Category: Austin

You might wonder why I’m bothering with Movies This Week this week. We all know exactly which single movie has opened around the country, already pulling in more than $16 million just from midnight and overnight screenings, which has yanked the US box office out of its springtime slump, and which is dominating most theaters in town this week.
However, it is possible that Austin might contain a few people who don’t want to go see the big George Lucas extravaganza and would like to find out if any other movies are playing around town this weekend. Or perhaps some people saw the big movie already but would like to watch something else too.
If you didn’t catch them on opening weekend, you can still find some good movies playing in first-run theaters. Kung Fu Hustle and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room are both great films in entirely different ways. (I wouldn’t try them as a double-feature, though.) I can’t believe the Arbor is still showing Bride and Prejudice, which I would also recommend.
And there are lots of special event screenings in Austin this week, whether you like lesbian spy spoofs, Thirties musicals, John Hughes flicks, or Humphrey Bogart double-features.
Alamo Downtown, Alamo Lake Creek, Dobie, and Arbor Great Hills are the Austin theaters where you know you won’t have to push your way past long lines of lightsaber-loving fans to get to the smaller movie you might want to see. And you can always head over to Spider House or Pedazo Chunk for their regular DVD screenings.
And if you wanted to stay home to watch a movie, you could rent The Fearless Freaks, the documentary about the Flaming Lips that was just released on DVD.

Continue reading movies this week: there can be more than one

I am looking for Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. Has anyone seen her lately? I need her to cure my case of the Don’t-Wannas.
I don’t know how many of you have ever read the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books by Betty MacDonald (who also wrote The Egg and I), but they are delightful children’s books. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle lived alone in an upside-down house and she understood children perfectly. In fact, the neighborhood parents were always calling her to ask for help with their children, and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle had wonderful and sometimes magical cures for kids who didn’t take baths, or refused to pick up their toys, or had terrible table manners.
I am sure that Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle would have an effective cure for the Don’t-Wannas. I don’t wanna go to work. I don’t wanna write my grandparents. I don’t wanna change the cat’s litter box. I don’t wanna write movie reviews. And I don’t wanna write Movies This Week.
Perhaps she would provide some sort of magic powder that kept me stuck in bed for awhile. At first it would be lovely to not have to get out of bed and do anything. Later, I would get so bored and restless that I would jump at the chance to go to the office or clean the kitchen or see a Jennifer Lopez movie.
Without Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, I cannot overcome my apathy for the movies opening this week. I don’t wanna write about them and I don’t wanna see them. Can’t I go somewhere else for a little rest and recreation? I hear the south of France is lovely at this time of year.

Continue reading movies this week: paging Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle

“Snakes. Why’d it have to be snakes.”
“I need a baby, Hi. They got more than they can handle.”
“That rug really tied the room together.”
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
“Hey, careful, man, there’s a beverage here!”
“I want my two hundred dollars!”
“Son, you got a panty on your head.”
“I’m not left-handed either.”
I bet everyone reading this can recognize at least one of the above quotes. Who the hell cares which new movies are opening in Austin this week, when you can hear those lovely lines in theaters all around town? And by “theaters” I also mean the Rolling Roadshow setup at Republic Square Park and the Dart Bowl.
You’ve got your Coen brothers, The Princess Bride, some of the very best Bogdanovich movies, and a good movie involving George Lucas. Can’t ask for much more, but if you did, there’s also Ingmar Bergman and Audrey Hepburn (not in the same movie).

Continue reading movies this week: inconceivable, dude

This week’s crop of movies looks very tempting. I wish I could skip work and sit in the theater catching up on Kung Fu Hustle, seeing the new releases (to Austin) of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and ,em>the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and finally seeing Inside Deep Throat and Imelda and Downfalland then getting to catch some obscure new movies like Viva Les Amis.
“Hi, Ms. Boss? I won’t be in today. I’m sorry. I’m suffering from cinematic withdrawal disorder.”
No, I guess that won’t fly.

