SXSW
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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 […]
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Andrew Haigh’s Weekend
Screening Times: Friday March 11th, 7:00pm (Alamo Lamar C), Saturday march 12th,, 4:00pm (Westgate), Sunday March 13th (Alamo Ritz 1), Thursday march 17th, 8:00pm (Alamo Lamar C) A wistful Friday to Sunday romance unfolds in British newcomer Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, a drama involving a pair of men who meet at a gay dance club and spend a poignant weekend together, one which will change them both forever. Filmmaker: How did you first conceive of Weekend? Haigh: I really just wanted to tell a story about two guys and the start of a possible relationship in all its insecure, messy, drunken […]
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DUSTIN GUY DEFA’S “BAD FEVER”
Screening Times: Friday March 11th, 8:45pm (Alamo Lamar B), Monday March 14th 4:00pm (Alamo Ritz 2), Thursday March 17th, 3:00pm, (Rollins Theatre) SXSW stalwarts Kentucker Audley and Eleonore Hendricks star in Bad Fever, the debut from Brooklyn-based newcomer Dustin Guy Defa about the wistful, misbegotten almost, but not quite love affair between a couple of drifters, one of whom seems to videotape everything she does with an antiquated video camera. Filmmaker: How did you first conceive of Bad Fever? Defa: I was in the middle of writing a different screenplay and working as a carousel operator. One night this couple […]
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RODDY BOGAWA ON “TAKEN BY STORM”
Excuse the inconsistent audio levels, a few bad edits, and the boom-y sound of some of this, but I decided to simply take the recording of my interview with Roddy Bogawa about his new doc, Taken by Storm, and run it as an audio podcast. I may try and do some more, and if they get smooth enough, start uploading them to iTunes. Taken by Storm is a portrait of artist Storm Thorgerson, who is best known for his work with the graphic design company Hipnosis designing album covers for bands like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. His sometimes surreal […]
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“BETTER THIS WORLD” DIRECTORS KELLY DUANE DE LA VEGA & KATIE GALLOWAY
When two young activists from Midland Texas were arrested with Molotov cocktails at the 2008 Republican convention, their story became a media sensation, but documentarians Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega couldn’t escape the feeling that there was more to this story than the good-kids-turned-domestic-terrorists version the media was reporting. So, they did what any skilled documentarians do: they took a leap of faith, jumped a plane and started talking to people involved with the case. The result is Better This World, a documentary that explores what happens when idealistic, angry young activists stop being polite and start getting mixed up […]
