Special Screenings

By Susan LaMarca

A local sneak peek of the documentary 1: The Unvarnished Story helped kick off the 2012 Formula One US Grand Prix in Austin on November 15. The red carpet included former drivers Emerson Fittipaldi, Jackie Stewart and Brett Lunger, plus  Bernie Ecclestone, President and CEO of F1 Management and F1 Administration.

1 is an account of Formula One from the 1960s and 1970s, culled from thousands of hours of archival footage and contemporary interviews with 60 drivers and professionals. During those years, television audiences and sponsors brought business to motor racing as advancements in technology and engineering increased the performance of race cars. These decades marked the most dangerous period in the history of the sport, and many drivers were killed due to lack of safety regulations.

Producer Michael Shevloff introduced director Paul Crowder (Riding Giants, Dogtown and Z Boys) and writer Mark Monroe before the screening. After working on the project for three years in the making, the filmmakers expressed excitement at the opportunity to screen the film during Austin's Formula One weekend. They were also thrilled to announce that the final version of the movie would be narrated by Michael Fassbender.

The next Essential Cinema lineup from Austin Film Society starts Tuesday night, with a focus on Welsh cinema. For those of us whose Welsh pop-culture exposure is currently limited to episodes of Gavin & Stacey and Torchwood, this late fall lineup gives us a chance to experience a little more of the country's cinematic culture. SXSW programmer Jim Kolmar is the guest curator for this series.

From November 13 through December 18, the movies in "Music in the Blood, Poetry in the Soul: Wales on Screen" will screen each Tuesday night at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar. Tickets are free for AFS members at the LOVE level, $5 for members at the WATCH or MAKE level, and $8 for general admission.

Here's the lineup:

Patagonia (2010)
Tuesday, Nov. 13, 7 pm
This film pairs the stories of a couple journeying to a Welsh settlement in Argentine Patagonia and an elderly Welsh-Argentine woman traveling to Wales. The movie is filmed in both Welsh and Spanish languages (and has English subtitles).

I'm so happy to be able to tell you that Slackerwood is coordinating with Blue Starlite Urban Drive-In to host the Austin premiere of the Central Texas-shot indie comedy Cinema Six later this month.

The movie will screen on Friday, November 30 at 8 pm at the Blue Starlite setup at Austin Studios. Cinema Six co-writer/director Mark Potts will be attending the event, and I'm willing to bet other local cast and crew will be there as well.

We're giving away several tickets at the end of this article. Keep reading.

If you missed the giveaway, buy tickets now through the Blue Starlite website, either to drive in with your car and watch the movie, or to walk-in with your blanket or lawn chair and watch it that way. It's going to be the end of November in Austin, so it might be chilly (like 60 degrees, brrrr!) if you're walking in -- I suggest the lawn chair AND the blanket.

As election date has drawn ever nearer, I've started to feel as annoyed as this little girl about the constant poll numbers and horse-race-media-analysis of this year's Presidential election. Can't it all just be over already? In all seriousness, though, GO VOTE today if you didn't vote early. Here's a nifty mobile application* if you need help finding a nearby polling place in Austin.

If you are still excited and eager about election night and all that means, some local venues have you covered! Each of the Alamo Drafthouse locations is hosting an Election Results party starting at 7 pm tonight.  A $5 voucher gets you in the door (and covers part of your food/drink order). State and local races will also be included in the coverage shown at the Alamo.

The Violet Crown Cinema will also host an Election Night Watch party. The televisions in their lobby and lounge will be showing election results, as will one of their theater screens. The night's menu will include such goodies as Red, White, and Bleu Cheese Pizza (red peppers, bleu cheese and prosciutto), an All-American Hot Dog, and Wateroak Chevre Panna Cotta with local blueberries and raspberries, as well as their usual fare. Both the Alamo and VCC state that all political parties are welcome!

