March 2009

Austin Film Festival is starting a monthly film series called "Made in Texas" that will feature movies that are all -- well, you guessed from the title. The films will be shown on the second Wednesday of each month at 7:30 pm in the Texas Spirit Theater at the Texas State History museum. Admission is a mere $5 -- in fact, if you're an AFF or Texas State History member, it's free.

Several of these screenings will also feature writers and/or directors, and I am particularly pleased to see that the series kicks off with a movie written by Bud Shrake. About 12 years ago (maybe more), AFF showed Kid Blue during the fest, with Shrake and Dennis Hopper in attendance, and both the movie and ensuing discussion were unforgettable. I keep hoping for an encore screening, since Kid Blue isn't on DVD, but I'm happy to try a new Shrake-scripted film instead.

Full lineup after the jump ...

I attended AFI Dallas in its first year and had a great time. I'd love to go back this year, but it starts Thursday night and I'm still recuperating from SXSW.

This year's opening-night film is Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom, which played during Fantastic Fest as a sneak preview last year. Johnson was at the Austin screening, as you can see from the above photo. Johnson and Reiko Kikuchi are scheduled to attend the AFI Dallas event. Kikuchi nearly steals the movie, which is a comedy about con men, in the tradition of The Lady Eve.

The Brothers Bloom isn't the only film from Fantastic Fest 2008 to play at AFI Dallas this year. Zombie Girl, the documentary about Austin teenager Emily Hagins directing a horror film, is screening in competition. And a favorite short from the fest, The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon, is in the shorts competition.

I've got plenty of SXSW 2009 photos to share, but one of my favorites is from the Best Worst Movie screening on Friday night. Best Worst Movie is a documentary about the weird cult phenomenon of the film listed as the worst on IMDb, Troll 2. I should have known that the movie would have an Austin connection, namely Alamo Drafthouse. One of the Troll 2 events shown in the film took place at the old Alamo on Colorado. It was nice to see the old place again. In addition, Austin-turned-L.A. filmmaker Nick Robinson was interviewed at the Alamo screening, and Rolling Roadshow did a big event where Troll 2 was shot, so we also saw Tim League and Zack Carlson.

Zack was at the Q&A Friday night along with the Best Worst Movie filmmakers and some of the original Troll 2 cast. And in the documentary, you see that he is such a big fan of the film that he got a tattoo to commemorate it. So naturally, during the Q&A, everyone started chanting for him to take off his shirt and show off the tattoo. Thus, the above photo. But wait, there's more.

Only one more day to go, and I'm ready for SXSW to be over. It's not the quality of the films, but the lack of quality sleep that makes me appreciate the fact that film festivals do end.

Yesterday, due to a miscommunication, I headed downtown pointlessly on a #3 bus to meet a friend, and it was insanely packed with people and cars. I quickly came back to my home theater, the South Lamar Alamo.

I only caught a few films on Friday, and the stand out was Berlin Calling, a very long but good electronica music video good enough to convert the uninitiated to DJ Paul Kalkbrenner. Karlbrenner stars in the movie about a Berlin DJ whose overuse of recreational drugs induces a psychotic break. As director Hannes Stohr says, it's a story told a thousand times. With the music mirroring and forecasting the emotional ups and downs, it's worth a watch as much as a listen. It made me want to buy the soundtrack, and now I understand why some friends follow DJs.

Updated 3/22: SXSW Film badgeholders get in free; anyone else should buy a ticket through Alamo.

If you haven't been able to watch any SXSW films this week, you've got a second chance. Alamo Ritz will show four SXSW films on Sunday as part of a "Taste of SXSW" series that I hope continues in upcoming weeks/months. Even if you've been at SXSW Film Festival, you may have missed one of these. These screenings aren't part of SXSW, so you need to buy tickets through Alamo Drafthouse.

