The Screening Room

The lineup at the festival today seems pretty music heavy. Among the options:
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts, a documentary about the composer Philip Glass. It screens at 4:30 p.m. at the Angelika
Bowling For Soup: Live And Very Attractive, a doc about the locally based band. It shows at 7:15 p.m. at the Angelika
And topping it all off is Joy Division, a look at the influential Manchester band that previously screened to warm reception at the Toronto Film Festival. It shows at 9:45 p.m. at the Angelika.
And if all that weren't enough, Paul Oakenfold will attend the red carpet festivities tonight at 6 p.m. at the Magnolia Theatre. He's here in support of Vexille, an anime movie that he scored that will play free on the huge outdoor screens at Victory Park tonight at 7. Here's hoping the skies stay clear.

Just hung out with Alex Gibney, who has become a major stud in the documentary world. His Taxi to the Dark Side won the doc Oscar this year, and his new film, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson, plays AFI Dallas at 7:30 tonight and 12:15 Saturday at the Magnolia.

Among the surprising interview subjects in the film is Pat Buchanan, a Nixon man whom Thompson met covering politics for Rolling Stone (read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, if you haven't). Gibney told me Buchanan originally declined to participate in the film, but changed his mind when the filmmaker reminded him that the great Gonzo's work spoke to folks of all political stripes and ideologies. (Apparently Thompson and Buchanan were known to knock back a beer or ten together).

Gonzo will be released by Marc Cuban and Todd Wagner's HDNet Films later this year.

Want to snap some pictures of the famous folks dropping into town this weekend? Here's a guide to the gawking:
Saturday night's red carpet lineup is highlighted by Mischa Barton, who will be here for her film Assassination of a High School President. You might also recognize Ms. Barton's co-star, Reece Thompson, who starred in the acclaimed Rocket Science from last year. It all goes down at 6 p.m. at the Magnolia Theatre in the West Village.
Then on Sunday, one of the festival's big gets, Public Enemy frontman Chuck D, will walk the red carpet in support the documentary Public Enemy: Welcome to the Terrordome. That event is at the Angelika Film Center at Mockingbird Station beginning at 6 p.m. Bring those cellphone camera.

Read the reviews, get showtimes and grade the films by clicking below. Or comment here to share your own thoughts on this week's new releases.

Superhero Movie wasn't screened in advance for critics. Did you see it? What did you think?

• Stop-Loss (B+)
• Run Fat Boy Run (B+)
• 21 (D)
• Superhero Movie

Watch the Trailers

Thursday night at the Majestic Theatre, Helen Hunt screened her directorial debut, Then She Found Me, as the festival's opening night movie. But her fellow Star Award recipient, Mickey Rooney, was really the one who held the spotlight the most.
The 87-year-old legend took the stage and told stories about his life and career in showbiz. And then he told some more. And then a few more after that. If you've ever listened to your grandpa talk about the olden days, it was kind of like that.
Which is not to say it wasn't both entertaining and heartfelt.

You might have seen the nasty little billboards popping up around town. The ones that say, "My mom always hated you Sarah Marshall" or "You do look fat in those jeans, Sarah Marshall."
And you've probably wondered, "Who is this jerk spending all of this money, and what does he have against Sarah Marshall?"
You'll find the answers to those questions in the upcoming comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which plays at the AFI Dallas film festival on April 6 before opening in wide release on April 18.

AFI Dallas is ready to roll through April 6 and we'll be all over it like Jerry Jones on Darren McFadden. Peep our preview of the many small town Texas films on display here. Stevie Becker will be covering the opening night festivities at guidelive.com (I'll be reviewing Chris Rock. Very stoked). Check The Screening Room every day for news, reviews and all the AFI you can handle.

LOS ANGELES — The truth about The X-Files sequel — some of it, anyway — is now out there.

The X-Files creator Chris Carter, writer Frank Spotnitz and other crew members gathered Wednesday to discuss the TV series — and declassify some information about the upcoming film.

