Austin Chronicle. Shock + AFF.

Marc Savlov talks with "Austin author, artist, and screenwriter Stephen Romano" about Shock Festival: One Hundred and One of the Strangest, Sleaziest, Most Outrageous Movies You've Never Seen, an "homage to movies such as The Undertaker and His Pals and a surrealistic masterpiece of alternate-universe journalism that's so detailed and so full of heart (good, bad, black, or bleeding - take your pick) that you may think it's real. But it's not. It's a book. A big book, 350-plus pages of sideswiped faux-cinema history, that tells the sordid story of a forgotten group of fringe-dwelling filmmakers - 'forgotten' chiefly because they're totally fictional - whose unrepentant bad taste and surprising genius are comparable to and indeed based on such real-world mavericks as American International Pictures' Roger Corman, Samuel Z Arkoff and James H Nicholson; Full Moon Pictures' Charles Band; and Italy's Luigi Cozzi."

And another conversation in the Austin Chronicle: "Plenty of artists and graphic designers had a hand in helping Stephen Romano bring Shock Festival to life, but none was more important to the project than the book's art director, Tim Bradstreet, an Eisner Award-nominated artist whose cover work for Marvel's The Punisher, Vertigo/DC's Hellblazer, and, yes, even the cover of Iron Maiden's A Matter of Life and Death has made him one of the most respected and prolific artists in his field. He's also the co-founder (with actor Thomas Jane) and creative director of Raw Entertainment."

Meanwhile, the Austin Film Festival wraps today and the Chronicle's got the jury award winners, snappy quotes from filmmakers and capsule reviews:

• Josh Rosenblatt on I'll Come Running.

• Belinda Acosta on A Good Day to Be Black & Sexy.

• Marc Savlov on The Atom Smashers.

• John Davidson on Les Ninjas Du Japon.

• Josh Rosenblatt on Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman.

• Dan Oko on Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison.

• Richard Whittaker on Tree of Ghibet.

• Theresa Everline on A Quiet Little Marriage.

For more see the Austin Movie Blog.

Joe O'Connell's been gleaning news from the festival, including word on Robert Rodriguez's next film, a live-action take on The Jetsons. But the gist of his piece is that "the trickle of Hollywood films shooting in the Lone Star State [is about to] dry up completely unless the 2009 Texas Legislature acts to stanch the bleeding." Rodriguez won't be shooting in Texas. Neither will his producing partner Elizabeth Avellán. Nor Michael Winterbottom.

Meantime: Sno Cone Inc premieres this weekend.

Posted by dwhudson at October 23, 2008 6:42 AM