Yo! Hurry! The BPM Filmmaking Frenzy Contest wants YOU!!

Filmmaking Frenzy has only a short time left to recruit teams for its action-packed filmmaking competition, the 2008 edition of BPM (Beats Per Minute), a 48 hour music-fueled movie-making meltdown! At the beginning of the contest, teams will be given a song from one of the artists performing at the Red Bull Moon Tower. There's still time to check in, and immediately you and your team start scrambling: listening to the song, decoding the lyrics, making the shot list, borrowing and stealing guitars, wigs, rotating drum cages - whatever it takes to make the most entertaining video of them all.

Grand prize for this Frenzy is an AMD-based Dell laptop loaded up by Guitar Center with a music editing package, second prize is an AMD-based Dell laptop and third prize is an Epiphone guitar provided by Gibson. The top 40 films will also be posted on the Red Bull Moon Tower Facebook page., and the top 40 teams will be invited to the Red Bull Moon Tower where their videos will be played in between the live sets of the bands from the competition.

Teams have from between Friday, Feb 29, 7:00 PM and Sunday, Mar 2, 7:00 PM, to produce a music video for a band that will be performing at the Red Bull Moon Tower. All films will be posted online for voting by March 5 at 5:00 PM.

Sign up for a team and see all the rules and info here.

THE SIGNAL - Now Playing Lamar!

"A gory good time!"
- eFilmCritic.com

"A moderately subversive and very proficient splatter horror movie of the sort David Cronenberg used to make back in the ‘70s and ‘80s."
- Box Office Magazine

It’s New Year’s Eve in the city of Terminus and chaos is this year’s resolution. All forms of communication have been jammed by an enigmatic transmission that preys on fear and desire driving everyone in the city to murder and madness. In a place once marked by conformity but now sent into complete anarchy, the rebellious Ben must save the woman he loves from the bedlam in the streets as well as her crazed sadistic husband. But the only way he can tell who to trust or who has given in to violence is by uncovering the true nature of THE SIGNAL.

Told in three parts from three unique perspectives by three visionary directors, THE SIGNAL was originally conceived as an experimental film project called Exquisite Corpse where one filmmaker would begin a story then hand it off to another filmmaker to continue and then to another and so on until the movie was complete. The story eventually took shape and evolved into a scifi/ horror/thriller that imagines a world where everyday anxieties become the catalyst for inhuman terror. THE SIGNAL is a horrific journey towards discovering that the most brutal monster might actually be within all of us.

The Academy Award Nominated Shorts

Yes, JUNO and ATONEMENT and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and THERE WILL BE BLOOD and MICHAEL CLAYTON were all exceptional films from last year, and each of them deserves a nod from Oscar. But they aren't the only nominees for Best Picture in this year's Academy Awards, because there are completely separate categories for Best Short Film, and isn't a short film still a Picture? So before you can say which film was *truly* the Best Picture of the year, you need to check out all of the features as well as all of the best shorts.

Unfortunately, the Academy doesn't see eye to eye with us on that issue (yet), and they've once again left Short Films in a category all by themselves. But just because Oscar doesn't give them as much attention as he lavishes on George Clooney and Daniel Day-Lewis, that doesn't mean that you have to be so short-sighted. We've got two programs of the Oscar Nominated Shorts playing this week at the Alamo South Lamar, so you can come down and make a double feature of the Live Action and Animated films or spread your pleasure across two nights. However you splice them up, though, don't miss this rare chance to see truly amazing shorts on the big screen. It'll increase your odds of winning your office's Oscar betting pool, and it will be the surprise treat of your film-viewing season.

Tickets to the Live Action Shorts are available here.

Click here for tickets to the Animated Shorts.

LOVE BITES: The Power Ballad Sing-Along

Valentine's Day? That's for people who still believe in fairy tales. The rest of us know that love isn't really something that lifts us up where we belong, oh no. Love tears us up inside, burns our souls with an Eternal Flame, and you Don't Know What You've Got Till It's Gone. And you can sing about how you'll be mine Faithfully all you want, but I know that in the end I'll be Right Here Waiting and trying to figure out how to live Without You after we've gone our Separate Ways.

The Love Bites Power Ballad Sing-Along is back this Valentine's week, with two shows at the Ritz on Valentine's night itself and special Wednesday the 13th shows at the Ritz and at the Village, and we know that you Can't Fight This Feeling, so come sing away the pain of junior high loves lost in a crowded theater of like-minded lighter-wielding rockers. Tickets include a souvenir lighter so you can carry on the flame all through the night.

Click here for advance tickets to Love Bites at the Ritz. Click here for tickets to the shows at the Village.

SPIRAL Opens At The Alamo Lamar Friday 2/8!

If you wondered why so many people were wandering around shaking their heads and muttering to themselves at Fantastic Fest last year, it's probably because they had just seen a screening of the terrific, suspenseful thriller SPIRAL. This time HATCHET director Adam Green has taken on an all new challenge and once again he succeeds with edge-of-your-seat excitement.

And now, by popular demand, we are thrilled to bring it back for everyone to enjoy.

Buy your tickets now HERE.

"A Hitch-cocktail of precision direction, deft pacing, startling imagery and clean style. The undercurrent of sly suspense never subsides in this teasing psychodrama packing a final shock punch." Alan Jones, FrightFest

Portland in the fall is a solitary city. A city where a lonely man can lose himself, insulated beneath the cold, and the clouds, and the rain. Mason (Joel David Moore) is just such a man. A gifted artist, Mason is never-the-less neurotic and reclusive, living a life of anonymity, working from a drab cubicle in a florescent-lit phone bank, repeating the same meaningless conversation with faceless strangers ad nauseam.

Mason is never truly noticed by anyone, save his boss, Berkeley (Zachary Levi), not quite a friend, but a sole source of companionship in an otherwise isolated existence. That is, until he meets a gregarious co-worker named Amber (Amber Tamblyn), a girl struggling with her own loneliness and need to define herself. Amber's jovial demeanor and seemingly carefree attitude provides a sort of catharsis for Mason, and allows his true gifts to come to light as she poses for his art.

It is an unlikely, and unusual courtship that helps Mason find peace for possibly the first time in his life. But as Mason's defenses lower, and the man inside is revealed, there may be something behind the surface darker than anyone expected. For not everything that is hidden should be found, and not every love is meant to be. And you can't paint over your past...