SXSW Presents: TINY FURNITURE

SXSW Presents:
TINY FURNITURE
Sunday 1/30, Tuesday 2/1 & Sunday 2/6 @Ritz
Advance tickets available here

We're thrilled to bring the SXSW sensation TINY FURNITURE to the Ritz. A humble film from New York, TINY FURNITURE is the little indie of 2010, and it's got the SXSW Award, as well as two nominations from the Independent Spirit Awards (Best First Film and Best First Screenplay), to back it up.

Much attention has been brought to the film's creator, Lena Dunham. Dunham has made it clear that this is an intensely autobiographical film. As a 24-year old girl from a privileged background, she is able to "simultaneously embarrass and endear us to her," according to Miranda Siegel in New York Magazine. TINY FURNITURE is an honest, poignant, and very funny exploration of twenties malaise; Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times goes so far as to call Dunham "a soulful artist with a gift for intimacy both in front of and behind the camera." She also crowns her "one of the promising new voices in the independent film world."

Presented by SXSW

Get your tickets for this great show now.

IP MAN 2 Opens at Village and Lake Creek

Fantastic Fest Favorite:
IP MAN 2
Opens @Lake Creek 1/28 and starts @Village 2/4
Advance tickets available here

IP MAN 2 Premiered at Fantastic Fest this year to huge acclaim. We're bringing back one of our favorite films from the fest for select screenings at Lake Creek and Village - on 35mm!

No knowledge of IP MAN 1 is necessary. Driven out of Foshan by the Japanese, we pick up the Ip Man story in 1949 as Master Ip (Donnie Yen) arrives in Hong Kong. Wife pregnant, money short, friends scarce, he sets up a martial arts school but no Hong Kong people want to study with the weird, tea-sipping dude from China. It doesn’t take long to figure out the problem: Master Hung (Sammo Hung) runs the martial arts schools in Hong Kong with an iron fist, extorting “fees” and paying off the corrupt British cops.

But nobody puts Donnie Yen in the corner, and soon enough he’s standing on a rickety table in a tea house, putting down masters one by one in order to purchase his right to teach wing chun with payments made in nothing but knuckles. Wing chun is the sissy kung fu, invented by a Buddhist nun and long derided in the martial world.

Fluid and graceful, IP MAN 2 makes the case that while wing chun may have been invented by Buddhist nuns, these particular Buddhist nuns were not fooling around.

Get your tickets for IP MAN 2: Opens Friday at Lake Creek, and Starting at Village on 2/4

One Gong to Rule Them All

The Alamo Drafthouse presents

OPEN SCREEN NIGHT

Wednesday, Jan 26th at the Ritz

Advance tickets available here

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, OPEN SCREEN NIGHT is back! We're letting you guys take over the Alamo Ritz's screen Wednesday night to aid in your quest for fame and fortune. All you have to do is bring in the most entertaining and weird stuff you can find, and we will literally play ANYTHING you bring.

Want to test out your new short on a discerning audience? Bring us your best. Know of the craziest video ever made online? Give us the URL and do your worst. One of you will be elected to the hallowed position of mighty gonger, and after the two minute grace time is up, the audience's boos will dictate whether they want to watch more or if the gonger must do his most excellent task and end our suffering.

Even if you don't have something to bring in, OPEN SCREEN NIGHT always promises something truly hilarious (and/or, most likely, completely disgusting). So, crack open your old home movies, start scouring the Internet, or get to some filming today because when the "OPEN SCREEN NIGHT" light is on anything goes.

What are you waiting for? Grab your tickets HERE already!

Documentary Feature GERRYMANDERING Tonight!

GERRYMANDERING
Post-film discussion with special guests:
Steve Bickerstaff, U of T professor and author of LINES IN THE SAND
Linda Curtis, Independent Texans
Guillermo Garcia, San Antonio Express-News
Monday, Jan 24 at Ritz
Tickets here!

Right now, politicians are gearing up for the once-a-decade battle to decide who will control Congress for the next ten years or more. Behind the scenes, and away from the prying eyes of their constituents, they are jostling for control of the ultimate political weapon - the ability to directly determine the outcome of elections. Why bother with stuffing ballots when you can just draw your own districts?

