News from Slackerwood: one week to SXSW

The SXSW film festival lineup gets more celebrity-rich every day. Matt Dentler just announced more performers who will speak at the conference and/or screenings, including Ray Romano, Charles Nelson Reilly, and Erykah Badu. I'm still trying to decide which films to see ... there are some tough choices. Karina and I will be covering the film festival for Cinematical but even with two of us, we won't be able to catch everything.

• Night Watch opens in Austin this week as part of the Austin Film Society/Dobie Theatre series, AFS@Dobie. Ballets Russes (pictured above) is also held over for another week.
• Kevin Smith will be in Austin early next week and will introduce a midnight screening of House Party on Monday 3/6 at Alamo Downtown. Admission is free, but if you want to guarantee a seat you can buy a food/beverage coupon from Alamo ahead of time. I am not sure what the actual connection is between the Clerks director and the 1990 Kid 'N Play movie, but I'm sure Smith will explain.

• Free coffeehouse movies: Austin Java is showing Interview with the Vampire on Friday 3/3 at 8 pm. Ventana del Soul screens the 1976 Invasion of the Body Snatchers on Monday 3/6 at 7:30 pm. And on Tuesday 3/7, Rounders Pizzeria will show Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit at 6 pm and Howl's Moving Castle at 8 pm.
• Alamo Village and Alamo South Lamar still have tickets left for their Oscar night parties on Sunday 3/5. At the South Lamar theater, admission includes a multi-course feast in which each course represents one of the Best Picture nominees. Meanwhile, Alamo Lake Creek's Oscar party has free admission, so you don't need a ticket. If you want something ultra-fancy, space is still available for Austin Film Festival's party, which will be hosted by "representatives from nominated films Brokeback Mountain and Murderball."
• Speaking of Austin Film Festival, check out the AFF blog, which includes weekly celebrity photos from previous years, such as Jeff Daniels, Larry McMurtry, and Robert Altman. The site also features podcasts with tips for festival submissions, guest spots from Wedding Crashers writers, and other fun tidbits.
• Austin Film Society begins a new month-long series this week in collaboration with Cine Las Americas and SXSW: "Felipe Cazals: The Conscience of Mexico." The first film in the series, Canoa, screens Tuesday 3/7 at Alamo Downtown. Canoa is a 1976 film directed by Cazals about four tourists who are mistaken for Communist assassins in 1968.
• The Texas Documentary Tour is showing Zizek! The Elvis of Cultural Theory on Wednesday 3/8 at Alamo Downtown. Afterwards, UT instructor Mitchell M. Harris will lead a discussion of the film about Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek.
• To wrap up the Harry Ransom Center exhibit on acting teacher Stella Adler, Taxi Driver will play at Alamo Downtown on Thursday 3/9. Robert De Niro was one of Adler's students.
• Alamo Downtown has started a new free-movie midnight series: Terror Thursdays. This week's film is The Gates of Hell, a 1980 horror film written and directed by Lucio Fulci.
• An interesting story: Raymond J. Schlogel, the director of the Austin-shot film For Love & Stacie, couldn't get his movie into SXSW. So he rented one of the Alamo South Lamar screens to show the film on the opening day of the festival, Friday 3/10. I'm not sure if this is a smart move or a silly one; will people in town for SXSW want to shell out more money to see something not affiliated with the festival? Plus, the film's at 4 pm, when most locals are still working and SXSW'ers are unlikely to be hanging out at a non-downtown theater. Perhaps the director has some promotional strategy I don't know about. I'll be interested to see how well this works.