SXSW 2008 Film Reviews, Part 2
Monday March 10
More Panels
The one of interest to report was the panel titled “Behind the scenes at Troublemaker post”. I’ve heard a lot of things about how Troublemaker, Robert Rodriguez and Elizabeth Avellan’s Austin film studio, has been revolutionizing how movies are made. For one, they do so largely outside the Hollywood system, which is about all I knew going in. The panelists, all members of the post production team, were able to fill in some of the blanks.
The gist: they work in much smaller teams, but work more cooperatively between departments to find novel solutions to the various problems they face. Apparently, the methods Rodriguez in particular uses in filmmaking has forced the team surrounding him to kind of adapt to supporting his approach and vision. So, it sounds like they culturally shoot for a staff of passionate, hard-working types rather than for one with more of a “work for a paycheck” mentality. Sounds like this means they get some pretty aggressive deadlines, but the panelists didn’t think it was a problem, in that it helped them focus on be being creative and efficient with their innovations. That said, one panelist did mention that some of his department were wearing heart monitors during one recent crunch time, kinda scary.
“Where In the World is Osama Bin Laden?”
No SXSW review list would be complete without a Morgan Spurlock mention, and this year we have his latest effort where he goes a looking for Osama. Morgan’s style is decidedly informed by Michael Moore. Very flashy, quick paced, humorous and personal, but a bit less comparatively confrontational than Moore. With this comes the burden of occasionally looking like you’re full of crap. It doesn’t help when the title and premise is largely a dramatic contrivance to go on a tour of several Middle Eastern countries and do several “man on the street” and a few “expert” interviews. So, the whole “Where is Osama” bit kind of turns into a continuity (and occasionally a humor ) device, but the interviews he does really are challenging. He managed to capture a few of the more coherent haters on film, but he made sure to add quite a few respondents whose attitude amounted to a fairly rational “we hate your policy, but we don’t hate Americans at large” approach, which is a stark contrast to what gets portrayed in our daily media.
This is the big take-away, and despite the occasional carnival atmosphere of the film, it at least doesn’t come off as mean-spirited as Moore’s works can and often do. I guess you have to sweeten it up pretty good if you expect anyone to see it. So, I have some (once again) mixed feelings about that. During Q & A, he answered a question where said that documentaries should be fun, and not “spinach”. There’s fun aplenty to be had with this one, but I can certainly see why he also made the AV Club’s tolerability index last month.
That, and as a guy I sat next to at the Alamo said when the power went out part way into the screening and it took 30 minutes to get the projector back online, prompting Spurlock to order a round for the entire sold-out theater (thanks for the beer Morgan/Harvey), “It doesn’t hurt to work for the Weinsteins.” Makes me wish I hadn’t accidentally sat next to him a few years back when “Super Size Me” played at the Dobie and bad-mouthed and groaned my way through the film (not that I didn’t like it , mind you), only to watch him walk up front for the Q&A afterwards. Such are my brushes with proto-fame. 
Well, this one was Mindy’s pick, and thanks to the fact the “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden” ran over and that Mindy couldn’t get in thanks to it being the hot ticket that night, we split up and I arrived a little late. This is a high-minded feature trying to capture the events of the 1999 Seattle WTO protest though the stories of several characters, ranging from the protest leadership to cops working riot duty, to the media and innocent bystanders, and even WTO attendees. Make no mistake, this film has a very deliberate anti-globalism slant, and as it features some high profile actors, Charlize Theron and Woody Harrelson, might even get seen.
Although much of the drama is kind of predictable, and has a very similar plot structure to, say, one of your better zombie movies for example, I think it does a fair job of giving all those involved a human face instead of reducing them to their strict stereotypes as anarchist/commie bomb-throwers or faceless bureaucrats as so often happens. I don’t often say this, but I think it leans perhaps a bit too hard in the direction of developing its large array of characters and at times intercuts madly to keep up with all their threads, but it winds up working overall. It ends up a bit sappy, but then makes up for it all with a quick rundown of the key moments in protest history since 1999. Meh, you might learn something, but mostly you’ll be bouncing between some genuinely nice dramatic moments living in the chaos of the protest and a few contrived but competently acted/directed dramatic tropes.
