I would like to do something fun that is not related to movies this weekend. I have seen plenty of movies recently during the SXSW film festival. It looks like I need to catch up at the office on Sunday, or else I would want to do something outdoors (weather permitting). Even yard work might be welcome … well, okay, that’s going a little too far.
Now that SXSW is drawing to a close, local theaters have scheduled a good lineup of interesting movies and movie-related events. Check the Alamo and Paramount listings for full details.
Oh, yeah, there are also new current releases in Austin. Some look quite good, depending on your taste: Born into Brothels for the documentary fans, Steamboy for the anime fans, Ice Princess for … um … figure-skating fans, I guess.
Category: Austin
movies this week: in the SXSW bubble
What, there are movies opening in Austin this week that aren’t part of SXSW? Oh. Hm. I hadn’t been paying attention.
nine days, 200 movies
I’ve been trying to figure out how many films I actually can see in nine days. So far my SXSW film calendar has 28 films listed, although some will be impossible for me to attend (I do not think I will be able to see a movie at Alamo South at 10 pm and then drive to Alamo Downtown, and park, for a midnight movie on a weekend). I wish I could have taken the entire week off work so I could see more collections of shorts during the day, but I didn’t decide early enough that I would attend the film festival. I wish I had bought a pass to the film conference, but I’m not a filmmaker and so it didn’t seem to be worth the money for me. (If I can’t get into any of the films I like with my plain little film pass, I will be very sad.) I wish I had a chauffeur to shuttle me from theater to theater.
My boyfriend is going to SXSW Interactive, so we might not see very much of each other for the next week. He got a new laptop last night, just in time for the conference, and he has been trying to set everything up properly so he can take it with him. I haven’t decided if it’s worth it for me to bring my laptop with me. I know Alamo has free wireless, but do I actually need the laptop? Wouldn’t a nice little spiral notebook work just as well? Am I really going to post entries between movies?
The Austin bloggers are arranging for happy hours and dinners and things during the first days of SXSW Interactive. I don’t know anyone else who is going to the film festival. That’s not true. A coworker might buy a film pass and go to some movies with me (I haven’t heard from him lately so I’m not sure) and I think LB is going to the film conference and some of the movies too.
The movie theaters for SXSW are not clustered in one place; they are scattered around town. The Arbor is close to my house; Alamo South and Dobie are both a short drive from downtown (in opposite directions); the other theaters are downtown and you can walk from one to the other if you are athletic and have good shoes. In the daytime. I wouldn’t do it at night alone (well, Paramount to Alamo Downtown, but not ACC). The Paramount and Alamo Downtown don’t have their own parking, so you have to fight everyone else for street parking (which will be impossible during the music festival) or find a pay parking lot that isn’t too terribly pricey (whee). I don’t think Dobie is charging film festival attendees for parking but I can’t say for sure.
If I were going to the film conference, I might have a good chance of meeting other film people and talking (I do not network, sadly) and so forth, but just going to the film festival, there is no central place for attendees to cluster and hang out. But as I’ve said, I don’t think the film conference is worthwhile for me; I would get more out of the interactive conference. The only panel that caught my interest was the one on film blogs (and why are there no women on this panel, when most film blogs I read are written by women?), because I would like to hear what other people have to say about them.
So I am a little envious of my boyfriend because he will have more of a social experience than I will. Okay, neither of us is very social, and I know that I like the idea better than the actuality of these events. We went to an Interactive-related party last year and I hid in a corner on the porch and talked only to people I know. I’m such a wimp.
I realize that what I really want is some good advice about attending the film festival. The only film festival I have ever attended has been Austin Film Festival, which was smaller and I had a free all-access pass (I used to do some work for them) and I didn’t care about seeing a lot of movies back then.
This is my first time attending SXSW, unless you count a single SXSW-related concert I attended back in 1992 (I should tell that story sometime), but that’s hardly the same thing. I know Austin, I know most of these theaters very well (Alamo South is the only one I haven’t been to, but that’s because it opened last week), but I don’t know this film festival at all.
David Nunez wrote some very good guidelines about attending SXSW Interactive. Kramer has some good advice for SXSW attendees who aren’t from Austin (I disagree about Guero’s, though, and would instead suggest y’all take a little drive to Hoover’s for yummy barbecue and home cooking). But I have not found anything helpful anywhere on the Web about attending the film festival. Which venues tend to fill up? If I have a film pass instead of a badge, am I screwed? Do I have to pay to park at Dobie? What is the screen like at ACC? If I see one movie at Alamo Downtown, can I stay in the theater for the next one, or do I have to get out and get in a line again? Is it okay if I keep a camera in my purse (I’m not going to use it in the theater)?
Is there anyone reading who can help me (and any other SXSW film newbies) here? Please post your advice in the comments section. And let me know if you’re going to be in Austin next week and want to say hi. If you see a lil round short-haired chick frowning at a laptop that is adorned with a Cookie Monster sticker, that would be me. (The sticker is on the laptop, not on me.) I only wish I could bring Cookie Monster stickers for everybody.
movies this week: screw that, I’m going
One line stood out in the weekly email newsletter from Alamo Drafthouse this week:
“And there you’d been thinking that SXSW was the only big film event you had to look forward to this month. Ha! If you do it right, you’ll be exhausted before South By Southwest even starts.”
