Mamma Mia! is offered as an (extreme) alternative to the Batman film at the theaters this weekend. The basic gist of the musical is: girl is getting married, girl has no clue who her father is, girl invites three men she read about in her mother's diary to her wedding, men come to Greek island where she lives with her mom, and hilarity (and much singing) ensues....

With more than 1,600 weekend screenings of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight already sold out (according to movietickets.com), it's quickly shaping up to be one of the summer's hottest flicks. So hot, in fact, that we had to stage a brutal dance-fight for the right to review it. Austinist contributors Luke Quinton and Darcie Duttweiler both caught IMAX screenings earlier this week, and what follows is a conversation about human nature, Oscar nominations, and shirtless Christan Bale....

PaperDolls Magazine is an online publication looking to shove aside teenage stereotypes while being a little sassy. To raise awareness and cash for their commendable project, they’re staging a four-part, girl-themed film series featuring slumber party classics like Shag, Mean Girls and Heathers. ...

Tum (Lalita Panyopas) is having a totally crap week. She has lost her job as a bank teller, but can't bring herself to tell her family, as they are all depending on her for survival. For a brief moment, Tum contemplates pulling the trigger on her hopeless life, but thinks better of it, and soon thereafter discovers a noodle box on her doorstep, filled with cold hard cash. Now, you would think that the first thing she would do with her windfall is fix that stupid number on her door that keeps swinging around, but she is soon distracted by more, um, pressing matters....

The 15th Annual Austin Film Festival is only a few months away, but you've still got one more day to submit your film for consideration. The "very late postmark deadline" is tomorrow, Tuesday July 15th. So you've got 24 hours to submit your film for consideration in one of six categories (Narrative Feature, Narrative Short, Narrative Student Short, Documentary Feature, Documentary Short, and Animated Short). The easiest (and cheapest) way is to submit over the......

Bigger, badder, and exponentially goofier than its predecessor, Hellboy II is a heck of a lot of fun. The action is great, the visual effects are impressive and the humor is (mostly) dead on. Perlman is absolutely perfect as the beer-swilling, cigar-chomping superhero (Ron doesn't get enough respect, in our opinion), and del Toro's fantastical vision is just as stunningly realized as it was in his critically acclaimed Pan's Labyrinth....

According to a recent email newsletter, Waterloo Records will be "exiting the video rental business", and will be closing their Waterloo Video store in mid-August. But it's not all doom and gloom--they'll also be remodeling the Waterloo Records space this summer in order to make room for all the displaced non-rental DVDs, and all current Waterloo Video employees have been offered positions at the remodeled store to "[assure] the continuity of [Waterloo's] renown personalized video customer service." But the even better news can be summed up in one unnecessarily capitalized word: SSAALLEE!...

Henri Verdoux, of course played by Chaplin, is a Perraultian Bluebeard, who, after being nixed from his job as a bank teller, provides for his ailing wife and young child by charming, marrying and subsequently offing independently wealthy femmes, collecting the spoils in the wake of their wakes. You see, Mr Verdoux sees murder as nothing more than a business proposition, and if large corporations can fill mass graves and their pockets at the same time, then why shouldn't he be able to follow in lock-step, albeit on a much smaller and more personal scale?...

Local filmmaker Bradley Beesley will be at the Alamo tonight to screen and chat about his films Okie Noodling II, and Summercamp!. Noodling, (about the revived sport of hand-fishing) was shot in Oklahoma in the late '90s, and won the 2001 Audience Choice award at SXSW, as well as first runner up for Best Documentary. Noodling II is the follow-up. Summercamp!, directed by Beesley and Sarah Price (American Movie), shows what being a kid at camp is about....

still from When Did You Last See Your Father? Ahhhh, what could have been. We're a little tore up from watching the new Colin Firth flick When Did You Last See Your Father? this week; a reaction to watching the fine acting of Jim Broadbent run headfirst into a script about the pitfalls of puberty. The book by the same name received staggering reviews as a popular memoir that refused to pander, and acted as......

PaperDolls Magazine is asking if you wanna, like, hang out tonight. This teen-oriented, soon-to-be-launched zine kicks off a summer series of cleverly paired films with “Frienemy Night”–an outdoor showing of two high school comedies with bite. ...

Wednesday nights can be tough. It’s the middle of the week, you’re not quite over the hump, and there’s nothing to do—nothing on television (“So You Think You Can Dance?” Come on!),and you’ve got to get up early tomorrow anyway, so how to pass the evening? How about a magical journey back to one of the most unique movies ever made (and later, less uniquely, re-made). We’re talking, of course, about Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Your good friends at the Alamo and 101X present a special screening in the lawn of Central Market tonight....

Who knew that an emoting robot could steal your heart so quickly and effortlessly? It only takes a moment for your eyes to meet those of Wall-E, the newest pipsqueak of a trash compactor from the magicians at Pixar. But in that moment, gazing into the mechanization of his little binocular face, you realize that you could love his bleeping robot heart your whole life long....

