Sunday, May 27, 2007

Eli Roth Live--Hostel: Part II June 3


Ain't It Cool News and Fantastic Fest present
Eli Roth live in person
with a sneak preview screening of
HOSTEL: PART II

For many years, we have been friends with the new crown prince of modern horror, Eli Roth. Harry, Eli, Kier-la and I all met at the Sitges Film Festival in 2001 after an early screening of Cabin Fever. We bonded over cool T-shirts, 80s horror and all things that movie nerds hold near and dear.

Eli has been back to the theater many times over the years: the insane asylum horror all-nighter, QT Fest, multiple Butt-Numb-A-Thons and most importantly, his hosting gig at the Mary Kate and Ashley 18th Birthday Celebration. In short, we go way back. We consider him a very dear friend of the original Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.

When word of the closing of the theater came down, Eli jumped at the chance to say farewell one more time to our beloved cinema playhouse. He is taking a break from his very busy promotion schedule to present a special advance sneak-peek screening of his new film, HOSTEL: PART II, to his downtown Alamo Drafthouse extended family.

Reservations for the event become available on Monday, May 28 at noon exclusively to Fantastic Fest badge holders and Heroes of the Alamo members. The screening is free, but you can reserve a seat by pre-purchasing a food and drink voucher. Remaining tickets will be made available to the general public on May 30 at noon. (Tim)

Special thanks to Lionsgate for making this event possible.

HOSTEL: PART II opens in theaters (including the Alamo Drafthouse) on Friday, June 8.

(Note: This show is 18 and up, no children are allowed to this screening)

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Saturday! The Godfather of Gore, Live!


In 1963, it took one enterprising Floridian filmmaker to realize that scary films could be made a hundred times more stomach-churning with just a splash of red. Hell, why not gallons of it? When BLOOD FEAST debuted that year, theaters were packed, audiences turned green, and a bold new genre was created: the gore film.

With 2000 MANIACS and beyond, Lewis continued to quite literally push the limits of the drive-in movie circuit with ragged, two-fisted terror tales made to nail the everyman right in the gut. His unique movies are always unforgettable and outrageous, and his creativity and voraciousness have made him a B-movie deity, second to none in the great hall of shoestring budget entertainers. Austin is impossibly lucky to host this living legend for the most mammoth ultimate Rolling Roadshow horror event EVER, presented at an actual secret ghost town just outside of the city!!! Truly, an event like this comes along once (or less) in a lifetime!

Grab your tickets now, and we'll see you in splatterville!

Tonight - Jiggy Crunk!


Last week's Jiggy Crunk shows were AMAZING. We had spontaneous acts of clothing removal, more booty shaking than I've ever seen in a movie theater before, and old school - no, actually *middle* school style dance circles at the front of the theater where people were showing off their long dormant skills at the Running Man and the Roger Rabbit. And that's just the stuff that happened offscreen. Up on the screen were some of the most amazing videos we've ever played, and a lot of videos that you can't see anywhere else. I loved it, and I can't wait for tonight's shows.

Get your advance tickets here, and in addition to giving yourself a chance to do the Humpty Dance in public again, you'll also get to say word to your mother with Vanilla Ice, you'll bust a move with Young MC, LL Cool J, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Will Smith (cause, you know, he was a totally different rapper on Big Willie Style than he was on Homebase) - and we'll have the ladies represented, too. Salt 'N Pepa, Neneh Cherry, TLC - they'll all be there, along with Puff Daddy (before he was a Diddy) and Big Punisher and Outkast and more. Stop! Hammertime!

Friday, May 18, 2007

Sat, May 26 - The Godfather of Gore Live!


In 1963, it took one enterprising Floridian filmmaker to realize that scary films could be made a hundred times more stomach-churning with just a splash of red. Hell, why not gallons of it? When BLOOD FEAST debuted that year, theaters were packed, audiences turned green, and a bold new genre was created: the gore film.

With 2000 MANIACS and beyond, Lewis continued to quite literally push the limits of the drive-in movie circuit with ragged, two-fisted terror tales made to nail the everyman right in the gut. His unique movies are always unforgettable and outrageous, and his creativity and voraciousness have made him a B-movie deity, second to none in the great hall of shoestring budget entertainers. Austin is impossibly lucky to host this living legend for the most mammoth ultimate Rolling Roadshow horror event EVER, presented at an actual secret ghost town just outside of the city!!! Truly, an event like this comes along once (or less) in a lifetime!

Grab your tickets now, and we'll see you in splatterville!

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Tonight - Open Screen Night w/ Free Beer!


Wanna win $100 for drinking a free beer? Tonight’s Open Screen Night is the show for you!

See, here’s the deal: at every Open Screen Night, we play whatever people bring to the theater with them, and we buy everyone who brings a video to play a free beer just for helping out with the show. At the end of the night, the audience votes on their favorite video of the evening and then the winner gets $100 in cash. Usually, the competition for the money is pretty fierce, with filmmakers from all over Austin bringing in their most recent work, collectors bringing in their favorite oddball finds, and oddballs bringing in their favorite episodes of Friends that they think it’d be funny to make us watch on the big screen. But this month, most of the filmmakers who would normally come out are all busy trying to finish up their Unnecessary Sequels projects, so the number of people who will have something to bring to Open Screen Night will probably be much lower than usual. That’s bad for us, but it’s good for you! The $100 prize has never been easier to grasp!

