Sunday, December 27, 2009

The Alamo Ritz New Year’s Eve Bash: THE APARTMENT!


Toast the new decade with THE APARTMENT with the finest food and drink on the planet!

Hungry for the best night out of the year? Looking to share some food and drinks with one of the best films ever made? Searching for the best way to celebrate New Years while still having time to get to the party for the midnight countdown? Then we'll be raising a glass along with you at our second annual New Year’s celebration of classic cinema, cocktails and cuisine at The Ritz!!

2008’s screening of AFTER THE THIN MAN was a true extravaganza, bringing together an incredible drinking/dining experience with one of the greatest film’s of Hollywood’s golden era.

This year, we’re stepping it up with the flat-out greatest New Year’s film in the world: Billy Wilder’s 1960 masterpiece THE APARTMENT, a brilliantly written, fast-paced, heartbreakingly hilarious adventure of a poor schlub (a young, bumbling Jack Lemmon) who just can’t steer things right to fall into the good graces of the most wonderful woman in town (a young, unbelievably charming Shirley MacLaine). In his way are an innumerable number of comic obstacles, including the great Fred MacMurray and Ray Walston as self-serving high-rollers content to kick dirt in the face of anyone who crosses them.

It’s a gorgeously shot, perfectly constructed, fun-as-hell monument to filmmaking at its very best (in AFI’s Top 100 films!), and we’re pleased to bring it to you along with a very special menu with drink pairings to ring in the new decade, all prepared by our chefs John Bullington and Elijah Horgan, with accompanying beverages masterminded by bar wizard Amy Patton.

Get your tickets HERE, and we'll see you for New Years!

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Break out the visine and mistletoe...it's HIGH FOR THE HOLIDAYS!


HIGH FOR THE HOLIDAYS at The Ritz, Dec 23 - Jan 6!!!

This holiday season, feel free to sit around a fireplace listening to an old CD of Jingle Bells with your family. There's nothing wrong with that, and we respect you if that's what you want to do with yourself.

As for us, we're spicing it up a bit with a bevy of movies that have nothing to do with the holidays, but plenty to do with getting high (or drunk). From the mind-warping insanity of mutant-psychedelic classic THE HOLY MOUNTAIN to our now-classic all-you-can-eat burger show of the original HAROLD & KUMAR to ultimate odes to drunken insanity like THE HANGOVER and BEERFEST (with Beerlympics!), we have truly learned how to make Santa's nose just a little more rosy red.

Not only that, but we're mixing up an aperatif of special activities to go along with each film that makes it more than a movie, giving audience members the chance to win great prizes from MR. NICE GUYS! There's no doubt...this year, High for the Holidays will be a transcendental experience!

Get the whole HIGH FOR THE HOLIDAYS rundown HERE!

Thursday, December 17, 2009

AVATAR in 3D now playing Lamar & Village!


AVATAR in State-of-the-Art 4K Digital 3D!
Click here for tickets to South Lamar
Click here for tickets to Village

"It's thrilling and lovely and sad and explosive in all the right ways, and it needs to be seen – on the big screen, in 3-D – to be believed. 4 Stars."
Mark Savlov, The Austin Chronicle

"It's an impossible but completely plausible and seductive world that invites your total immersion. Don't resist it; sink in and fly with it. All Cameron asks is that you open your eyes."
Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine

"There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $250 million, or was it $300 million, wisely."
Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun Times

When we first saw images from James Cameron's latest $300 million dollar behemoth, one word came to mind- "Ferngully." But then we were treated to 20 minutes of sneak-peak footage at Fantastic Fest, and HOLY MOTHER OF GOD. All the hype about the groundbreaking technology developed just to make this film pays off in a big big way. 60% CGI, 40% live action, 10,000% fun. This movie is GORGEOUS- you MUST see it in digital 3D, cause if you're seeing it in 2D, you're not seeing AVATAR. Worth. Every. Penny.

And now at Alamo South Lamar & the Village, we've got brand new, ahead-of-the-state-of-the-art Sony 4K Digital Projectors, which render Cameron's world like you won't believe.

In the distant future, Jake Sully, a paraplegic war veteran, is offered a second chance in the military. He's transported to a planet called Pandora, where the world's armed forces have been put in a fierce battle against the planet's native species (the Na'Vi) for years, struggling to mine a vital energy source for earth, which rests under the Na'Vi settlement.

See it at Village or South Lamar

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Get MORTIFIED


MORTIFIED
Weds, Dec 16, 7pm
at the Alamo Ritz
Advance tix available here while they last


Tickets are going fast, but there may still be time for you to get to be a part of one of the most exciting live shows to make a fresh appearance on the stage at the Alamo Ritz: MORTIFIED.

Ripped from the pages of real life, Mortified is a comic excavation of awkward adolescent artifacts - old journals, poems, love letters, lyrics, locker notes, home movies, etc. - shared by their original authors in front of total strangers. Hailed a "cultural phenomenon" by Newsweek and celebrated for years by the likes of This American Life, The Today Show, Esquire, The Onion AV Club, Daily Candy, Entertainment Weekly, and E!, Mortified is a celebration of the strange and extraordinary things we created as kids. Share the Shame. Get Mortified!

Monday, December 7, 2009

No joke!: BAD LIEUTENANT is THE movie of the year and it opens at Ritz this weekend!


BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS opening Dec 11 at The Ritz

God-DANG.

