Ray Pride

Most people don't realize how fragile film history is, and it's not just because the third DVD in a row arrived in two pieces from Netflix. When I was a kid, Eagle Pennell's 1978 "The Whole Shooting Match" (released in New York in 1979), made for around $30,000, was written up all in the film magazines I read about the films that would never have come to my part of Kentucky. This slacker avant-le-lettre Austin fable was obscure then and would remain obscure now if not for the discovery of a mint print of the shot-on-16mm black-and-white, and the digital restoration of its gamy glories. Of Pennell (1952-2002), writer Paul Cullum, an Austin peer, wrote, "the man belonged in the Alcohol of Fame; he put pop alcoholics like us to shame." Cullum also got confirmation that this quote from Robert Redford was indeed about the troubled Pennell: "I thought a real service to the industry would be to provide a guy like that with a place to train, a place to go where he could develop his skills. It would shortcut a lot of the problems he was going to be facing." Voila: Sundance. But voila aussi: "The Whole Shooting Match," which also inspired the similarly shaggy but much more prolific filmic ambitions of another Austin cineaste, Richard Linklater. This profane charmer is still inspiring, and it's terrific that Mark Rance's Watchmaker Films is putting both this and Pennell's second feature, "Last Night at the Alamo," out for a new generation of potential regional filmmakers to admire. Watch the trailer for a taste (watchmakerfilms.com/trailer.html); fall in love with it this week at Siskel. The "chinchilla/flying squirrel" exchange in the trailer between the effortlessly charming Lou Perryman and Sonny Carl Davis is only a modest sample. 109m.

The restored digital version (including soundtrack) of "The Whole Shooting Match" starts Friday at Siskel. Rance will appear at Friday's showings to describe the difference between film and digital restoration.

(2007-12-26)

Also by Ray Pride

Holiday Movie Preview
Dour and dismal and downbeat and dark are a few of my favorite things… but this holiday season's movies are ridiculously melancholy, not only the ones released during Christmas week, but the holdovers that still have drawing power
(2007-12-18)

Savage Grace
Note-perfect, Tamara Jenkins' "The Savages" puts all too much American moviemaking to shame. I've written about her second feature a lot since its Sundance debut in January, but it's solid: life is undeniably funny, even in its most uncomfortable moments, and Jenkins' screenplay and direction offer a stellar showcase for the substantial Philip Seymour Hoffman, Laura Linney and Philip Bosco
(2007-12-18)

Tip of the Week
One of the best and certainly most beautifully made films of the year, Julian Schnabel's third feature, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" is the arrival of a true, full-on filmmaker
(2007-12-18)

$128 Million Later
"I Am Legend" is not a melodrama of murder or genocide but of lusty, proud, arrogant self-annihilation—the end, my friend
(2007-12-11)

Tip of the Week
(2007-12-11)

Stiff Upper Brit
(2007-12-04)

Tip of the Week
(2007-12-04)

Everything is Wide-Eyed
(2007-11-27)

Tip of the Week
(2007-11-27)

Blurred
(2007-11-19)

Tip of the Week
(2007-11-19)

All Yesterday's Costume Parties
(2007-11-13)

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