The Screengrab : sxsw 2009

SXSW: The Final Roundup

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:30:00 GMT

The whirlwind of SXSW often takes on a life of its own, and that was certainly true this year for me and the rest of the Screengrab contingent. There are movies we fully intended to see and cover for you here, but fate decreed otherwise. (Winnebago Man proved particularly elusive for various reasons; my worst SXSW memory this year involves sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on 5th Street with no hope of finding a parking space before a screening began. In my anger, I cursed the Winnebago Man, but I now understand it wasn’t his fault.) There are also movies I saw and never found the time to review during the festival. And they are:

For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism . How does a film critic review a movie about film critics made by a film critic? It’s a tough question for me, which is probably why I kept putting off a review of Gerald Peary’s years-in-the-making documentary. With the help of interviewees ranging from the old guard (Andrew Sarris, Richard Schickel) to the increasingly endangered critics of today (Owen Gleiberman, Wesley Morris), Boston Phoenix mainstay Peary does an admirable (if a bit square and PBS-ready) job of tracing the history of film criticism and revealing the ways in which it mirrors the history of cinema itself. One thing I learned: most film critics were not meant to be seen in extreme close-up from the front row of the Alamo Ritz.

Modern Love is Automatic. Writer/director Zach Clark’s second feature has attitude to spare, but for the most part, it left me cold. It’s the story of two women who become roommates – nurse Lorraine (Melodie Sisk) and would-be model Adrian (Maggie Ross). The lovely but robotic Lorraine is so bored and jaded with everyone and everything that she launches a side business as a dominatrix, while deluded Adrian can only find work at a unique mattress store where the customers cuddle with the hired help. There’s no denying that Sisk makes the most of her leather bondage-wear, but her monotonous performance wore on me, as did the ‘80s MTV color scheme, jarring bursts of heavy metal on the soundtack, and a couple of dark developments that don’t really feel earned.

Monsters from the Id. Here we have another group of film buffs, although most of the ones featured in David Gargani’s documentary are actually professional scientists. They just happen to share a love of the sci-fi movies of the 1950s, which helped inspire them to pursue careers in their chosen field. The interview subjects, including Rocket Boys author and retired NASA engineer Homer Hickam and physics professor Dr. Leroy Dubeck, bemoan the loss of the scientist heroes of the golden age, worrying that the kids of today have no role models in the field, and therefore are not pursuing careers in science. Whether or not their fears are legitimate, the doc is worth seeing for the copious clips from ‘50s sci-fi classics both renowned and forgotten, which will have you racing home to your Netflix queue.

Related:
SXSW Review: Along Came Kinky
SXSW Review: The Slammin' Salmon

SXSW Review: "Along Came Kinky"

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:45:00 GMT

Musician, author, comic, animal rescuer and self-described cowboy philosopher Kinky Friedman added another line to his resume in 2006: politician. Actually, that's a label he'd be quick to reject, but Friedman did mount a grassroots independent campaign for the Texas governorship then and now occupied by empty Republican suit Rick Perry. David Hartstein's engrossing, entertaining documentary Along Came Kinky...Texas Jewboy for Governor follows the Kinkster and some of his opponents along the campaign trail, through the eyes of the staff and volunteers frustrated with the current state of the political system in the Lone Star State.

Friedman launches his campaign with the best of intentions: throw the bums out, specifically the haircut posing as the current governor. His platform is populist-humorist, light on policy details but heavy on barbed one-liners aimed at lobbyists, career politicians and apathetic non-voters. In his black cowboy hat, clutching his ever-present cigar, Friedman carries himself as a Jewish redneck Mark Twain, and his appeal isn't difficult to fathom. He's the kind of outsider who can get away with proclaiming himself the only candidate in favor of both school prayer and gay marriage.

As the race takes shape, two more opponents come into focus: another "independent" candidate, former Democratic Austin mayor turned Republican Comptroller turned politically expedient "one tough grandma" Carole Keeton Strayhorn, and the eventually Democratic nominee Chris Bell, a generally colorless wonk. With no party backing him, it's up to Kinky's army to compile the necessary signatures to get his name on the ballot. Along the way we meet Kinky believers ranging from campaign manager Dean Barkley to a Bexar County volunteer who is transformed into a man on a mission through the process of collecting signatures. One thing they all have in common is a relentless optimism about their candidate and their chances, even given the fact that Friedman is consistently polling in the teens. If they bring out the non-voters, they reason, those numbers will be meaningless. But as one talking head points out, the thing all non-voters have in common is that they don't vote.

Hartstein captures some hilarious and revealing fly-on-the-wall moments, such as a pre-debate encounter between Friedman and rival Bell that rides a thin line between "I'm kidding" and "I'm not really kidding." He's also there when the campaign takes an ugly downturn, first when Friedman makes some unfortunate remarks referring to Katrina refugees being "crackheads and thugs," which the press is quick to turn into a "Kinky is a racist" meme, and later when the Kinkster admittedly brings his C game to the only televised debate between all four candidates.

Along Came Kinky may be the funniest documentary about the political process in years, even as it raises the big questions about the flaws in our system of government. For old-timey Kinky fans, it even offers a few old Austin City Limits clips of the Texas Jewboys performing "Asshole from El Paso" and "They Ain't Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore." And it looks like Hartstein may have some material for a sequel: in a post-screening Q & A after the film's premiere at the Paramount theater in Austin, Friedman all but announced plans for another run in 2010 - this time as a Democrat.

Related:
SXSW Review: The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle
SXSW Review: Best Worst Movie

Screengrab's Favorite Movies About Music: Fiction Edition (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Last week, as part of our ongoing coverage of the South-By-Southwest Film, Music & Interactive Festival, we decided to get our collective groove on with a list of our favorite movies about real-live musicians.

But who says musicians have to be real to be memorable? Sure, Mitch & Mickey may be fictional characters portrayed by Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara in Christopher Guest’s faux-folkumentary, A Mighty Wind...yet despite the fact the duo never really existed, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house when my lovely Polish bride and I danced at our wedding reception to that non-existent classic hit of sweet, sweet romance, “A Kiss At The End Of The Rainbow." And, sure, the real Sid Vicious was nice and all...but I have equally fond memories of Gary Oldman’s fictional version in Alex Cox’s Sid & Nancy.

To blur the lines of fiction and reality even further, this week’s list also includes movies about make-believe people affected by real musicians and real musicians transforming themselves into make-believe people as your pals at the Screengrab salute OUR FAVORITE MOVIES ABOUT MUSIC: FICTION EDITION!