In GERRYMANDERING, filmmaker Jeff Reichert exposes the most effective form of manipulating elections short of outright fraud. District lines are re-drawn to suit the interests of a few and manipulated for political gain. Democrats and Republicans collude to ensure their own re-elections while our whole democratic process is threatened. GERRYMANDERING covers this important facet of our political process, and does so in a way that is both informative and easily digestible.

Get tickets for this show tonight!

Sommelier Cinema: VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA

Sommelier Cinema:
VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA
Wednesday 1/26, 7:00 @Ritz
Advance tickets available here

Sommelier Cinema is a new series that pairs fine wine with the films that make us want to drink them. We are inviting guest sommeliers to come to the theatre, be inspired by a film, and come up with a dream menu of wines that will sweep you through the film. To kick off the series, we are excited to present VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA, the idyllic trip through Spain that celebrates love, passion, and the wines of Catalonia. We'll be joined by guest sommelier Claudia Alarcón.

Claudia has chosen four wines from the Catalan region, the location VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA romanticizes so well. Catalonia also happens to be one of the greatest wine-producing regions in the world, and the wines she's chosen are exquisite.

The menu is below, and you can read more about it here:

Raventós i Blanc L’Hereu Reserva Brut 2007

Clos del Pinell Blanco 2009

Mas Igneus - Barranc dels Closos Blanc 2009

Clos Figueras “Serras del Priorat” 2008

All audience members will get the four wines and a short introduction from Claudia about the history/characteristics of the wines, what to look and taste for, and how to become closer to the wine snob you want to be. Then we'll watch the fabulous film and sip passionately.

Get your tickets for this great show now.

Nukin' the Fridge

The Action Pack presents
INDIANA JONES & THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL
IN HECKLEVISION
Sun, Jan. 23 at Alamo Ritz
Advance tickets available here

Presented in HeckleVision - your texted jokes appear live on the screen with the movie!

Sure, it's easy enough to suspend your disbelief when you're watching a fantastical adventure fantasy (outrunning boulders IS pretty outrageous, after all), but when that disbelief jumps out of a Jeep and starts swinging with monkeys from trees, escaping from nuclear explosions in refrigerators, and pursuing crystal skulls in an attempt to unlock alien secrets? Well, that's when it's time for you to tell that disbelief you've had it with him and move on 'cause you're too good for him, girl.

Listen, we're all a little hurt about this one. We expected great things out of the latest Indiana Jones, but it just didn't come together. And the only way we're going to overcome this tragedy is for all of us to band together and laugh...because laughter cures everything. Except cancer; I'm pretty sure that one is still best cured with traditional medicine.

Indy's still got it. Crazy Russians are after him, and Shia Laboeuf is threatening to take over the franchise. WE NEED YOUR HELP! Hecklevision offers the latest in heckle technology that allows you to mock the film right from your seat with the power of your cellular telephone. No one will know if you laugh at your own jokes, so it's OK to have a stupid smug face of satisfaction when an audience erupts with laughter at your doing because the gloves come off and the funny flies freely as our battle of wits is streamed LIVE onscreen for everyone's enjoyment.
Sure it's a hodge-podge of self-parody, phony nostalgia, and constant winks to the audience. But it's OUR hodge-podge of self-parody and phony nostalgia . Even though we deserved better, we keep coming back to this latest chapter of a once perfect trilogy and staring into its dead, soulless eyes searching for some clue as to where it exactly all went wrong.

So come on, what are you waiting for? Grab a ticket and let's vent these frustrations together.

Tickets available HERE.

ENTER THE VOID Returns to the Ritz

SXSW presents ENTER THE VOID
Encore screenings this weekend at the Ritz
Jan 21 & 22 - GET TICKETS HERE

The Uncut Festival Version - Brand New 35mm Print!

One of the most anticipated cinematic events of the year, Gaspar Noé's ENTER THE VOID is a visionary thrill ride that's riveted audiences at the Cannes, Toronto, Sundance and SXSW film festivals. At Cannes, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called it "an exceptional work...the work of an artist who's trying to show us something we haven't seen before.”