Read more from the Associated Press.

/film offers links to two bootleg trailers

It's time for round two of the AFI Dallas International Film Festival, and I have to admit I'm pretty excited about this year's offerings. What I have seen of the films (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the opening night Then She Found Me) I liked very well, and it looks like there are other promising titles on the slate. I'm looking forward to getting a look at Tulia, Texas and Crawford, two documentaries that Chris Vognar will be profiling in a story running in Thursday's paper (on 1A, God willing). And it also looks like some pretty high-profile guests will be hitting our fair burg, including Helen Hunt, Mickey Rooney, Charlize Theron, Robert De Niro, Woody Harrelson and others. If you want to plan your festival going, head over to the AFI Dallas Web site to make a run through their schedule.

The winner and still champion
Horton Hears a Who! decided to play two, topping the box office for a second weekend with $24.6 million. Right on its tale was the latest from Tyler Perry, Meet the Browns, which opened impressively at $20 million. That marks the first time since mid-January that two films earned $20 million or more in the same weekend.

The appropriately named Movie Food publishes recipes for dishes that match the theme of a particular movie, a cool idea for your next movie night.

So, for Ratatouille, for example, the site tells you how to prepare the dish that melted Ego's icy heart.

(Photo: Movie Food)

There are only a handful of recipes so far, but the "Upcoming Dishes" list looks promising.

I might skip the spaghetti the next time I'm watching Alien, though.
View image

In case any cine-Potterheads missed the news, Warner Bros. and producer David Heyman have announced that the movie version of the seventh and final Harry Potter book, Deathly Hallows, will be split into a two-part film release.

DH1 is set for November 2010 and DH2 for May 2011. David Yates, director of both Order of the Phoenix and the now-in-production Half-Blood Prince, will helm Deathly Hallows as well.

Texas-born screenwriter Steve Kloves tells the Baltimore Sun that he's on board with the plan: "As for Deathly Hallows, I intuited -- almost from the first moments I began reading it and certainly once I'd finished -- that to realize the story in a single film was going to be a tall order."

Chris Cooper, who can be seen in the new film Married Life, is a Kansas City native. But his people come from Texas. "I'm the only one that's not from Texas, going back generation to generation on both sides of my family," he told me recently.

It seems his great-great grandfather once had a chance to get in on the ground floor of a fledgling city called Dallas. But it didn't quite work out.

There's a long weekend ahead. Are you heading to the multiplex? Read the reviews, get showtimes and grade the films by clicking below. Or comment below to share your own thoughts on this week's new releases.

Neither Shutter or Meet the Browns screened in advance for critics. Did you see either one? What did you think?

• Drillbit Taylor (B-)
• CJ7 (B+)
• Married Life (B)
• Diva (B)
• Under the Same Moon (B)
• Meet the Browns
• Shutter

If you were one of the unfortunate souls who invested in Toshiba's now-defunct HD-DVD high definition disc format -- and you bought your player from Best Buy -- you can now get a consolation prize in the form of a $50 gift certificate.

Read all about it at our tech blog.

If you were planning your spring schedule around the USA Film Festival - hey, it's possible - please take note: the dates have been changed from April 24-May 1 to April 21-27. Maybe they decided they wanted to be closer to AFI-Dallas (which runs March 27-April 6), or at least steal some thunder with an announcment. Maybe they just wanted to avoid any conflict with potential May Day celebrations. In any case, them's the new dates.

Javier Bardem starred in one of 2007's best films (No Country for Old Men) and one of its worst. Mr. Bardem's Love in the Time of Cholera got no love at the box office, disappearing quickly from multiplexes after its November 2007 release. To see it is to know why.

Fans of films gone hilariously awry (you know who you are) won't want to miss this one, which lands on DVD today. Based on Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez's epic novel, Love tells the story of Florentino and Fermina, whose attraction for each other goes unrequited for decades.

