Kindle 2 Usability Review Jakob Nielsen's review of the Kindle 2. Kind of weird that Amazon has ALREADY unveiled the Kindle 3, no? The 2nd gen has only been available for a few months.
UPDATE: These screenings have all been canceled. Bummer. They are still showing Repo Man for Music Monday, but it will be Coxless.
On May 17th and 18th, British-born indie icon Alex Cox will present three films at the Alamo Drafthouse here in Austin. Two of the films (Repo Man and Searchers 2.0), are his. The third (Michele Lupo’s 1966 Spaghetti Western Arizona Colt) is apparently one of Cox’s favorite European Westerns, which means it’s probably quite good.
I’ve been on a mild Cox kick lately, and I’m super excited to hear him talk about his films. I’m also fairly excited to see Repo Man on the big screen with an audience.
Which reminds me, here’s the beginning of a great Believer piece about Repo Man, and a Repo-themed scavenger hunt organized by the folks at the Alamo. If you want to read the rest, I’ll lend you the issue. If I can find it.
Short Letterpress Documentary A short (and apparently old) but great little documentary about a Massachusetts letterpress printing shop. Looks like this made the rounds a long time ago, but I'd never seen it. Makes me want to buy or build a letterpress.
Showlist Austin - A SXSW Party Guide Speaking of SXSW parties, Show List Austin (which is always a handy reference guide for live music-loving Austinites) is practically indispensable for planning out your SXSW day party schedule. They don't list official showcases, but the list of free parties is brain-meltingly long.
Data Pop 09 Data Pop 09 will celebrate the fine art of chiptunes–that is, making music with instruments fashioned form old video games. I love this.
Cinematic Titanic Come to Austin If you live in Austin, you should check out Cinematic Titanic this weekend–it's the original cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 in a traveling show, riffing on a different movie every night. Of course, Austin has its own gang of handsome heckler heroes in the Master Pancake Theatre crew, but still… MST3K!!!
Arthouse to Distribute Visual Acoustics The folks at Arthouse films have acquired the rights to Eric Bricker's Visual Acoustics, a fantastic documentary portrait of architectural photographer Julius Schulman. They plan a theatrical release sometime this year, followed by a DVD release. Recommended.
Patton Oswalt Is Gay-tham for Statham How did I not know Patton Oswalt had a myspace blog? Anyway–I agree with him on this Jason Statham thing. Totally badass action hero whose movies are somehow completley disposable, but totally awesome at the same time. Via the Alamo Blog.
The Whole Shootin Match on 3-Disc DVD Austinite Eagle Pennell's lost (sort of) iindie slacker (sort of) classic The Whole Shootin' Match is now available on DVD, in a handsome 3-disc set. Definitely worth getting. I've also noticed that one of its stars, Lou Perryman (a great Texas character actor who was also in Texas Chainsaw Massacre II) has been making the rounds commenting on blog posts and articles about it. Lou seems like a great guy–I saw him on a TCM panel at Fangoria weekend last year, and on a panel for Shootin' Match during a special SXSW screening in 07.
SXSW YouTube Channel If you're attending SXSW Film this year, you can check out a ton of trailers on their newly-created YouTube channel. Which is great, because the video player on the SXSW site is annoyingly slow.
ABC Orders Pilot For No Heroics Apparently, ABC will be producing an American version of the not-even-a-season-old British sitcom No Heroics, which looks completely awesome, but which I haven't yet seen (those damned Brits won't let me stream it from The States! I'm willing to pay, even!). Looks like a much hipper, more grown-up version of Fox's short-lived live-action version of The Tick.
The Making Of Wrestle Jam: The Wrestler’s Unsung Hero A fun piece on "Wrestle Jam", the old-school wrestling game played in Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler (via John Merriman: http://twitter.com/jmerriman/status/1252264955).
Critical Vision: An Interview with James Gray A very good interview with director James Gray, whose new film (Two Lovers) I caught at AFF this year. Gray also gave a very interesting Q&A at the fest–and Two Lovers will definitely leave you with a lot of questions.
Joan Didion on "The Panic in Needle Park" Novelist Joan Didion talks to IFC's Aaron Hillis about the re-release of a film she co-adapted with her husband in 1971, "The Panic In Needle Park".
Watch Online: The Vanishing (1988) Apparently, the original version of the Dutch thriller The Vanishing–which is supposedly fantastic–has been available for a while now through Criterion. I've been wanting to see it, but didn't think it was out on DVD. You can also watch it (along with select other films) for $5 through the criterion website.
