A triptych of chilly flicks blows into Austin theaters this weekend. Among the new releases: Indie-horror auteur Ti West’s “The Innkeepers;” “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” an austere drama anchored by Tilda Swinton; and “The Woman in Black,” released under the storied Hammer Films franchise with an up-and-coming young actor named Daniel Radcliffe. (Maybe you’ve heard of him?)
Austin audiences have had a few chances to catch “The Innkeepers” previously, having screened at South by Southwest and the Alamo Drafthouse’s Fantastic Fest. The follow-up to director West’s well-received “The House of the Devil,” “The Innkeepers” shares a similar retro-horror sensibility to his breakout film. Two slacker clerks at a storied northwestern inn investigate reports of workplace hauntings on the weekend the inn is slated to close. Suffice to say, mysterious visitors check in, nerves slowly fray, and plenty of things begin to go bump in the night. Light on gore and long on tension, “The Innkeepers” is certain to keep audiences unnerved.
“Bullhead” director Michaël R. Roskam says in a press release that "It feels like going to the world championship!" And Alamo Drafthouse/Drafthouse Films CEO Tim League notes, “Roskam is an incredibly exciting new director. We are so happy that the Academy thinks as highly of him as we do!"
"Dazed and Confused" fans wondering what happened to Matthew McConaughey’s iconic character David Wooderson can fret no more: Apparently he’s been wandering through some upscale night club in slow-motion.
That’s what’s McConaughey’s character is doing in the clip for “Synthesizers,” a song from Butch Walker and the Black Widows. It seems as if McConaughey’s Camaro-rock character’s been dumped there in countenance to the superficial glam of his surroundings. Or as Walker laments in the song’s opening bars: "Everybody's writing songs with synthesizers /But I don't have a synthesizer.”
Two limited release features open in Austin this weekend, while a third installment of a violent fantasy series caters to its fans.
The Alamo Drafthouse is having another big weekend, with two notable premieres. While "Richard Garriott: Man on a Mission" has screened in Austin during South by Southwest, it begins a limited theatrical run tonight at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar.
So this is the way we live now: a new mobile application is coming to Austin that rates bars. But instead of relying on user-submitted data like Yelp, it has a network of cameras in participating nightclubs feeding real time information on a club’s capacity and demographics.
That’s the idea behind SceneTap, launching across several Austin bars this Friday.
The City of Austin says it will pay up to $166,000 in costs and labor for someone to create a piece of “exterior art that is engaging for families and children” near a bridge that will become part of the Seaholm District redevelopment project.
The bridge, as you can see in the image above, will link Shoal Creek Trail to West Avenue via Second Street. The City of Austin’s Art in Public Places Project, which has been doing this kind of thing since 1985, says applicants should focus on meeting these criteria:
