From the Vaults: Bats vs. Aurochs

Quvenzhané Wallis as Hushpuppy stares down an auroch in "Beasts of the Southern Wild"

This weekend The Dark Knight Rises has commandeered the national box office. In Austin, where we generally have 4-8 new movies released on local screens every Friday, not a single movie opened up against the inevitable Batman onslaught. We've got nothing against Batman; in fact, it was our recommended film this week. But we also like variety.

So, if you're looking to see something this weekend other than The Dark Knight Rises – whether you're waiting for the crowds to thin out or just have little enthusiasm for comic-book superheroes – it might be a good time to catch up with some of the indie hits of the summer. At the top of my suggestion list are Bernie and Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Richard Linklater's Bernie – starring Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, and Matthew McConaughey – opened on April 27 and has been playing for three straight months on both local and national screens. Having grossed over $8 million and still counting, the independently made Bernie represents Linklater's biggest box-office draw, apart from his studio-financed movies, School of Rock and Bad News Bears. Bernie is still playing on four local screens and more than 300 nationally (unlike the 3,000+ screens on which The Dark Knight Rises appears).

Beasts of the Southern Wild opened in Austin last weekend, and this film, too, is proving to be one of the summer's indie success stories. The movie's mixture of hard-edged stoicism and magical flights of fancy combine to create a unique experience. Survivalist strategies in the face of Hurricane Katrina combine with a little girl's personal experience and imagination – in which she runs through the bayou with ancient aurochs. The film's writer/director Benh Zeitlin is no stranger to this subject matter or to Austin. Zeitlin made a short film in 2008 called "Glory at Sea," which now now seems like something of a sketchbook for Beasts. "Glory at Sea" received the SXSW Wholpin Award at the 2008 South by Southwest Film Festival. But though Zeitlin experienced "glory at sea" while in Austin, his adventures on land were much less favorable. On the way to one of his screenings, Zeitlin and three of his crew members were rear-ended in a bad car accident. Zeitlin's hip was dislocated and fractured in three places and his pelvis was also fractured. Spencer Parsons wrote about the accident and subsequent benefit show in the pages of the Chronicle. Obviously, Zeitlin went on to recover and make Beasts of the Southern Wild, which has scooped up several of the top prizes at Sundance, Cannes, and other 2012 film festivals. The 25-minute-long "Glory at Sea" can be viewed below.