Results tagged “Movies”

There are lots of goodies on tap tonight, from the festival's most outrageous documentary to a Chinese historical epic. Docs are definitely on show, starting with Floored, about the traders on Chicago's stock exchange. Already one of the most interesting jobs in America, we're expecting some memorable characters up in here.

The Screenwriter's Conference is over and done with, so now it's just down to the films. Here are our picks for Monday at the Austin Film Festival, including some you may have missed the first time around...

Excitement and anticipation was thick in the air last night as Austin Film Festival goers began to claim their badges and passes. Today is the first day of AFF 2009, and while it starts a little bit later than all the other days, there is still a lot of content to pack in this afternoon. Here are the things we think you should ink in on your schedule.

When you think about all the big name film festivals, we bet it sets off a soundtrack of ka-ching ka-ching in your head. Expensive to get to and pricey to attend, most folks like us can't work that sort of expenditure into our yearly budget. Well, we would like to remind you that this isn't Utah; you're livin' in Austin, baby, and around these parts Austin Film Festival passes start at the totally-affordable-even-if-you-don't-have-a-ton-of-money price of $42 (General Admission to individual screenings is just $9!), and it all happens right in your backyard.

The Austin Foodie scene has truly exploded over the last couple of years, exposing our growing metropolis to so many opportunities to eat tasty food and drink delicious drinks. It is overwhelming to consider just how long it would take, and just how many pounds we would gain, in order to experience the best of what Austin has to offer in the dining realm. Thankfully, over the last seven years, the Austin Film Festival's Film & Food Party has been able to compress all of the tasty business around town into one night of bites, booze and bidding.

Clive Owen's latest is a good little art-house film stuck in the body of a Hollywood script that constantly teeters towards over-sentimentality. I mean, they didn't even get the license for the actual song from "Irish Hard Rock Band" Thin Lizzy.

Zombies get a bad rap. It’s not like they DECIDED they wanted to be undead. Well tomorrow night all that changes…for a little while, anyway.Tonight these poor undead bastards are getting some solid screen time as Spider House Café teams up the film geniuses to show a double feature with Zombie and Return of the Living Dead. Catch them on the big screen on the back patio as part of their Midnight Movies Series.

Kicking off this Wednesday with Bikes Rock at the Parish La Zona Rosa, the 9th Annual BFF will skid into Austin for five days of bike-centric love, including art shows, after-parties, bike polo and, of course, films about bikes and the people that love to ride them. Luckily, we got the chance to exchange emails with Brendt Barbur, the founding director of the Bicycle Film Festival, about why this festival is important, the culture of cycling and, oddly enough, fashion.

Look out sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigots! Tonight and tomorrow night the ladies of the 80s are climbing the corporate ladder and aren't afraid to kick you down a rung if you don't recognize their keen intellect and undeniable business acumen, not matter if you are one of their kind or not. In a stroke of pure brilliance The Paramount has programmed a double feature that will give any other activity tonight or tomorrow night a real run for its money shoulder pads, pairing the Dolly Parton/Lily Tomlin/Jane Fonda triple threat of 9 to 5 with the bony-assed-boss berating, Aqua Net-enhanced prowess of Melanie Griffith in Working Girl.

A couple of weeks ago Warren and I went to see the movie Moon, sort of a thematic mash-up of that old classic Gaslight meets the Disney flick Parent Trap meets Castaway with a dash of A Boy and His Dog thrown in and some sub-themes that might’ve been derived from Bowie’s Major Tom and Elton’s Rocket Man. That I was able to gather all this from the film is a testament to my ability to multi-task. While it’s true I sometimes purposefully multi-task in the theater—yes, I can knit in the dark—in this case I found myself unintentionally and unhappily tri-tasking. Because the couple sitting next to us WOULD NOT SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Kids are endlessly creative and/or insane, and anyone who has hung out with a 10-year-old for more than a minute knows that the stories they craft are sometimes more bizarre than anything a seasoned wordsmith could ever come up with. The Austin Film Festival's Summer Film Camp allows budding filmmakers to express those words through moving pictures and specifically in this case, through moving clay. The video is only 5 minutes and 52 seconds long, and the four short films contained therein are totally worth a watch. Our favorite happens to be the incredibly wacky Sacred Cupcake, by no-doubt-future-auteurs Colin, Connor and Sam, although all of the participants are to be commended for their super cool work.