The book is tragic, romantic, poetic and moving. The movie is a showcase for stiff acting, bad makeup jobs, funny fashion choices (authentic though they may be) and many scenes to snicker over. Enjoy! Enjoy!

Trunk show
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! stomped out the competition in its opening weekend, earning $45 million to become the biggest opener thus far in 2008. Overall, the weekend was up 8.5 percent over the same weekend in 2007, the first "up" weekend in four weeks.

As promised, here's a little more on my Martin Scorsese interview Saturday. We talked mostly about his new Stones movie, Shine a Light, which opens April 4. If you're a fan of Scorsese's music flicks, this one is more of a Last Waltz-style concert movie than a No Direction Home study of Dylan.

Near the end of the interview I told him I was a fan of his doc A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies. He immediately lamented that his press schedule was causing him to miss a rep screening of Bigger Than Life, a Nicholas Ray/James Mason film that was playing up the street in New York and is featured in Personal Journey. Classic Scorsese: He's rather be watching a movie - even one that he's seen a million times - than doing anything else. Except, possibly, making a movie.

We'll have much more Marty as his film's opening date approaches.

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So tomorrow afternoon I'm supposed to chat with one Martin Scorsese on the phone. To get an idea of where this rates on my "giggling like a schoolgirl" meter, picture Bob Sturm hanging out with Brett Favre. The only other time I've had idol-worship nervousness was before I talked to Clint. Pray for me.

His Martyness' new movie, the Rolling Stones doc Shine a Light, opens April 4.

So I have made it back to my safe Dallas cave (time of journey from Austin: 2 hours, 45 minutes. Speed Racer, baby). Saw lots of good stuff. What were my top five SX movies, you ask? Oh you didn't ask. Too bad. Here they are.

1. Gonzo - I dug Alex Gibney's style before he won the documentary Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side. This doc on Hunter S.Thompson captures the gonzo spirit of the man and his times without sugarcoating either.

2. The Visitor - Richard Jenkins has long been the best actor you've never heard of. His role here as an emotionally stifled econ professor coming out of his shell in the presence of a Syrian immigrant is a joy to behold.

3. Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay - Like the first one, but more political. And Neil Patrick Harris takes 'shrooms. Our little Doogie.

4. Mongol - Epic portrait of the young Genghis Khan that I didn't get to see all of because the 30 minute delay caused by the theater staff putting the wrong lens on the projector and I had to go to my next interview. But I liked the 3/4 that I watched.

5. Crawford and Tulia, Texas -Two docs about small Texas towns, made by outsiders who take nothing for granted.

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I've got a post up over at our technology blog about a new feature on a handful of high definition Blu-ray movies that lets you legally and easily rip a copy of the movie to your computer's hard drive or to your portable video player (such as the iPhone).

It's a capability that the studios were talking about before either Blu-ray or HD-DVD hit the market, and I have to admit I was skeptical they'd ever actually implement it.

So kudos to Fox and Lionsgate for taking baby steps in this consumer-friendly direction, and let's hope this is just the beginning of a trend.

Kickin' it really old school
The prehistoric epic 10,000 B.C. didn't come close to matching the firepower of its March 2007 predecessor, 300, but it has plenty to be proud of. It easily won the weekend with $35.9 million and could have a solid second week as much of its potential audience is on spring break this week.

AFI Dallas anounced today that local act Polyphonic Spree will play the festival's closing night party on April 5 at the House of Blues. Anyone with a premiere pass to the festival is invited to the event. The festival kicks off its run on Thursday, March 27.

Elvis Mitchell has been a film critic (most recently for The New York Times), a brodcaster (currently as host of the KCRW film show The Treatment) and a magazine editor (Interview). Now, with The Black List, he can add "filmmaker" to his resume.