Of course, now that I’ve let the cat out of the bag, maybe all sorts of new people will come out to show their videos, but even if that makes the $100 harder to win, it should make for an even more fun show than usual, so go shoot a quick video, bring it down to the theater, and prepare to have your mind ripped open by the most free-form short film contest of all time.

Get advance tickets here and we'll see you at the show!

Tonight - Jiggy Crunk!


Last week's Jiggy Crunk shows were AMAZING. We had spontaneous acts of clothing removal, more booty shaking than I've ever seen in a movie theater before, and old school - no, actually *middle* school style dance circles at the front of the theater where people were showing off their long dormant skills at the Running Man and the Roger Rabbit. And that's just the stuff that happened offscreen. Up on the screen were some of the most amazing videos we've ever played, and a lot of videos that you can't see anywhere else. I loved it, and I can't wait for tonight's shows.

Get your advance tickets here, and in addition to giving yourself a chance to do the Humpty Dance in public again, you'll also get to say word to your mother with Vanilla Ice, you'll bust a move with Young MC, LL Cool J, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Will Smith (cause, you know, he was a totally different rapper on Big Willie Style than he was on Homebase) - and we'll have the ladies represented, too. Salt 'N Pepa, Neneh Cherry, TLC - they'll all be there, along with Puff Daddy (before he was a Diddy) and Big Punisher and Outkast and more. Stop! Hammertime!

Monday, May 14, 2007

Tuesday - John Erler's One-Man He-Man Show!


John Erler's been working overtime lately. In addition to heading up Master Pancake Theater's presentation of PRETTY WOMAN, he's been burning the midnight oil to put together his One-Man He-Man show, completely rewriting all of the dialogue for THE SECRET OF THE SWORD, the originally-made-for-TV-but-then-theatrically-released-anyway He-Man and She-Ra movie. John's been making Skeletor voices for years, and if you saw any of the Sinus Christmas shows back in the day, you've seen him redub cartoons before (pudding... butter...) but combining those two talents into one feature-length combination? That's like chocolate and peanut butter, like Milli meeting Vanilli, like Prince Adam and Cringer... By the power of Grayskull, don't miss it!

Advance tickets avaiable here.

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Tonight-a taste of PRARIE HOME COMPANION live!


FRED NEWMAN, the man of 1000 voices and sounds from A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANIONwill be live in person, providing all the sound effects for a very special Foleyvision performance of the Japanese Spiderman. to help them out. Fans of NPR's acclaimed Prarie Home Companion should not miss this one-time chance to experience live sound-effect storytelling in the intimate space of the original Alamo Downtown.

Foleyvision is definitely one of the feathers in our Alamo cap, and if you haven’t been to one of those shows yet, let me be the first to tell you that the technically amazing feat of performing all of the music and sound effects live in the theater while simultaneously re-dubbing all of the dialogue live, in sync with the movie, is really only the tip of the iceberg. Because when you’re turning down the soundtrack to the original movie and making your own sounds, you get to play around with everything, making some characters sound like Jack Bauer and others make creaking sounds when they walk and others having operatic themes that come out of nowhere and follow them around for the whole film. Really, anything can happen. This Saturday, the Foleyvision gang will get to play with THE JAPANESE SPIDERMAN.

Fred Newman from Prarie Home Companion isn’t the only special guest we have this week, of course, and I’m surprised to be able to tell you this, but at the time of this writing there are still some tickets left to QUENTIN TARANTINO’s LAST NIGHT AT THE ALAMO GRINDHOUSE mini-festival, featuring QT live in person. And next Wednesday we’ll also be welcoming Mr. Willy Wonka to the Alamo Downtown for our special four course chocolate feast! Before that, of course, we’ll be having the most special guest of all, your mom, come by for the Mother’s Day Feasts at the Lamar and Village this Sunday. Should be tasty business all around!

Sunday, May 6, 2007

Tonight at the Alamo Downtown!



No offense, and we're looking forward to the new PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movie as much as everyone else, but there are some things that Johnny Depp isn't the best at. Okay, maybe that's not true... Really though, why did he feel the need to improve on absolute perfection? We love you, Johnny, but Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka was chocolate-covered delicous.

Fun fact: did you know that the somersault fall Wonka does when he makes his entrance in front of the candy factory was Wilder's idea? And that not only was it his idea, but that he said that if the director didn't let him add that movement in, he wouldn't do the movie? It's true. Wilder said that from that moment on, we'd never be able to know when he was lying and when he was telling the truth, and he was so dedicated to the idea that he would have let the role pass him by if he couldn't keep us on his toes by falling off of his own.

Join us this Wednesday night for our first WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY party us as we celebrate this ode to chocolate and childhood and morality, and we'll give everyone who comes through the door their very own Wonka bar; one of them will even have a lucky golden ticket in it!

Brought to you in part by Holland Photo, who'll have all sorts of prizes on hand!

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Eastbound and Down!


If you don't love SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT, I'm going to have to ask you to leave America. Burt Reynolds' mustache alone makes this THE cinematic tour de force of the late '70s. Tonight we'll express our undying love and devotion for Burt at the SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT Extravaganza at the Alamo Downtown. We've got a mountain full of cold Coors beer in the lobby, L'il Cap'n Travis playing live before the movie, and plenty of lyric sheets so everyone can sing along to Eastbound and Down.