in the war-torn country of Afghanistan, there’s a TV show much like our own inexplicably popular American Idol, where anyone can compete regardless of race, age, religion, or any other factor. And people all over the country use their cell phones to vote for their favorite performer. This remarkable film (winner of Directing and Audience Awards at this year’s Sundance Film Festival) follows four finalists as they compete to become the next Afghan Star.It's sure to inform, inspire, enlighten, and entertain you. And that’s a lot more than Simon Cowell could ever do for you.

The Paramount continues their Depression-era comedy theme for the month with 1936's My Man Godfrey and 1937's Easy Living showing Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Both of these comedies throw everyday folk (if you can call a "forgotten man" everyday folk) into strange circumstances involving wealthy families.

Who wouldn’t want to follow Burt (John Krasinski) down the path that is Away We Go, as he and his pregnant girlfriend Verona (Maya Rudolph) take planes, trains and automobiles to visit friends and family searching for a place to raise their baby, and figuring out what life and love are all about, laughing and crying all along the way.

Hit up the Alamo Drafthouse this Sunday for a Father's Day Feast while watching Wes Anderson's dysfunctional family masterpiece, The Royal Tenenbaums. Sure, Royal might be a shitty dad. Okay, maybe he's an asshole and has disappeared for several years. And, true, he fakes his death to force his family closer together. But whatever, it'll just bring you and your dear ol' dad closer together as you can say, relatively, "You are such a great dad, Dad!"

You know what’s fun? Movies. About food. With painted up dwarves. And young comedians in purple coats. Under the stars. Sounds like a perfect Friday night, right? Well, we’ve got your golden ticket for this Friday, June 19th—the Alamo Drafthouse and Whole Foods present Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory outdoors, on the roof of their flagship store at 6th and Lamar.

Proving that not everyone is letting the ungodly summer heat slow them down, the Blanton Museum of Art and the Austin Film Festival are teaming up to present the New Directions Film Series, which will feature the intelligent voices of emerging independent filmmakers. The five chosen films will screen at the Blanton on Third Thursdays and a few selected Sundays from now until July 19. Kicking off the indie fun is Gretchen, the story of an awkward 17-year-old trying to survive the indignities of adolescence.

Tonight and tomorrow night, the Paramount Theater will be screening two classic favorites starring Cary Grant: 1940's The Philadelphia Story and 1937's The Awful Truth. Both films feature Grant as a wealthy divorcee and both are certain to make you laugh.

The word around town (specifically from Chris Garcia at the Statesman) is that come May 21st, the Galaxy Highland will have a brand new technology, only released last March, which bears the unfortunate name of D-Box (which immediately made us think of D-Bag, a horse of a completely different color, no doubt). D-Box replicates the motion happening on screen, frame-by-frame, in each and every theater seat. You will, allegedly, feel like you are actually in the movie.

In a tactical move of sheer intergalactic brilliance, the enterprising people over at the Austin Planetarium have forged an alliance with the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum to bring you a Star Trek premier experience like no other. On Friday, May 8th from 6-9pm, the grounds and lobby of the Bob Bullock will play host to Austin's Trekkies and astronomy buffs alike, featuring none other than cosmonaut and space tourist extraordinaire, Richard Garriott.

