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1) “Safety Not Guaranteed”: Have you ever had one of those experiences where you see a movie and then when it’s over, you kind of start sobbing and aren’t really sure why? Please tell me I’m not the only one. It’s really only happened to me a couple times before (during “WALL-E” and “V for Vendetta,” and I’m not sure what that says about me). But it happened again at the end of “Safety Not Guaranteed,” a hybrid comedy-drama-romance-fantasy flick that I fell head over heels for, and it was a particular shame given that they were filming my screening to show audience response for an upcoming trailer. So if you see a sobbing dork on the left side of the screen, that would be me. This movie, which stars Aubrey Plaza, Jake Johnson and Mark Duplass (who, along with his brother Jay, had co-directed and co-written the very funny SXSW entry “The Do-Deca Pentathlon”), sprung to life from a real classified ad that read “WANTED: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. Safety not guaranteed.” I think what was so overwhelmingly wonderful about the movie was how it blended whimsy and sex jokes with dark emotions and a strong, irrepressible streak of hope. Although I couldn’t find a trailer for the movie online, here’s a brief interview with director Colin Trevorrow from Sundance, where the flick won a screenwriting award earlier this year. FilmDistrict snapped up distribution, so I hope it will be getting a release date soon.

2) Free Shows in Cool Places: I’ve never had a SXSW wristband or badge, but I love getting to see some free music. I think Auditorium Shores in March is a lovely place to spend an evening, but I haven’t found the best live music to be there. Instead I’ve found music I’ve loved at much smaller places. Like the Whole Foods rooftop. Can we just have ACL there next year? It’s so pretty! And you can buy beer and wine downstairs and bring it upstairs, which is amazing. Also amazing was the live show put on by one of my favorite bands of the past couple years, the Las Vegas-based Imagine Dragons. After accidentally stumbling (literally) across one of their live shows in Vegas back in January 2010, I’ve been avidly following their career and am thrilled they’ve been signed to Interscope. I hope to hear more big things from them in the future. Here they are doing an acoustic version of “It’s Time.”

South Congress is a good place to be during SXSW – plenty of food options, opportunities to create your own shopping montages and the free shows over at South by San Jose. And if the crowd at the stage behind Jo’s gets to be too much, you can pop next door to the Hotel San Jose, where things are always chill. Over at SXSJ, I caught one act I can’t wait to hear more of, LP, and her huge gorgeous voice. Check out “Into the Wild,” and if you’re anything like me, you’ll be sad you never learned to whistle.

3) Randomness: When you’re winging it, you start to appreciate the utter randomness of SXSW. Whether it’s celeb-spotting, celeb-spotting by proxy (“My friend just saw Joseph Gordon-Levitt on East Sixth!”), a new favorite food trailer (sweet potato fries with truffle mayo at The Peached Tortilla) or a last-minute invite to a party, SXSW never quite ends up where you think it will. For me, it ended up front row at Timbaland at the Perez Hilton party. Sup.

So thanks, SXSW! I’ll try to remember to hydrate next year if you promise to keep being awesome.

The premise is simple enough. Two guys (Tom Hardy and Chris Pine), who are also best friends, inadvertently fall for the same girl (Reese Witherspoon). But because these best friends are also CIA agents, the stakes are raised to be both hilarious and, at times, life-threatening. Reese Witherspoon brings a sex appeal to her character of Lauren that we haven’t seen in her work since “Walk the Line.” Of course, she kind of has to as the romantic foil for both Tom Hardy’s Tuck and Chris Pine’s FDR, because the three of them together are probably the best looking trio of leads in a movie ever.