THIS IS SPINAL TAP (1984)

Yes, we all know it's hilarious. But This Is Spinal Tap is a classic for more reasons than simple hilarity. This was one of the first major films to be classified a "mockumentary", and in order for the style to work at all, director Rob Reiner and stars Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer had to get all the details down cold. This meant concocting an elaborate backstory involving multiple group names, format changes, and a parade of dozens of drummers who met their respective ends under bizarre circumstances. But beyond the more obvious references, Spinal Tap had to walk, talk, and play like a real aging rock band, from the principles writing and performing their own songs before actual crowds to the shorthand that the band members have with each other, as when Nigel (Guest) calls out "GSM" during rehearsal to signal that he wants to practice the song "Gimme Some Money." The gambit worked -- numerous moviegoers at the time were convinced that Spinal Tap was a real touring act, and the movie quickly became a favorite of legitimate rock acts, who identified with such scenes as the group getting lost on their way to the stage. Soon enough, life imitated farce, and Guest, McKean, and Shearer began touring as Spinal Tap, even releasing a second album in 1992 entitled Break Like the Wind. Even today, Spinal Tap endures, both in its cinematic form and its real-life incarnation, with a tour coming later this spring.

24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE (2002)

Steve Coogan has a motor-mouthed smart-guy comedian's dream role as Tony Wilson, TV reporter, pop theorist, and the man behind Factory Records, which brought the sound of Manchester to a postpunk world. Directed by Michael Winterbottom, the movie, which also provides plum roles for Shirley Henderson (as Wilson's first wife), Paddy Considine (as his sidekick Rob Gretton), Andy Serkis (as the deranged genius producer Martin Hannett), and Sean Hayes (as Ian Curtis), covers the first public performance by the Sex Pistols, the rise and end of Joy Division, the band's resurrection as New Order, the slaphappy career of the Happy Mondays and the coming of rave culture, and Factory's death throes, with Coogan's Wilson walking through it explaining himself and the culture he's part of, always talking a mile a minute. Coming from the cerebral Winterbottom, the movie itself could be called a sustained work of rock criticism, except that rock crit hasn't been this funny since Lester Bangs swigged his last bottle of Romilar.

HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (2001)

John Cameron Mitchell energetically transposed his hit off-Broadway show to celluloid with 2001’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the story of a transsexual punk rock goddess named Hedwig (Mitchell) who narrates her life story while travelling across the country playing second-rate venues, her shot at stardom stymied by a former lover and disciple (Michael Pitt) who became a music sensation by stealing her songs. Hedwig’s is a lunatic odyssey which begins in East Berlin where, as a young boy, she undergoes a sex change operation in order to marry her U.S. army lover and escape the Iron Curtain, and which is partially conveyed via a bevy of musical numbers and animated sequences that are striking in both their ingenuity and power. Bolstered by rollicking, blistering tunes that are as well suited for arenas as they are for the stage and screen, Mitchell’s film is rowdy, bombastic, idiosyncratic and heartfelt, a combination to which only a select few movie musicals can legitimately lay claim.

THE DOORS (1991)

A close friend once derided The Doors’ music as “bad poetry with keyboards,” and while I’m generally inclined to concur with his assessment, there’s nonetheless something transfixing about Oliver Stone’s 1991 biopic, which has the type of on-the-edge, trippy-druggy dynamism that typified the director’s creatively fertile early-‘90s period. Stone’s anything-goes aesthetic showmanship is an ideal approach for a portrait of the L.A. band and, in particular, lead singer Jim Morrison, whose larger-than-life persona – drunken fool, callous bastard, earnest poet, sex god – naturally appealed to a filmmaker fascinated with mythologizing socio-political icons. The Doors oozes reverence without alienating those who might think the film’s subjects and their classic-rock canon fall somewhat short of greatness, due in part to uniformly superb performances led by Val Kilmer’s pitch-perfect embodiment of the lizard king, but mostly thanks to Stone’s lack of inhibition, his madman stylistic excesses (and yes, I’m including the Indian in the desert), supremely well-attuned to the careening rollercoaster energy of The Doors.

VELVET GOLDMINE (1998) and I'M NOT THERE (2007)

With these two films, Todd Haynes has produced the finest examples of fictional rock movies that I can imagine. Both have taken the lives of real rock musicians -- Bowie & Iggy in the former, Dylan in the latter -- and played up the mythic qualities to create a transcendent hyper-reality. No, Bowie and Iggy and Dylan didn't really live like this. But speaking from the point of view of poetry and mythology and literature, these are more true than mere reality can manage. That's what myths and stories are about: heightening everyday reality into a more universal truth. Most people's lives aren't up to the examples set by Ulysses or Hercules or even Ishmael or Natty Bumppo. But I think few would deny that there's a universal recognition of the truth in the lives of these wandering heroes. Celebrities sometimes play the role of real-life analog to idealized heroes. That's why so many urban myths leap up about the lives of celebrities; people need to believe in the extraordinariness of others. Rock musicians in particular often play the debauched Dionysian role of the glorious artistic mess, the pleasure-seeker who indulges in sex and drugs to feed his or her creative output. With these movies, Haynes pushes past the mere facts to feed the stories, and the results are fascinating, part narrative and part critique. In Velvet Goldmine, Christian Bale plays a journalist in an Orwellian Britain of the late '80s. A series of events causes him to investigate -- and recall -- the heyday of glam rock and its figurehead Brian Slade, who is basically the Platonic ideal of David Bowie (with elements of Brian Eno thrown in for good measure) as played by Jonathan Rhys Meyer. Slade's closest associate is Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), who is mostly Iggy with a little Lou Reed thrown in. The two are lovers, and Slade gleefully expresses his fluid sense of sexuality. So there's three layers right there: Orwellian future, permissive past, rockers as trangressors. But there's more. Haynes dares to suggest that the bisexual/creative impulse was a gift from aliens (or angels) to Oscar Wilde in the Victorian era, and has passed down through the ages to the instigators of glam. That's, well, audacious as all hell. Haynes specifically compares Slade to both Wilde and his horrendous creation Dorian Gray. So, that's at least two more layers, maybe more. So, yes: gay theory, rock theory, lit theory, treatises on repression and freedom combined with the cults of youth and beauty. There's a lot going on in this movie. And it rocks like hell.

In I'm Not There, Haynes similarly adopts all of the myths about Bob Dylan into a narrative that's both fractured and more meaningful than a straightforward film could convey. There are six Dylans in this film, which is fewer Dylans than real life has given us. But these six Dylans represent the greatest periods of his life. Marcus Carl Franklin, an 11-year-old African-American boy, represents the youngest Dylan myth, the farmboy who rides the rails calling himself Woody Guthrie, learning America's traditional folk and blues music along the way. Ben Whishaw plays the interior Dylan, the playful interviewee who calls himself Arthur Rimbaud and comments cryptically on the rest of Dylan's life. Christian Bale plays the young and sincere New York folksinger Dylan, the socially active songwriter who calls himself Jack Rollins and travels to the South to sing to Civil Rights workers in a field. Rollins will later morph into Pastor John, the born-again Christian Dylan of the late '70s and early '80s. Heath Ledger plays the actor Dylan, the one who is horrible to his beautiful wife and torn in two by their divorce. His name is Robbie Clark and his wife, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, is Claire, and their story evokes the mid-'70s Dylan of Renaldo and Clara and Blood On The Tracks. Cate Blanchett plays Jude Quinn, the rock star Dylan of the mid-'60s and Don't Look Back. Quinn is explicitly shown as dead from a motorcycle accident at the beginning of the movie, which references Dylan's 1966 motorcycle accident which effectively killed off his Don't Look Back-era persona. Richard Gere plays Billy the Kid, who is the Dylan of The Basement Tapes, John Wesley Harding, and Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid. Gere's Billy lives in Riddle County, where the carnivalesque/Old West/Old Testament world of the Basement Tapes springs to life. So, that's the shallowest overview I could provide, and it more or less ate up all my space. Layers and layers in these films. Watch 'em again. And again.

