Argh. Why does this happen to me every freaking year? Seriously, every year for the past half-decade or so, I manage to somehow miss the start of the WorldFest-Houston Film Festival, only finding out it's going on a day or two after the fact, and this year has turned out to be no exception, sadly. Dimwit that I am, I blanked on the fact that WorldFest always starts when the International Festival starts, which means the festival kicked off without yours truly this past weekend.

Luckily, it ain't over yet, but will be continuing on all week (through Sunday, April 29th) up at the AMC Studio 30 on Dunvale. Which makes me a little sad, by the way -- I get why the festival organizers moved the show from the sketchy Meyer Park 16 up to a big, fancy-shmancy movie theater like the spaceport-looking Studio 30, but I still miss the days when the festival ran at the departed Meyerland Theater, which used to be about a 20 min. walk from my house. (To add insult to injury, not only did they rip out the movie theater nearest to me a few years back to expand the Meyerland Plaza shopping center, they still haven't filled more than a teeny-tiny bit of the expanded section. Yeah, apparently we really needed more store space, didn't we? Fuckers.)

If you've never been to the festival, you seriously ought to check it out -- they show some weird, freaky, intriguing, and downright entertaining films, most of which don't hit the "big" indie festivals like Sundance or SXSW. I've seen some very, very, very good movies (May and August, Jacob TwoTwo and the Hooded Fang) and some awfully bad movies (Hotel, some crazy movie with Holling from Northern Exposure as a guy who digs up an Egyptian queen in his back yard) at past WorldFests. Even the bad ones, though, were at least interesting, and the documentaries and short films always seem to be pretty cool ('cause hey, if you're watching a bad short film, at least it'll be over soon...). And of course, there's also the lure of second-string/has-been stars popping in to promote a flick -- a friend and I once did a double-take to see Eric Stoltz standing around the dingy Meyerland Theater lobby, glad-handing for a film he was in. Very weird.

Hrm. Okay, so now I just need to figure out how to cajole Grandma into taking the munchkin some night this week...

Labels: Moo-vies, Things To Do, Things To See

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