We'll be offering an Absinthe drink special to help put this experience over the edge of psychedelia!

The long-awaited follow up to his controversial IRREVERSIBLE, ENTER THE VOID is an immersive and mind-bending experience. Oscar and his sister Linda are recent arrivals in Tokyo. Oscar’s a small time drug dealer, and Linda works as a nightclub stripper. One night, Oscar is caught up in a police bust and shot.

As he lies dying, his spirit, faithful to the promise he made his sister that he would never abandon her, refuses to leave the world of the living. It wanders through the city, his visions growing evermore nightmarish. Past, present and future merge in a hallucinatory maelstrom.

Nathaniel Brown and Paz de la Huerta (Lucy Danziger on BOARDWALK EMPIRE) star in a visceral journey set against the thumping, neon club scene of Tokyo, which hurls the viewer into an astonishing trip through life, death, and the universally wonderful and horrible moments between.

Get tickets to this mindf**k now!

Jodorowsky's SANTA SANGRE: One screening only! Don't miss!

Severin Films Presents

SANTA SANGRE

Wednesday January 19th at the Ritz

Advance tickets available here

In celebration of their new DVD release of this Jodorowsky classic, Severin Films is presenting this rare 35mm screening. There will be DVD giveaways at the show.

SANTA SANGRE is as worthy of classic status as Alejandro Jodorowsky’s earlier tandem EL TOPO and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN. It takes the hysteria and strangeness of Mexican pulp art and pushes it to the limit and far beyond, creating a bizarre world of armless saints, ruthless drunken knife throwers, deformity and madness. Along the way, there is beauty, love and towering imagination. It is truly one of the most astonishing film experiences you will ever have.

If you’ve never seen SANTA SANGRE on the big screen don’t miss this chance.

Part Man, Part Machine....All Hero

Tough Guy Cinema presents

ROBOCOP

Wednesday January 19th at the Ritz

Advance tickets available here

This Wednesday at the Alamo Ritz, Tough Guy Cinema is going to change the way you watch action movies....forever. Get your tickets early and grab your complimentary cap gun and ammo because we are going to be practicing our gun twirls in between interactive shoot outs with bad guys. Then just when you think this experience can't get any better, we're going to BLOW STUFF UP, live in front of your very eyes as the action on the screen unfolds.

Alex Murphy roams the streets as a tough-as-nails cop ready to serve and protect until (SPOILER ALERT!) he finds himself on the wrong end of a shotgun party. OCP owns Murphy’s corpse and decides to take what’s left of him to create their crime fighter of the future: ROBOCOP.

At first, everything is all fine and dandy; Robo is cleaning up the streets with his trusty partner Ann Lewis at his side until… Robocop starts having Alex Murphy’s memories. BUM BUM BUM! What follows is one of the greatest action/social-satire/all-around badass movies I’ve ever seen. You’ve got gangs, drugs, cars, guns, nudity, explosions, but most importantly… robots fighting robots.

If that isn’t the perfect recipe for a night out with Tough Guy Cinema, then I don’t know what is. Come quietly or there will be… trouble.

Get your prime directives in order and grab your tickets here.

Skatin’! Fightin’! Brolin! THRASHIN’!!!!!!!!!

Zzang!!! presents THRASHIN' in 35mm!
Sunday - 1/16 - Ritz - only 5 bucks!

Are you a teenage rager who's a slave to the need for speed? Or do you just want to see a young, blow-dried Josh Brolin do wicked 180s and fistfight beach punks? Either way, YOU WIN! Zzang!!! is worshiping the '80s with a 35mm print of the single greatest skateboarding epic in cinematic history, and you're invited to the max!!

Oscar nominee Brolin plays Corey, a skateboard-crazed teen tourist who quickly falls for a true California dreamgirl. Unfortunately, her brother Tommy is the kingpin of The Daggers, a gang of criminal deckriders who rule Venice Beach with a denim fist. These off-suburban nogoodniks dent cars, berate breakdancers and get severely peeved when Valley pissants like Corey horn in on their ramps and/or siblings.