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Phil Nugent, Nick Schager, Hayden Childs

A Pair of SXSW Shorts: "Thompson" and "A. Effect"

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:30:00 GMT

We love the short subjects here at the Screengrab, especially once we've hit the wall about four or five days into SXSW. While it may take four hours or more to get through a double feature at the Paramount, we can burn through a couple of shorts in less than half an hour, which really frees up the drinking time. And we're especially grateful if they're conceived and executed as well as Thompson and A. Effect.

Mike Ott and Jason Tippet are both graduates of the California Institute for the Arts (Ott was actually Tippet's first film teacher), and both had their latest shorts accepted to this year's SXSW. Tippet's Thompson - his CalArts thesis film and the winner of the SXSW Jury Award for Best Reel Short (that is, any short film that doesn't fall into the Animated or Experimental categories) - is a micro-documentary about Newhall, California high school senior Matt Thompson and his buddy Ryan Adres. Some would describe them as troubled kids; Matt has been arrested twice, and Ryan was once expelled for calling in a bomb threat. (It was all a big misunderstanding, of course.) That's not how they come across in Tippet's short but sweet portrait of their friendship in the twilight of their teenage years, trying to deal with small town life after outgrowing the go-carts and other amusements of their youth. In the brief time we spend with them, both Thompson and Adres make indelible impressions.

A. Effect isn't a documentary, but it uses semi-improvised naturalism to sketch a couple of characters who could be Thompson and Adres a few years down the road. In my review of another SXSW movie the other day, I made a disparaging comment about a character reciting the Taxi Driver "You talkin' to me?" bit for the bazillionth time, but lo and behold, Ott manages to do something fresh with it here, as a community college student uses Travis Bickle's mirror rant as a monologue in his acting class. It doesn't go well, as his classmates are only too happy to inform him, but it's a masterpiece compared to his buddy's attempt to meld Jerry Maguire and Meat Loaf into his own monologue mash-up. Both guys are trying to impress the same girl with their valiant efforts at saying something intelligible about Scorsese or Brecht, and the result is a very funny spin on the artist's eternal struggle for acceptance.

(Both shorts screen tonight as part of the Reel Shorts 3 program at 7:30 pm, Alamo South)

SXSW Review: "Pontypool"

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:15:00 GMT

Canadian director Bruce McDonald (Hard Core Logo) has been insisting in interviews that his new film Pontypool is not really a zombie movie, and as someone who has burnt out on zombie movies of late, I have to agree with him. It's a difficult film to categorize at all - sort of like Orson Welles' War of the Worlds in reverse, or a George Romero adaptation of Talk Radio, although neither of those descriptions quite gets at how peculiar Pontypool really is.

Set almost entirely inside a radio station and unfolding in something close to real time, McDonald's film concerns the efforts of morning DJ Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie, most recently the original Nite Owl in Watchmen) and his producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) to understand and properly react to a mounting crisis in the small town of Pontypool, Ontario - a crisis that begins as a riot and escalates into an epidemic.

Isolated from the outside world, privy only to information from callers, a traffic reporter on the scene and a BBC newsman who has somehow gotten wind of the situation, Mazzy and Sydney attempt to piece together what exactly is happening. They figure out that the townspeople are indeed being transformed into..well, creatures that behave a lot like zombies. The means of the infection is one of the oddball, ingenious twists that shouldn't be revealed here, but suffice it to say that this is the only zombie movie I can think of that climaxes with a very important game of word association.

Adapted from the novel Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess (who also wrote the screenplay), McDonald's film marries the claustrophobic tension of Night of the Living Dead with a more cerebral approach. Gore is used sparingly, albeit to startling effect, and the grand finale is more of a semiotics discussion than the sort of bloodbath that gorehounds might be hoping for. It's not simply an intellectual exercise, however, and McHattie in particular keeps the movie grounded with his lived-in, world-weary performance as the increasingly frazzled DJ Mazzy. Pontypool isn't for everyone, but it just might be the zombie movie for everyone who thinks they're sick of zombie movies.

Related:
SXSW Review: American Prince
SXSW Review: Beeswax

SXSW Review: "Best Worst Movie"

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:30:00 GMT

Sometime last summer I was at the Alamo Drafthouse enjoying the pre-show and a cold frosty when the strangest promo for an upcoming Rolling Roadshow I'd ever seen appeared on the screen. Usually a Rolling Roadshow consists of a well-known movie screening at an iconic location that figures prominently in the film - The Searchers at Monument Valley, Close Encounters at Devil's Tower, that sort of thing. This particular Rolling Roadshow preview promised a screening of Troll 2 in Nilbog, Utah. At the time, this didn't sound like an event that could possibly appeal to...well, anyone, really, but a friend sitting next to me insisted that no, actually, Troll 2 had developed quite a cult following.

The extent of that following becomes clear in Best Worst Movie, a new documentary by the star of Troll 2, Michael Paul Stephenson. In 1989, at the age of 11, Stephenson played Joshua Waits, a boy forced to do battle with vegetarian goblins bent on turning his family into edible plant people. (For further plot details - and believe me, the preceding description doesn't begin to scratch the surface of this demented tale - check out the latest installment of the Unwatchable series, which just so happens to be Troll 2.) The movie was never released in theaters, and when Stephenson finally got a look at Troll 2 on VHS, he was mortified. It was quite possibly the worst movie ever made.

Stephenson was not alone in his disappointment. His co-star George Hardy, an Alabama dentist who played his father in the movie, had hoped Troll 2 would launch him to stardom. It was not to be - at least, not in the way that he imagined. But a funny thing happened on the way to obscurity, as Stephenson learned a few years ago when he was invited to a Troll 2 screening in New York. The film had accumulated a devoted fan base over the years, not because it was any sort of effective sequel to the immortal Sonny Bono vehicle Troll (in fact, it has nothing to do with the original), but because it was simply insane.

