Food Fight!!! IRON CHEF AUSTIN: Round IV - Thursday at Lamar

Proceeds benefit the Capital Area Food Bank!

For years, we have been producing food-and-film-themed events at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. Probably our favorite yet is the Alamo Iron Chef competitions, in which we have pitted our chefs against each other or against a local fine-dining establishment, with the proceeds going to the Capital Area Food Bank.

The stage is now set for Iron Chef Alamo Round IV, in which the Alamo chefs John Bullington, Trish Eichelberger and Elijah Horgan will team up against a common foe, the award-winning kitchen of Roy's led by Chef Lawrence Kocurek. The proceedings will take place in the luxurious Alamo Kitchen Stadium (theater #3) wherein Alamo founder Tim League will be assuming the red kimono of Chairman Kaga.

It is similar to the popular TV show but the secret ingredient in this battle is not green peppers or foie gras, it is celluloid. Each contestant will deliver to each of the 100 attendees a series of 5 dishes (that's 10 dishes in all folks!) themed to a film. 5 wine courses will also be provided. At the end of the show, the audience and an esteemed panel of Austin food critics will decide whose meals were tastier and more cleverly matched and timed to the movie.

The film chosen for this installment of IRON CHEF ALAMO is the Preston Sturges Comedy Classic THE LADY EVE. Henry Fonda plays a snake-obsessed beer magnate who emerges from an excursion up the Amazon only to find himself in the clutches of sexy con artist Barbara Stanwyck. He woos her on a luxury steamliner and later their paths cross at a high society banquet. It's one of the funniest, most romantic films ever made and we can't wait to see what our chefs do with it!

The show is seriously close to sold out, so grab your 10-course wine-paired Henry Fonda fill while you can! Click here.

AIR GUITAR Championships tonight at the Ritz!

Now with a $100 cash prize for the thrillingest shredder!!!

Compete in (or just sit back and revel in) the Austin Air Guitar Championships, Tuesday, March 25 at the Ritz, 9:45 PM. Contestants choose a track with hot licks, crank on the fog machine, grab their air-axes and ROCK OUT! Fabulous prizes, a trophy with an actual air guitar on the top and the green light with flocks of air-guitar groupies are yours if you win.

Details on the contest can be found here or check out the Austin Air Guitar Facebook Group.

The top three winners of each of the Austin Air Guitar preliminary rounds will be eligible to compete in the Austin Air Guitar finals (date TBA). The winner of the Austin finals will be flown to New York for the U.S. Finals. The winner of the U.S. Finals will be flown to Finland in June to represent America in the 2006 World Finals.

An amazing spectacle for both performers and spectators alike, Air Guitar has reigned supreme at the Alamo Drafthouse since 2005. We are looking for the next air guitar savant who will represent Austin on the world stage and finally make our town the "Air Music Capitol of the World."

It's free to compete, plus as an added bonus, each competitor will get 4 free tickets to the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. If you want to compete, bring a CD of your 60 second performance track to the Alamo Drafthouse on the night of the show or you can email it in advance to brad@originalalamo.com.

Each competitor has 60 seconds to perform air guitar to a song they either choose before the competition or bring with them. Contestants are judged on the 4.0-6.0 figure skating scale. Costumes are highly recommended as is a little practicing in the mirror, although we have had many amazing walk-up competitors over the years.

Hip Hop classic WILD STYLE Friday and Saturday Midnight at Lamar!

There's a brand new print of the amazing, historical, epochal classic WILD STYLE and we've got it! Come watch it with us this weekend at the Alamo South Lamar.

To say WILD STYLE is an important film is a huge understatement. Before this film was released, most New Yorkers hadn’t even heard of hip hop music. Now it’s the most popular and important musical form in the world. This movie stars graffiti superstar Lee Quinones as a subway tagger who flirts with the downtown art scene. Along the way we are introduced to most of the real-life South Bronx and outer borough legends who created hip-hop style and culture. Featuring Grandmaster Flash (breaking it down on his kitchen table!), DJ Theodore, Busy Bee as well as legendary breakdancers Rocksteady Crew and the Cold Crush Crew.

So what we're saying is: THIS MOVIE IS CRUCIAL.

Buy your tickets here.

WILD STYLE with TOP-QUALITY LIVE BREAKDANCING at LAMAR!!