What works best in “This Means War” are the things that appeal to both sexes — the humor, the characters and their relationships to each other, particularly in the sweet bromance between Tuck and FDR. What doesn’t work, aside from a video store meet-cute scene that seems almost anachronistic, are the big action set pieces, which is pretty surprising considering that the movie is helmed by director McG. One-time music video auteur McG made his directorial debut with two silly “Charlie’s Angels” flicks that were more fun than they had any right to be. Despite having more plot holes than a pair of fishnets, “Charlie’s Angels” created big action set pieces that were exciting to watch, which is why the ho-hum spy action of “This Means War,” and in particular the opening sequence that felt like a deleted scene from “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol,” felt disappointing. By the time the spy action centers around FDR’s and Tuck’s attempts to sabotage each other’s chances with Lauren, the excitement definitely picks up, but I can’t help feeling like the intro and the rest of the spy storyline was a missed opportunity for greatness.

Overall, “This Means War” is pretty much the best Valentine Hollywood has given us yet — hot people falling in love, kicking ass and, the most romantic of all, making us laugh.

2) If you’re feeling a little broken-hearted this Valentine’s Day, we won’t blame you if you cry along with this gorgeously intimate cover of the cheeseball “Pretty Woman” soundtrack staple “King of Wishful Thinking” as performed by Time Travels (via SYFFAL):

King of Wishful Thinking by SYFFAL

3) If you’d rather spend your V-Day three sheets to the wind, we recommend blaring Fun. and Janelle Monae’s “We Are Young”:

4) If you’d rather just look at hot guys, definitely watch the Oscar-nominated French star of “The Artist,” Jean Dujardin, doing some villainous auditioning in this Funny or Die video:

And then there’s this banned poster for his next film, “Les Infideles.” Sacre bleu!

5) And for those who appreciate a Chuck Norris joke, Happy Valentine’s Day from America’s Sweetheart herself:

As a married lady of childbearing age, I’ve seen kids on the horizon for a while now. But after watching “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” I may be putting those plans on hold for a while longer. By turns fascinating, mysterious, thrilling and haunting, “We Need to Talk About Kevin” may just be the best form of cinematic birth control out there.

The movie, a festival favorite that opens today in Austin at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar and the Regal Arbor, is based on the award-winning novel by Lionel Shriver, directed by Lynne Ramsay and stars Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly and newcomer Ezra Miller. The story follows Eva (Tilda Swinton) throughout, vascilating between the present and flashbacks to different points in her marriage to Franklin (Reilly) and the rearing of their son, Kevin, who is played by Miller as a teenager and by several younger child actors early on. From the beginning, Eva senses that Kevin is different, and the mother-son bond never forms. Franklin thinks it is all in her head, but as the film unfolds, we see that Eva’s unease was definitely founded, and she finds herself facing situations we could never imagine while also trying to find answers within herself to questions of parental responsibility and love.

Ezra Miller, as well as the younger actors playing Kevin at various points in childhood, gets under your skin and makes you uncomfortable throughout, giving Kevin a chilling air of unpredictability and menace. But this movie absolutely belongs to Tilda Swinton, who gives the best performance by an actress I’ve seen all year, and I am utterly stunned that she did not receive an Oscar nomination. If I had an Oscar ballot, she would be taking home the prize. She has won many awards so far for her haunted, stricken portrayal of Eva, including being voted Best Actress by the Austin Film Critics Society.

“We Need to Talk About Kevin” isn’t an easy film to watch, but because it forces you to face the unthinkable, it will stick with you long after its 119 minutes.

The action kicks off on Animal Planet at 2 p.m. this Sunday. As an added bonus, this year’s edition includes a cheering section of piggies!

2) In other animal-related news, this video of our beloved Kristen Bell’s sloth meltdown kept us in stitches all week. Well, you know what they say, Veronica Mars, she’s a marshmallow!

3) Some animals live in zoos, while others lived on your childhood bed. As “The Velveteen Rabbit” knows, that doesn’t make them any less real, which is probably why this essay on childhood stuffed animals from The Gloss got us all choked up.

4) Another week, another trailer for “The Hunger Games.” We wish Cinna would dress us for the premiere.