Stephenson and Hardy overcame their initial distaste for Troll 2 and learned to embrace it as the beloved cult object it became, but the same can't quite be said for the movie's director, Claudio Fragasso. Fluent in a sort of Italian-English-gibberish, Fragasso believes he has made an important eco-horror film, and while he is delighted to be invited to a screening - believing that, at long last, America has come to appreciate the nuances of his vision - he is shocked and disgusted to discover that his new fans regard his masterpiece as the worst movie ever made. (Not that this dissuades him from announcing plans to proceed with a sequel, to be called, naturally, Troll 2 Part 2.)

Best Worst Movie is a hilarious, affectionate tribute to the movie, the cult, and the cast, most notably Hardy, the world's most affable dentist. A beloved figure almost everywhere he goes (as he learns the hard way, the Troll 2 cult hasn't quite taken over the UK yet), the square-jawed, perpetually upbeat Hardy couldn't be more thrilled with all the newfound attention, and seemingly never tires of repeating his most famous line, "You can't piss on hospitality," even to people who have no idea what he's talking about.

Stephenson's documentary is unexpectedly moving at times, as when he and Hardy pay a visit to their long-lost co-star Margo Prey, now a frail, haunted recluse, or to a depressing Dallas horror convention littered with the dregs of B-movies past. Stephenson offers no definitive explanation for the fragile alchemy that transforms a forgotten no-budget horror sequel into a beloved cult object, mainly because there isn't one. In its own twisted way, Best Worst Movie is a joyous celebration of the continuing mystery and magic of movies.

SXSW 2009 Awards Announced

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

The jury and audience awards for the 2009 SXSW Film Festival were announced last night at the Austin Convention Center. Made in China won the Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature as well as the special Chicken & Egg Emergent Women Award. The Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature went to That Evening Sun, which also picked up a Special Jury Award for Best Ensemble Cast (including Hal Holbrook, Mia Wasikowska, Ray McKinnon, Walton Goggins and Carrie Preston).

The rest of the winners:

Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature: 45365 (Honorable Mention: The Way We Get By)
Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature: MINE
Audience Award for Emerging Visions: Motherland
SXSW & AIGA Austin Movie Poster Award: The Dungeon Master
SXSW Wholpin Short Film Award: Sister Wife
Reel Shorts Jury Award: Thompson
Animated Shorts Jury Award: Shaman
Experimental Shorts Jury Award: Cattle Call
Music Video Jury Award: "Jerk It," Thunderheist
Texas High School Competition: Performance Evaluation

SXSW Review: The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle

Andrew Osborne — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:00:00 GMT

A few weeks back, your pals at the Screengrab did a list of Comebacks We’d Like To See, and one of the ladies on my wish list was Natasha Lyonne, who shone as a wised-up, enjoyably weird young character actress in movies like Slums of Beverly Hills, American Pie and, well, Freeway 2: Confessions of a Trick Baby before (alleged) drug problems knocked her life and career off track.

So I was happy to see Lyonne in fine form as a market testing guru pushing ominous “self-warming” cookies (with some pretty unnerving side effects) in David Russo’s peculiar conspiracy thriller/monster movie/existential freak-out The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle. Lyonne’s character, Tracy, is the sexy corporate fixation of the film’s appealing central protagonist, Dory (Marshall Allman), a spiritually confused naïf who flushes away his own corporate career with an ill-timed freak-out and winds up joining the invisible Morlocks responsible for cleaning the offices and toilets of the Eloi elite.

Dory’s fellow janitors are a party-hearty band of misfits, including motor-mouth wise-ass O.C. (Vince Vieluf, channeling Thomas Haden Church), sex-crazed rockers Ethyl and Methyl (Tania Raymonde and Tygh Runyan) and their laid-back transvestite boss, Weird William (Richard Lefebvre), and the movie is most enjoyable in the early scenes depicting the likable group’s nightly rituals of work and play.

Things get progressively more strange (and, frankly, less interesting) when the janitors become addicted to Lyonne’s cookies, which eventually cause strange blue creatures to burst from the sphincters of the men in the crew. Yes, that’s right: the film is about wriggling ass fish, not to mention male womb envy, corporate irresponsibility and, I suppose, the meaning of life (although, as I say, the whole thing gets a bit chaotic towards the end).

So is it worth seeing? Well, I suppose: it’s certainly never dull, and for a movie so (necessarily) obsessed with toilet humor, the visuals are frequently beautiful. Unlike the annoying SXSW dud My Suicide, which piled meaningless digital effects on top of jump cuts on top of animation in a desperate attempt to seem innovative, Dizzle’s director stages his visual tricks with an artist’s eye...and the opening credits sequence alone -- involving a message in a bottle and an unexpected payoff -- is (almost) worth the price of admission.

Related Stories:
SXSW Review: Humpday
SXSW Review: Best Worst Movie

SXSW Review: Beeswax

Andrew Osborne — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:10:00 GMT

(Click here for a review of Humpday, part one of my SXSW mumblecore double-feature coverage!)

Mumblecore, as defined by Wikipedia, is “an American independent film movement that arose in the early 2000s. It is primarily characterized by ultra-low budget production (often employing digital cameras), focus on personal relationships between twenty-somethings, improvised scripts, and non-professional actors.” The mumbly side of the equation stems from the genre’s fealty to vérité naturalism over manipulative plotting and the stammered rambling of speech as it’s spoken rather than the too-perfect rhythms of tightly-crafted screenplay dialogue.

To be fair, mumblecore’s loose, meandering style is something of an acquired taste...though at its best and most accessible, it can yield the sort of fresh, relatable characters and scenes that breathe fresh life into clichéd cinematic scenarios. The self-aware riffing of the Judd Apatow brand has reinvented Hollywood-style romantic and stoner comedies in recent years with a more polished, pop culture-heavy, testosterone-infused version of the mumblecore "bromance" makeover of Lynn Shelton’s Humpday or the gentler rhythms of Andrew Bujalski’s mumblecore “legal thriller” Beeswax.

Boston native Bujalski was one of the founding fathers of mumblecore with Funny Ha Ha, his 2002 tale of insecure, often inarticulate twentysomethings searching for love and job satisfaction in the post-collegiate ghetto of Allston, Massachusetts.

Beeswax, meanwhile, is about slightly older characters searching for...well, job satisfaction and love. This time around, though, Bujalski (who remains stubbornly committed to celluloid while most of the indie-verse has switched to digital video) has a slightly higher budget, a slightly tighter pace and an even more charismatic cast of talented “non-actors,” including fellow low-budget directors the Zellner Brothers (Plastic Utopia, Goliath) and Alex Karpovsky (whose documentary Trust Us, This Is All Made Up is likewise showing at the 2009 SXSW festival...which, not-very-coincidentally, one expects, is being produced this year by fellow castmate Janet Pierson, who together with husband John, has long been a member of the Indiewood Illuminati that helped thrust the film’s Austin, TX locale into the cinematic spotlight back in the early ‘90s).