Join us for a special live breakdancing performance by B-Boy/B-Girl City stars Romeo Navarro, Dee Nice, and Jesse aka Recon before Thursday night’s show!!

To say WILD STYLE is an important film is a huge understatement. Before this film was released, most New Yorkers hadn’t even heard of hip hop music. Now it’s the most popular and important musical form in the world. This movie stars graffiti superstar Lee Quinones as a subway tagger who flirts with the downtown art scene. Along the way we are introduced to most of the real-life South Bronx and outer borough legends who created hip-hop style and culture. Featuring Grandmaster Flash (breaking it down on his kitchen table!), DJ Theodore, Busy Bee as well as legendary breakdancers Rocksteady Crew and the Cold Crush Crew.

So what we're saying is: THIS MOVIE IS CRUCIAL.

Click HERE to grab tickets!

ROCK BAND at the Ritz!

No, this is not a call out to find hot new "musical" talent. This is a call to Playstation 3 and XBox 360 owners. There's a new breed of Rock Band and we may just wipe actual musicians off the planet. Since Christmas, we've been nothing less than ADDICTED to Rock Band. But now we're tired of keeping the party in our living room and the basement at our parents' house, and we want to bring it out into public and see what you can do. So in the spirit of rock that started with AIR GUITAR, we invite you to form a band, come up with some costumes, and come down to the Alamo Ritz theater this Wednesday night to show us how you rock.



It's free to compete, and we'll also be posting updates, videos and photos to this Facebook group, so please join if you are a Rock Band enthusiast.

Send an email to brad@originalalamo.com to register your band to compete, or click here to purchase tickets as a spectator.

The Rock Band Championships are sponsored in part by Coleandbobby.com. Not only are they obsessed with film, they are, like us, addicted to Rock Band.

BUD CORT is coming to the Ritz!

If you don't get your fill of celebrity sighting during South By this week, don't worry. After years of trying, we've finally arranged to have Bud Cort, the star of BREWSTER McCLOUD and HAROLD & MAUDE, come out to the Alamo Ritz for a special double-feature of his two breakout roles.

At 7pm, join Bud for a screening of BREWSTER McCLOUD, Robert Altman's madcap surrealist adventure that was filmed right here in Texas and focuses on the story of a young man (Cort) obsessed with building a functional set of wings so he can fly around inside the Astrodome (R.I.P.). The story takes off from there, of course, and Brewster soon caught up in a whirlwind of crackpots, romance and a mysterious killer.

Then at 9:45, HAROLD & MAUDE. No character defines art house cinema like the faux-suicidal Harold in this classic romance between an unlikely pair of eccentrics, and Mr. Cort's deadpan humor in no small way helped created one of the most unique cult hits of our time. Whether this will be your first viewing or your hundredth, we can't think of a single better way to enjoy this masterpiece than by starting out with a salute to Bud Cort live.

Tickets for BREWSTER McCLOUD are available here.

Tickets for HAROLD & MAUDE are right here.

And here's the video trailer for the event, in case you need more Bud Cort *right now*:

Master Pancake Theater goes BACK TO THE VILLAGE...uh, I mean FUTURE!!!

Continuing the triumphant return of local renaissance funnyman Owen Egerton to the movie-mocking circuit, we're pleased to add additional screenings of this sold-out show at the Alamo Village!

For this installment of the much-ballyhooed Master Pancake Experience, the Austin public will be at Comedy Ground Zero for the reunion of two original cast members from the Sinus Show: John Erler (the tall bald one) and Owen Egerton (the compact ginger nut), who, along with pal Joe Parsons, lampoon BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985), a film so iconic that for a brief period in the mid-80's it convinced people that DeLoreans, Burger King and Huey Lewis and the News were hip. Michael J. Fox (FAMILY TIES, TEEN WOLF) plays, well, Michael J. Fox -- or Marty McFly as he's called here -- who travels back in time in order to save his professorial pal 'Doc', played by Christopher Lloyd (CLUE, STAR TREK III). Along the way, McFox ends up inventing Rock 'n Roll, changing the future and almost dating his own mom. Oedipally complex, this movie features a brilliant performance from indie icon Crispin Glover as Marty's exquisitely milquetoast dad, who eventually learns how to sock it to Biff. Time McFlys when you're having fun, and you'll be having 1.21 jigowatts of it this February, with film-embellishers John, Owen and Joe, March 7 and 15 at the Alamo Village! Get yer tickets HERE!