Richard Linklater

IN the closing credits of Richard Linklater's hallucinogenic animated film "A Scanner Darkly," an unusual list of names scrolls upward. It's a roster of the lost: friends and acquaintances of the late sci-fi author Philip K. Dick who died of overdoses or had their lives devastated by drugs. Their names were taken from Dick's book, on which the film is based. "Between alcohol and drugs, I'd say all of us involved in the film have our own list," says Linklater.

Early in the movie "Bernie," a character describes the distinct regions of Texas with an on-screen map as a guide, noting that East Texas is "where the South begins. This is life behind the Pine Curtain. " It is against that specific regional identity that the film's darkly comic tale of murder amid the rhythms of small-town life takes place. "Having grown up there, that map is really the spiel I give people when they ask, 'What does East Texas look like?'" said filmmaker Richard Linklater, a lifelong Texas resident who has made films such as "Slacker" and "The Newton Boys" explicitly set in the state.

Ol' Willis would most likely think it fitting. "The Newton Boys," Richard Linklater's filmed adaptation of the life and times of Willis Newton and his three brothers, the most successful larcenists in American history, had been plagued all spring by record rains, punishing hail, hip-deep mud and even a tornado that took 27 lives just a few miles from the film's set in Bartlett, Texas.

Losers and schmoozers, philosophers, poets, assorted conspiracy buffs and lunatics by the score--not the stuff of your typical Hollywood blockbuster, or even an interesting L.A. cocktail party. But as drawn and manipulated by first-time filmmaker Richard Linklater, the ravings and conversations of a collection of societal drop-outs--"slackers"--who slink through the alleys and coffee houses of Austin, Tex., might just be the stuff that Hollywood dreams are made of.

NEW YORK - "Before Midnight," Richard Linklater's third film about the relationship between an American man (Ethan Hawke) and French woman (Julie Delpy), closes with what might be the series' piece de resistance : a 30-minute hotel-room argument between the couple. Brutal and witty, the power dynamic shifts back and forth between the pair, as one grabs the upper hand and the other snatches it back. The scene is so credible that at least one woman who'd seen the movie walked up to Linklater recently and told him she had begun to use some of the lines when she came to a disagreement with her husband.

In this age of brand-enhanced, franchise-fattening "media events," when inane sequels, incomprehensible prequels and unjustifiable remakes seem to be replacing original films like the pods replaced the real people in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (which, by the way, is being remade for the third time), there may be scant room for a film like "Before Sunset."

A threequel for a scripted independent film is an anomaly. A threequel for a movie whose original premiered 18 years before is almost unheard of. Yet "Before Midnight," Richard Linklater's return to the romantic and other life travails of Julie Delpy's Celine and Ethan Hawke's Jesse is exactly that. And judging by its debut screening Sunday night at the Sundance Film Festival, the franchise has only gotten better with age. "I guess we're all...

MOVIES Eat See Hear will screen Richard Linklater's 1993 classic high-school comedy, "Dazed and Confused," with a pre-show performance by the indie band the Little Ones. Food trucks will also be on hand including Canter's, Calbi, No Tomatoes, Fatburger and others. FIDM / Grand Hope Park, 919 S. Grand Ave., L.A. Doors, 5:30 p.m.; band, 7 p.m.; movie, 8 p.m. Sat. $10 to $20. http://www.eatseehear.com.

With "Before Sunset," filmmaker Richard Linklater rapturously returns to a romance that took flight in his earlier film "Before Sunrise." In that 1995 wisp of a story, a young American journalist, Jesse (Ethan Hawke), and a younger Sorbonne student, Celine (Julie Delpy), meet on a European train and embark on a spellbound affair that takes them down narrow cobbled streets, across sweeping boulevards and finally into each other's arms.