So I arrived in Austin on Saturday to do a week's worth of work at the Austin School of Film, helping them with promotion and scheduling. I always have a good time working with Karl and Anne, coming up with ideas for new classes and ways of getting butts into seats for our existing classes.

I watched the latest version of Bryan's short, now called Grammy's, and then on Sunday we went through it together and did a polish on the editing. Also hung out with good friend Chris Doubek. He's in a short film that is apparently playing in the largest short film festival in Europe, Claremont-ferrand Short Film Festival. I shot a short with him over the Christmas holiday that I'm getting more and more excited about as I begin to edit it. It's a strange idea that I don't want to say too much about here and now. It was an experiment in process and content and may only be interesting to me, but that's fine. It's a movie I'd want to see.

I lucked into a ticket to see David Lynch's new film Inland Empire at the Parmount Theater on Wednesday night. It's 3 hours long with an hour long Q&A with Lynch afterward. BP, who has already seen it, says it's a mind-hole-f%@k. Can't wait!

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I'm coming to Austin on Sunday, Jan 21 to conduct and full day editing workshop (10-6pm) over at the Austin School of Film. We'll take a close look at some examples of different editing styles through clips, and we'll talk about some editing theory (includian some Murchian ideas of editing). And, even more exciting for me, students will bring in their work on a firewire drive and we'll take a look at what they've been working on. As a class we can then try to asses how to increase the impact of the scene. I'll also bring in raw footage from Dear Pillow and talk about and show how Bryan Poyser and I sifted through the enourmous amount of improvised material to create short and workable scenes.

It should be a fun and interesting day for everyone who attends. The class is $125 for Austin School of Film members and $150 for non-members. If you or someone you know is interested, contact Karl Anderson at the Austin School of Film at 512.236.8877 or go here.

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Now hear this: I'm teaching another DVD Studio Pro course at the Austin Apple Training Center November 13-15. For those who want to learn how to create menus, encode video, use advanced overlays, and produce their own stunning DVDs, check out my course. It's a 3-day class and afterwards you have the option of getting certified as an Apple Pro User.

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Greek friend Rachel sent this link to Bryan last week, adding that he should watch this video first thing in the morning, every morning, to get inspired.

Day 1 of the DVD Studio Pro class was great! We covered a lot of ground and I somehow managed to keep it interesting and fun (speaking for myself of course). The classroom setup is comfortable and hi-tech -- we have 10 G5 iMacs and a couple of Macbook Pros, all of them fast as hell. I was feeling nervous about teaching before the class, but now I feel like I can handle this stuff alright.

I spent a lot of time hanging out at the Driskol Hotel this past weekend during the Austin Film Festival. The Driskol is ground zero for socializing with new as well as old friends. Yehudi Mercado, a high school buddy of mine who created the Dear Pillow website, has a new script called Buffalo Speedway that made it into the top three finalists in the Final Draft Screenplay competition out in LA. As a result, he is now fielding tons of phone calls from agents and producers that are dying to sell and produce his script. Back in Houston where we grew up, Yehudi wrote a play called A Wok on the Wild Side about an asian kid who is reluctant to take over the family Chinese restuarant. The play closes with the Lou Reed song Take a Walk on the Wild Side, played live on stage by yours trully on drums, Marc Ballentine on bass, and a saxophone player who's name escapes me right now (that was a long time ago). The play was funny and creative and definately forshadows Yehudi's marketable talents.

It has been an inspiring week overall. Hopefully it will motivate me to get off my ass and finish Wetback. Although finding time to write might be difficult due to the fact that we're finishing Midnight Kiss this month and next. We're diving into the online first thing when I get back on Thursday. Fun!

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I'm in New York city right now sitting in the Apple Training Center. For the next 4 days I'll be taking a "Training the Trainer" type course for DVD Studio Pro, so that I may become an Apple certified instructor.

I went to the Universal lot on Friday to do a half day of work for my new boss. I color corrected some shots on a documentary that he edited called "Going to Pieces" (a doc about the history of the slasher movie). It's a neat project and should air on Starz eventually.