Continue reading movies this week: so tempting

It’s that time of year again, when my allergies are sorely put to the test. I am walking around all the time with dull sinus headaches and congestion and feeling generally crummy. You-know-what is in the air, and I just can’t tolerate very much of it.
No, I don’t mean pollen. I mean dumb movie remakes. Why do we need another version of The Amityville Horror? My sinuses are throbbing in protest.
Get ready for a summer full of dumb remakes. So far I have heard about House of Wax, The Longest Yard, War of the Worlds, The Bad News Bears (okay, that one’s Linklater, but still), The Pink Panther, and probably others that I would be happier not to know about.
I am also allergic to movies adapted from TV shows and I know I am going to be afflicted with a bout of those, including The Dukes of Hazzard (urrrrgh), Bewitched (it’s the Ephrons, but still), and even The Honeymooners.
Does anyone else notice that remakes of old movies and adaptations of old TV series provide filmmakers with an excellent excuse for showing women in stereotypical, subservient roles? I can’t wait for a summer of seeing women as housewives, bimbos in halters and shorty shorts, and gruesome horror-movie victims.
I don’t think the doctor is going to be able to prescribe anything to cure these allergies, sadly. I’m going to put an ice pack on my head and watch Holiday again. Someone come find me when a Terry Gilliam movie opens.
And don’t even talk to me about horrible sequels/prequels being released this summer, or I may require emergency care.

Continue reading movies this week: allergy season

So last weekend, my parents and my boyfriend and I all went to Spamarama. Spamarama is a longtime (29 years) Austin festival devoted not to unwanted email, but to the potted meat product. I hadn’t been to Spamarama before. We stayed long enough to watch the Spam relay and scarier still, the Spam toss.
The highlight of Spamarama is the big tent of people participating in the Spam cooking contest and offering samples to everyone. There was a long line of people waiting to get into the Spam sample tent. I am not quite sure what this says about Austinites. Are they brave, innovative, weird, or not very bright? We were in line with everyone else, so it’s hard for me to judge.
What I learned is that anything that tastes remotely edible with Spam in it probably tastes even better without Spam in it. (Very similar to Rachel’s insight about capers in Nora Ephron’s Heartburn.) The (relatively) tastiest dishes were so heavily spiced that any potential Spam flavor was masked: chili, jambalaya, and sauteed Spam in a mushroom wine sauce.
But I knew that deep down, it was Spam. And later on, I regretted it and had to clear my palate with some fudge pie a la mode from Scholz’s.
This week’s movies tend to make me think of Spam that has been heavily disguised with all kinds of trimmings. But at its heart … potted pork. Yum.

Continue reading movies this week: cinespamia

I realized this morning that some cool movies are playing in Austin this week, and I missed telling everyone about them because I was too busy playing Ask Jette. (You can still email me questions, you know. I am seriously considering doing it again if I get enough good questions.)
I am not going to list the movies that opened over the weekend because you probably already know about Sin City and Beauty Shop, and if you’re enough of a Woody Allen fan to care, you also know that Melinda and Melinda opened in Austin.
But here are a few gems you might have overlooked:

Continue reading movies this week: abbreviated in Austin

My parents are visiting Austin next week. We don’t usually watch movies together. They go to the outlet mall while I’m at work. We sit around on the sofa with a golf game on the TV and talk about what we might want to do (and rarely do any of it except nap). Sometimes we sit on the patio and drink beer and tell very funny family stories. (My dad pulls me aside to tell me the ones my mom hates to hear, like anything to do with my grandparents.)
We might go to the Wildflower Center, but I’m not sure my dad will like it. He likes to go places where he can get snacks at regular intervals. (His favorite Austin restaurant is Taco Cabana. Don’t ask me why.) So perhaps we might go see the new Whole Foods, because that seems like a great place for him to procure snacks while we watch the chocolate enrobing station. We could go to the Westlake Farmers Market. We could walk to the Dairy Queen, or hang out with the cows at Amy’s Ice Cream. Who knows?
But we are probably not going to see any movies, especially not in movie theaters. My mom doesn’t like anything with crude language or even hints of non-marital sex. My dad loves movies with fart jokes or any kind of physical humor. (He would have felt right at home seeing those movies with the Fiji audience in Reel Paradise.) Usually he pretends to pacify my mom, or whomever else is in the room, by shouting, “That’s disgusting! What kind of filth is that?” and then laughing his ass off.
I will illustrate the difficulties in seeing movies with my parents by sharing my estimate of my parents’ reactions to some of the movies opening in Austin this week. I will leave you to guess which parent would say what.

Continue reading movies this week: what would Mom and Dad think?