Get Your War On: The Definitive Account Though David Rees' fantastic comic Get Your War On is officially over, you can get the almost complete collection in book form.
Crips and Bloods: Made In America Stacy Peralta's now retitled "Crips & Bloods: Made In America" is opening soon in select cities. Hopefully, it'll swing through Austin before its DVD release this spring.
If you’re a frequent user of Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” feature, you might have noticed that a big chunk of movies went offline at the beginning of this month (probably because the digital distribution rights expired).
Bummer. Looks like I’ll have to have some kind of Herzog-a-thon this month, before they disappear. (I’m being dramatic, of course–they’ll still be available via DVD.)
It’s also worth noting that Sam Peckinpah’s brilliant 1971 thriller Straw Dogs will become unavailable on the same day. Watch it while you can. Don’t worry though, Peckinpah’s other 70s masterwork, Convoy, is safe for now.
While reading this post earlier today (via BB), I came across a link to Wikipedia’s Year In Film page, which I am thoroughly impressed by.
It’s a pretty fantastic wrap-up of the year, covering all the bases from awards to box office earnings to “notable deaths” (I had no idea Michael Crichton OR Brad Renfro died this past year). What’s great, though, is the simple, chronological list of films that came out in ‘08. Even better–there are similar pages for nearly every year since the 1870s. Of course, the pages get less detailed as you go further back, but they’re still fun.
In the year I was born, films released included The Last Waltz, Animal House, Days of Heaven, The Deer Hunter, Pretty Baby, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Grease, Battlestar Galactica, Halloween, Superman, Up In Smoke, Watership Down and Revenge of the Pink Panther.
Wolves In The Throne Room EP and Full-length This Spring This spring, Washington-based black metal band Wolves in the Throne Room will release a new EP along with (finally) a new full-length called Black Cascade, both through Southern Lord. If you're into black metal, and haven't yet heard these guys, you need to check out their 2007 Two Hunters EP. It's stellar.
Tufte Comes to Austin Data visualization rockstar Edward Tufte will be teaching a one-day course in Austin at the end of this month. Cost is $380 per person, and includes copies of all four of his books.
Cinephiliac’s Best of 2008 Critic, filmmaker, and DVD label owner Aaron Hillis has posted a list of his favorite films for 2008. Some I've seen, some I now want to see. Hillis has recently taken over duties as postmaster at the highly awesome Greencine Daily blog, while longtime GC overlord David Hudson has moved to IFC.com.
First Trailer For Romero’s …OF THE DEAD Twitch has the first trailer for George Romero's new zombie flick "…Of The Dead". It's a lame title, to be sure. But it might be good. Question Mark?
In Slightly Better Horror News, Universal Sells Rogue for $150 Million In contrast to the recent mainstreaming of Lionsgate, Rogue Pictures (who've released some solid original genre flicks like Shaun of the Dead and The Strangers) were just purchased by Relativity Media, who apparently think the company has some value. Fingers crossed.
Will We Be Able to Watch Watchmen? Twitch Film's Rodney Perkins has some fantastically detailed coverage of the ongoing lawsuit between Fox and Warner over the upcoming big-screen adaptation of the popular graphic novel Watchmen. If you ask me, this case is a perfect example of our need for sweeping copyright reform.
The trailer for Gary Hustwit’s new industrial design documentary Objectifiedis up at Gizmodo, and it looks great–kind of like a filmic Design of Everyday Things (but suspiciously lacking an appearance by Don Norman).
Though Hustwit’s name isn’t on the website yet, he’ll be appearing in some capacity at this year’s South By Southwest, and I’ll be surprised if Objectified isn’t screening as well.
If you’re a big fan of Gary’s, and if you’ve got some money to throw around, you can get your name in Objectified’s credits (plus a whole bunch of other fun swag) for a cool $500 donation to the film, which is currently in post-production.
In case you think that a documentary about industrial design is boring, keep in mind that Hustwit is the man behind the hugely entertaining typeface doc Helvetica. He’s also one of the principals at Plexifilm, arguably the best documentary DVD label in North America.
Sorry, Thanks A new film starring Austin's own Wiley Wiggins. Check the trailer.
Why Lionsgate Is Abandoning Horror Lionsgate (the studio behind genre flicks like Shadow of the Vampire, The Descent, The Devil's Rejects and Midnight Meat Train) is transitioning away from horror. Which is bad news for fans of original (meaning non-remake), English-language genre films.
Netflix To Stream Movies From Starz Netflix has just added significant value to its Watch Online service–maybe it's finally time to buy a Roku.
