Austin360 blogs > Austin Movie Blog > Archives > 2008 > August
August 2008
OMG! Best movie event. Ever.
The swirling, swooning, keening voices of Bollywood are coming to Austin and we’re all giddy about it. Let’s quote the organizers of this event. We don’t want to mess it up.
A mega-Bollyhood [their neologism] show is slated in Austin on Friday September 12, 2008 at the Gateway Church auditorium, McNeil Road with a band of playback singers led by S.P. Balasubramanyam and K.S. Chitra.
Balu has sung for more than 30 years in all the languages in India and has to his credit more than 4,0000 songs and hold the Guinness book of record for the maximum number of songs by any male artist. He is also is also a producer, director, actor. A gifted singer, he is highly regarded for his incredible vocal range, deep rich voice, and mastery of style, technique and control. In a single concert, SPB can take his listeners along with him on a rich and colorful emotional journey across states of mirth and melancholy, romance and revelry, reflection and abandon, leaving them ecstatic and breathless.
Chitra has the unique distinction of being the first female singer in the history of South Indian film playback singing to be honored by all the four southern state government’s as the best playback singer.
We will be there. You should too. Tix run $30 to $100. Get them HERE.
Back on Earth, the Austin Film Festival and Screenwriters Conference keeps beefing up its super line-up of panelists. Now on: Melissa Rosenberg, writer of the teen vampire flick “Twilight,” which she adapted from the crazy-popular novel. She’s also written for TV’s “Dexter,” “The O.C.” and “Birds of Prey.”
More HERE.
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Kevin Smith opens Fantastic Fest
Kevin Smith — yet another filmmaker who enjoys a requited love affair with Austin — will open Fantastic Fest with his new romp “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” on Sept. 18 at the Paramount.
Smith will of course be there to regale the crowd, which tends to eat right out of his naughty hands. Speaking of the salacious, viewers may stick around for official after-party festivities: the Air Sex World Championships on the Paramount stage. Like the film — starring Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks — this event merits a hard R.
Tickets go on sale Saturday online at www.fantasticfest.com, by phone at 1-866-4GET-TIX or at the Paramount box office. (Admission to this show is included for Fantastic Fest badge holders.)
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Bob Ray: Hell on Reels
That indefatigable machine Bob Ray has news piled upon news, which he loads on top of a previous Everest of news and more, well, news.
We’ll share just a mound of it for today.
First: Ray’s insta-classic “Hell on Wheels” — “the ultimate roller-derby documentary” — is hitting DVD and Web download at IndiePixFilms.com on Sept. 30.
Then, on Monday, Ray won the Second Funniest Filmmaker in Austin Contest with the animated short “Platypus Rex in: Hymenoplasty,” which you can watch right HERE.
More on “Hell on Wheels” HERE.
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Halloween horrors
Carolyn Banks, our industrious film friend in Bastrop, says she’s revving up for the October shoot of her comedy-romance-horror movie “Invicta.”
With Banks writing and directing, the film is a joint production of River Road Studio and Upstart, the non-profit behind Bastrop Community Access Television.
And they need some help. Wanted are Bastrop students as PAs, special effects folks and lots of fire ants. (Ask Banks about that one.)
Get the lowdown HERE, or call Banks at 303-1531.
A sure way to get a beating on Halloween …
The men’s “The Love Guru” costume, only $39.99!
The next day, this guy’s wife filed papers.
Order yours HERE!
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Ben McKenzie stars in a loaded ‘Gun’
Austin’s Ben McKenzie, formerly of TV hit “The O.C.,” is starring in the filmed stage play “Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun,” based on Trumbo’s celebrated and harrowing anti-war novel.
We tell you because the movie gets its world premiere at 7 p.m. Sept. 22 at the Paramount Theatre, with McKenzie there. The special screening is a fund-raiser for the Mark Cuban Foundation’s Fallen Patriot Fund. The movie opens Sept. 26 at the Dobie.
Learn more about it HERE.
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A pair of great new media resources
Mary Celeste Kearney at UT’s RTF department alerts us to her cool new site Girls Make Media, “honoring and mobilizing girls’ media production,” she says, adding, “Hopefully, the site will become a rich resource that is useful to media educators, media researchers, and, of course, girls themselves!”
We’ve perused it, and it really is an extremely well-done, thorough and practical resource center that you should bookmark. We did. See it HERE.
Another outstanding outreach program for filmmakers from the Austin Film Society is the Texas Filmmakers’ Travel Grant, starting Sept. 1.
Says AFS: “The program will help offset travel costs for Texans whose films are invited to prestigious film festivals and events around the world, with small travel stipends given out on a rolling, year-round basis.”
Considering gas and flight costs, we respond: Yesss!
$10,000 a year will be set aside for the program. Read all about it HERE.
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Matthew’s coming back to town
Matthew McConaughey’s coming to his old stomping (and naked dancing) grounds for the red carpet world premiere of “Surfer, Dude,” the comedy he’s made with his old pal from Longview, writer-director S.R. Bindler, who’s best known for the magnificent 1997 doc “Hands on a Hard Body.” McConaughey’s j.k. livin’ production company is behind the new feature.
A fundraiser for the Austin Film Society, the screening is Sept. 3 at the Paramount Theatre (713 Congress Ave.). Bindler and other cast members will be in attendance.
“Surfer, Dude” will open exclusively in Austin on Sept. 5, then roll out to select cities later.
