After a successful 2007 run, can the success of the Lone Star International Film Festival be duplicated? Or will recent developments at the Lone Star Film Society threaten the existence of a festival in 2008?

In case you missed it (and you probably did), there was a pretty big deal of an International Film Festival right here in Fort Worth back in November. For four days, a bunch of people you’d recognize from TV and film were wandering around the streets of our city, participating in panel discussions, screening films, and partying as if what happens here stays here. If you’re curious about what you missed (and you totally should be), go back and read and listen to our coverage of the festival. Don’t bother to search back issues of the FW Weekly or the Star-Telegram, they rarely bothered to show up.

Considering the success of 2007’s event, (a remarkable performance considering that for nearly everyone involved it was their first film festival) most people would expect that the team charged with putting it together would be kept on, to make 2008 just as successful, right?

Wrong.

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The Lone Star International Film Festival is just starting to warm up, and Thursday was definitely more encouraging than Wednesday. I was finally able to make it to a couple of movies, and you can read more about it after the jump!

Bernie and I went to see Hell on Wheels, a documentary about roller derby in Austin that was shot BEFORE it started to really take off and get its own reality show. It was really good, with just the right amount of feel-good and tension that a good documentary should provide.

After that we headed over to the Four Day Weekend Theater to catch the DIY Shorts presentation hosted by local filmmaker James Johnston. Of the 6 short films that we saw, James’ were excellent, and the one about the guy and his dog was really moving. I’m not ashamed to say that I cried at the end of it.

After the shorts (actually we had to leave early to make it in time) we went to catch Red Road, a movie filmed in Scotland. I’m not going to ruin it for you in case you get a chance to see it, but it was really, really good. I’ll just say that it was really intense, and leave it at that.

As Bernie and I left the Palace, Steve-O called to tell me that he was heading to the Saucer after seeing “Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead,” to spend some time in the “hospitality suite,” which was really Half-Acre Hall. As I’m climbing the stairs to meet Steve, Bill Paxton is heading the opposite direction, so I turn around, thinking (rightfully so) that the party is leaving. It turns out that they’re all heading back to the Palace to introduce Frailty, and Steve and I have been personally invited by Tom Huckabee to come over for the intro. What moron would turn down that invitation?

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