This essay by Alex Cox (Director of many brilliant and underrated flicks like Repo Man and Walker) has got me really, really interested in seeing Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, which unfortunately won’t be released on DVD until February. I’ve had Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie floating near the top of my Netflix queue for a long time now, but I know embarrassingly little about the famed Spanish director. Time to fix that.
My major point, though, is that I love it when criticism is done right. Most people (wrongly, I think) tend to think of criticism as opinion–as two thumbs up or two thumbs down. But when done well, criticism is barely opinion at all; it’s part of a conversation about art, and about life. And when it’s underpinned by a passion for either one of those things, it can be just as important as the films themselves. Maybe even more important.
At the Austin premiere of the highly anticipated My Name Is Bruce, I had a drink and a friendly chat with b-movie megastar Bruce Campbell. It was a very last minute thing, and I wasn’t sure it was even going to happen until about ten seconds before it did, so the interview isn’t nearly as good as it could have been. But when you get a chance to talk to someone like Mr. Campbell, you take it. Thank you to Matt and Karen at the Alamo for making this happen on such short notice, and thank you to Ain’t It Cool News for calling in sick and freeing up an interview slot.
Two major events in the realm of online viewing: the first is today’s online premiere of Crawford, a locally produced documentary about the tiny Texas town that GWB chose to adopt as his “home” (Bush was born in Connecticut, and spent his formative years in Houston and Midland). The film was acquired by Austin-based B-Side Entertainment, and was released simultaneously on Hulu, iTunes and Amazon. I personally hate the Hulu player (it’s way too intrusive and distracting–but hey, it’s free), but Amazon’s unbox service is much less annoying, and hopefully B-Side will soon offer a paid download. B-Side’s service is great, and they offer mobile and DVD definition versions at (in my opinion) appropriate price points.
The other big news (yes, I’m two weeks behind on this one) is the online release of Michael Moore’s 2004 election doc Slacker Uprising. Moore is, unarguably, a popular filmmaker, and for him to buy back the North American rights for the flick from Harvey Weinstein just so he can give it away online is a pretty big deal. Read Luke Quinton’s fantastic piece on Slacker Uprising here.
Role Models Q&A with David Wain and Paul Rudd Here's a short chunk of a great Q&A with Wain and Rudd that happened after their screening of "Role Models" at Fantastic Fest. The movie, despite the incredibly awful trailer, is actually really funny. I'm just gonna come out and say that I love Paul Rudd.
Austin Film Festival Schedule Online The complete Austin Film Festival 08 lineup is now online. It's a strong lineup this year. We'll be doing a bunch of preview coverage on Austinist over the next couple weeks, so keep an eye out.
Fantastic Fest is so close I can taste it. But since it’s completely sold out, I feel kinda bad for folks who didn’t get badges in time. For them I’ve put together a list of publicly-accessible FF screenings and events. Check it out on Austinist.
Watch KLRU’s “Downtown” Online You can watch the first three seasons of KLRU's fantastic series "Downtown" through the magic of the internet. Most of the segments are between 1 and 7 minutes, so it's fun to browse around.
Austinist’s “Must See Friday” ACL Picks Some of the music writers have come up with five "sleeper picks" for the first day of ACL. Vote on your favorite and win a chance to watch the band from the stage with 3 of your friends. Neat.
UPDATE: These screenings have all been canceled. Bummer. They are still showing Repo Man for Music Monday, but it will be Coxless.
If you’re a frequent user of Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” feature, you might have noticed that a big chunk of movies went offline at the beginning of this month (probably because the digital distribution rights expired).
The trailer for Gary Hustwit’s new industrial design documentary Objectified is up at Gizmodo, and it looks great–kind of like a filmic Design of Everyday Things (but suspiciously lacking an appearance by Don Norman).
This essay by Alex Cox (Director of many brilliant and underrated flicks like Repo Man and Walker) has got me really, really interested in seeing Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, which unfortunately won’t be released on DVD until February. I’ve had Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie floating near the top of my Netflix queue for a long time now, but I know embarrassingly little about the famed Spanish director. Time to fix that.
At the Austin premiere of the highly anticipated My Name Is Bruce, I had a drink and a friendly chat with b-movie megastar Bruce Campbell. It was a very last minute thing, and I wasn’t sure it was even going to happen until about ten seconds before it did, so the interview isn’t nearly as good as it could have been. But when you get a chance to talk to someone like Mr. Campbell, you take it. Thank you to Matt and Karen at the Alamo for making this happen on such short notice, and thank you to Ain’t It Cool News for calling in sick and freeing up an interview slot.
