SXSW 2012, Day Six: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
This first photo is actually from Tuesday, Day 5, taken at the Alamo Drafthouse on Slaughter for the most packed screening line that venue has seen yet. Both the badge line and the pass/single ticket line for Safety Not Guaranteed stretched out the doors and curled around the courtyard in front. The studio sent a camera crew to film crowd reaction shots after the very successful movie's second performance.
My schedule for Wednesday was light,though it remained in flux as I had to change selections several times. The goal was to avoid the Music fest crowds downtown and stick to satellite venues (Lamar, Slaughter, Village, Canon). So, what was originally going to be Bernie became instead Thale, which I planned to see but missed on the first day of the fest. Thale is a sleepy film based on the Norwegian myth of the Huldra, or hidden forest people. The star Silje Reinåmo, seen in the above photo, is beautiful with otherworldly eyes and an intense stare that fit the character perfectly. Eerie and frightening at times, Thale had some fantastic musical cues, but at 77 minutes it still ran just a bit too long with scenes stretched out and people staring for long minutes at each other or their surroundings.
Next on my schedule was Iron Sky, and though it didn't start for three hours, I planned to get in line immediately, since it has been one of the most popular midnight screenings at the fest, with SXXpress passes going quickly and a full house for each of the prior showtimes. At 9 pm, the line had already begun, and I was tenth. I snapped a few photos of the line, which was placed across the street while the prior show seated. Wisely anticipating the crowd to come, the SXSW staff announced that they'd be moving the screening to the largest theater available. By the time they were ready to seat, enough badged people were waiting in line to fill all the seats, leaving perhaps five seats for those waiting in the film pass line.
In spite of largely negative critical response, I quite enjoyed Iron Sky, a farce about Nazis returning from a secret base on the Moon where they have waited almost a century to return and reclaim Earth. It's full of absurdist political satire and subtle in-jokes. The film is visually appealing, with a fantastic style based on 1940s German technology that never advanced with modern innovations like the integated circuit or plastics. Even the score was a joke, full of immediately recognizable lines from Wagner.
Star Julia Dietze was present for a Q&A, and she was just as adorable in person as she was onscreen. The audience responded very well to Iron Sky, and had many questions for Ms. Dietze about distribution, production design, script revisions and her fellow cast members. (Originally her character was intended to have a lesbian love interest.) Iron Sky already has distribution in numerous countries, including the U.S., according to Dietze.