But the heart and soul of Beeswax are the film’s charismatic co-stars Tilly and Maggie Hatcher, real-life twins who play fictional twins Jeannie and Lauren. Bujalski wrote the film with his two old friends in mind, and the plot (such as it is) revolves around a job offer that would take Jeannie to Africa while Lauren struggles with a potentially litigious business partner to maintain control of a funky vintage boutique.

Oh, and by the way: Lauren (and the actress playing her) are wheelchair-bound, though audiences expecting Lifetime Movie melodrama over the plight of the “otherly-abled” young woman (or, for that matter, suspenseful John Grisham-style legal showdowns) will be sorely disappointed.

Lauren’s condition is simply a given in the film, as is the same-sex relationship between the twins’ mother and Pierson’s character -- a quietly revolutionary approach to material that’s typically whitewashed or overdramatized in most mainstream media -- while the legal side of the story is treated as a real world pain in the ass the characters must contend with (rather than a twisty puzzle box that renders the characters irrelevant).

While a film like My Suicide uses visual overkill to hide the one-dimensional nature of its characters and themes, filmmakers like Bujalski and Shelton focus on the rich, simple pleasures of the real world.

Related Stories:

SXSW Review: Humpday
SXSW Review: Me and Orson Welles

SXSW Review: Humpday

Andrew Osborne — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:00:00 GMT

So far at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival, I’ve seen at least one movie with a good shot at landing on my year-end Top Ten List and one that may already be my personal lock for Worst Film of The Year.

Let’s start with the one I didn’t like: My Suicide, an achingly self-important act of digital onanism by David Lee Miller about a rich teenager who really FEELS, man...a pampered “rebel” who can’t deal with the fuckin’ family that bought him thousands of dollars of filmmaking equipment so he can make over-edited, under-conceived videos of himself doing bad Frank Caliendo/Fred Travalena-style impressions of Christopher Walken and Robert DeNiro saying lines from much better movies, like the not-at-all-played-out quote, “You talkin’ to me?” (Take THAT, Mom and Dad!)

My esteemed colleague Scott Von Doviak has already reviewed Miller’s Aronofsky-Lite homage at length, but I mention it as an example of the flashy, faux-edgy crap that’s just as mindless and cynically conceived as any high-concept Hollywood swill, yet frequently gets overpraised simply because the director has enough money for a trade show demo reel’s worth of digital effects and new “hot” indie bands on the soundtrack every few minutes to cram some "anarchy" or "ennui" down our throats (no matter how we actually feel about what’s happening on screen).

I work at a creative arts camp in the summer, making original mini-DV movies with young people, and I tend to cram my no-budget epics with songs, rapid-fire A.D.D. edits and gobs of iMovie special effects to distract the audience when scenes aren't working on their own.

On the other hand, when the writing and performances are strong, then I don’t need all the flash (or Flash animation): I just get the hell out of the way and let the actors do their thing...a strategy writer/director Lynn Shelton employs to great effect with Humpday, described in the SXSW catalogue as a comedy about Ben and Anna (Mark Duplass and Alycia Delmore), a smart yuppie couple whose seemingly perfect relationship is thrown into disarray by the arrival of Ben’s old bohemian pal, Andrew (a hilarious Joshua Leonard, finally reemerging from the oblivion of the Blair Witch woods).

That’s all I knew about the movie going in, and though the above summary makes Humpday sound like You, Me and Dupree, it actually develops into something far less predictable and a hundred times funnier. But even if you discover Humpday’s central plot twist in advance, the movie is still a goddamn delight: the only thing funnier than the dialogue is what’s left unsaid in double-takes and reaction shots. These are characters who actually think before they speak, refusing to flatten into predictable stereotypes, and the actors work together with the chemistry of a virtuoso jazz combo...especially Leonard and Duplass, a writer/director in his own right who’s developed into the mumblecore movement’s answer to Paul Rudd (or possibly Ron Livingston).

(And click here for a SXSW mumblecore double-feature review of Beeswax!)

SXSW Review: "Me and Orson Welles"

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:30:00 GMT

The SXSW Super Special Screening this morning turned out to be Me and Orson Welles, the latest film from Richard Linklater, a director so long associated with Austin and SXSW that the screening shouldn't have been much of a surprise at all. (And apparently it wasn't a surprise to many in the audience, so I assume Twitter was all a-tweet with the news.) Suprise or not, it was definitely a treat.

Zac Efron - yes, the High School Musical kid - stars as Richard Samuels, a high school student circa 1937 with dreams far beyond his class musical. He knows he's an artist at heart, he's just not sure whether he's an actor, writer, musician or what. He does have a crucial knack for bullshitting that will serve him well, as we learn when he happens upon members of the Mercury Theater announcing their latest production to a throng of New York pedestrians. Richard manages to charm Mercury honcho Orson Welles with his bravado, insisting he can play the ukelele and sing like an angel. While he's not quite clear how these skills will come in handy for the modern-dress production of Julius Caesar Welles is masterminding, he does get the tiny part of Lucius in the show.

What follows is a lightly comedic mix of coming-of-age story and classic backstage intrigue. Richard gets quite an education in how theater really works, not only from Mercury mainstays Joseph Cotton, Norman Lloyd and John Houseman, but from Welles' assistant Sonja (Claire Danes), who briefly indulges Richard's romantic interest before revealing the full measure of her ambition. Efron is perfectly bland as the callow youngster, which is appropriate for the role; it doesn't matter much that he's not terribly exciting to watch, as his primary co-star picks up more than his share of the slack.

Me and Orson Welles may technically be more about the former than the latter, but there's no question that the movie belongs to relative newcomer Christian McKay as Welles. I'm not one to start trying to generate Oscar buzz in March, but I'm dead certain you'll be hearing his name in connection with the O-word when the film opens later this year. It's a dead-on impression, but much more than that; McKay nails Welles on pretty much every level you can imagine - his charm, theatricality, humor and megalomania all weave in and out of one another in a seamless portrait of the artist as a young man.

Linklater's last attempt at a period piece was his disappointing take on The Newton Boys, but he's on much firmer ground this time around. There's a hint of Woody Allen in his nostalgic Radio Days mode here (even the elegant white-on-black opening credits seem like a wink toward Allen), although Linklater's own experience in the film business surely informs the behind-the-scenes tensions and backstage farce, as well as the camaraderie that develops as showtime approaches. Me and Orson Welles probably isn't destined to be considered a major Linklater work, but it's one of the most purely enjoyable films of the festival so far.

SXSW Review: "My Suicide"

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Imagine all the worst case scenarios you might associate with the term "indie film," and you'll find most of them on display in David Lee Miller's intolerable feature My Suicide. Overbearing, in-your-face mixed media visuals? Check. Facile approach to "edgy" subject matter? Check. Record label-approved hipster band soundtrack slathered over every scene? Check. Photogenic young cast sure to meet the approval of The Hills demographic? Check. Any sort of heart or insight or recognizable human behavior? Nowhere to be found.