Yes, I will.
March is starting to look downright insane. I bought my SXSW film festival pass on Tuesday night. Every year, the department where I work gets terribly busy right around SXSW time, and so I decide I really can’t make the time to go. I’ve seen coworkers buy festival passes that they aren’t able to use. I didn’t want to deal with the frustration and I always said, “Maybe next year.”
This year, I said, “Screw that. I’m going.”
I am taking some time off work in the middle of a hectic time at work, which is pretty dumb, but I don’t care. You cannot plan your life around product release schedules, mainly because they always seem to shift so that the vacation you’ve been planning for months suddenly occurs in the middle of crucial beta testing.
I would take the whole week off work if I could, because I want to see manymany movies and write about them and it would be nice if I could get to the gym at least once during a week when I will spend a lot of time with my butt parked in theater seats … but even working half-days will probably create some deadline difficulties.
And I should work this weekend to make up for the time lost, but I want to see Bride and Prejudice and I’m going to a wedding and did I mention I am auditing a class at UT? It’s a film class so I have to make time for screenings, too. I can’t go to The Muppet Movie sing-along on Sunday night because I need to watch a film for the class.
And there are other various personal projects that I decided to undertake and can’t back away from right now.
So I think that Alamo Drafthouse is being downright mean, opening their new Alamo South theater (on S. Lamar) this weekend and showing all kinds of interesting movies next week before the SXSW film festival starts. I can’t see The Iron Giant because I have a class. If I see Rashomon I will miss the only opportunity all week to work out. (Fortunately, the Rashomon is a little too pricey for me.)
Under the circumstances, perhaps you understand why I cannot even deal with a movie titled Be Cool. And I don’t need The Pacifier, either. (What is this, Dumb Titles in New Releases Week? They’re all two words long and laaaaame.)
movies this week: why I love Austin
I noticed it last week: a particularly long listing of special screenings and film-related events in Austin. And that wasn’t comprehensive by any means. I don’t usually include movies being shown in non-theatrical venues, like at Spider House or Pedazo Chunk (is Pedazo Chunk still open? Their Web site doesn’t work). I also don’t include the TV-related stuff like Alamo’s Buffy Sing-Along, which I’m told is quite popular.
This week, the list is just as long. And it’s not going to get any shorter. The new Alamo South Lamar opens next Friday, March 4, and they have scheduled all kinds of fun film events as part of their grand opening from March 7-10. The SXSW film festival runs from March 11-19, and you can buy festival passes now at Waterloo Video. And once it warms up outside, Rolling Roadshow will start showing films in parks again.
New releases? Who cares about seeing the latest Hollywood product in a big chain theater when there are so many interesting one-time-only events going on in town? (Okay, I want to see Bride and Prejudice, but that’s about it.) Check out the film schedules for the Alamo theaters, for the Paramount, and for the Texas Union Theater. (Why didn’t anyone tell me the Texas Union showed Army of Darkness on Ash Wednesday? And Shaun of the Dead the day after? I am bookmarking that calendar.) And so many of these movies are free or cheap … you can indulge your love of seeing movies in theaters at a very low cost.
I love Austin. We’ve got everything from Takashi Miike films to The Muppet Movie playing on screens here.
On the other hand, with this incredible bounty of films around town, I think I may have persuaded myself to cancel our Netflix account. Oops.
movies at Spider House?
When I write Movies This Week entries, I don’t include movies that are being shown on non-theater screens (on TVs in bars or video stores, for example) unless the movies are unusual or hard to find. But week after week, I read in the Austin Chronicle film listings about interesting double features being shown at Spider House, the funky-cool cafe off Guadalupe at 29th Street.
This week, for example, the Spider House lineup includes double features of American Pop and Wizards, Conan the Barbarian and Pumping Iron, and Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision (about the artist who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial) and The Times of Harvey Milk.
I am curious about where at Spider House they show these movies. Do they have a big-screen TV or do they project them onto a wall? I’ve been to Spider House a few times over the years, usually sitting outside. The cafe itself is a converted house with a number of little-bitty rooms. I can’t imagine a room in the cafe that would hold more than a half-dozen or so people. So I am intrigued.
Unfortunately, the very pretty Spider House Web site contains no information about this at all. The only place I’ve found the schedule of films is on the Austin Chronicle’s site. So is there anyone out there who has been to the Spider House movie nights and can provide some first-hand information? I’d also like to know if a more complete schedule is available. Please post a comment or email me.
movies this week: what’s my demographic?
I wonder when, or if, I ever was in a target audience demographic, particularly for movies.
First of all, I am female, and we all know that women are not as important as men when you are marketing a movie. After all, women will go along with their boyfriends to see a movie the boyfriend wants to see, but men won’t go along with their girlfriends to see some damn chick-headlining movie, unless it involves Uma Thurman brandishing a sword. (Hollywood people really do think like this, I am sorry to say. And they are worse about children’s movies, which is why so few children’s movies star girls. Look at the trailers for The Incredibles, in which the little boy takes center stage, and tell me I lie.)
