Results tagged “movies>”

in the war-torn country of Afghanistan, there’s a TV show much like our own inexplicably popular American Idol, where anyone can compete regardless of race, age, religion, or any other factor. And people all over the country use their cell phones to vote for their favorite performer. This remarkable film (winner of Directing and Audience Awards at this year’s Sundance Film Festival) follows four finalists as they compete to become the next Afghan Star.It's sure to inform, inspire, enlighten, and entertain you. And that’s a lot more than Simon Cowell could ever do for you.

The Paramount continues their Depression-era comedy theme for the month with 1936's My Man Godfrey and 1937's Easy Living showing Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Both of these comedies throw everyday folk (if you can call a "forgotten man" everyday folk) into strange circumstances involving wealthy families.

Who wouldn’t want to follow Burt (John Krasinski) down the path that is Away We Go, as he and his pregnant girlfriend Verona (Maya Rudolph) take planes, trains and automobiles to visit friends and family searching for a place to raise their baby, and figuring out what life and love are all about, laughing and crying all along the way.

Hit up the Alamo Drafthouse this Sunday for a Father's Day Feast while watching Wes Anderson's dysfunctional family masterpiece, The Royal Tenenbaums. Sure, Royal might be a shitty dad. Okay, maybe he's an asshole and has disappeared for several years. And, true, he fakes his death to force his family closer together. But whatever, it'll just bring you and your dear ol' dad closer together as you can say, relatively, "You are such a great dad, Dad!"

You know what’s fun? Movies. About food. With painted up dwarves. And young comedians in purple coats. Under the stars. Sounds like a perfect Friday night, right? Well, we’ve got your golden ticket for this Friday, June 19th—the Alamo Drafthouse and Whole Foods present Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory outdoors, on the roof of their flagship store at 6th and Lamar.

Proving that not everyone is letting the ungodly summer heat slow them down, the Blanton Museum of Art and the Austin Film Festival are teaming up to present the New Directions Film Series, which will feature the intelligent voices of emerging independent filmmakers. The five chosen films will screen at the Blanton on Third Thursdays and a few selected Sundays from now until July 19. Kicking off the indie fun is Gretchen, the story of an awkward 17-year-old trying to survive the indignities of adolescence.

Tonight and tomorrow night, the Paramount Theater will be screening two classic favorites starring Cary Grant: 1940's The Philadelphia Story and 1937's The Awful Truth. Both films feature Grant as a wealthy divorcee and both are certain to make you laugh.

The word around town (specifically from Chris Garcia at the Statesman) is that come May 21st, the Galaxy Highland will have a brand new technology, only released last March, which bears the unfortunate name of D-Box (which immediately made us think of D-Bag, a horse of a completely different color, no doubt). D-Box replicates the motion happening on screen, frame-by-frame, in each and every theater seat. You will, allegedly, feel like you are actually in the movie.

In a tactical move of sheer intergalactic brilliance, the enterprising people over at the Austin Planetarium have forged an alliance with the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum to bring you a Star Trek premier experience like no other. On Friday, May 8th from 6-9pm, the grounds and lobby of the Bob Bullock will play host to Austin's Trekkies and astronomy buffs alike, featuring none other than cosmonaut and space tourist extraordinaire, Richard Garriott.

30 years ago, before the dawn of the Reagan era and all the conservative back-patting and chumminess that would come with it, a film was released that would eventually introduce our little sheltered selves to punk rock and rebellion-as-fun. Rock ‘n’ Roll High School is the bizarre anti-Grease (which, notably, was released just a year before RNRHS), a film which follows the same musical paradigm as its lily-white counterpart, but instead of poodle skirts and dance competitions favors "ugly, ugly, ugly" punk rockers and a boys-bathroom-businessman who sells black market hall passes and hired dates.

n a top 40 world, Austin is a proudly NPR town, so tonight should be a special treat for many of us who enjoy the popular radio show “This American Life.” Tonight only you can catch a live HD simulcast of the show at movie theaters around town. Glass will be there hosting the show, and contributors will include regulars like Starlee Kine, sex columnist Dan Savage, and the hilarious Mike Birbiglia, among others.