Archie Williams (Gabriel Sunday) is a 17-year-old high school student living in a media-saturated world of his own making. A video camera seemingly permanently affixed to his hand, an array of movie references his most reliable form of communication, Archie is pretty much insufferable from the very beginning of My Suicide. So when we learn he's planning to kill himself on camera for a media class project, it's not the most upsetting news.

Understandably, Archie's teacher is not on board with his concept, although his classmates are intrigued, particularly beautiful Sierra (Brooke Nevin), the poor little rich girl Archie has always had a crush on. Sierra lost her brother in a car accident, and her parents are unfeeling, overmedicated plastic people who give her everything she wants. Naturally, she's suicidal as well. Oh, the pain of the privileged!

Archie and Sierra turn out to be kindred spirits, at least temporarily, and they set about checking items off their bucket list together, which works out great for Archie as Sierra takes his virginity. Just as we begin to suspect they'll decide there might be something to this "life" thing after all, a tragedy hits that sets them both back into a tailspin. Only the gaseous wisdom of special guest star David Carradine can set Archie back on the path to righteousness.

Director Miller gives this Afterschool Special material the full Requiem for a Dream/Natural Born Killers migraine treatment, emptying his box of ProTools to engineer a rapid-fire mix of film, video, animation and computer graphics that some will undoubtedly call "dazzling." All of this only serves to conceal how hollow the story is at the core and how little we care about the characters. Sunday is a skilled mimic, as we learn when Archie does trite re-enactments from The Deer Hunter, The Matrix, Apocalypse Now and Taxi Driver (yes, he actually does the "You talkin' to me" scene, which we all needed to see recreated for the twelve millionth time),but Archie's big emotional moments never ring true. Nothing does in My Suicide, including the tossed-off suggestion that helping others is the cure-all for depression. It would be depressing to think this is what passes for visionary indie filmmaking these days, but fortunately SXSW provides enough counter-examples to ensure that's not the case.

Related:
SXSW Review: American Prince
SXSW Review: New World Order

SXSW Review: “New World Order”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Welcome to the New World Order, where 9/11 was an inside job and secretive elitist organizations called the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission and/or the Council on Foreign Relations are plotting our enslavement. Our only hope is a ragtag band of conspiracy theorists, anarchists and anti-globalists, led by the mad prophet of the Info Wars, Alex Jones.

Jones launched his empire more than a dozen years ago on Austin's public access television, a haven for kooks like the guy who calmly lectured about out-of-control feminism while wearing a toilet seat around his neck. At first Jones seemed right at home, but it soon became clear that cable access couldn't hold him; his charisma was too fierce, too weird, and worse yet, every once in a while he made sense. But between brain and mouth there was no interlocutor, so although he was capable of the occasional trenchant observation about the trampling of Constitutional rights or the erosion of personal freedoms, it wasn't worth trying to sift through his elaborate stream-of-consciousness black helicopter fantasias to find them.

That is, unless you buy into the whole global conspiracy, like the subjects of this compelling new documentary from Luke Myer and Andrew Neel (Darkon). Although Jones is the central figure here, we also meet a number of his counterparts and protégés, including 9/11 "Truthers" Luke Rudowski and Seth Jackson, retired police officer and militia-based separatist Jack McLamb, and Turkish-Irish filmmaker Timucin Leflef. They have little in common besides their fiercely held belief in the New World Order.

Myer and Neel aren't concerned about the reality of these beliefs, and they don't present any counter-arguments or talking head rebuttals. They don't have to. In a way, New World Order is an extension of their previous film Darkon, which was about live-action role-playing gamers. That movie's tagline was "Everybody wants to be a hero," which could just as easily apply to this one. You don't need a Ph.D. to figure out the psychology at work here; we'd all like to think our lives our important, and if you can convince yourself that you're one of the few in the know about what's really going on in the world, one of the few fighting the good fight against forces bent on destroying you...well, then you have a lot in common with Jones, Rudowski, Jackson and the rest.

Paranoid delusions are contagious in New World Order, and Alex Jones is patient zero. Bloated almost beyond recognition from his early cable access days, his face a puffy fright-mask of popeyed outrage, Jones leads his minions to the hotel where the annual Bilderberg Conference is taking place. He sees his enemies behind every tree and around every corner - he's continually evading cars he imagines are pursuing him and at one point announces that a nearby bare-shirted bicyclist is clearly Secret Service. When a fire alarm goes off in the hotel just as he's set to call into a talk radio show, it's simply more confirmation that They're Out to Get Him. That he's living the movie in his mind is evident from the references to The Matrix, Star Wars and even Ghostbusters that pepper his rants.

It's no wonder that youngsters like Rudowski and Jackson fall so easily under his spell; they admit that before 9/11, they gave little to no thought about the larger global picture, so why wouldn't they be susceptible to a Hollywood-ready narrative that explains it all? At least Leflef actually channels his paranoia into creative work by making his own dystopian sci-fi films. The others are activists of the worst kind, the perfect storm of self-righteous certitude and blowhard ignorance. A healthy skepticism of government, institutions and the wealthy elite is a good thing, but without ever overtly passing judgment, Myer and Neel show how easily it can curdle into narcissistic rage.

Related:
SXSW Review: Roadsworth: Crossing the Line

SXSW Review: “Roadsworth: Crossing the Line”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Peter Gibson is a Montreal street artist who goes by the nom de spraypaint Roadsworth (a wry spin on the last name of Andrew Goldsworthy, one of Gibson’s chief influences). Under cover of darkness, Roadsworth takes to the streets armed only with the homemade stencils and spraycans he uses to convert utilitarian paint jobs into pop art images. Thus an ordinary crosswalk becomes a row of birthday candles and a lane divider is transformed into a giant zipper. Some are amused by his work, others not so much.

Maybe this is my personal bias speaking, but I see the two camps breaking down roughly along these lines: 1) those who find his additions to the drab, workaday urban environment to be a cheeky, refreshing change of pace; and 2) uptight, humorless jackasses. This documentary by Alan Kohl presents a somewhat more nuanced view of the situation, even as it tackles that great question “What is art?” from a number of fascinating angles. Some of the uptight, humorless jackasses may actually have a valid point, in that Roadsworth’s embellishments could make it difficult for some people to interpret the original intent of the road markings. Also, since graffiti is a rampant problem in Montreal, who gets to decide that what Roadsworth does is art and what the taggers do is vandalism? Isn’t it all in the eye of the beholder?

When Roadsworth is caught in the act and arrested, the situation gets even more complicated. He is charged with 53 counts of mischief and faces potential fines totaling in the thousands, but then something astounding happens: the city of Montreal commissions him to do exactly what he’s been doing all along: defacing public property. Only now that he has permission, it’s called “public art.”