By John Elder

Do you have a film that is special to you? Not necessarily a favorite film, or even a film you would consider to be good. I'm talking about a film that you have a soft spot for. No matter the reason, this is a movie that is close to you, and you're close to it. You can identify with something about it. It hurts a tad to hear someone criticize it. It might be a guilty pleasure, but that's only half way there, because a guilty pleasure isn't necessarily special.

On Saturday September 8, I was fortunate enough to be at The Paramount for their "In Conversation" series. This installment featured Spike Lee and his 1999 film Summer of Sam. It was an event I'd had on my radar for a few months and had been eagerly awaiting. To see the director of Do The Right Thing in person giving a talk about one of his films, no matter how routine or rehearsed, had me in great anticipation.

Here's the Paramount Theatre's pitch: "Join us for an intimate interview with Spike Lee followed by a screening of Summer of Sam." I figured we'd get some very general questions with some very general answers to go with them. Preceding the prepared Q&A, we'd get some prepared remarks on Summer of Sam recited like a daily routine. Even if this was a routine gig for Spike Lee, I was still excited to be graced with Lee's presence.

Let me just say that I was pleasantly surprised. I now know why Summer of Sam is a very special film to Spike Lee (besides the fact that he made it). After hearing from Lee himself, that he wanted Sam to be "loud and full of colors," I now know what his guilty pleasure is, too. Summer of Sam is Lee's dramatization of the Son of Sam murders in Brooklyn during 1977. There is plenty of graphic violence, sex, and drugs to go around as we follow the lives of several eccentric characters in a closely-knit Brooklyn neighborhood. The film is loud and colorful, and its certainly not for the faint of heart, of which I saw a few leaving the theater a couple murders or expletives in.

Toronto never disappoints. I have just returned from my fifth year at the Toronto International Film Festival, which featured over 300 films. Since most of those films are from many countries besides the U.S., I always feel like I am in paradise. At least one of these movies will screen in Austin soon, and I hope more will make their way here by next year.

Most of the time I avoid English-language films, since many of them will eventually make their way to Austin theaters or on-demand services. However, I broke my rule the very first day by going to see On the Road, Walter Salles's adaptation of Jack Kerouac's classic novel about young men driving through late 1940s America.

I went into the theater with the wrong expectation initially. I wanted a film that grabbed me by the arm and rushed me through a multitude of scenes and events, as had Kerouac's glorious novel and movies like Scorsese's Goodfellas. After 15 minutes I settled down and let the film work its own kind of magic as a character study of the charismatic Dean Moriarty/Neal Cassady, gay Carlo Marx, and mama-ridden participant/observer Sal Paradise/Kerouac. I can hardly wait to see the film again -- it will feel like revisiting old friends in an America long gone. Please don't ask me about Kristen Stewart.

by Julian Singleton

The stars were finally right at the Austin Film Society screening room on August 29 for a special double-feature screening of The Call Of Cthulu and The Whisper In Darkness. The two films, based on select works of renowned "weird fiction" author H.P. Lovecraft, were brought to the fore under the AFS Avant Cinema banner by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which dedicates itself to modern appreciation of the late author's work.

Both films are rooted in the extensive mythos that Lovecraft and his successors cultivated through endless collections of short fiction published in pulp magazines and anthologies, beginning in the early 1920s. The premise of Lovecraft's universe was that the cosmos is secretly under the control of the Old Gods, a supreme race of beings that held humanity's fate within its clutches. Those who happened to stumble upon this revelation were faced with either madness, death or worse -- inescapable, crippling sanity.

Such protagonists populate the two movies screened at the retrospective. The Call Of Cthulu features a man who recounts his discovery of a cosmic conspiracy involving an ocean-dwelling God and the unfortunate cast of characters who were influenced by its power. The Whisper In Darkness, on the other hand, follows a professor of folklore goaded into debunking the tales of mysterious creatures populating the New England hillside ... only to discover that these tales are all too true.