5) You’ll have to wait until March 23 for “The Hunger Games,” but we heartily recommend that you get your movie fix this weekend from “Chronicle,” which we caught at an Ain’t It Cool News sneak peek last night with filmmaker Josh Trank in attendance. While he may be maddeningly young (27, to be exact) to have a feature bowing in a wide release, Trank did a great job putting a new spin on an old idea — what would happen if we actually had superpowers? The performances from the three leads, which include Michael B. Jordan of “Friday Night Lights” and “The Wire” fame, were great as were the visual effects. The only negative for us was the found-footage format, which we’re growing tired of (IGN has a retrospective on the genre and its flaws), but overall, “Chronicle” is a surprise well-worth the time. Check out the trailer:

In “I Love You Phillip Morris,” Jim Carrey (in easily his best performance since “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) plays Steven Russell, a cop who ultimately divorces his wife (Leslie Mann) and comes out of the closet. To fund his lavish lifestyle, he soon becomes a con artist, and when those exploits land him in a Texas prison, he falls deeply in love with his cellmate, the titular Phillip Morris, played by Ewan McGregor, who imbues Morris with the perfect mix of sensitivity and sweetness. Their love for each other is so strong that Russell falls into one long strand of cons, scams and frauds after another to ensure that he can always be near the man he loves. “I Love You Phillip Morris” succeeds as both a comedy and a touching love story, but what truly elevates this movie to the next level are the performances of Carrey and McGregor. And to top it all off, as outlandish as the story is, it’s even more amazing that it is actually true and took place right here in Texas, which makes it all the more enjoyable.

2) For those who were bummed about the uncertain fate of “Community” and its group of delighfully comical Greendale College misfits, it’s absolutely coming back this season, though Season 4 is still, unfortunately, unconfirmed. The darkest possible timeline will not prevail!

3) If you’re running out of things to watch on Netflix Instant, Pajiba’s got you covered with a list of 20 underrated gems just waiting for you to stream them. We heartily endorse the recommendation of Happythankyoumoreplease, which, from its description, seems designed to bludgeon you with its hipster quirk, but actually wins you over with its romantic charm.

4) We’ve obvi been guilty of totes LOLing from time to time, but we wholeheartedly agree that Internet shorthand should be banned in 2012. What specific words would you <3 to never see again on your computer monitor?

5) Before we retire Internet slang forever, can we just say that nothing made us LOL and LMAO as much this week as this story about NASA’s new space shuttle engines?

Of what I’ve seen, Meryl Streep probably has the showiest role playing Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady.” She is just as fantastic in the role as you’d expect, but the film is unsatisfying if you’re at all expecting to see a Margaret Thatcher biopic. Even the nickname that spawned the film’s title is only obliquely referenced during exposition in a news report about the former prime minister. We never see her earning it. For a woman who literally shattered one of the biggest glass ceilings in the Western world and had an enduring reputation as a ball-buster, there are remarkably few scenes of any glass being shattered or balls being busted. The tumultuous events (union strikes, the Falklands, the IRA, the Cold War) that Great Britain endured during the 11 1/2 years of Thatcher’s tenure at 10 Downing Street are all handled in only a superficial way. Instead, most of the screen time focuses on the frame story of her later years as she hallucinates conversations with her husband (Jim Broadbent), who has been dead for eight years. At the end, Thatcher minimizes everything she’s accomplished (good or bad) into whether or not she made her children and her husband happy. And while I’m ashamed to say that I’m exactly the sort of sap that gets weepy because of something like that, the sort of romantic who hopes that if I do outlive my husband I’ll at least find comfort in hallucinating his presence, I also couldn’t help but feel like a biopic of a male leader would never boil down to that same conclusion. One of her children has a supporting role, and the other is never seen on screen, but I felt like judgments were being given on her commitment as a mother both by the filmmakers and by the audience throughout the movie. In all the celluloid representations of JFK we’ve seen, I don’t remember anyone ever asking afterward, “But was he a good father?” The fact that the double-standard exists stinks, but at the same time, the movie can’t have it both ways.