Not only does this development aid Roadsworth’s legal case – after all, as his lawyer points out, how can it be a crime if the city can pay you to do it? – it starts to change how he feels about his own art. In the second half of the film, Roadsworth travels through Europe, painting the streets and parking lots of France, England and Amsterdam, usually with permission. We wonder along with him whether the meaning of his work changes when it’s authorized – if it loses something when its outlaw, guerilla aspects are stripped away. Maybe it never meant much in the first place – Roadsworth himself muses that his stuff is closer to cartoons than high art – but what more appropriate way to kick off your SXSW than with a movie that contemplates art and its place in our society?

SXSW Explosion!

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:30:00 GMT

What, more preview? Well, the Film Issue of the Austin Chronicle is now out, and it’s chock full of goodies, whether you’re planning to be here for the fun or you just want to experience it vicariously from your igloo. Highlights include:

- A roundtable discussion with three documentary filmmakers now living in Austin: Bradley Beesley (Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo), Ben Steinbauer (Winnebago Man) and Alex Karpovsky (Trust Us, This is All Made Up).

- A preview of Tobe Hooper’s long-lost first film. “Eggshells makes explicit what many have long assumed – that Hooper's sense of cinema is the defining characteristic that makes Chainsaw great. Eggshells is a true 1968 film, psychedelic and political; it seems clear that Hooper had watched more than a film or two by Jean-Luc Godard. The film celebrates alternative lifestyles and politics and people and an odd, kinky semimysticism that is grounded more in humor than the supernatural. It captures what Austin looked like in the Sixties as well as the political sensibility shared by so many at the time.”

- An interview with Beeswax director Andrew Bujalski. “I needed a wheelchair-accessible vintage-clothing store. My whole script depended on that ... and they're really hard to come by. Vintage stores are usually very cramped places, and that's part of their charm, but I started to panic a little bit, because I thought I had written something that doesn't exist. ...So I spent a week driving around Austin. I went to every vintage store you could find. And the last place I walked in the door was Storyville on 51st and Duval, and it was eerily right on. It was so much how I had written it, down to there being this sort of back room behind the counter, which is what I had written. And the counters were low, so it also made sense that someone in a wheelchair would be back there. ... So that more than anything seemed like a sign from God that we should be here.”

- A look at the new wave of Australian films well-represented at this year’s festival. Could this be Ozsploitation: The Sequel? “Australia has given us tales of crazy villages in the outback (Welcome to Woop Woop), cross-dressers on the rampage (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert), and, of course, hard men with big hearts (Crocodile Dundee), but this year at South by Southwest, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade wants us to know it's not all about kangaroos and costumes anymore. The filmmakers of seven Down Under films, which range from slashers to piss-your-pants drollery, will attend SXSW 09, the result of a government grant for the Australia International Cultural Council through film body Screen Australia.”

- A visit to the editing room of Tim McCanlies (Secondhand Lions), as he works around the clock to finish The 2 Bobs in time for its SXSW screening. “For two days, McCanlies and Reisch have been going through the film with a fine-tooth comb and a digital equalizer, raising and lowering volumes so that vital bits of plot information come through and less vital bits recede into the background, and cutting frequencies in the tone of certain actors' voices so they don't sound like they're speaking from inside a well. They watch and rewatch shots over and over again until the untrained ear becomes completely numb to the experience.”

SXSW Preview: Ten Must-See Narrative Features (Part Two)

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Can there possibly be more SXSW Film Festival preview? Why, yes! We have five more narrative features that may be of interest you.

MODERN LOVE IS AUTOMATIC

This looks like fun – two roommates, one a nurse, the other a mattress salesman. Loraine “is drawn into a secret, seedy world of lonely men, cheap motel rooms, and whips and chains” while Adrian “dreams of becoming a glamorous fashion model.” Director Zach Clark tells eFilmCritic, “I like to make movies about things that are awesome” and promises full frontal nudity in the first ten minutes. The title comes from a Flock of Seagulls song, but let’s not hold that against it.

(Screens March 15th at 7:30 pm, Alamo Ritz, March 19th at 9 pm, March 21st at 7:15 pm, Alamo South)

THE PARANOIDS

Luciano is an aspiring screenwriter in Buenos Ares who is shocked to learn he’s the basis for a character on the hit TV show The Paranoids, produced by his childhood friend Manuel. “When Manuel leaves on a business trip to Chile, his beautiful new girlfriend Sofia (Jazm’n Stuart) decides to stay with Luciano, a turn of events that amounts to a nightmare for her fearful host.”

(Screens March 16th at 2:30 pm, Alamo Ritz, March 19th at 2:15 pm, Alamo South)

PONTYPOOL

Canadian director Bruce McDonald (Highway 61, Hard Core Logo) returns with a blood-soaked zombie tale he insists is not a horror movie. I know, it seems like the day is fast approaching when there will be nothing but zombie movies, but McDonald insists this one is different. It has “elements of screwball comedy…a little French semiotics ... a little political allegory. ... It's a very curious movie.”

(Screens March 14th & 15th at 11:59 pm, Alamo South)

SPLINTERHEADS

Producer Darren Goldberg describes Splinterheads as “a cross between a punk rock romance and a balls-out comedy set in a carnival.” Small town schmoe Justin Frost (Thomas Middleditch) falls for “sexy con artist” Galaxy (Rachael Taylor, hubba hubba), and wackiness ensues. Turkey legs optional.

(Screens March 14th at 7 pm, Alamo Ritz, March 17th at 1:30 pm, Paramount Theater, March 19th, 12 pm, Alamo South)

THE SQUARE

Former stuntman Nash Edgerton’s directorial debut is already available on DVD in its native Australia, but it has its North American premiere at SXSW. It’s a neo-noir about a construction supervisor and his mistress who get in over their heads when they steal from her criminal husband. “In an escalating spiral of blackmail, kickbacks, cover-ups, arson and murder, they find themselves in a nightmare of unforeseen events stemming from their simple plan.”

(Screens March 13th at 7 pm, Alamo South)

Part One

SXSW Preview: Ten Must-See Narrative Features (Part One)

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Our 2009 SXSW Film Festival preview continues with a look at the most promising narrative features on the slate. (You can check out my documentary picks here and here.) I’ve left out the big ticket items that are due in theaters soon, like Adventureland and I Love You, Man. They don’t need my help.

BEESWAX

Mumblecore maven Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha) returns with this legal thriller “for anyone who finds 'legal thriller' to be an oxymoron.” Real life twins Tilly and Maggie Hatcher star as identical twins Jeanne, who is paraplegic, and Lauren, who isn’t. The pair find themselves dealing with a vague threat from Jeanne’s partner in a vintage clothing business, Amanda. New SXSW producer Janet Pierson has a supporting role, which is certainly an ingenious tactic by Bujalski.

(Screens March 14th at 2 pm, Paramount Theater)

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF LITTLE DIZZLE

Strange. Odd. Twisted. These are words that crop up frequently in reviews of Little Dizzle, which debuted earlier this year at Sundance. A cleaning crew of misfits, hallucinatory cookies and a strange new toilet-based life form are the ingredients that could only add up to a fun time at the movies. Presumably.