Staying with Greg Gilpatrick for the first couple of nights that I'm here. Not sure where I'll be staying the last three nights.

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Just heard from Kyle whose film ROOM is doing quite well over at the Alamo South in Austin. So well indeed that it's run at that theater has been extended for at least another week! From Kyle:

Exciting news today that ROOM's run has been extended for another week at the Alamo in Austin, playing nightly at 7PM from Friday, April 14th through Thursday, April 20t! For those friends and family who still haven't seen it on the big screen, now might be there last chance. For those who have seen it (and liked it!) please encourage them to pass the announcement below onto their circle of friends. Who knows, if we do well enough, ROOM might even be around for a third week! Thanks again everyone for really getting the word out there and making this extension possible!

ROOM is a psychological drama about an over-worked woman from Texas who is haunted by psychic visions, driving her to extreme acts, which land her on the streets of New York City during the Christmas season. Cyndi Williams, in her feature film debut, was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for her riveting performance.

ROOM had its U.S. premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and its international premiere at the Cannes Film Festival (Director's Fortnight) in 2005. The film is produced by The 7th Floor; and executive produced by Michael Stipe's C-Hundred Film Corp.

View the film's trailer here.

Hear KUT's Arts Talk interview with Kyle and Cyndi.

Purchase advance tickets!

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So did Austin freeze last night? I sort of miss the drama of "seasons" now that I'm here in LA. Actually it's been rainy and overcast the last couple of days.

I've been moving in to my new place near the freeway. From the front door you can see the cars zooming by about 50 feet away. You must be asking, why is this important for me to know? It isn't. You've probably got some real work to do today but you've been putting it off, reading some blogs, sipping your third cup of coffee. That's all I'm here for, to give you something do while you wait for the grip of fear to take hold and really knock you into doing something useful.

I learned to play blackjack last night. Of course I already knew how to play, but I wanted to learn the basic stategy so I read up on it here and then played some practice games here. I think you can gamble for real money on this site but I will not do that. I'll wait until I'm in Vegas next and try these strategies out.

3 weeks until SXSW!!

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Heather Courtney's new film Letters from the Other Side got a review in Variety! I talked to Kyle last night and it sounds like they had a great time up at Slamdance.

I met up with Qasim Naqvi, our composer on TCK, over at Cal Arts in Valencia. He just started taking classes there in the school of composition. He's been making some good progress on the score and it's sounding really nice. He'll be working on the score this week and then I'll go back up there to listen to the finished pieces on Friday.

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I had no idea the AFS party was going to be such a huge bash! I got there at 6:45 and the food was already getting scarce. But that certainly did not dampen the spirits of the hundreds, I dare say thousands, of people who showed up at the Austin Studios tonight to wish the Austin Film Society a happy 20th birthday. There were people who came in from out to town just for this event. It's really great to see everyone you know in the Austin film community in one place. What was really strange was to see people that I met for the first time in LA here at the party.

What I heard and what I saw: JP was all around, MD better have taken pictures, the other JP showed me some of her artwork, BP showed off his increasing mane of facial hair, KJ told me about her new zombie flick, LD mistook me for a childhood friend, DZ and NZ (the Z-Bros) are just about to head off to Sundance, DC is chillin with Gary Busey, BB just wants to party, JD has a scoop that really isn't a scoop but he should hold off on publishing anything until MD gives the a-okay, MB is one cool customer, and the L's are just plain crazy.

BTW, if you held off on seeing War of the Worlds because you thought it might be really really stupid like I did, you should check it out because it's not all that stupid. Maybe just a little, towards the end -- Spielberg just can't bring himself to end a movie without beating us over with either a family-values-gavel or a strange sexually-stunted transmorgrafied terrorist cumshot. I mean really, what is the ending of Munich all about? Can someone out there shed some light on that icky mess of a closer? (Wouldn't it be great to cut all the endings of all his movies together on one reel and see the evolution of a man lose all sense of reason? Don't get me wrong, I was his biggest fan growing up... Empire of the Sun? Genius. Raiders? Perfect. Batteries Not Included? Excuse me while I clean the bile off my bullwhip.)