In full disclosure, I’m moderately horrified by the way everyone has been saying that the Lisbeth Salander character of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and the rest of the Millennium Trilogy is this awesome powerhouse female character when basically she is a male fantasy who is hypersexualized to the point of fetishization (even to the point of rape/attempted rape) by every single male character she encounters. And for the entire first book and some of the second, the writer at least once every page, if not many more times, refers to her “childlike figure,” “anorexic look” and “doll-like limbs.” It’s gross. She is constantly repulsed by how men just find her so irresistible, so when the Blomkvist character (played by Daniel Craig in the new David Fincher version of the bestselling Swedish trilogy of books and films) doesn’t immediately try to seduce her, she’s all like, “Hmm, why isn’t this guy seducing me or trying to rape me or treating me like an object? I know! I’ll seduce him!” So yeah, it’s cool that she can hack computers and can kick ass when necessary, but basically, with all her unearned irresistibility shoved down our throats in the first book, on the page, she is more or less Bella Swan with a dragon tattoo. In the Swedish films, Noomi Rapace portrayed Salander as more of a woman taking control of her life, while Rooney Mara (with an assist from Fincher) brings a wholly different interpretation to the role, amplifying the little-girl-lost aspects of Salander and turning her affair with Craig’s Blomkvist into more of a teenage infatuation than the straight-up lust-driven tone Rapace’s Salander projected. Mara does completely disappear into the role, which is a feat in its own right, but I can’t wrap my head around why a character solely defined by how men treat her is a feminist icon.

However hilarious Kristen Wiig is as a performer in “Bridesmaids,” her character Annie Walker‘s never-ending “poor-me” syndrome grates and actually detracts from the fun. Let’s be honest, Annie kind of sucks, right? It’s a testament to Wiig’s affability (and the rest of the cast’s performances) that we stick with Annie’s journey throughout the movie.

Could it be possible that one of the most interesting female characters this awards season is actually Charlize Theron’s Mavis Gary from “Young Adult”? Mavis may actually be the least likable protagonist, male or female, to hit the silver screen in some time, but for all her myriad failings, she at least feels like flesh and blood. She’s not perfect, far from it, in fact, but at least we see her making choices and acting on them, however misguided and delusional they may be. She makes decisions entirely on what she thinks is best, paying no mind to societal constraints.

In the supporting category, one of the ladies from “The Help” will probably walk away with the prize, but Shailene Woodley did fine work in Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants” as Alex, George Clooney’s character’s teenage daughter. In what could have easily been a wise-beyond-her-years cookie-cutter daughter role, Woodley imbues her character with palpably authentic teen angst and conflicted feelings about her parents, particularly her mother, while spending most of the movie in a bikini, no less.

Despite my disappointment with the female characters Hollywood served up this year, I’ll still be tuning in this Sunday to see who takes home that golden orb, but I’m already more excited about 2012′s Oscar bait, when hopefully we will be treated to some more well-rounded female characters. And if not, at the very least, we always have Pixar, whose geniuses managed to make a wordless futuristic robot really feel like a woman and are sure to get it right again with their first feature led by a female protagonist in this summer’s “Brave”:

Watch Downton Abbey I Wonder Preview on PBS. See more from Masterpiece.

2) If after watching “Downton Abbey” you find yourself in a period-piece marathon, make sure and choose wisely, namely from the films and miniseries including the chaps who landed on Pajiba’s list of their favorite cravat-wearing Brits.

3) Could “Twilight” be better or worse? Find out by reading io9′S imaginings on “If Famous Authors Had Written ‘Twilight’…”

4) We couldn’t get enough of the trip back in time afforded to us by “The Artist,” undoubtedly the most unique film we saw in 2011. With two winning leads and a charming love story, this black-and-white silent gem will make you long for quieter times at the cinema and heartily root for its chances come Oscar season.

5) We’re also rooting for Chelsea Gill, who posted a gutsy and adorable song on YouTube to ask her biggest celebrity crush (and ours), Jason Segel, out for a drink. We hope she gets her drink!

2) New York Magazine’s Vulture also gave us this delightful clip of the “Community” cast playing the Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture Edition. We wish we could be on their teams.