(Screens March 15th at 9:15 pm, March 19th at 4 pm, Alamo Ritz, March 21st at 11 am, Alamo South)

EGGSHELLS

This 1969 “American Freak Illumination Time & Space Fantasy of the exploding Austin inevitable” was the first feature directed by Tobe Hooper and has long been considered a lost film. But it’s lost no more! A print has been found, and Hooper’s hippie poltergeist movie will finally see the light of day. Or the dark of theater, I guess.

(Screens March 17 at 7 pm, Alamo South)

LESBIAN VAMPIRE KILLERS

Once you’ve come up with the title Lesbian Vampire Killers, do you even have to bother writing a script? Won’t the financiers immediately start lining up at your door? Actually, the title is slightly confusing: are the lesbians killing vampires or are the vampires also lesbians who are being killed by someone else? Judging from the trailer it’s the latter, but hey, either way works for me.

(Screens March 16th at 11:59 pm, March 18th at 11:30 pm, Alamo South)

MAKE-OUT WITH VIOLENCE

The Deagol Brothers would have you know that, although it involves an animated corpse, Make-Out with Violence is not a zombie movie. Rather, it’s “a dreamlike coming-of-age tragicomedy.” And a “rock musical wherein the living love the dead and break into silence instead of song.”

(Screens March 14th at 8 pm, Alamo Ritz, March 17th at 9 pm, March 21st at 9:30 pm, Alamo South)

SXSW Preview: Ten Must-See Documentaries (Part Two)

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Continuing our weeklong SXSW Film preview, here are five more documentaries for your viewing consideration:

IT CAME FROM KUCHAR

Kuchar is not a Middle Eastern country you’ve never heard of; it’s the surname of twin brothers from the Bronx who have been making no-budget underground films together since the 1950s. The Kuchar filmography is more than 200 titles strong, including I Was a Teenage Rumpot, Pussy on a Hot Tin Roof and Fill Thy Crack with Whiteness. Jennifer Kroot’s documentary “interweaves the brother's lives, their admirers, a history of underground film and a 'greatest hits' of Kuchar clips into a hilarious and touching stream of consciousness tale.”

(Screens March 14th at 5 pm, Alamo South, March 19th at 1:30 pm, Alamo Ritz, March 20th at 11:30 am, Convention Center)

MONSTERS FROM THE ID

Did the sci-fi cinema of the 1950s inspire a generation of scientists? And now that Hollywood no longer glorifies the scientist in quite the same way it did during the Atomic Age, what will inspire the American youth of today to pursue science as a career? “Monsters From The Id weaves the intersecting themes of over 30 films in order to tell the untold story of the Modern Scientist and his role in inspiring a nation.”

(Screens March 13th at 9:45 pm, Alamo South, March 18th at 11:30 am, Convention Center, March 21st at 2 pm, Alamo South)

NEW WORLD ORDER

In the late 90s, I used to fall asleep watching Alex Jones ranting on late night cable access television in Austin, never dreaming that one day he would be hero to Conspiracy Theory Nation. This documentary from Darkon director Luke Meyer focuses on Jones and the conspiracy movement, from anti-globalization to the “9/11 was an inside job” crowd.

(Screens March 13th at 7 pm, Alamo South, March 17th at 11:30 am, Convention Center)

THE WAY WE GET BY

This may not be of interest to everyone, but as someone who grew up near the tiny Bangor International Airport, I’m intrigued by this look at the troop greeters – senior citizens who meet soldiers returning from Iraq at their port of entry on the way home (or their last stop on their way out).

(Screens March 15 at 11:30 am, Convention Center, March 16th at 12 pm, Alamo South, March 19th at 7 pm, Convention Center)

WINNEBAGO MAN

Jack Rebney became a YouTube sensation when the outtakes from his Winnebago sales video hit the internets. Now he’s a recluse, but filmmaker Ben Steinbauer has tracked him down to find out the shocking secret origin of…Winnebago Man.

(Screens March 14th at 7 pm, Alamo South, March 18th at 6 pm, Alamo Ritz, March 20th at 1:30 pm, Paramount Theater)

Part One

SXSW Preview: Ten Must-See Documentaries (Part One)

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:00:00 GMT

The 2009 SXSW Film Festival kicks off on Friday, so what do you say we spend the week previewing some can’t-miss attractions? We’ll start with the documentaries – five today and five tomorrow – then move on to the narrative features.

ALONG CAME KINKY…TEXAS JEWBOY FOR GOVERNOR

From singing Jewish cowboy (“Asshole from El Paso,” “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed”) to mystery writer (A Case of Lone Star, Road Kill) to gubernatorial candidate, Kinky Friedman has done it all. Along Came Kinky chronicles Fridman’s 2006 unsuccessful run for the governorship of Texas.

(Screens March 19th at 7:30 pm, Paramount Theater)

AMERICAN PRINCE

The great lost Martin Scorsese film (note: not so lost) is American Boy, a profile of Steven Prince, who memorably played the gun salesman in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. Thirty years later, director Tommy Pallotta catches up with Prince, now living in Austin and still graced with the gift of gab.

(Screens March 14th at 7:30 pm, March 17th at 11 am, Alamo South)

BEST WORST MOVIE

I had no idea there was any such thing as a cult of Troll 2 until a few months ago, when the Alamo Drafthouse hosted a Rolling Roadshow screening of the movie in Morgan, Utah. Who would go all the way to Utah to see Troll 2? Find out in Best Worst Movie, the behind the scenes story of what some consider to be the worst movie ever made (but which is actually #41 in our Unwatchable countdown – perfect timing!).

(Screens March 14th at 9:30 pm, Alamo South, March 16th at 4 pm, Paramount Theater, March 20th at 9:30 pm, Convention Center)

DRUNKEN ANGEL: THE LEGEND OF BLAZE FOLEY

SXSW has a long, proud tradition of musical documentaries, particularly ones about eccentric or troubled musicians (The Devil and Daniel Johnston, You’re Gonna Miss Me), and here’s the latest. “Born in a tree house, killed in a friend's living room, 86'ed from his own funeral, Blaze Foley is now a bona fide country music legend.” He’s also the subject of the Lucinda Williams song that gives this documentary its title.

(Screens March 18th at 7 pm, Convention Center)

FOR THE LOVE OF MOVIES: THE STORY OF AMERICAN FILM CRITICISM

How’s this for self-indulgence? A film critic previewing a movie about film critics made by a film critic. Gerald Peary talks to many well-known film critics, including some who are still employed, about their love of movies and the history of film criticism. Participants include Roger Ebert, Elvis Mitchell, Andrew Sarris and, for some reason, Harry Knowles.

(Screens March 16th at 8 pm, March 18th at noon, Alamo Ritz, March 21st at 4 pm, Alamo South)