• Beeswax -- Plays at 1:45 pm. I can recommend this one, which I reviewed for Cinematical. Beeswax was shot in Austin and half the filmmakers in town have minor roles.
• Anvil! The Story of Anvil -- Plays at 4:30 pm. I missed this movie last night because I was too chicken to deal with downtown parking. But on the Sunday after SXSW, parking shouldn't be a problem. It's a documentary about a heavy metal band that's been touring on and off for 30 years now.
• Adventureland -- Plays at 7:30 pm. This is the latest film from the director of Superbad and stars Jesse Eisenberg and Kristin Stewart.
• Ong Bak 2 -- Plays at 10:10 pm. Tony Jaa's martial-arts sequel played only at midnight during SXSW, so if you're a little more of an early bird, you can see this Sunday night.

I saw The Overbrook Brothers on Monday night (it was Monday, wasn't it? the days are starting to fuzz together). This is the first feature film from Austin filmmaker John Bryant. If you saw his short Momma's Boy, this film is actually an expansion.

The photo is from the Q&A afterwards. That's producer Chris Ohlson, John Bryant, and actors Nathan Harlan and Mark Reeb. The high point of the Q&A -- or low point, if you like your humor refined -- was a discussion about an intimate prosthetic that Reeb had to wear in one scene. Other cast members who weren't at the screening but might look familiar to you are Cyndi Williams (Room) and Steve Zissis (Baghead, Momma's Boy).

The Overbrook Brothers was funny and over the top, and it's playing once more during SXSW. You can catch it Saturday night at 10 pm at the Paramount.

I've got about 20 minutes. Let's see what's been going on.

• A funny moment on opening night: The red carpet for I Love You, Man was super-crowded, plus it was cold and raining and ... I thought a minute, then rushed from Paramount to ACC and caught The 2 Bobs instead. This is a fun movie if you live in Austin, because you can probably pick out every single locale. Plus, Turk Pipkin has an unbelievably freaky small role.
• I just saw David Lowery's St. Nick and wow. Lovely. The kids are amazing.

Days are already running into each other, and it's only day three.

American Violet (Lone Star States)
Director: Tim Disney. Writer: Bill Haney
It's an old story; wrongfully charged, someone fights back. What makes a film like this work is the performances, and Nicole Beharie delivers a memorable one as single mother wrongly charged with a felony drug offense. Actually, most of the performances were very strong. While the story itself is fiction, it puts faces to the very real phenomenon of aggressive police action. I just wish they'd shot in a Texas location, since the cases it's based on took place in the Waco area. I highly recommend it, if only for watching Beharie, particularly when she has battles of will with Alfre Woodard, who plays her mother.

Despite the chill and the rain, filmgoers seemed to be out in force for the first day of SXSW film festival.

The Square (Spotlight Premieres)
Director: Nash Edgerton. Writers: Joel Edgerton and Matthew Dabnet
I usually avoid the opening film for festivals, and at SXSW, there is usually a single-screening of a smaller film I want to see. This year, it was The Square, which I knew very little about. It was an excellent choice. Screening with his darkly humorous and startling short, Spider let the audience know they were in for a very interesting ride. A tale of choice and repercussions, the audience gasped audibly several times, in unison, and at one point twice, yet the shock value was never gratuitous or outrageous. I don't know if it has distribution yet, but if it does, check it out. It's the best kind of low-key, small budget thriller. It's a shame it only screened once, I'd like to see it again.

SXSW is upon us and I always get a little antsy trying to figure out my schedule. It's tough to balance the screenings, panels, parties and general socializing with friends I only see at festival time. Not for the first time, I had to decide if I was going to stick with a Film badge or upgrade to Gold to take advantage of the Interactive conference. Thankfully, SXSW knows the lines between Interactive and Film get blurrier each year, and offer a number of joint panels and events.

Like every other year, I like to have a screening-heavy schedule. SXSW is a film lover's dream because the programming is very eclectic, with an emphasis on smart, independent films (Hollywood hates me, but I'll write about that later). This year, my most anticipated films seem to include more docs than usual, something I blame on SXSW; I never used to be a big doc fan, but the lineup is consistently strong, and several of them really resonate with me.