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Well, I attended my first Butt Numb-A-Thon and I'm dead tired because of it. Staying up 24 hours and watching 12 films back to back is a first for me, though I'm so glad I did it. At noon yesterday Harry Knowles began the program with The Most Dangerous Game and then moved on to the mother of a all gorrilla remakes, Peter Jackson's King Kong. It was really great, a huge canvas, rich detail and appalling spectacle wrapped into one mega hit movie that will probably rake in more than Titanic. Then we saw a James Cagney musical called Footlight Parade. After that was an episode from the Showtime series Masters of Horror called Sick Girl starring Angela Bettis (May) and directed by Lucky McKee, both of whom were sitting two seats over from me on my left (Matt Dentler and Eli Roth were on my right). Up next was Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, the third installment in the trilogy by Chan-wook Park. It could have been because I was already getting tired, but this film confused the hell out of me. I couldn't figure out what was going on for the first half of the movie. But then finally I figured it out and enjoyed the second half. I much prefer Old Boy, though I still haven't seen Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.

Then we watched The Professional with Lee Marvin and Burt Lancaster. Great men-on-a-mission type movie. After that was District 13, an amazing action crime thriller from France. The Descent was next and that scared me half to death. It had some great scares and made me jump several times. The next two films, Stunt Rock and Drum, gave new meaning to the phrase what-the-fuck?!? Drum is the sequel to Mandingo and Stunt Rock is the sequel to a turd. My guess is this is the movie that Chistopher Guest and Micheal McKean must have studied every frame of before they made Spinal Tap. You see there's this band called Sorcery and they play some bitchin music. And there's this stunt guy named Grant Page who does all these crazy stunts. How those two elements naturally weave together is the magic of Stunt Rock.

Finally, and well worth the wait, was V for Vendetta which was definately my favorite film of the night. It was incredible! A great story! I'm still digesting it though I can't wait to see it again. Harry said that the print we saw was the only one in existence. In a not so sneaky way the film pulls liberally from current events to create an enthralling tale of revolution in a world gone mad. I love this movie, love it, love it.

It was a great experience all in all, even though I did feel as though I was a link on one of the AICN webpages, surrounded by all of Harry's spies. And I came out of it with an Atari 2600 (!!), a bag of swag, some T-shirts, two count them TWO Aeon Flux baseball caps (I'll give those to the twins), and a stack of posters. Not bad at all.

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Take a look at this stunning sattelite animation of Rita.

Here's what Katrina looked like from beginning to end. The red/orange color indicates the temperature of the water. Warm waters intensify hurricanes. Apparently Katrina gained strength in the final days before it hit land.

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Rita has now strengthened to a category 5 hurricane. Have there ever been two category 5 hurricanes the close together? According to the Columbia Encyclopedia:

Only three category-5 storms have hit the United States since record-keeping began—the 1935 Labor Day hurricane, which devastated the Florida Keys, killing 600; Hurricane Camille in 1969, which ravaged the Mississippi coast, killing 256; and Andrew in 1992, which leveled much of Homestead, Fla. Hurricane Mitch in 1998 was a category-5 storm at peak intensity over the western Caribbean, and Gilbert in 1988 was a category-5 storm at peak intensity and is the strongest Atlantic tropical cyclone of record.

Add two more within a month in 2005.

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At 2:15pm today Rita was upgraded to a category 4 huricane. I found a Storm News Tracker that is posting updates about every half hour. Looks like it's going to hit somewhere between the northern tip of Mexico and the Western part of Louisiana.

My parents, who live in Houston, are lucky to have a getaway home in Fredricksberg where they'll be staying until the storm passes. Kyle's parents live in Clear Lake, very close to the coast, and I hear they're coming to Austin to stay with Kyle.

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