AFS Essentials: J’Entends Plus la GuitareTuesday, December 11thAlamo Drafthouse Downtown (320 E 6th Street)$4 / Free for AFS Members, 7pm[info]When we think of a muse, we don't typically imagine the corporeal, but rather a winged sprite, strumming a lyre, an apparition that is not of this earth and cannot be held in its confines. We also imagine that once you have found your muse, or that which turns on the flowing faucet of your......

Promo still from Jaman.com AFS Essentials: Le Vent de la NuitTuesday, December 4thAlamo Drafthouse Downtown (320 E 6th Street)FREE for AFS members, $4 non-members; 7pm[info] | [tickets]Tonight, AFS continues their amazing Phillipe Garrel retrospective with 1999's La Vent de La Nuit (The Wind of the Night), starring the timeless Catherine Deneuve as Hélene, a hot (duh) rich lady driven to distraction by her much younger art-student lover, Paul. Does he really love her for who......

AFS Essentials: Les Amants Réguliers Tuesday, November 27thAlamo Drafthouse Downtown (320 E 6th Street)6:15pm, $4 / Free for AFS members[info]Poor Philippe Garrel. He has made dozens of films over the last four decades, but has been mostly overlooked stateside because he didn't fit into the tidy (or not so tidy) box of French New Wave, thereby not enjoying the peripheral fame brought about by heavy hitters such as Godard, Truffaut, or Melville. In truth,......

Photo of Frantz Fanon courtesy of AFS website AFS Essentials: Black Is, Black Ain’t and Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White MaskTuesday, November 20thAlamo Drafthouse South Lamar (1120 S. Lamar)$4 / Free to AFS Members, 7PM[info] | [tickets]Most of the time it is easier to just blend in with everything around you, to not be different, to avoid rocking the proverbial boat, perhaps to the detriment of your true identity and eventually your soul. In the......

AFS Essentials Presents Black DjuTuesday, November 13thAlamo Drafthouse South Lamar (1120 S. Lamar)7pm, $4 / Free to AFS Members[info] | [tickets]It's bad enough being a stranger in a strange land, but when you need assistance from the local people to help solve the mysterious disappearance of your father, things can get downright maddening. Tonight, the Austin Film Society sends us on a suspenseful quest as they presents Black Dju, the fifth offering in the......

Sugar Cane Alley, the third offering of the current Austin Film Society series Torn From the Motherland: Films from the African Diaspora, introduces us to a young boy named Jose who has grown up in the shanty towns of Martinique. Life in his village has been poor in material possessions, but rich with lessons. He has learned about race relations through his friendship with a child of mixed ethnicity, the bastard son of the Creole......

Arthur Seaton (a young, bright Albert Finney) reminds us of ourselves--a hard working man that refuses to let the daytime sweat on his brow dictate his ability to personify something more grand in the twilight hours. (Granted our job doesn't necessarily make us "sweat" in the conventional definition, and we are actually of the female persuasion, but that's all semantics really.) He cares not what toll his rabble rousing may bring upon those around him,......

One truly is the loneliest number. We prefer things in multiples: beers, potato chips, orgasms (was that taking it too far? Eh, fugetaboutit.) And we definitely enjoy the chance to experience two landmark films in one compact bundle. Tonight, the Austin Film Society presents not one, but two sensational films as part of their gritty Essential series Blokes 'n' Birds: British Realist Cinema (1958-1965). In the past several years, you may have noticed that a......

Tuesday night, the Austin Film Society presents Girl with Green Eyes, a tale of the naive-girl-in-the-big-city and the second offering in their Essential Cinema Series "Blokes 'n Birds: British Realist Cinema, 1958-1965." Rita Tushingham plays Kate, a quiet, wide-eyed rural Irish girl thrust into the hustle and bustle of metropolitan Dublin and into the bombastic presence of the worldly Baba, played by Lynn Redgrave. While Baba may have plenty of verve, she is brushed aside......

Tomorrow, as part of the new AFS Essential Cinema series "Blokes 'n Birds: British Realist Cinema, 1958-1965", Look Back in Anger will bring its critique of postwar British identity to Alamo South Lamar. Richard Burton stars as a disaffected, angry, undirected young man stuck in a flat and bullying his wife for an outlet--as clearly shown in the above still. (Too bad he didn't happen to live in America...the Beats had an excellent road-n-drugs cure......

As part of their summer Global Minds, Other Worlds: Global Sci-Fi Cinema series, the Austin Film Society presents Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). In this masterful remake of the '50s original, director Philip Kaufman confirms once and for all that soulless pod people are, truly, a mass-anxiety filmic allegory for the ages. The first Body Snatchers (1956) saw alien seeds drifting to a small California town, quietly killing off its inhabitants and hatching......