3) Alison Brie, “Community”‘s Annie Edison, will soon be on the silver screen in “Five-Year Engagement.” In addition to two of our other beloved TV actors (Jason Segel and Chris Pratt) and Emily Blunt, this trailer offers romantic comedy fans like us hope for the future. And in our book, co-writers Segel and Nick Stoller are two-for-two after “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “The Muppets.”

4) Another dearly departed TV favorite, “My So-Called Life,” received the where-are-they-now? treatment, courtesy of an imaginative writer over at HelloGiggles. They sooooo pegged Brian Krakow.

5) Wondering what to get us for Christmas? We’ll take anything from Brookish, a lovely Etsy shop full of handmade goods inspired by the great Jane Austen herself.

Released in the UK in 2009, “Nativity!” stars the perennially perfect Martin Freeman (“The Office,” “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”). No one does adorable sad-sacks better than him. He is basically the British Charlie Brown. In “Nativity!”, Freeman stars as adorable sad-sack Paul Maddens, a primary school teacher whose Christmas spirit (and heart) is broken because his girlfriend (the luminous Ashley Jensen, best known stateside for “Ugly Betty” and “Extras”) dumped him on Christmas five years prior and is now charged with putting on the school’s nativity play, very much against his will. While that setup could in fact easily be turned into a crappy American cable movie, in the hands of these British filmmakers, it turns into something funny and sweet that marries sharp satire with tear-inducing warmth. I mean, the villain, a rival Nativity-play producer at a ritzy private school, is named Gordon Shakespeare, which is just awesome. And he is played by the great Jason Watkins (Herrick from “Being Human”). The kids are also delightful, and the original songs from the Nativity production will be playing in your head even days later. And there are donkeys!

2) And on the other end of the November movie releases, this reviewer sums up exactly how we felt about “Breaking Dawn, Part 1″:

3) So many great movies will be coming out in the next four weeks, but one of the ones we are most excited about is Chickster favorite Cameron Crowe’s “We Bought a Zoo,” which comes out Dec. 23. The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Crowe in a great cover story that also includes the mix tape (what else?) he made to convince Matt Damon to sign on for the project. We were happy to see our all-time favorite Ryan Adams song (and Crowe knows from Ryan Adams songs), “If I Am a Stranger,” on the playlist. Here’s a video a fan recorded of Adams playing the song solo at a show in Ireland this summer. As usual, his vocals are heartbreakingly gorgeous:

4) The Hairpin has added another great installment to our beloved Scandals of Classic Hollywood series, this time focusing on the fascinating and tragic story of the beautiful Rita Hayworth. Long, but well worth the read.

5) It is officially December, which means it’s time for one of our favorite music genres — Christmas music! Over on HelloGiggles, they’ve assembled a pitch-perfect mix of retro holiday jams, including one of our absolute musts, Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)”:

(photo via Yahoo/Kevin Winter, Getty Images)

But among all the coverage of “Breaking Dawn: Part 1″ this week, perhaps the funniest has been this Pajiba post that posits “I’m convinced that no one hates ‘Twilight’ as much as Robert Pattinson,” and then goes on to detail some of the actor’s choicest sound bites about the series, including this spot-on summary of “Breaking Dawn”:

“Have sex, demon baby. No, they get married first, demon baby, Jacob falls in love with the little baby [laughs], then everyone tries to kill each other, but nothing happens. Oh, that’s the second one [laughs even harder].”

2) Now that sparkly vampires are almost behind us, it’s time to move on to a teen heroine who is truly kick-ass. This week, we got a good look at Katniss Everdeen and the tributes competing in “The Hunger Games,” the first film adaptation of the best-selling young adult trilogy. Check out the awesome trailer below, and may the odds be ever in your favor!

3) If you’re tired of all this teen-centric fare at the cineplex, catch up on the Hollywood of yore through The Hairpin‘s fantastic Scandals of Classic Hollywood series. This week’s column broke from its scandalous traditions to lovingly profile the late Paul Newman. It’s a great read devoted to a great humanitarian and actor, and well, the photos definitely don’t hurt.