When I was in high school, the teen market became very desirable. Studios were falling all over themselves to make movies that would appeal to teenagers (especially teenage boys, as I mentioned above). But I wasn’t allowed to see any of the teen sex comedies, so I was limited to John Hughes. I wasn’t even old enough to get into The Breakfast Club, which was rated R, because Lakeside Theaters was enforcing the under-17 rule. So I never did get any benefit from that.
I don’t remember quite when I started getting all film geeky, but I know that the teen movie fad was still going on when I was in college, only I was too old and too film snobby to want to see any of that fare.
And now I am in an age group (let’s just say “over 30″) where Hollywood and marketers assume that I don’t go to the movies at all, despite the fact that I would love to see a movie in a theater every week if I could. I am sure we average at least two movies per month in theaters, especially if you count revival and art films.
I’ve been thinking about this because this week’s crop of movies opening in Austin all seem to be designed to appeal to some particular demographic group, but those groups don’t include me. Too old and jaded for Because of Winn Dixie. Too smart for Son of the Mask. Too allergic to black trenchcoats for Constantine. (I had some nice zingers here for Man of the House, but it doesn’t open until next week. Darn.)
But wait, there is one movie that does seem to appeal to me as a film geek: Inside Deep Throat. There’s nothing like an NC-17 rated documentary to lure me to a theater. So maybe there is something for everyone in theaters right now. Isn’t that lovely? (But what demographic group does that put me in, and should I be ashamed to admit it?)
movies this week: houseguests and all
My sister and her boyfriend are visiting us this weekend. As I’ve mentioned, her boyfriend is a big film geek. I tried to interest them in seeing that most underrated of 2004 films, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, but they are oddly uninterested. He wants to rent something by Atom Egoyan. She wants to see romantic comedies.
But we’re all agreed: none of us want to see any of the movies opening in Austin this weekend. For one reason or another, these films offer no temptation to go to a theater. I wanted to take them to Dobie to see a movie in one of the amusingly decorated theaters, but I’ve already seen Sideways and The Life Aquatic, so I may have to send them off by themselves to see one of those films (both of which I liked, but not enough to want to see again soon).
I wish I could persuade all three of them (sister, her boyfriend, my boyfriend) to watch The Palm Beach Story with me. I just bought the DVD last week, a few days after it was released. It’s a delightful movie. I mean, who can resist The Ale and Quail Club? The Princess Centimillia? And of course, The Wienie King. Yeah, I know. I’ll enjoy that particular movie alone.
movies this week: bad boogie
Austin is just about caught up now on all those acclaimed movies that y’all on the Left and Right coasts got to see last year. Like the rest of the country, we’re also getting the doggy films of winter, which no one quite knows what to do with, but which might appeal to some people as an alternative to all those highbrow Oscar flicks. Bad Education or Boogeyman … the choice is yours.
If you’re not planning to watch football or football-related advertising this weekend, there are still plenty of good movies out in theaters for you to catch.
(Personally, I like to go to a nice restaurant during the Superbowl, somewhere with no TV sets. Those places are usually pretty empty while everyone is crowded around the TV at parties. It’s a great time to enjoy the places I normally like but usually find a bit noisy and/or crowded.)
movies this week: snubbed!
Oscar nominations were announced this week, which means that the major contenders are in wider release or in re-release. So Austin finally gets a chance to see Million Dollar Baby, like it or not, and Sideways is popping out all over. (I would rather see Eternal Sunshine again, but no one asked me.)
I don’t have much to say about the nominations, except to mention the movies that were overlooked entirely. I am thinking in particular about one movie. You know which one, don’t you? So entertaining and enlightening. Perhaps a bit controversial (conservatives have been ranting against one of the main characters), but I felt it had so much to offer every one of us. A sincere and sweet tale about Triumph of the Human Spirit, which is just what the Academy seems to like, and yet it did not receive a single nomination. Perhaps that’s because it wasn’t about the triumph of the human spirit exactly, but still I cannot understand why it was snubbed so entirely.
Of course, I am talking about my boyfriend’s favorite movie of 2004 and in his opinion, possibly the best movie ever made, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.
The Academy Awards do include a category for animated film, and while I can understand that The Incredibles were something extra-special (in fact, I think it should have been nominated in the general Best Picture category), and that a lot of people did seem to like Shrek 2, it is sad to see that Shark Tale is in there but our absorbent and yellow and porous friend is not. I suspect political conspiracy, perhaps due to the influence of these alleged “family” groups that are currently accusing SpongeBob of being a gay icon who promotes such shocking values as tolerance.
Or maybe the Academy is full of humorless Philistines. You be the judge.
Alamo Drafthouse, however, is undaunted by the lack of industry awards bestowed on The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, and is showing this masterpiece of silliness next month. You can go on Saturday morning and enjoy lots of sugary cereal with your movie, or you can go at night and have a beer.
In the meantime, there are other movies opening in Austin this week, but none of them have singing pirates in them. A shame, really.