By Lishann Johnson

The main reason I was excited to go to Alamo Drafthouse's recent screening of The Incredibles, aside for my love for the movie, was the chance to meet and participate in the Q&A with composer Michael Giacchino (jee-a-kee-no). It was a great experience to listen to Giacchino talk. The Q&A, moderated by Austin composer Brian Satterwhite, happened before the movie, which I really enjoyed. In my opinion, having to wait until the end of the film to talk to the guest is not necessary when the movie is as popular and memorable as The Incredibles.

This was Giacchino's first feature film, before he started composing for video games (the Call Of Duty and Medal of Honor series) and television (Alias and Lost). I would say he hit a home run on his first feature score.

Giacchino told the audience how he came to work on The Incredibles; his friend Teddy Newton introduced him to director Brad Bird. Like all stories in Hollywood, it had its ups and downs. The upside (besides getting the job) was when he was asked to take a couple of the scenes home to score them, the downside was having to wait a week to find out if he had gotten the job, and then being told by Bird that his music had the potential to ruin the movie if he got it wrong. Ultimately I think anyone who has seen The Incredibles would agree that the movie was only enhanced by his jazzy heroic themes.

By Lara Morgan

Outdoor summer film series Cinema East went out with an emphatic bang Sunday night at Yellow Jacket Stadium, with its finale screening of Girl Walk // All Day (Jette's SXSW review). Approximately 700 Austinites watched the musical; some with beers, some with (what would become futile) chairs, almost all destined to dance that evening, whether they knew it or not walking into the venue.

Set to Girl Talk's marvelous mash-up album All Day, with no dialogue, Girl Walk // All Day is a strange mix of narrative-yet-documentary, silent-yet-musical film. The movie follows a dancer (Anne Marsen) who feels the sudden urge to bust out of her ballet class and dance around New York City. She then reacts to passersby and the cityscape with ingenuousness and charm and the craziest amalgamation of dance styles imaginable.

I had seen Girl Walk // All Day before, and could not have been more content with it, but still I couldn't help but think: How did this album-long, epic music video of a movie come about? In a video that showed before the film, director Jacob Krupnick, told the story about how the concept came to fruition: Years ago, while working on a film project, he asked for amateur dancers to come and throw caution to the wind, dancing with their all to a song they love. Marsen showed up and totally knocked him off his feet with a nonstop performance to Daft Punk's "Human After All," incorporating capoeira, hip-hop and ballet.

From that moment he knew he wanted to "turn her loose in New York," waiting for the perfect soundtrack to make his "giant music video" -- when he heard Girl Talk's All Day he knew it was time. Krupnick then hired a small crew to sneak through New York City, filming in a way that had "minor impact on the city, but would also incorporate the passersby and the visitors and the businessmen and the daily flow and traffic of the city." He describes it as "somewhat planned, somewhat improvised," for though it interacts with real people and settings, the movie is a narrative with plot, characters, and masterful choreography.

The Texas-produced feature film Searching For Sonny is on tour around Texas this month as part of the Texas Independent Film Network's Fall 2012 program. It returns to Austin after having its world premiere at Austin Film Festival 2011. After winning 13 major awards on the festival circuit -- including the Best of Fest at the Hill Country Film Festival -- writer/director Andrew Disney (pictured above) will be at the screening when the roadshow lands in Austin next week.

You can buy tickets now to see the Fort Worth-shot movie at the Violet Crown Cinema on Tuesday, August 21 at 7:30 pm. I saw it at AFF and my review describes it as "kinky and subversive, dark and outrageous." Here's my synopsis from that review:

"Jason Dohring stars as Elliot Knight, an unsuccessful 28-year-old pizza delivery driver. Jason receives a surprise invitation to his 10-year class reunion from his estranged best friend, Sonny (Masi Oka). As soon as he arrives at the reunion, he meets up with twin brother Calvin (Nick Kocher) and classmate Gary (Brian McElhaney). Together, the three of them set out to find Sonny, following clues left on their postcard invitations, and uncover a larger scheme involving their former high-school principal."