4) Speaking of scandals of years past, a new theory that alleges Jane Austen was actually the victim of (possibly intentional) arsenic poisoning was featured on Yahoo this week. We’re not sure what to make of it, but we are sure we need to watch “Pride and Prejudice” again while we think about it.

5) The weather today makes for perfect scarf-weather. Thanks to this clever tutorial, we now know 23 more ways to work a scarf:

(courtesy Austin Film Festival/Jack Plunkett)

My favorite panel of AFF was, of course, “Script-to-Screen: Veronica Mars with Rob Thomas,” which delved into both behind-the-scenes trivia and the writing process behind bringing the best teen detective noir ever to grace the small screen. For my money, television doesn’t get much better than “Veronica Mars,” so hearing showrunner (and off-and-on-again Austinite) Rob Thomas (pictured above) tell how he came up with and developed the show’s central story, characters and perfectly plotted season arcs was a fangirl’s dream. (If you haven’t seen the show yet, it’s no longer available on Netflix Instant, but you can rent all three seasons on DVD. As we said before, Veronica Mars is a pint-sized, pop culture-spewing private investigator who packs a punch – and an oh-so-handy taser. First seasons of television shows only very, very, very rarely come as deftly plotted, suspenseful, funny, unflinchingly honest, swoon-inducing and addicting as the first season of “Veronica Mars.”) During the panel, Thomas played the pilot episode (including clips from both his cut and the network’s cut) while pausing often to share thoughts and stories. One of those stories included the casting process for the main male characters of Duncan Kane and Logan Echolls, and then it turned out that Jason Dohring, the actor who played Logan Echolls (the inciter of the aforementioned swoon), was actually in the room. Sigh.

As for the films, well, it’s easy to take shots at films with hundreds of millions of studio money behind them, but with more personal films, like the kinds that premiere at a festival geared toward writers, it feels wrong and mean-spirited to spend time pointing them out. So, rather than talking about films that were empirically good or bad, I’ll just share the five that I enjoyed watching the most, in chronological order. That being said, one of the bad things about living in the city where the festival is held is that life sometimes gets in the way of screenings you most want to see, which is why i missed both “The Artist” and “Jeff Who Lives at Home.” Before I get to my chronological countdown of new movies, I have to give a special mention to Friday’s screening of 1990′s “Metropolitan,” a comedy of manners I adore and that was such a treat to see on the big screen followed by a Q&A with its brilliant and elusive writer/director, Whit Stillman.

1) When a film is charged with opening an entire festival, it has a lot of expectations, including setting the tone and level for the next week of films. “Butter” more than rose to the challenge. The only things I knew about “Butter” before setting foot into the Paramount on AFF’s opening night were that it starred Jennifer Garner and served as an allegory of the 2008 Democratic presidential primary set in the world of competitive butter carving. The film, which also starred Ty Burrell, Olivia Wilde, Hugh Jackman, Alicia Silverstone and Rob Corddry, turned out to be all that and much more as one of the most enjoyable salty-and-sweet comedies this side of “Bad Santa.” And I never would have pegged Rob Corddry as the kind of actor that could make me cry, but he brought so much warmth to his role as the foster father of aspiring butter carver (and Obama surrogate) Destiny. Writer Jason A. Micallef was in attendance and participated in a Q&A after the panel, in which he talked about his smart and funny script, which previously had been on the famous Black List of the best unproduced screenplays.

