If there's one documentary we recommend seeing during this year's Austin Film Festival, it's Eric Bricker's Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman, a fascinating, beautifully realized portrait of famed architectural photographer Julius Shulman. Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, Visual Acoustics explores Shulman's life and work through interviews, animation, archival footage and heaps of gorgeous photographs. Featuring conversations with architect Frank Gehry, designer Tom Ford, artist Ed Ruscha, publisher Benedikt Taschen and a host of notable design-o-philes, the film is an intimate portrait of an extraordinary talent....

Grocery stores are the great equalizer—pretty much every one in America frequents one, be they monolithic or modest. And after you have purchased your snacks and sundries, there is generally one question that remains: do you want to carry your wares home in paper or plastic? Granted, in Austin the swing is towards "neither" with our cloth bag revolution, but across the country you will find dutiful baggers, sackers, or whatever you choose to call them, packing up jars, cans and bread, hopefully with the later after the former. Sounds like the stuff of legend, right? You wouldn't think so, but in the Austin Film Festival documentary feature Paper or Plastic?, those disregarded courtesy clerks finally get their moment in the sun....

Please Vote for Me documents a Model UN-styled event held by a Chinese elementary school to elect a class monitor, a position that (surprise, surprise) is usually appointed by the teacher. The ensuing melee is a Nixon/Stalin-like wheeling and dealing from which, evidently, only one can emerge as "Supreme Leader."...

Heavy Metal in Baghdad follows the boys in "Acrassicauda" through the heady days of post-Saddam, pre-insurgency life, when they thought that after years of repression, they might finally be able to Live the Rawk, and then chronicles the downturn of their dreams as their country falls to pieces. (Think the dancers in "Footloose" were oppressed? Think again!) ...

Image from Alamo Drafthouse website Roman Polanski: Wanted and DesiredSunday, August 24; Tuesday, August 26; Wednesday, August 27Alamo Drafthouse Downtown (320 E 6th Street)$8.50, $6.50/students; 4 pm on Sunday; 9:45 on Tuesday and Wednesday[info] | [tickets]Roman Polanski: the original Creepy Joe? Any sympathy points the man may have racked up after his pregnant wife was murdered by the Manson Family were kinda obliterated by his fleeing the country after being accused of doping a thirteen-year-old......

American Teen, the new documentary from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Nannette Burstein (The Kid Stays in the Picture), made quite a splash at Sundance as well as here at SXSW this year, and for good reason. The film follows five very different high school kids going through the ups and downs of their senior year in Warsaw, Indiana. Make no mistake, any resemblance to the seminal John Hughes film is purely intentional; witness the movie poster’s loving pose-for-pose homage and the extremely hip soundtrack. But hey, if you’re going to emulate a movie, it’s not a bad choice....

Last August, as the Austin Film Festival was ramping up, we spoke to Austin-based filmmaker Don Swaynos about the creepy slash awesome animated commercials he'd produced (along with partner Cameron Petri) for the folks at AFF. But Don's commercials weren't the only work he had premiering at AFF '07. Along with pal Steve Metze, he presented a documentary feature called Year at Danger, a firsthand account of Metze's deployment as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom....

Austin dweller Margaret Brown brings her new documentary, The Order of Myths, to SXSW after a successful showing at Sundance. Brown was born in Mobile, Alabama, where Myths takes place. The film follows Mobilians through one cycle of their Mardi Gras celebrations—a festival which the city is proud to have begun celebrating before New Orleans. Unlike the Big Easy’s do, however, the Mobile Mardi Gras is, effectively, segregated. ...

"I was initially drawn to Crawford, because I'd been effectively duped. I didn't know that Bush wasn't from Crawford."...

With the faith of a thousand men, Pastor Richard Gazowsky set out ten years ago on a divine mission: to make the greatest film ever made. Nevermind that the first film he ever saw was The Lion King, at the tender age of 40. Nevermind that he had absolutely no background in directing, editing, or producing an epic so grand that it's concept was enthusiastically described as "The Ten Commandments meets Star Wars." Nevermind that his only solid source of funding was the generous tithes of his congregation at the Voice of Pentecost Church....