Never mind that it's not that hot outside right now (though we would argue that the wet-dishrag humidity more than makes up for what the thermometer's not showing). Climate change is still happening/still scary, and the movie at the Alamo tonight, the next installment in the AFS' global scifi series, is all about that possible future heated terrasphere. The Day The Earth Caught Fire, having been birthed in 1961, is more worried about nuclear war......

If the Italian name of the vampires-in-space sci-fi movie playing tonight at the Alamo Downtown (that would be "TERRORE NELLO SPAZIO") doesn't give you a thrill of glee, how about this line of the description? "...the crew soon discovers the crashed Argos—and learns that her crew died fighting each other!" No? You have a hard and boring heart, my friend. This film, part of the AFS' summer foreign scifi series, "Other Minds, Other Worlds: Global......

Slide, slide, slippity-slide, hittin' switches on the block in a '65... oh, sorry, wrong kind of voyage. Anyway, this Cosmic Voyage promises to be pretty much as rad as anything Coolio's ever done. Based on early space travel theorist Konstantin Eduardovitch Tsiolkovsky's novel Beyond the Earth, Cosmic Voyage (Kosmicheskiy reys: Fantasticheskaya novella) portrays humans in space 25 years before Yuri Gagarin's historical journey. It's presented as part of the Austin Film Society's Other Minds, Other......

As part of the AFS Essentials series on the films of superhuman director Michel Haneke, the Alamo Downtown will be running The Piano Teacher (or "La Pianiste", if you want to impress somebody impressionable) tonight. Do not let this film still of a scene of passion in a public restroom deceive you; this movie will not inspire you to do the popcorn trick on anybody, but rather to rush out and invest in a chastity......

Okay, maybe we're not the kind of friend you'd invite to your wedding, or ask to hide a gun for you until the heat dies down. But we do try our best to keep you informed about awesome new films and film-related events—which is something your regular, non-blogger friends probably almost never do. Now that we think of it, why do you even hang out with them? Anyway, this Tuesday April 10th you'll get a......

Tonight, as part of their Children of Abraham/Ibrahim: Films of North Africa and the Middle East series, the Austin Film Society presents Satin Rouge, Tunisian director Raja Amari’s warm, moving tale of personal triumph and reclaimed happiness. The film follows Lilia, a conservative, widowed mother struggling to come to terms with her husband’s death and frustrated by her increasingly rebellious daughter, Salma. After fainting at a belly-dancing cabaret late one night, Lilia is befriended by......

Tonight, as part of their Children of Abraham/Ibrahim: Films of North Africa and the Middle East series, the Austin Film Society presents Iron Island, Mohammad Rasoulof’s eerie, allegorical drama about a community of Iranian squatters living on a decaying oil tanker anchored somewhere in the Persian Gulf. The ship is full of strange characters: a schoolteacher who insists the boat is slowly sinking; an eccentric old man who spends his days staring into the sun......

Tonight, as part of their South By Southeast: The Films of Thailand and Vietnam series, the Austin Film Society presents Ong-Bak, the breakout 2003 action film that brought martial arts whiz Tony Jaa to international attention. When a nasty big-city gangster steals a sacred Buddha head from a small Thai village (thereby severely messing up the village’s karma, or something), Ting (Jaa) ventures to Bangkok to recover it. With the help of his estranged con-artist......

Tonight, as part of their South By Southeast: The Films of Thailand and Vietnam series, the Austin Film Society presents Last Life in the Universe, Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s gorgeously pensive tale of violence, loneliness and love on the outskirts of Bangkok. Last Life tells the story of Kenji, a timid, obsessive-compulsive librarian whose attempt to hang himself is interrupted by his brother Yukio, a Japanese gang member on the run from a vindictive Yakuza boss. After......

Tonight, as part of their South By Southeast: The Films of Thailand and Vietnam series, the Austin Film Society presents Academy Award nominee Anh Hung Tran's elegiac 2001 drama Vertical Ray of the Sun. Set in modern Hanoi, Vertical Ray of the Sun follows three sisters (Suong, Khanh and Lien) as they prepare a memorial feast in honor of their deceased parents. The more time the sisters spend together, the more they discover hidden truths......

TUESDAY [24] film • The Best of Sex-Ed with Owen Egerton at Alamo Downtown (9:45pm, $9) film • Chocolat Feast at Alamo South (7pm, $50) film • AFS Essentials: Laura at Alamo Downtown (7pm) film • The Yes Men at The Space (8pm, Free) film • Young Frankenstein at Rounders Pizzeria (8pm, Free) tv • SXSW Presents: The Dreams of Sparrows on KLRU (9pm) film • Bubba Ho-Tep at Alamo Village (9:45pm) music •......