Finalists for the 2008 SXSWclick Online Shorts Festival have been announced, and you can watch them all on the festival's website. The selected shorts are competing for various prizes, and a slot at the 2008 SXSW Film Festival. The finalists are divided into five categories: "Old School Shorts", "Really Real Shorts", "Animate-It", "Sound Checks", and "What the F*#!?". This year's judges include Jeffrey Tambor, Don Hertzfeldt, Doug Benson and Eugene Mirman among others--but the general... [continue]

A spectacular water main break near City Hall just filled the construction site at the soon-to-be W Hotel with a hell of a lot of water (which will presumably interfere with work on the $295 million project come tomorrow morning). This nighttime snap was taken just before the city came to shut the pool party down. Sorry for the blurriness--we're saving up for a tripod.... [continue]

We don't know about you, but we love the Alamo's Weird Wednesday series. Like, we wish we could make steamy, passionate love to it (and the chocolate covered toffee bits that come with it! Wait... no, that's gross). Unfortunately, we generally have to wake up super early on weekdays, and we're too weak-willed to attend many midnight screenings (you don't have to tell us how lame we are... we're well aware). So we tend to... [continue]

Last August, as the Austin Film Festival was ramping up, we spoke to Austin-based filmmaker Don Swaynos about the creepy slash awesome animated commercials he'd produced (along with partner Cameron Petri) for the folks at AFF. But Don's commercials weren't the only work he had premiering at AFF '07. Along with pal Steve Metze, he presented a documentary feature called Year at Danger, a firsthand account of Metze's deployment as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.... [continue]

If you were one of the many people turned away from the single SXSW screening of Baghead this spring, you'll be happy to know that the Austin-lensed film will have its premiere this coming Thursday at Starhill Ranch, a neat little film-set-turned-party-venue out on Hamilton Pool Road. And starting this weekend, the movie will also have a proper run at the Alamo South Lamar.... [continue]

Still from Foot Fist WayThe Foot Fist Way A washed-up, slack-jawed, perv-inator of a martial arts instructor simultaneously insults, intimidates and inspires his students to uphold the tenets of tae kwon do in The Foot Fist Way, a little indie princess that got fitted for its Cinderella slippers at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. After it was scooped up by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, TFFW went viral amongst the comedy community, with some people... [continue]

Tonight, the Austin Film Festival is screening Public Enemy: Welcome to the Terrordome, a documentary look at PE's past and present, focusing heavily on the group's individual members. Through extensive live footage (including an Austin performance of “Son of A Bush”) and interviews with Henry Rolllins, The Beastie Boys, Tom Morello, Talib Kweli and DMC, Welcome to the Terrordome explores the band's personal politics, as well as their extensive influence on music and culture.... [continue]

Have you ever spent Thanksgiving at your significant other's house, where you realize that while you like his or her mom, the pumpkin pie or stuffing isn't nearly as good as your mom's? Sure, you're satisfied. You're about to fall asleep from being so jam-packed with stuff, but you're missing a little bit of that childhood nostalgia of biting into Mom's fluffy pie. That's how Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull feels. You have yearned for it for so long, you've built it up in your head, but it's just not quite the same..... [continue]

We're too old to have a proper sense of the seasons any more, but we figure it must be summer, because a) there was minimal traffic on 35 this morning and b) The Paramount Theatre's 2008 Summer Classic Film Series kicks off this Thursday with a double-shot of Bogey and, er, a single shot of Travlota! Huzzah! Perennial Bogart classics Casablanca and Key Largo (which, we assume, need no preamble) will kick things off, while the feel-good summertime musical Grease rounds out the weekend.... [continue]

This Sunday, as part of the Austin Film Festival's "Conversations in Film" series, Writer / Director / Actor / Producer Johnathon Schaech will appear at the Hyde Park Theatre for an intimate discussion about screenwriting.... [continue]

Though Fantastic Fest '08 is nearly five months away (why won't you work, time machine!?), devotees and newcomers alike can get a taste of the kickass genre film festival TONIGHT as the Alamo presents Exte: Hair Extensions and Big Man Japan, two favorites from FF '07.... [continue]

Cine Las Americas Film Festival schedule for Thursday, April 24th.... [continue]

Cine Las Americas Film Festival schedule for Wednesday, April 23rd.... [continue]

Cine Las Americas Film Festival schedule for Tuesday, April 22nd.... [continue]

Cine Las Americas Film Festival schedule for Monday, April 12st.... [continue]

Cine Las Americas Daily schedule for Sunday, April 20th.... [continue]

Cine Las Americas Film Festival schedule for Saturday, April 19th.... [continue]

In addition to all the films screening at Cine Las Americas on this beautiful Friday evening, tonight is also Brazil Night (which is code for "party till you drop"). From 10pm until question mark, Academicos da Opera Samba School and DJ Boris will be spinning Brazilian and World Contemporary Music at the Copa Bar & Grill on Congress. Admission is free with Film Pass or festival ticket stub.... [continue]

Tonight, the Cine Las Americas film festival will screen four films, including the Argentinan drama XXY, Alejandro Springall's dramatic comedy Morirse está en hebreo (My Mexican Shivah), actor Diego Luna's legendary boxer doc JC Chavez and Lorena Giachino Torrens' doc Reinalda del Carmen, mi mamá y yo (Reinalda del Carmen, My Mother and Me).... [continue]

Tonight, the Cine Las Americas International Film Festival will kick off its 11th edition with a reception and screening at the Paramount Theatre, followed by an after-party at the Mexic-Arte Museum on Congress (where there'll be appetizers, drinks and music). The program this year looks amazing--in all, the festival will screen eighty-two films from eighteen countries in a wide range of genres, including drama, documentary, experimental, animation, film noir, thriller, comedy and fantasy. And, of course, all of the films are made by or about Latino and indigenous people of the Americas.... [continue]