We’ll admit, we were initially merely amused at the prospect of the new BAD LIEUTENANT film. Mid-career action convert Nicolas Cage starring in a film from German renaissance wildman Werner Herzog? Sure, we’ll watch that. An advance screening rolled around about a week ago and the programmers gathered together to give the movie a fair viewing.

Two hours later, our faces were obliterated. It’s no joke: BAD LIEUTENANT is the BEST FILM OF 2009. I swear on my granny. It’s a perfectly assembled, harrowing, hilarious, one-of-a-kind film, and deserves to be seen by everyone between the ages of 16 and 3000. Nicolas Cage does things that no actor has ever done in a movie. Herzog takes chances that pay off without fail. There are invisible iguanas and breakdancing ghosts. And it all ties together in a tight, completely linear storyline. That’s some kinda miracle and these guys did it.

It’s everything you could want on a screen, and we’re not even the only ones who think so. Take a look at some of these rave reviews from normally respectable sources:

“An original, offbeat and rewarding cop story with Nicolas Cage in great form.” – Hollywood Reporter

“Here, Nicolas Cage is a fearless actor. He doesn’t care if you think he goes over the top…he will crawl to the top hand over hand with bleeding fingernails. ” – Roger Ebert

“Like a jumpy, coke-fueled Pied Piper, Cage takes viewers to the very precipice of depraved self-abasement, while preserving just enough self-conscious humor to keep from tumbling in.” – Washington Post

“A vividly acted and directed movie that stretches the boundaries of its genre and keeps you in its ever-unpredictable grip throughout.” -BoxOffice

…These are just the tip of the iceberg. This Nicolas Cage crime movie offers the most outrageous, entertaining night you’ll have until the actual Mayan apocalypse.

Believe it.

Tickets are HERE!

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Cartoons, Cereal and Kamikaze Comedy attack the Ritz this weekend!


SAT MORNING CARTOON CEREAL PARTY Holiday Edition - Sat, Dec 5
STAND-UP COMEDY DISASTERS - Sun, Dec 6

This weekend will provide all fun-loving Alamo patrons with busted guts and cavities!

On Saturday morning, we'll be presenting our ever-popular SATURDAY MORNING CARTOON CEREAL PARTY Holiday Edition! Time to pull out the long red winter pajamas with the feet attached! And for the Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa edition of our Cartoon Cereal Party pursuits, we'll be putting on a special HOLIDAY edition just for you!!

Your eyes will devour Santastic episodes of your favorite cartoons, plus see some deeply bizarre holiday surprises that you never imagined existed! Forget that you grew up and got a job and started sleeping through Saturday mornings...the glory days are BACK! Because we're gonna bring you a 2.5 hour attack from the wildest cartoons in the TV Netherworld!

Just bring yourselves, and if you have a special spoon or stuffed animal you can bring that too. Pajamas are optional. Let me rephrase that: please wear clothes, even if you choose not to wear pajamas. Regardless, both the cartoons and the endless supply of cereal will unleash your powers of winter wonderlanding, sugar-eating and FUN-HAVING until you reach a new level of superhuman powertimes!!!
Tickets are HERE!

Then, on Sunday, your funnybone will explode like an atomic warhead at STAND-UP COMEDY DISASTERS. We've all seen bad stand-up comedians - comics who lack timing, personality, material, simple human dignity...the effect can be like watching a car crash happen right next to you. You feel like you should avert your eyes, but you can't. This show is a tribute to all the terrible comics.

While comedian Andy Ritchie worked with a well-known comedy booker, he brushed elbows with famous stand-ups and some of today's finest comedic minds. He also saw an endless stream of unsolicited audition tapes and demo reels. From the delusional and misguided to the downright baffling, he collected the best of the worst. Charlie Sotelo, late of the Show With No Name, has his own collection of audition tapes and on stage disasters.

Ritchie and Sotelo will present highlights from their collections to bring you a night of the worst and most awkward moments of all these documents of desperation. The results are somewhere between a kick in the groin and a choir of heavenly blonde angels singing you to sleep after pleasuring you in ways you never dreamed of. With special guests, surprises and a lot of laughs! Get those tickets HERE!

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

MASTER PANCAKE presents ROAD HOUSE!



Master Pancake Theater Presents

ROAD HOUSE: Benefiting Pancreatic Cancer Research
Two Shows Only 7pm (SOLD OUT)
and 10pm Wednesday 12/2 at the Ritz

Tickets on sale here.

For one show only, to honor our fallen friend Patrick Swayze, Master Pancake resurrects one of their most requested mocks ever: ROAD HOUSE (1989). We'll be donating a hefty percentage of the night's proceeds to PanCAN, the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, to help battle the disease that took down our hero, as we mock ROAD HOUSE, the Citizen Kane of bouncer movies, and possibly the most entertainingly cheesy movie of all time. ROAD HOUSE tells the story of James Dalton, an itinerant Zen bouncer (or "cooler" as it's called in the trade) played by Patrick Swayze who comes to town and uses his incredible cooling powers and Zen wisdom ("Pain don't hurt") to help turn a seedy whisky joint into a somewhat less seedy whisky joint by teaching a ragtag gang of lovable losers to believe in themselves and, more importantly, to spot a knife hidden in a shoe from 40 feet away ("Right boot"!). Swayze adds a real touch of class to this otherwise ridiculous B-grade actioner. Come on out as Master Pancake showers this movie with their own brand of affection and helps give a roundhouse kick to Pancreatic Cancer.