SXSW
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CAMERON YATES’ “THE CANAL STREET MADAM”|
By Alicia Van Couvering
What’s it like to get out of jail and try to rebuild your life when that life was running a hugely successful brothel in the middle of New Orleans and the Lifetime movie of your experience is about to air? Cameron Yates’ new documentary, The Canal Street Madam, asks that question of Jeanette Maier and generates even more questions than answers. Was Maier a dangerous criminal, transporting women across state lines for the purposes of her own profit and their vicitimization as sex workers, or was she herself the victim of a hypocritical system that convicted and exposed her but […]
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GEOFF MARSLETT’S “MARS”|
By Alicia Van Couvering
Geoff Marslett’s Mars is a whimsical rotoscoped space exploration romance starring Mark Duplass, the kind of film whose possible existence may never have occurred to you, but one that you are very glad to have discovered. Marslett, an Austin native and much-lauded teacher of animation at UT Austin, studied mathematics, philosophy, art, science and languages before arriving in Texas to get his degree in narrative filmmaking. Gradually, he began to get interested in animation, taught himself the process and started inventing new techniques for his short films, now numbering over a dozen. Monkey vs. Robot, for instance, has screened at […]
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Matt McCormick’s Some Days Are Better Than Others
Matt McCormick may be premiering his first feature here in Austin this week, but he has long been a major figure within the Pacific Northwest’s independent film scene. For over 15 years he has made work that is both experimental and humorous, formally challenging and beguilingly poetic. His 2002 film, The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal, is something of a short-film masterpiece, a wildly clever riff on art criticism that is also an ode to changing face of the modern city. In addition to his film work, which he presents in film venues but also bars and rock clubs, McCormick […]
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FILMMAKERS SQUARED
Love was in the air at the Filmmaker Brunch on Friday afternoon, where the top shelf tequila ran rampant. Against the backdrop of the soon-to-be-retired Troublemaker Studios green screen — where almost every Robert Rodriguez film has ever been shot — filmmaker pairs mixed and mingled. They were implored to hold this moment dear, because “this is the moment,” in an actually very moving speech by Up In The Air director Jason Reitman, who got into his car the day after the Oscars and drove straight to Texas. Jody Lee Lipes, co-director of NY Export: Opus Jazz and DP of […]
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I WAS TOLD THERE WOULD BE COWBOY HATS
…at the Texas Hall of Fame Film Awards, a glorious benefit for the Austin Film Society that drew the cream of the Texas to Austin Studios last night. And indeed, there were Cowboy hats aplenty — Robert Rodriguez even gave one to Quentin Tarantino, the evening’s honoree. Some pictorial highlights: Kim Le Blanc of the Texas Film Commission, Lovers of Hate director Bryan Poyser, whose film is part of IFC’s day-and-date “Direct from SXSW” initiative, and Janet Pierson, Director and Head of Programming at SXSW and the kind of woman who can start sentences with, “When I was running a […]
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A SOCIAL MEDIA GUIDE TO SXSW ’10
Mashable.com has compiled an unbelievable guide to how you can follow SXSW (in Austin or afar) through social media. The one we’re most intrigued by is Cliqset.com. Cliqset.com has created a real-time map that aggregates all of the geo-tagged activity in the festival area of Austin. Pulling in data from the major location-based social networks (Brightkite (), Flickr (), Foursquare, Gowalla (), Qik, and Twitter), the map will give you a bird’s eye view of who is at SXSW, where they are, and what they’re doing.
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Marwencol’s Jeffrey Malmberg
By Alicia Van Couvering
Mark Hogencamp was an illustrator living in Kingston, NY, and one night in 2000, he walked out of a bar and was followed by a group of teenagers who beat him mercilessly and left him for dead. Hogencamp was in a coma for nine days, suffered massive brain damage, and lost most of his memory and ability to move and write. Unable to afford therapy, he came up with his own: Marwencol. A 1/6 scale World War II-era town set someplace in Belgium, Marwencol’s inhabitants are dolls painstakingly painted and clothed by Mark, most representing a person from his real […]
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How to Go Green with Producer Miranda Bailey
For a filmmaker approaching L.A.’s Ambush Pictures with a new project, “greenlit” is the happiest word in the English language. For Ambush Entertainment co-founder Miranda Bailey, an executive producer of The Squid and the Whale and a producer of the upcoming Super, the word came to mean something very different as she made her directorial debut. Greenlit is its title, and it refers to Bailey’s commitment to “green” the company’s The River Why by hiring an environmental consultant during production. While there’s been much documentation about greening the motion picture business, Bailey brings a perspective that’s both practical and irreverently […]
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GILBERT SHELTON AT SXSW
As part of their annual look at SXSW, The Austin Chronicle gets ready for the fest with this piece on iconic psychedelic comic book artist Gilbert Shelton, who’s best known for his Freak Brothers comics. He will also have an exhibit of his work in town during the fest as well as Harry Knowles conducting a conversation with Shelton on March 15 at the Austin Convention Center. Here’s an excerpt from the piece: Freewheelin’ Franklin, Phineas, and Fat Freddy symbolized the pot culture of the Sixties, their free-spirited lifestyle in pursuit of sex, drugs, and rock & roll the model […]
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“LOVERS OF HATE'”S BRYAN POYSER | By Alicia Van Couvering
Originally posted as part of our Sundance 2010 coverage, Lovers of Hate will screen at SXSW and is available on VOD beginning March 15. Playing in competition this year is Austin filmmaker Bryan Poyser’s Lovers of Hate, starring Alex Karpovsky and Chris Doubek as brothers, Paul and Rudy, vying for the attention of Rudys’ soon-to-be ex-wife, Heather (Heather Kafka.) Paul is enjoying wild success as the author of a Harry Potter-like series of children’s books, which are based on stories that Rudy used to make up for Paul when they were children. Rudy, who calls himself a writer but who […]