The film co-stars Woody Harrelson, Scott Glenn, Willie Nelson and Alexie Gilmore.
Official movie description:
In SURFER, DUDE, longboarding soul-surfer Steve Addington (Matthew McConaughey) returns to Malibu for the summer to find his cool hometown vibe corrupted. New sponsorship demands Addington to expand into Virtual Reality Video Games and Reality TV. Unwilling to participate in this new digital reality, he chooses to spend his summer surfing his home break. But in a twist-of-fate, the waves go flat and stay flat. Out of money, his expense accounts canceled, and betrayed by his buddies, Addington is backed into a harsh corner. He must endure the insanity that comes with no waves or give into “the Man” and his new, reality-altering machines.
Members of AFS and the Paramount may buy tickets starting Monday. Non-member tickets go on sale Aug. 23 through GetTix (or 866-443-8849), or the Paramount box office.
Check the film’s site HERE.
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Linklater’s latest at Toronto
Richard Linklater works fast. Seems it was mere weeks ago we reported that he’d wrapped his latest film “Me and Orson Welles” in London.
Since then a rough-cut has screened at Austin Studios and the film will join an exciting slate of American movies at the Toronto International Film Festival, running Sept. 4 through 13. (Expect it in theaters next year.)
Zac Efron, Claire Danes and Ben Chaplin star in the theater drama based on Robert Kaplow’s novel. More about the movie HERE.
Efron in ‘Orson’
Other Toronto titles: Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler”; Steven Soderbergh’s “Che”; Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York”; and Kevin Smith’s raunchy “Zack and Miri Make a Porno.”
Illustrious Austin screenwriter Anne Rapp hosts “Write What You Know, Then Make The Rest Up” as part of the Austin Film Festival’s Conversations in Film series.
The seminar happens at 3 p.m. Aug. 24 at the Renaissance Hotel (9721 Arboretum Blvd.), followed by a screening of “Cookie’s Fortune,” one of the Robert Altman films she wrote, at 5 p.m. at the Alamo Lake Creek.
$17; $12 for AFF members. Go HERE or call 478-4795.
Seating is limited.
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Film festival updates
At last: SXSW film is accepting movies for its 2009 iteration in March. This is a call for entries, peepos!
Go right HERE.
And in other fest nooz, the second wave of creepy, crawly, kooky Fantastic Fest flicks has been announced. Step right up, here.
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Slicing up ‘Pineapple,’ and an odd Elvis sighting
Like “Super Bad,” its companion-piece bro, “Pineapple Express” is being overrated beyond comprehension. We are so over Seth Rogen. In his secondary role, Danny McBride is twice as funny as Rogen and the likable but whatever James Franco. And no one seems to notice how much it lifts — whole scenes and sentiments — from its Apatow predecessor “Knocked Up.”
An earlier stoner movie sums it up in its title: “Half-Baked.”
There.
Update: It just dawned on us that Seth Rogen’s g.f. in Pineapple Express is Amber Heard from Austin.
Heard has done lots of stuff, including these Austin-shot films: “Friday Night Lights,” “All the Boys Love Mandy Lane” and the just-finished “Ex-Terminators.”
Scan her CV HERE.
In totally unrelated news featuring another kind of smoking …
Elvis Mitchell, former New York Times critic, nice guy and BFF with SXSW film, got popped with a wad of cash and his ubiquitous Cuban cigars, and you can read about the movie-ready bust HERE.
Just strange.
Elvis, stogie
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‘Mad’ man comes to Austin Film Festival
Matthew Weiner, writer, producer and director of AMC’s too-hot “Mad Men,” and some others have been added to the roster of panelists at the Austin Film Festival, Oct. 16-23.
Read more HERE.
At-risk youth are the target during the Mobile Film School’s Bowl-a-Rama fundraiser, sponsored by Confidence Bay. It happens 6 to 11 p.m. Saturday at Saengerrunde Hall and Scholz’s Biergarten in Austin.
Bowling, demonstrations, auction, live music, food — what’s not to like?
Open to all. Details and tickets HERE.
You remember the scene in “Knocked Up” in which Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd’s characters ingest a certain psychedelic fungus before they attend a Cirque du Soleil performance?
We’re not suggesting anything — not us! — but the famously flamboyant Quebec circus spectacle is splashing onto Austin movie screens in all its blinding hues and mind-warping theatrics. Under the banner “Cinema for the Senses,” the concert film is called “Delirum: Imagination Takes Flight.”
Woolly, weird, sometimes grandiose, sometimes embarrassing, the show plays Aug. 20, 21, 23 and 24 at the Gateway.
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Extras wanted for ‘Friday Night Lights’
Paid extras are needed for the third season of NBC’s “Friday Night Lights,” which shoots in Austin. Hiring runs through Nov. 26. Parts include football players, coaches, trainers, cheerleaders and fans.
Get your photo and apply at HERE. It’s free. Questions? Call: 707-7934.
Some details, via the talent agency:
Core Panther football players, ages 18 to 24, must not be now playing or intending to play football in college as this will jeopardize your NCAA eligibility. Football experience strongly preferred but not required, but you should look like a high school football player.
Core Panther cheerleaders, ages 18 to 24, must have previous cheerleading experience.
Fans, all ages, all types, willing to sit in the stands and cheer on our Panther team.
It’s not necessary to “activate” and Agency Pro account in order to be booked for work on “Friday Night Lights.” Upgraded packages will be offered but are definitely not required.
