Wholphin

YouTube launched their new high-quality, short content channel, The Screening Room, last week with four films, including Wholphin No. 1’s “Are You The Favorite Person of Anybody?”

The launch party kicked off with an in-theatre screening of the first four films and a casual Q & A with the filmmakers, and then moved upstairs for a rooftop party where mash-up DJ Synchronize Live featured a sneak peak at the next four films playing in the Screening Room starting in July, including Wholphin No. 1’s “The Big Empty,” as well as our very talented animator friend, Josh Raskin’s, John Lennon-starring short film, “I Met the Walrus.”

Check back for new films in the Screening Room every two weeks.

YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, filmmaker Rick Castaneda (The Golden Egg) and Wholphin’s Brent Hoff at the Screening Room launch.

In between the stellar shorts programs at this year’s Cinevegas Film Festival, we joined the former and new SXSW festival heads, Matt Dentler and Janet Pierson, respectively, at the blackjack table. Janet bet her husband that she wouldn’t gamble, but like a pro went on to rake in $200 in twenty minutes.

Cinevegas easily took home this year’s top festival schwag bag award with Nalgenes to keep us hydrated, hangover pills to keep us wide-eyed, and Grey Goose vodka which, unable to carry it on the airplane, we gave away to a nice cab driver on our way out of town.  

Thanks to festival programmers, Trevor Groth and Mike Plante who, as always, put on a fine show.

Wholphin’s Brent Hoff, SXSW’s Janet Pierson and Cinetic’s Matt Dentler at the blackjack table at the Palms.

If you agree that watching two World Champion Rubix Cube players demonstrate their skills is a good use of time, click here. Dan Dzoan and Ryan Zheng, the stars of “Piece by Piece” (to be released on Wholphin #5) gave our LA screening an air of technical proficiency we are not likely to see again.

San Franciscans: Jessica Yu’s new film, The Protagonist, will be opening at the Kabuki Theatre on Friday, December 14th and like Sour Death Ball’s before it, the film observes people squirming in truly uncomfortable situations, except this time instead of a painfully sour attack on the salivary glands, it’s men falling victim to Euripidian extremism. And yes, there is a tragic puppet chorus.

protagonistthemovie.com.

Live in Austin?? Lucky.

The bad news first: Cinematexas, the long-running, great underground film festival lost its funding from certain institutions and is over. Annually providing the best, brightest and cutting-edgest short (and occasional feature) films, CNTX was an exciting long weekend of political hotbeds, avant-garde works, underground sludge and music films that traversed all of those worlds. It also programmed for the community – programs and a competition for Univ of Texas student films, and various childrens’ shows.

The good news: The fest is having a going away show this weekend, the Cinematexas Viking Funeral.

On Saturday, December 1st there are three free shows:

RAGNA-ROCK. One of two compilations of new work by esteemed Cinematexas alumni like James Fotopoulos, Ben Coonley, Daniel Cockburn, Stephanie Gray, etc.)

UT HOLLYWOOD SHOWCASE. A local screening of this year’s best UT-produced student films, which screened at the DGA Theater in LA in September.

ASSASSINS: A FILM CONCERNING RIMBAUD. An early experiment by Todd Haynes and an clear precursor to his new Dylan non-biopic I’M NOT THERE. This film is rare!

Then on Sunday, December 2nd:

RAGNA-ROLL: More madness from Cinematexas chums. One of these two programs will have videos from the incomparable, one-man-band Laz Rojas.

INTERKOSMOS. A delightfully tongue-in-cheek homage to a fictional East German space project, Jim Finn’s INTERKOSMOS uses recreated newsreels combined with musical interludes to resurrect the ’70s in all its Brezhnev-era glory.

And two incomparable greats: FROWNLAND, the uber indie film from Ronnie Bronstein, led by the new short by Don Hertzfeldt, EVERYTHING WILL BE OK. This single show is so great its already sold out. But try to catch everything else you can. Criminy, its free and hard-to-find films…. Viva Cinematexas.

http://www.austinfilm.org/film/cinematexas-viking-funeral-frownland