Tonight at the Alamo Drafthouse S. Lamar, you can experience the tornado-like fury that surrounds the competitive Dachshund circuit in the dog-umentary Wiener Takes All. Canadian filmmaker Shane MacDougall, who apparently challenged Queen Elizabeth II to a kickboxing match or math test to win the monarchy of Canada at one point in time, spent two years following what we would assume to be a real-life Best in Show, documenting the heated rivalries, the epic speed trials, the allegations of doggie doping and the amazingness that is the Westminster Dog Show, watching as the broad field is winnowed down to one winning weenie.

Anxious Wilco lovers must wait a few more weeks until the still-untitled next album is released, but a worthy distraction will soon arrive to make the suspense a little less terrible. Ashes of American Flags, a live concert film featuring performances from the band’s 2008 tour, will be released on DVD April 18 and will also be shown at the Alamo Ritz on Monday night.

The Alamo Ritz invites you and your pooka to the movies this weekend to enjoy the Jimmy Stewart classic, Harvey. You and your spirit animal can sip Martinis along with Dr. Chumley, Dr. Sanderson, Nurse Kelly and of course Elwood, as Harvey is part of the Alamo Cinema Cocktails Signature Series, which pairs signature drinks (The Harvey Wallbanger, for example) with movie characters' alcoholic tastes.

"Oh, that's cool," we thought, "Leonard Nimoy showed up for the screening of The Wrath of Khan that the Alamo Drafthouse and Fantastic Fest had set up for last night." We were so naive to think that the Alamo didn't have some subversive trick up its sleeve. Suddenly, our mobile phone exploded as millions of geeks from inside the maroon-swathed walls of the Alamo South Lamar simultaneously flooded the internet with word that, no, Nimoy had not showed up for TWoK, but rather he had shown up with a never-seen-by-pedestrian-eyes print of the soon-to-be classic J.J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek.

How many times have you considered how awesome a movie version of your life would be? You're hilarious, your friends are crazy, you have gut-wrenching problems, and then there was that great that thing you said that one time. Seriously—it’s not just us, is it? But would people who didn’t know you find it as great as you would? Adventureland might just answer that question.

• @NYTimes writes about the annual nerd pilgrimage! @sxsw #sxsw #sxswi
• Doh! Massive downtown iFail prompts AT&T to scrape egg off their iface and boost their inetwork.
• Local peeps hoping music festival brings some serious scratch to the ATX.

Clark Lyda and Jesse Lyda are first-time filmmakers based out of Austin and New York City. The documentary they produced and directed about the T. Don Hutto family detention center in Taylor, The Least of These, is having its world premiere Monday as part of the SxSW Film Festival.

In We Live in Public, acclaimed director Ondi Timoner pieces together footage from two of Harris' past projects, one of which was "Quiet", a chronicle of 100 people living in an underground bunker in Manhattan for 30 days, their every movement recorded (voluntarily) and broadcast online by Harris, until the cops shut it down. Maybe it was the indoor shooting range that did it? Following that experiment, Harris and his girlfriend decided to broadcast their lives 24/7 online for six months—until she had enough and moved out. This from a man who began one of the first online television networks and made millions through web consulting. Harris, "the greatest Internet pioneer you've never heard of," lived in public, and eventually lost his sense of self and his mind. And we could watch it all online.

In Observe and Report, Rogen plays a mall cop obsessed with Brandi (Anna Faris, the House Bunny herself!). When Brandi gets flashed by a…well, a flasher, he takes advantage of the situation, warning her that the perv might return to kill her and telling her that she needs protection. Hey, it’s a smooth move if you’re a lonely mall cop with nothing to lose. But with Rogen’s ne’er do well energy (and the fact that he’s a friggin' Mall Cop), we feel it's safe to assume he’s probably fighting a comically uphill battle.

Burma VJ, a documentary by Anders Østergaard, pieces together this undercover footage—which might seem a bit shaky at times, since some of the videographers were carrying their cameras hidden in bags—taken by the Burmese reporters as they put their lives on the line to make sure that the world knew about the plight of their people. The film is likely to show more of the real story than we ever saw on our television.

In part a genre history of 50's era sci-fi movies, Monsters from the ID promises footage of rickety-looking pre-CGI robots and aliens, along with reels of scenes in which scientists make love to women in high heels and round-collared dresses. For kitsch-seekers, the 50's flashbacks will deliver. However, director David Gargani, has bigger fish to fry, as the movie makes clear when it transitions from a meditation on the cultural factors which influenced the resurgence of sci-fi during this decade into a polemic on the need for Americans to reclaim their past love affair with science and technology—before the rest of the world passes us by.

"It takes a lot more to gain respect with just lyrics," one of the female MCs states in Say My Name, a SXSW World Premier documentary feature. First-time director Nirit Peled focuses on the growing female presence in the realm of rap and hip-hop, with stops in the Bronx, London, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, LA and Detroit.

Pontypool (adapted from the novel "Pontypool Changes Everything" by Tony Burgess) is a quasi-zombie flick set in a rural Ontario town, where a strange virus is causing outbursts of violent behavior among the locals. If director Bruce McDonald's horror flicks are half as good as his cerebral dramas, Pontypool could well be one of the best Midnight flicks at SX this year.

The stories of two families collide in Sin Nombre, the first feature film from Writer/Director Cary Joji Fukunaga, which will screen as part of the Spotlight Premier category of SXSW. As anyone who grew up in Texas, or any of the border states, can tell you, the people of southern and central America who dare to dream of a life above that determinate line in the sand will risk everything that they have to provide a better life for themselves and their family.

The T. Don Hutto Family Detention Center in Taylor, TX, which is not too far from our fair city, opened in May of 2006, and houses a significant number of immigrant families who seek asylum in our country. When it first opened, only an hour a day was spent on education for the children; families were required to eat meals in a fifteen minute time frame, children were allowed less than 20 minutes a day outside, and all detainees were counted three times a day.The Least of These, a documentary that will see it's World Premier as part of the Lone Star States screenings at SXSW, is the story of these families and the advocates that struggle to win basic human rights for them in the looming shadow of the Department of Homeland Security.

Whatever happened to Bill Withers? Filmmakers Damani Baker and Alex Vlack made a decision eight years ago to find the answer. After dealing with some initial resistance, they found that Bill Withers was willing to open up to them. The final result of their collaboration, Still Bill focuses on the life of the singer-songwriter of such hits as "Ain't No Sunshine", "Lean on Me" and "Just the Two of Us." The documentary follows Withers to his birthplace of Slab Fork, West Virginia and to New York City, where a concert is given in his honor, but is mainly based in Los Angeles where Withers lives with his family. Bill Withers grew up an asthmatic stutterer, which led to some self-esteem/self-worth issues that he still deals with. Before he burst into the world of music, Withers spent time working in a factory and seemed to have no real hankering for fame. Perhaps that is why it wasn't too difficult for him to stop releasing albums after his lousy experience with a big-name record company.

Sorry, Thanks was shot entirely in San Francisco’s Mission District and features a cast of largely unknown actors. This is director Dia Sokol’s feature debut, and the film will compete in the 2009 SXSW Narrative Feature category. We’re excited to see what (Mitch Kramer) Wiggins is up to these days, and highly doubt he ends up being very much of a jerk.

Isn't it great when your friends throw you a surprise party? It shows that they really wanted to impress upon you the fact that you are loved, and also that they cared enough to plan ahead. We kinda feel like SXSW is throwing us a little surprise party with their latest news: both Sam Raimi and Jonathan Demme will be bringing their newest films to this year's conference. Oh goodness, South By, you shouldn't have.

Fantastic Fest and SXSW are having a baby and Woodstock will be relived during SXSW Film 2009.