Right now, in a room across the hall from where I'm sitting right now, Mark Cuban is moderating a discussion with Michael Eisner. So why am I sitting in here instead of over there? Because the room is at capacity, and about 30 people are waiting in a line outside the door in attempt to get in as people leave.
I've been to many a panel here at SXSW, and the procedure has always been just show up and walk in. This one's the first one that I've ever seen closed off to more viewers.
So I'm sorry, dear readers, to be failing you today. But the good news is that the festival will release video and audio of all the panels on its Web site in the near future. Maybe me and the rest of the poor souls who didn't get in will get together for a watching party.

Last year, Universal brought the Judd Apatow comedy Knocked Up to SXSW, creating a buzz that propelled it to one of the biggest comedy hits of the year. And the studio seems to be sticking to the formula, as its Forgetting Sarah Marshall, also produced by Apatow, had its world premiere Monday night at the Paramount Theatre.
As much as I loved Knocked Up (it made my top 10 list this year), Forgetting Sarah Marshall is at least its equal.

The nerds are here in full force. No, I'm not dissing the socially challenged among us. But when one of the hot films at the festival is called Nerdcore Rising, the other N-word is fair game.

Billy Bob Thornton is standing across from me in the Radisson lobby. He's on a panel tomorrow afternoon - conversation with Billy Bob kinda thing - and his band is actually playing at Antone's tomorrow night. He's being very cool and taking pictures with fans and lookers-on. Looks sharp in his black leather jacket.

If Carrolton's John Gordon III isn't the youngest filmmaker at South by Southwest this year, he's got to be close. The 15-year-old R.L. Turner sophomore's short film, To the Ends of the Earth, was accepted into the Texas High School Shorts competition and screened to a packed house of parents and students on Friday night at the Dobie Theater.
The five-minute film follows a father (John's father, John Gordon II) and son (John's younger brother, Taylor) as they travel to the airport, where the boy wanders off and gets lost. There's no dialogue in the film; instead, a contemplative narrator speaks of the uneasiness of separation.
"The film comes from the feelings that you have when something we value is lost," John said during an interview Monday morning, his beaming mother, Benita, sitting near by. "It really came from my younger brother, who gets lost all the time. It's such a deep impact -- I know how I feel."
You can catch a trailer for it here.

This morning I had the chance to interview one of my musical idols, Daniel Lanois. Never heard of him? Odds are you are familiar with his work: He, along with Brian Eno, produced many of U2's albums, including The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby and All That You Can't Leave Behind. And he's also produced acclaimed albums by Willie Nelson (Teatro) and Bob Dylan (Time Out of Mind).
When he sat for our interview, he looked as rock and roll as one can get, wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket, dark shades and a black cap. And as we talked, he fiddled with an acoustic guitar, which he referred to as his security blanket.

The Promotion, the comedy about two grocery store assistant managers (Seann William Scott, John C. Reilly) competing for the same manager job, enjoyed a raucous reception Sunday night at a packed Paramount Theater. The film marks the feature debut of Steve Conrad, best known as the writer of The Pursuit of Happyness. And it's a marked depature from Pursuit, with several moments of broad, laugh-out-loud comedy. If you think the idea of Reilly trying to fight Scott while wearing tap shoes sounds just absurd enough to be funny, you'll like the movie.
Afterward, Conrad and Scott took questions from the audience, during which Scott talked about his experience working in the plumbing department at Home Depot, where he spent most of his time hiding inside one of the shower floor models practicing for auditions. Sounds like it all worked out -- three months after he took the job he landed his big break in American Pie.
So far, The Promotion doesn't have a Dallas release date, but it seems a safe bet that you'll have the chance to see it closer to home before the year's out.

