SXSW
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SXSW SNAPS, PART TWO
The Innkeepers‘ star Sara Paxton, glam at the Driskill Hotel premiere afterparty. In Ti West’s excellent horror picture, wearing a red hoodie and blue jeans she plays a tomboyish hotel clerk and amateur ghost hunter. A fantastic idea — as part of its Film Design Awards, SXSW hosts a poster design competition, displaying all the entries in lobby gallery. Myth of the American Sleepover producer Adele Romanski and Visit Films sales agent Ryan Kampe at the Kodak Filmmaker’s Brunch. Forget barbecue. Grilled cheese is the food of Austin. The sandwich here is from The Big Cheese, inside the convention hall. […]
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AROUND AUSTIN : MONDAY MORNING
So much pork, so much sitting in dark cold rooms! The first grand weekend of SXSW 2011 was, for me at least, rather subdued. Individual films threw little parties and then there were some big ragers, and there is as ever that old sense of uber-community. But it was a slow burn feeling of familiar faces colored by a succession of new friends, all incredibly nervous for their premieres, all getting drunk later in parking lots. But just when you think you have party fatigue, something like this happens: An army brigade of cuties! Yes, readers, an army brigade on […]
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CHERIE SAULTER’S “NO MATTER WHAT”
Screening Times: Sunday March 13th, 4:15pm (Alamo Ritz 1), Monday march 14th, 4:30pm (Rollins Theatre), Wednesday March 16th, 9:00pm (Alamo Lamar B) When 15-year-old Joey’s mother goes missing in the rural, economically depressed corner of northern Florida that he and his best friend Nick call home, they go searching for her through increasingly dangerous territory in No Matter What, a harrowing drama from first-time director Cherie Saulter. Filmmaker: You grew up in Northern Florida and your film is set there. What did you draw upon from your personal experience growing up there for this film? Saulter: None of the things […]
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DON ARGOTT AND DEMIAN FENTON’S “LAST DAYS HERE”
Screening Times: Monday March 14th, 4:30pm (Vimeo Theater), Tuesday march 15th, 2:00pm (Alamo Lamar C), Friday March 18th, 4:30pm (Vimeo Theater) After their acclaimed investigation of the fate of Alfred C. Barnes‘ multi-billion dollar art collection in The Art of the Steal, Philadelphia-based doc duo Don Argott and Demian Fenton return with Last Days Here, a profile of Bobby Liebling, lead singer of the cult metal band Pentagram, who has lived a hermetic life in his parents basement for decades. Filmmaker: When did you first hear of Bobby Liebling and when did you know you had to make a movie […]
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“CONAN O’BRIEN CAN’T STOP” DIRECTOR RODMAN FLENDER
Ever since Jane Pauley left the Today Show, the trials and tribulations of network television personalities have been the stuff of dinner table fodder. However, few contract negotiation battles captured as much attention as the recent skirmish over who would host The Tonight Show, Jay Leno or Conan O’Brien. What started out as a simple transition turned into an epic battle for late night’s soul, one that Leno won — even if many consider it to be a pyrrhic victory. One of the most anticipated films at SXSW, Rodman Flender’s Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop follows a bruised O’Brien in the […]
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“PAUL” DIRECTOR GREG MOTTOLA
Writer-director Greg Mottola won himself a lot of fans with his smart, witty debut movie The Daytrippers, and then promptly disappeared from the indie scene for the best part of a decade, working in television while he tried to get his sophomore feature off the ground. In 2007, he returned to the big screen fray with Superbad, the Judd Apatow-produced teen comedy, which was a number one box office hit and made him a hot commodity once again. Going back to his indie roots, Mottola followed up the success of Superbad with Adventureland, a beautifully nuanced coming-of-age dramedy about a […]
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“ROAD TO NOWHERE” DIRECTOR MONTE HELLMAN
There’s little better at restoring one’s faith in cinema then when a great director returns from the wilderness. Terrence Malick was MIA for 20 years between Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, but Monte Hellman’s time away from feature filmmaking has been even more prolonged. It was as far back as 1988 when Hellman made Iguana, his last “proper” film, but now the director of such cult classics as Two Lane Blacktop and Cockfighter has happily returned to filmmaking. Last fall, Hellman unveiled Road to Nowhere at the Venice Film Festival – where he won a Jury Award […]
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SXSW SNAPS, DAY ONE
The first day at SXSW, the 4th floor. “What’s this line for?” I asked the woman standing next to me. “No idea,” she said. But it wasn’t a line for anything. The crowd was just there. And as I pushed my way through, it slowly started to dissipate. It was like one of those highway slowdowns, where the memory of congestion lingers after whatever caused it. If you’re going to sponsor a festival, at least do something useful, like this rolling Samsung display of panel times, schedule changes and social media activity. When you check into SXSW, you’re given three […]
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“THE CITY DARK” DIRECTOR IAN CHENEY
Documentarians get their ideas from all sorts of places — newspaper stories, family albums, an overheard story on a train — but rarely does inspiration come from as poetic an activity as stargazing — unless, of course, the documentarian in question happens to be filmmaker Ian Cheney. While gazing at the New York City skyline, Cheney realized that he lived in a place where stars don’t really exist. Determined to find out how much he’s missed when he lost the night sky, he started interviewing scientists for a project that would become The City Dark, a meditation that explores how the […]
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SOPHIA TAKAL’S “GREEN”
Screening Times: Saturday March 12th, 5:30pm (Alamo Lamar C), Tuesday March 15th, 12:00pm (Alamo Ritz 1), Friday March 18th, 7:00pm (Alamo Lamar C) A couple of young, New York sophisticates travel upstate in order to research a book on sustainable farming, but when a working-class local woman becomes the object of their affection, jealousy and sexual gamesmanship threaten to ruin there relationship. Green, a new film from the team behind the recently opened Gabi on a Roof in July, marks the directorial debut of that film’s producer, editor and star, Sophia Takal. Filmmaker: You and many of your collaborators worked […]
