesday Oct. 25, and Saturday Oct. 29.
- Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek has a wonderful Halloween evening planned on Wednesday, Oct. 26. The 1922 silent film Nosferatu will be accompanied by an original score from the band Inversion Effect. The film also will be accompanied with a four-course vampire-themed meal (no garlic unless you request it).
- Owen Egerton, one of the Sinus guys, promises he won't be talking over or mocking Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, when he presents the horror film at the Alamo on South Lamar on Halloween night, Oct. 31. I'm not sure this promise makes me more inclined to see the movie, you know?
- Free family-appropriate horror: I was a little surprised to hear the Saturday Morning Kids' Club choice for this month: Mothra, the 1961 Japanese monster movie, screening at noon on Oct. 29 at Alamo Downtown. Then I remembered the first time I saw it: I must have been about 10 when my brother found this movie on TV late on a Saturday morning, post-cartoons. So I suppose it it is oddly appropriate.
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