Helen Hunt, the writer, director and star of Then She Found Me took part in an interview with Associated Press movie critic Christy Lemeire on Sunday afternoon. The main focus: How many times people told her "no" when it came to making her movie, which she said she began work on 10 years ago. But with a room full of filmmakers in attendance, most of the questions dealt with actual moviemaking rather than the usual celeb questions you might expect. An early questioner asked Ms. Hunt why she decided to direct the movie in addition to writing it (she says she actually decided to star in it fairly late in the process).
"After the long process of writing the movie, I became more and more married to the movie," she said. "It got to a point where it would have taken longer to explain to someone how I wanted it directed than to direct it myself."
And what was the experience of running the show like for the first time director?
"Well, the Coen Brothers have the other Coen Brother," she said. "All I had was me."

Have you ever wondered what happens to all those little independent films that make the festival circuit, only to die off without reaching a wider audience? I did, which is why I stopped by the B-side Entertainment booth on Sunday in the festival's exhibition space.
B-side's mission is two fold: to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to the thousands of independent films made each year and to help those filmmakers extend the lives of their films past the festival circuit.
"There are 20,000 films at 4,000 festivals each year, only a small portion of which actually make it to a theater near you," said B-side founder Chris Hyams. "We think that's pretty inefficient."

Richard Jenkins is in town, and if you don't know the name you know the face. He was dead dad Nathaniel Fisher on the hit HBO series Six Feet Under, and he has played in Coen Brothers films including The Man Who Wasn't There, Intolerable Cruelty and the upcoming Burn After Reading. He's one of those familiar-looking guys who gets stopped on the streets by folks who think they knew him in college, or at their first job. He's also a hell of an actor whose latest film, The Visitor, feels like a career high point.

The marquee film at the Paramount on Saturday night was Helen Hunt's directorial debut, Then She Found Me. Why should you care? Well, for one, it will open the AFI Dallas Film Festival in a few weeks. And another reason is: it's a pretty good movie.
In addition to directing, Ms. Hunt adapted the screenplay and stars as a woman with a whole life's worth of drama coming at her at once. First her new husband decides married life isn't for him. Then her adopted mother dies. And if that weren't enough, she's contacted by the birth mother (a show-stealing Bette Midler) she never knew who all the sudden wants a relationship with her daughter.

Gun nut, drug nut, all-around nut: the late Hunter S. Thompson was hell on literary wheels. He rolls on with full force in Gonzo, a robust portrait directed by recent documentary Oscar winner Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) and produced by Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner's HDNet Movies.

A pair of strong docs at SXSW, Crawford and Tulia, Texas, present complex looks at small-town Texas life. Crawford, directed by Austin's David Modigliani, looks at what happened when a president looking for a frontier image moved into a town of 700 people. Tulia, made by Californians Cassandra Herrman and Kelly Whalen, tracks the infamous 1999 drug sting that saw a since-disgraced undercover officer put 39 black residents behind bars (all were released when the case's many holes, including an arresting officer with a criminal record, were exposed; you can read more in Nate Blakeslee's excellent book). Both films do an admirable job of avoiding yokel stereotypes and leaving room for their stories and characters to develop. You'll be hearing a lot more about both: they're slated to play the AFI Dallas International Film Festival later this month.

Josh Brolin strolled into the Dobie Saturday around 2 p.m., just as the lights were dimming for his short film, X. He looked like a man who didn't really want to be noticed and didn't want to take any attention away from the feature attraction, an excellent and socially illuminating documentary called Tulia, Texas But once both films were done, he shuffled up to the front of the theater and took some questions.

I just got back from a nice chat with the co-directors of Bi the Way, Brittany Blockman and Dallas' Josephine Decker. For their film, the pair took a roadtrip across the country exploring what they thought was a shift in how American viewed bisexuality.
"We set out in the middle of a cultural war. The country was really divided," Ms. Decker, a 1999 Higland Park High School graduate, says of their feelings when they set off to make their film in 2005. "I was expecting to hear people say, 'No way! Those people are going to hell!' and then other people to say, 'whatever.' But people were more centered. I was more surprised to how open America was."
Almost more amazing was that the women, who met on their first day of school at Princeton University, were able to spend several months in a car together and remain friends in the end. They'll be celebrating their film (and friendship) tonight at its premiere and later a party at The Enchanted Forest that they say will feature burlesque dancers, beatboxing and body painting. What's not to like? As for the premiere, Ms. Blockman says they are trying to get 100 people to makeout before the film. Unfortunately I'm going to miss that spectacle (I'll be watching Helen Hunt's directorial debut, Then She Found Me) but I'm going to the party tonight, so I'll be sure and investigate how they, um, madeout in that endeavor. Sorry.