Just a few of the films I'm looking forward to seeing are:

Love him or hate him, you have to admit Kinky Friedman is a genuine Texas Colorful Character, and it's fascinating to see what he's going to do next. (But not running for governor again. Please.) I started to tell you all my own little story about meeting Friedman when I worked as an Austin City Limits intern in 1994, but it went on too long. And I don't want to take the spotlight away from my e-mail interview with David Hartstein, director of the documentary Along Came Kinky ... Texas Jewboy for Governor. The film is having its world premiere at SXSW this year.

Along Came Kinky ... Texas Jewboy for Governor plays just once during SXSW: Thursday, March 19 at 7:30 pm at the Paramount. I bet it's going to be fun to watch with a big audience, especially if a lot of Texans are there. Here's what local filmmaker Hartstein had to say about the film.

I emailed Tommy Pallotta a couple of weeks ago and asked him about doing an interview via email for his documentary American Prince, which is premiering at SXSW 2009. The former Austin resident is living in Amsterdam these days, so email seemed like the easiest way to communicate. Pallotta sent me what's essentially a very cool short article about the film. He told me to feel free to put it in interview format, but I love the story that this article tells and I don't want to break it up with questions and extra formatting.

American Prince is about Martin Scorsese's hard-to-find documentary American Boy and the man Scorsese profiled 30 years ago, Steven Prince. The two films will screen together during SXSW at Alamo South Lamar: on Saturday, March 14 at 7:30 pm, and again on Tuesday, March 17 at 11 am.

Check out some clips from the documentary and a very cool poster from the film over at Cinematical. And although this has nothing to do with American Prince per se, I recommend reading the Filmmaker Magazine interview with Pallotta about why he no longer uses Facebook or other social media.

One of the most intriguing trailers I've seen for SXSW this year has been for St. Nick, the feature from writer-director David Lowery that will premiere at the festival. I've attached the trailer after the jump so you can see for yourself.

David has a great blog called Drifting: A Director's Log where he often writes about the projects he's working on. His short films have screened at Slamdance, SXSW, and Austin Film Festival.

I recently conducted the following email interview with Lowery about St. Nick. If you're a vegetarian, you especially want to read to the end of this interview (why? you'll find out). St. Nick is playing during SXSW three times, each time at Alamo Ritz: Sunday, March 15 at noon, Tuesday, March 17 at 2:30 pm, and Friday, March 20 at 12:30 pm.

[Editor's Note: Please welcome our latest contributor, Jenn Brown.]

With SXSW just around the corner, and Tim McCanlies' latest film, The Two Bobs having its world premiere, it's a perfect time to review one of his earlier films, Secondhand Lions. McCanlies is a well-known figure in the local filmmaking scene as a writer, director, and co-founder of Fantastic Fest. His script for 2003's Secondhand Lions was known in Hollywood as one of the best unproduced scripts around, taking 10 years to make it the screen.

It's the 1960s, and Walter (Haley Joel Osment) is a weenie, even by his mother's low standards, so she abandons him to his great-uncles in rural Texas, with hopes of getting part of their rumored wealth. Garth and Hub (Michael Caine, Robert Duvall) after a mysterious 40-year absence, are back home and not taking retirement any more gracefully than the presence of greedy relatives and traveling salesmen. After Walter suggests they spend some of their money, the uncles start spending their wealth on the most outrageous items, starting with a skeet machine and culminating with a lion.

Update: A SXSW 2011 guide for non-badgeholders is now available.

Several commenters on the SXSW 2009 Guide to Film Fest Venues asked about the best way to enjoy the festival if they are using film passes instead of badges, or if they want to buy individual tickets for a few movies.

The SXSW film pass is the film-fest equivalent of the Music fest wristband. You're in a second-tier line, and are admitted into a screening after the badgeholders line has been let into the theater, if space permits. Passes for 2009 are $70 and are now available at Waterloo Records or any Austin-area Alamo Drafthouse. Someone asked me whether they'll be able to buy film passes halfway through the festival -- I don't know if there's a limited number and if they ever sell out. Anyone?