Slack time  Before Sunrise is something new from Richard
Linklater -- a failure  Most movie fans have a filmmaker they
latch onto, take to heart and enthusiastically root for. Their
triumphs make you euphoric and their failures make you surly and
sad, and once you're plugged into the thrill of following their
careers, the emergence of each new work is simultaneously
thrilling and unsettling, like the reappearance of a dear friend
you haven't seen in a while.  I've been rooting for Austin-based
writer-director Richard Linklater ever since I saw his 1991
debut film, Slacker, for the second time. On first viewing, I
dismissed it as a gifted bit of cinematic stunt work, way too
dependent on its central anti-narrative device. The way it
jumped gleefully from one character to another to another, never
returning to any of them, was so brazenly unique that it seemed
almost shallow and bratty -- a one-note gimmick for a one-note
movie.  But on second viewing, I realized the film actually did
have a structure. It wasn'