(Bruce Robinson and Johnny Depp, courtesy Austin Film Festival/Jack Plunkett)

2)The Austin Film Festival certainly draws famous actors and filmmakers to our city, but when Johnny Depp came to town, every person with a badge or a film pass flocked to the Paramount to see “The Rum Diary”on Friday night. The film was introduced by saying that no other actor can play comedy and fear at the same time as well as Depp, and he certainly proved that once again with his performance in “The Rum Diary,” which was adapted by writer/director Bruce Robinson from the novel by the late great Hunter S. Thompson. Set in Cuba in the 1950s and also starring Aaron Eckhart, Michael Rispoli, Austinite Amber Heard and Giovanni Ribisi, “The Rum Diary” is good fun and the perfect marriage of director, actor and source material, as anyone who has seen either Robinson’s famously gin-soaked “Withnail and I” or Depp’s appropriately gonzo performance as Thompson in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” can probably guess. After the film, Depp and Robinson (along with famed film columnist Elvis Mitchell) provided the most hilariously entertaining Q&A of the entire festival.

3) Heading into AFF, the film I was definitely most excited about was Sundance hit “Like Crazy.” Starring Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones as an American and Brit, respectively, who fall in love only to see their relationship torn apart by distance and visa problems, “Like Crazy” effectively creates that same feeling of love and longing that everyone can identify with. Beautifully shot and acted, the film was largely improvised from an outline from writer/director Drake Doremus, who said at the Q&A following the film that he wanted to write a story in which love was both the protagonist and the antagonist, because it caused Anna and Jacob to make decisions that ultimately hurt themselves and others. I’m not a fan of ambiguous endings, but I know that the heightened emotions of “Like Crazy” will stick with me for a long time.

4) Unfortunately, “Stuck Between Stations” was one of the few screenings I attended that didn’t have a filmmaker in attendance, and I enjoyed the film so much that I would have loved to hear more about its creation. Set all in one night, largely as a conversation between two twenty-somethings that kinda-sorta knew each other back in elementary and high school, “Stuck Between Stations” does an amazing job at creating one of those heady anything-is-possible nights when everything feels a little like a dream and you’re hesitant to do anything that might break the spell. (In that respect, it reminded me a bit of the also-great “In Search of a Midnight Kiss.”) In addition to bit parts with Josh Hartnett and Michael Imperiola, “Stuck Between Stations” stars Zoe Lister Jones and the film’s co-writer Sam Rosen as Becky and Casper, who are both a little bit lost. I was not a fan of Lister Jones’ tragically hip “Breaking Upwards,” but I thought she was great in this performance, although I think the MVP award has to go to Sam Rosen, who gave a three-dimensional, realistic portrayal of a soldier serving in Afghanistan that owed nothing to stereotype. In honor of the oft-unsung hero of “Friday Night Lights,” my husband and I have created the Saracen Award for QB 1′s specific brand of sweet, sad and earnest, and the character Rosen creates in Casper is a deserving recipient.

“Stuck Between Stations” Movie Trailer from Stuck Between Stations on Vimeo.

(Nick Kocher, Jason Dohring, and Brian McElhaney, courtesy Austin Film Festival/Tammy Perez)

5) With all that “Veronica Mars” and “FNL” love up there, I’m obviously a huge TV nerd. So is Andrew Disney, the NYU graduate who for his feature debut managed to assemble a cast that includes cast members from cult TV favorites “The Wire,” “Battlestar Galactica,” “Heroes” and, yes, “Veronica Mars” and “Friday Night Lights.” You kind of want to punch him for having that kind of luck, but then he manages to win you over with his heavily stylized, self-labeled slacker noir “Searching for Sonny.” While I missed the Saturday premiere with actors Jason Dohring, Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney present, the Monday night screening included a Q&A with producer Red Sanders and writer/director Andrew Disney, who said he won over his stellar cast by sending them videos detailing the reasons why they should be in his movie. And it worked. Dohring stars as a twentysomething pizza boy who heads back to his hometown (which, although not named, is shot in Fort Worth) when one of his high school classmates (Masi Oka) goes missing. Between Logan Echolls, Colonel Tigh, Lyla Garrity and narrator Lester Freamon, you wouldn’t think anyone else would have room to shine, but Kocher and McElhaney of comedy duo Britanick Comedy (I suggest starting with the Joss Whedon-approved video “Teamwork”) demonstrate that they both have bright careers ahead.