A great number of films at SXSW will also be rolling through Dallas later this month for the AFI Dallas International Film Festival. Among them is Intimidad, a slight but bracingly intimate portrait of a determined Mexican family navigating the global economy and trying to make enough dough to raise their young daughter. The film was directed by David Redmon and Ashley Sabin. Redmon, a Dallas area native who made the docs Mardi Gras: Made in China and Kamp Katrina, has a sharp eye for stories that fold highly personal stories into larger economic issues.

AUSTIN - Last night I caught Super High Me, one of several films at SXSW about pot and the smoking thereof (others include Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, Humboldt County). The premise of this doc is a direct rip-off of Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me: Comedian Doug Benson, a regular toker, decided to abstain for 30 days, then do nothing but smoke for the following 30. He visits doctors and a shrink to determine how much his daily herb effects his daily functioning, and comes to the conclusion that he really, really likes smoking pot.
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AUSTIN -- Consider this the beginning of our SXSW Film Festival coverage here on the Screening Room blog. So far .... not much to report, other than the usual 100-yard-long line to pick up my pass whizzed by in a brisk 45 minutes or so.
So let's talk about what's on tap. Tonight I will be headed over to the Texas Film Hall of Fame inductions, which has a decidedly North Texas flavor. Morgan Fairchild and Mike Judge both earned admission to the hall, as did Jayne Mansfield (whose daughter, Mariska Hargitay of Law & Order fame will accept) and ZZ Top, who will be presented by Luke Wilson. Urban Cowboy will also be recognized and will be represented by Debra Winger. Dan Rather will serve as emcee.
After that, it's off to check out the best high school filmmakers at the Texas High School Shorts presentation. R.L. Turner sophomore John Gordon earned a spot in the field with his five-minute film To the Ends of the Earth. You can catch a trailer for it here.

Star power doesn't hurt when it comes to getting people out to a film festival, and the crew over at AFI-Dallas has certainly recognized that. The festival announced this morning that it will present its Star Award to festival attendees Helen Hunt, Mickey Rooney, Todd Wagner and Charlize Theron. Jack Lemmon will also receive the award, accepted by his widow, Felicia Farr.

Shooting bricks
Semi-Pro, on the strength of star Will Ferrell's tireless promotion, topped the charts with a well-below-expectations $15 million. That's the lowest chart-topping total since Sept. 14-16, when The Brave One won the weekend with $13.4 million.

Paramount

According to Bloody-Disgusting.com, director Uwe Boll has announced that he will release his newest film Postal, on the same weekend as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to "go out and destroy Indiana Jones in the Box Office."

Riiiiiiight. Good luck with that, Uwe.

Mr. Boll has brought us many box office blockbusters, such as Alone in the Dark ($8 mil worldwide), BloodRayne ($2 mil worldwide) and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (about $5 mil). Of course, those three films combined cost an estimated $105 million to make.

So what do you think: Is Indy really in any danger on May 23? Are you going to skip the crowds at Crystal Skull for Postal? And how DOES Uwe Boll keep getting funding for new films?

I somehow ended up on the Hillary e-blast list, which means I get to find out about every last campaign stop in the state. Anyway, the other day I got a message reporting that Melanie Griffith had endorsed Hillary (Woo-hoo!).The message went on to mention that "Griffith has starred in dozens of movies and won an Oscar for Best Actress for her role in Working Girl. Uh, no. She was nominated, but did not win. Then again, politicians have always been prone to exaggeration.