30 years ago, before the dawn of the Reagan era and all the conservative back-patting and chumminess that would come with it, a film was released that would eventually introduce our little sheltered selves to punk rock and rebellion-as-fun. Rock ‘n’ Roll High School is the bizarre anti-Grease (which, notably, was released just a year before RNRHS), a film which follows the same musical paradigm as its lily-white counterpart, but instead of poodle skirts and dance competitions favors "ugly, ugly, ugly" punk rockers and a boys-bathroom-businessman who sells black market hall passes and hired dates.

n a top 40 world, Austin is a proudly NPR town, so tonight should be a special treat for many of us who enjoy the popular radio show “This American Life.” Tonight only you can catch a live HD simulcast of the show at movie theaters around town. Glass will be there hosting the show, and contributors will include regulars like Starlee Kine, sex columnist Dan Savage, and the hilarious Mike Birbiglia, among others.

Tonight at the Alamo Drafthouse S. Lamar, you can experience the tornado-like fury that surrounds the competitive Dachshund circuit in the dog-umentary Wiener Takes All. Canadian filmmaker Shane MacDougall, who apparently challenged Queen Elizabeth II to a kickboxing match or math test to win the monarchy of Canada at one point in time, spent two years following what we would assume to be a real-life Best in Show, documenting the heated rivalries, the epic speed trials, the allegations of doggie doping and the amazingness that is the Westminster Dog Show, watching as the broad field is winnowed down to one winning weenie.

Anxious Wilco lovers must wait a few more weeks until the still-untitled next album is released, but a worthy distraction will soon arrive to make the suspense a little less terrible. Ashes of American Flags, a live concert film featuring performances from the band’s 2008 tour, will be released on DVD April 18 and will also be shown at the Alamo Ritz on Monday night.

The Alamo Ritz invites you and your pooka to the movies this weekend to enjoy the Jimmy Stewart classic, Harvey. You and your spirit animal can sip Martinis along with Dr. Chumley, Dr. Sanderson, Nurse Kelly and of course Elwood, as Harvey is part of the Alamo Cinema Cocktails Signature Series, which pairs signature drinks (The Harvey Wallbanger, for example) with movie characters' alcoholic tastes.

"Oh, that's cool," we thought, "Leonard Nimoy showed up for the screening of The Wrath of Khan that the Alamo Drafthouse and Fantastic Fest had set up for last night." We were so naive to think that the Alamo didn't have some subversive trick up its sleeve. Suddenly, our mobile phone exploded as millions of geeks from inside the maroon-swathed walls of the Alamo South Lamar simultaneously flooded the internet with word that, no, Nimoy had not showed up for TWoK, but rather he had shown up with a never-seen-by-pedestrian-eyes print of the soon-to-be classic J.J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek.

How many times have you considered how awesome a movie version of your life would be? You're hilarious, your friends are crazy, you have gut-wrenching problems, and then there was that great that thing you said that one time. Seriously—it’s not just us, is it? But would people who didn’t know you find it as great as you would? Adventureland might just answer that question.

• @NYTimes writes about the annual nerd pilgrimage! @sxsw #sxsw #sxswi
• Doh! Massive downtown iFail prompts AT&T to scrape egg off their iface and boost their inetwork.
• Local peeps hoping music festival brings some serious scratch to the ATX.

Clark Lyda and Jesse Lyda are first-time filmmakers based out of Austin and New York City. The documentary they produced and directed about the T. Don Hutto family detention center in Taylor, The Least of These, is having its world premiere Monday as part of the SxSW Film Festival.

In We Live in Public, acclaimed director Ondi Timoner pieces together footage from two of Harris' past projects, one of which was "Quiet", a chronicle of 100 people living in an underground bunker in Manhattan for 30 days, their every movement recorded (voluntarily) and broadcast online by Harris, until the cops shut it down. Maybe it was the indoor shooting range that did it? Following that experiment, Harris and his girlfriend decided to broadcast their lives 24/7 online for six months—until she had enough and moved out. This from a man who began one of the first online television networks and made millions through web consulting. Harris, "the greatest Internet pioneer you've never heard of," lived in public, and eventually lost his sense of self and his mind. And we could watch it all online.