The name “James Dean” brings an image immediately to mind: the loner with perfect hair, smoking a cigarette coolly, squinting at the other young punks around him, unafraid of anything—bad to the bone. He doesn’t need much of an introduction, and neither does Rebel Without A Cause, playing at the Henry Ransom Center tonight as part of their “Rebel Classics” Film Series....

Sonic Youth has been getting a lot of attention lately, to the point where they're appearing in really weird places, like "Fresh Air" and stuff. This seems strange to us, since we treasured our cassette of "Goo" in ninth grade and certainly would never have thought of SY as NPR-approved Culture. Thankfully, the new documentary Sleeping Nights Awake is a bit different from these official sanctifications of Kim, Thurston, et al....

It’s too late to submit an entry to the first annual Bootstrap Film Festival, but sensitive entrepreneurs, aspiring Linklaters and anyone interested in the Octopus Club’s colorful art auction or stories about mystical cab drivers may want to check out this interactive, hybrid event to be held this Thursday night....

Get Smart PosterGet Smart We’re not ashamed to admit that we caught Evan Almighty on HBO just to see if Steve Carell was slightly funny. (No, he was not.) And maybe The Office is not quite as hil-ar-i-ous as it used to be. And so what if Dan in Real Life flat-out sucked nuts? We really want to give Carell the benefit of the doubt here, and we’re guessing so will thousands of movie-goers this......

Starting tonight, the Alamo will present three non-consecutive screenings of the "Brad Neely Animation showcase", a collection of cartoon shorts from the Austin-based artist. We recently sat down with Brad to get his take on Austin, Chevy Chase, and why it’s always good to read the fine print....

Just across the border from McAllen, Texas, lies its ugly stepsister who stays locked in the basement: Reynosa, Mexico (pop. 500,000+). Reynosa does not fit the stereotype of Mexican border towns. With the exception of its relatively small market district and plethora of cheap dentists, it is a decidedly utilitarian, hard working, industrial city. Intimidad is an intimate portrait of two people who work there. ...

There are a million ways to be, you know that there are. Some people look at the world through dark, cloudy glass, and some through rose-colored; amazingly love can still be seen and had through both. With that in mind, the Paramount will be putting a little black into their red this week as they continue their 33rd annual Summer Classic Film Series with two sets of amorous flicks, one pair with its sights on Park Avenue and the other buried six feet under. And remember, films are only $7, and if you go to the first film in the double feature, you get the second one for free!...

If your dad is anything like ours, he probably hates dudes in tights or pretty much anyone gyrating for the sake of dance. But, perhaps he’ll have the time of his life this Father’s Day for a dancing extravaganza at the Paramount Theater’s Summer Film Series with back-to-back dance film classics, Dirty Dancing and Flashdance. (Yes, the awful puns will continue.)...

This Saturday and Sunday, in honor of the huge motorcycle rally just outside of town, the Alamo Ritz is dusting off a couple of drive-in classics about real bikers—complete with leather, bandanas, and names like Jaw-bone and Knifer....

We don't know about you, but we love the Alamo's Weird Wednesday series. Like, we wish we could make steamy, passionate love to it (and the chocolate covered toffee bits that come with it! Wait... no, that's gross). Unfortunately, we generally have to wake up super early on weekdays, and we're too weak-willed to attend many midnight screenings (you don't have to tell us how lame we are... we're well aware). So we tend to......

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....

Once a month, Nueva Onda (the only place in town with delicious breakfast tacos and a knight in shining armor) opens its patio to indie-film lovers for a free screening. Tonight’s selection, bearing the provocative title “Crossing the Lines,” consists of four locally-flavored pieces for your viewing pleasure....

If you were one of the many people turned away from the single SXSW screening of Baghead this spring, you'll be happy to know that the Austin-lensed film will have its premiere this coming Thursday at Starhill Ranch, a neat little film-set-turned-party-venue out on Hamilton Pool Road. And starting this weekend, the movie will also have a proper run at the Alamo South Lamar....

Still from Foot Fist WayThe Foot Fist Way A washed-up, slack-jawed, perv-inator of a martial arts instructor simultaneously insults, intimidates and inspires his students to uphold the tenets of tae kwon do in The Foot Fist Way, a little indie princess that got fitted for its Cinderella slippers at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. After it was scooped up by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, TFFW went viral amongst the comedy community, with some people......

If you prefer your Marlon Brando with a little more leather and a little less cotton balls-in-the-mouth, you’re in luck, friend. The ultimate filmic bad boy and his Black Rebels Motorcycle Club (really!) take over the streets of a small town to your eyes’ delight when the Ransom Center screens The Wild One tonight, as part one of the Rebel Classics Film Series....

The Paramount’s 2008 Summer Film Series continues Wednesday with Chinatown, followed by L.A. Confidential, and switches the order Thursday for those who can’t make it all in one night. Two classic, award-winning noir flicks for the price of one admission in a theater as old as the detective genre itself—now that’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship....

Tonight at the Alamo South Lamar, the AFS is screening “Private Fears in Public Places,’ Alain Renais’ acclaimed collection of vignettes about loneliness of six strangers in modern-day Paris as they search for love. Originally written as a stageplay, the film takes a humorous but intimate look at each character, exploring the emotions and circumstances they share, sometimes without even knowing it. ...