2008 has yet to reveal its true heavy hitters release-wise, and it's just as well: I haven't even had time to absorb a thousand or so top ten lists, my own personal reflections on 2007, and my expectations for the new year. Even so, there is a handful of intriguing things this week, provided you like Various Artists. Typically, I'm into Various Artists only when the compilation features new, unreleased and / or collaborative......

Still from Lions for LambsWe were under the impression that "No Country for Old Men" was opening this weekend, and we just found out it's only coming to "big" cities today—Austinites have to wait till next weekend. Miffed, we're only slightly placated by the other offerings at hand, though Philip Seymour Hoffman is hard to turn down... Lions for Lambs: Meryl Streep is a reporter, Tom Cruise is typecast as a neocon congressman, Robert Redford......

After a fantastic week of panels, parties and screenings, the Austin Film Festival will wrap up tonight with a screening of Sidney Lumet's highly anticipated Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Lumet (the man behind films like Running on Empty, Serpico, and one of our favorite movies ever, Dog Day Afternoon) directs an unbelievably great cast including Albert Finney, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei and Philip Seymour Hoffman in this caper-gone-wrong thriller. We haven't had the......

Another Friday means another round of fresh outta the box movies. With summer's end possibly mere weeks away, these are our last days to indulge in the pastime of escaping Austin's scorching good vibes to sit in distracted air-conditioned comfort. And in some parts of the country it's already fall, which means there's a bumper crop of new movies out! The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: On one hand, this period......

Ethan Hawke, Richard Linklater and Jesse Harris walk the red carpet at Austin Film Society's screening of "The Hottest State" Wednesday at the Paramount. Photos by Kristin B. If you can't view the Flash slideshow above, an alternate version appears after the jump.......

The complete schedule for the 14th annual Austin Film Festival has been announced, and it looks pretty amazing. 79 feature films and 98 shorts will screen over the course of eight days at various locations in Austin, beginning on October 11th with Brett Morgen’s much hyped docudrama Chicago 10, starring Hank Azaria, Dylan Baker, Nick Nolte, Mark Ruffalo, Roy Scheider, Liev Schreiber and Jeffrey Wright. Jason Reitman's brilliant new comedy Juno (starring Ellen Page, Michael......

From his beginnings in youth flicks like Explorers and Dead Poets Society to his modern-day gigs with Rick Linklater and Sidney Lumet, Austin native Ethan Hawke has done his fair share of acting. Now he's jumped behind the camera to direct an adaptation of his novel The Hottest State, a story most believe is based on Hawke's 90's fling with singer Lisa Loeb. Regardless of the truth of that rumor, the story centers around......

The lineup for the 2006 Cannes Film Festival has been announced, and Austinite Richard Linklater will have the distinction of being the first director to ever show films in the main competition and Un Certain Regard (the competition which grants money to the winner to enable French distribution). Linklater’s Fast Food Nation, based on the book by Eric Schlosser and starring Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette and Kris Kristofferson, will appear in the main competition.......