The rivalry is fierce; Corey is called “Val trash” and counters with “punk poseur.” Hatred flairs, limbs are broken in wheeled combat and Tommy performs some blazing air guitar in preparation for the film’s epic climax: a 20-mile downhill skate race named The LA Massacre.

Incredibly, Brolin and the other cast members do much of their own skate and stunt work, adding surplus thrills to this already-raging adolescent eyeburner. Definitely the single most combustible triumph in skater cinema, presented to you in a gorgeous 35mm print! ZZANG!!!

Get the tickets!!

BLUE VALENTINE Opens at the Ritz

Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams star in:
BLUE VALENTINE
Starts Friday January 14 @Ritz
Advance tickets available here

BLUE VALENTINE premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and played in the Un Certain Regard Competition at Cannes before preparing for its theatrical release in the US. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams star in this amazing story of a young married couple’s tumultuous demise.

Poor, bitter, and always on the verge of eruption, Williams and Gosling embody a working-class dilemma with a rawness and ire unmatched by any film this year. Gosling is a monster, transforming from endearing joker to abusive maniac in a pitch-perfect performance. Williams is the saintly mother with deep-seated and bubbling frustration.

Writer/director Cianfrance masterfully blends flashback and memory in a fresh and sincere way, presenting the most intense and potent film about matrimonial hardship in a long time.

Their story is one that resonates with anyone who's ever had a broken heart, or who's broken a heart. Anthony Lane writes: "BLUE VALENTINE is that rare creation: a love story that doesn’t shy away from sex, ignore its consequences, or droop into pointless fantasy. The result is adult entertainment as it should be."

Get your tickets for this great show now!

Fantastic Fest: SUMMER WARS at Lamar and Ritz

Fantastic Fest and Anime at the Alamo Present:
SUMMER WARS
Now Playing @Lamar until 1/13 and starts @Ritz 1/10
Advance tickets available here

Winner of the Japan Academy Prize as Best Animated Feature and acclaimed by Variety as “spectacular” and “visionary,” SUMMER WARS opens at Lamar for a full week matinee run in the English dubbed version and for several night shows at the Ritz in the subtitled version. While not rated, SUMMER WARS is the equivalent of PG.

An animated epic, SUMMER WARS tells the tale of a young nerdling pretending to be the boyfriend of a schoolmate on her summer trip to her aging grandmother’s house. When an online social networking community known as Oz gets attacked by a piece of sentient malware that threatens to deliver a denial of service attack to the entire world, her massive extended family unites to restore peace to cyberspace.

Get your tickets for SUMMER WARS: Now Playing at Lamar, and Starting at Ritz on 1/10

Cobain + Vanilla Ice 4 Ever!

The Action Pack presents
THE '90s ULTRAMIX SING-ALONG
Thursdays, January 6, 13, 20 & 27 at the Ritz
Advance tickets available here

Uh, double up uh, uh!

Things I learned from pop music in the 1990s:

1) Silicon parts? They're made for toys.

2) Miami is the town that created all the bass sounds.

3) Will Smith's cardio is infinite.

4) Stay away from any kids named Jeremy, especially if they draw pictures of themselves on mountaintops.

5) If I wannabe one of the Spice Girls lovers, first I have to hook up with all of their friends.

And, of course, sooooo much more. Because pop music in the 90s *meant* something, didn't it? Well... that depends.

Yes, the 90s was the decade when alternative music and grunge made it from Seattle to the top of the charts and got massive play on MTV and radio. But it was also the decade when rappers realized all they had to do was take a hook from an old disco track and talk about how awesome they were over it and they would automatically be given the number one spot on the Billboard charts.

The thing is - both of those extremes are awesome, and so is everything in between that got influenced by the massive amounts of selling out and sampling and the painful desire to rock out with authenticity. And every single one of those songs became an anthem in its own right.

So join us this month at the Alamo Ritz as we celebrate all of the anthems of the 1990s, from "Smells Like Teen Spirit" to "Baby Got Back." We'll have tambourines so everyone can jam along with the indie rockers, glow sticks for when it's time to get the dance party going crazy, and some inflatable guitars we can try to smash on the stage during the guitar solo anthems. We'll feel stupid and contagious!
(Henri)

SXSW Presents AND EVERYTHING IS GOING FINE

Steven Soderbergh on Spalding Gray:
AND EVERYTHING IS GOING FINE
Monday 1/3 thru Wednesday 1/5 @Ritz
Advance tickets available here

AND EVERTHING IS GOING FINE is exactly what they tell you a film shouldn’t be. Pretty much 89 minutes of one talking head. But it’s a particularly unique talking head. Spalding Gray’s.

Spalding Gray (1941-2004) possessed two of my favorite qualities in a person: neurosis and gutsiness. In his case, as a monologist, these compelled him to tell his truth. The truth, mes amis, is always rare and riveting. And so is AND EVERTHING IS GOING FINE, which is directed by the often brave Steven Soderbergh (SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE, CHE, ERIN BROCKOVICH, SCHIZOPOLIS, BUBBLE).

Gray’s life was both humorous and tragic. His mother’s suicide overshadowed his whole life, and when he killed himself in 2004 we were all saddened but not especially surprised. Fittingly, Soderbergh allows Gray to tell his own story in his own words. After all, David Mamet once said of Spalding Gray, “No-one is able to do what he does, so don’t even try.”

Presented by SXSW

Get your tickets for this great show now.

SXSW Presents ENTER THE VOID

SXSW Presents:
ENTER THE VOID
Sunday 1/2, 950pm & Saturday 1/8, 3pm @Ritz
Advance tickets available here


For two Austin-exclusive shows, we’re showing the uncut, uncensored, complete version of ENTER THE VOID at the Ritz in a brand new 35mm print!

“Using three distinct point-of-view visual styles and a riot of color, effects and sound, Noé orchestrates the final mortal and metaphysical passage of an American dope dealer named Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), who lives in a seedy district of Tokyo. For the first half-hour, we see what Oscar sees (including the occasional image flicker to represent blinking eyes): the day-glo cityscape outside his dark, messy apartment; his sister Linda (Paz de la Huerta) leaving for her degrading stripper job; and, most notably, the pulsating, phosphorescent shapes from a powerful hallucinogen Oscar takes.” -Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

The resulting film is an experience, one that is completely immersive. You will be in a Tokyo rave nightmare, in a delirium along with Oscar and Linda as they get lost in the neon abyss. This is a visual masterpiece, a piece of cinema that looks like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

And it absolutely HAS to be seen on the big screen, in 35mm, in an auditorium full of bursting synapses. Do not miss your only chance to see this year’s controversial, mind-bending, art house milestone!

At the Sunday evening show, we'll be offering an Absinthe drink special to help put this experience over the edge of psychedelia!

Get your tickets for this great show now.

SXSW presents ENTER THE VOID

SXSW presents ENTER THE VOID
Sunday, Jan 2 at the Ritz
Get tickets here!

The Uncut Festival Version - Brand New 35mm Print!

One of the most anticipated cinematic events of the year, Gaspar Noé's ENTER THE VOID is a visionary thrill ride that's riveted audiences at the Cannes, Toronto, Sundance and SXSW film festivals. At Cannes, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called it "an exceptional work...the work of an artist who's trying to show us something we haven't seen before.”

The long-awaited follow up to his controversial IRREVERSIBLE, ENTER THE VOID is an immersive and mind-bending experience. Oscar and his sister Linda are recent arrivals in Tokyo. Oscar’s a small time drug dealer, and Linda works as a nightclub stripper. One night, Oscar is caught up in a police bust and shot.

As he lies dying, his spirit, faithful to the promise he made his sister that he would never abandon her, refuses to leave the world of the living. It wanders through the city, his visions growing evermore nightmarish. Past, present and future merge in a hallucinatory maelstrom.

Nathaniel Brown and Paz de la Huerta (Lucy Danziger on BOARDWALK EMPIRE) star in a visceral journey set against the thumping, neon club scene of Tokyo, which hurls the viewer into an astonishing trip through life, death, and the universally wonderful and horrible moments between.

At the Sunday evening show, we'll be offering an Absinthe drink special to help put this experience over the edge of psychedelia!

Get tickets now!