Tuesday March 11
OK, I admit it, I’m attracted to nerd documentaries, so sue me. I’m not a particularly big Harry Potter nut, but I am married to one, and I figured that qualified me to go see this film. The blurb on this was that it was primarily about “Wizard Rock” or “Dragon Rock”, a genre of music I previously knew nothing about (see “Harry & The Potters, Draco and the Malfoy’s). I’ll say this, I’ve seen some pretty hair-curling displays of geekdom in my day, but this one really takes the cake. The nice surprise about this film was that it kind of transcended just that and became a look a various other forms of Harry Potter fandom, such as fan sites and fan fiction. The fan sites story takes a really interesting turn when Warner Bros. starts issuing cease and desists and a woman rises up to organize an apparently effective boycott against them, getting WB to rethink their strategy. They also picked the king, IMHO, of Harry Potter fan fiction, Brad Neely’s “Wizard People, Dear Reader”, which is an alternate soundtrack & dialog he created to be played along with the first HP movie. I got to see him perform this live at the old Alamo a few years back, and it is both amazing to see and, by his own admission, amazing he was never sued over it. I highly recommend checking that out if you can find it.
The subjects picked for the movie are diverse and interesting, their stories well told. There’s a bit a a wandering sense to the narrative structure of the film, especially later on, but since the threads are all fairly interesting, the lack of a clearly progressional narrative development isn’t so irritating as it can be when the rest of what’s going on doesn’t stand out.
To be honest, I kind of caught this one by accident. It was a right place, right time with time to kill kind of scenario. Trust me, it happens. I’ve learned over the years that navigating the film schedule is a Greek tragedy all in itself; it’s best not to get too caught up in trying to make it work out perfectly.
Anyhoo, “Frontrunners” is about the campaign for student union president at Stuyvesant HS in NYC. Stuyvesant is populated with NYC’s best and brightest public school kids, and so the novelty is seeing how these ruling class larvae compete for power. That said, I’m simultaneously relieved and horrified to find out that the students were, at least on the surface, more or less like any other relatively well off public school. Again, the subjects were interesting, the built-in narrative of the campaign and the election presents a tidy structure. Although high school was far from the happiest time of my life, I was able to more or less recall identifying what the students were going through. Not a bad little doc really.
Did I say I was amazed at how geeky wizard rock was? Forget it. In only one day, I was taken to a whole ‘nother level. Nerdcore, for those not in the know, is hip hop done in the nerd fashion. Typically geeky white dudes up there busting nerdy-ass rhymes. In this case, the film makers profiled MC Frontalot, who I was peripherally aware of through Penny Arcade, but hadn’t actually researched all that much. They follow him and his band on his first US tour, winding up at Penny Arcade’s PAX event. The typical roadtrip sillyness ensues, but interviews with other nerdcore and hiphop artists keep it moving along. Gabe over at PA pretty much says it all: “On the outside, we run shit”. Nerd power! One thing though, docs about something currently going on, as opposed to something in the past, often have a sort of fan/promotional quality to them; this was no exception. Mike Henry’s “Slam Planet” comes to mind. Not that there’s anything wrong with that necessarily, but if one watches them, you won’t get a more objective sense of a topic’s legacy, For that, really, subjects do need some time to ferment. Whether contemporary “human interest” docs and their subjects will endure or turn into the roller skating or break dancing of their own periods, only time will tell.
Wednesday March 12
I didn’t schedule this one, but I’d been seeing this lady in period costume handing out flyers all week. Though I usually blow off the pushers (it’s kind of a sport for me I get to enjoy one week a year, clearly I am a monster), but her accompanying pitch was among the most compelling, so it was pretty hard to resist. “Living With the Tudors” is about a place in Suffolk, UK called Kentwell, where reenactors try to faithfully live in Tudor-era, and occasionally WWII era England, while the public may buy tickets to come observe and interact. As you might know by now, I’m a fan of a doc with a strong narrative, which this one doesn’t have, so it was a bit of a challenge for me to digest. My first reaction was not to like it very much, as it’s shot in a fairly naturalistic time and pace and has a somewhat dreamy atmosphere (editorial structure and soundtrack) with the occasional rare interjection of our embedded film makers, who themselves have participated as limners in the reenactment for three years prior to the one filmed.
Later that day, it kind of occurred to me that, at least in this case, the effect of the film wasn’t born of editorial incompetence or just lack of a decent narrative arising, but was actually intended. Many of the Tudors in the film report a certain therapeutic disconnect from reality spending the summer at Kentwell. Although during the film I was chafing a bit against the lack of conclusions being drawn about some of the tensions the fimmakers uncover, such as the interactions between the Tudors and the public, or those between the “house” Tudors and those on the grounds of the manor, or even between the men and women, I finally got that they were going for a more delicate, experiential style of representation in their film. Since most of the characters aren’t developed all that far, and there’s not real plot structure to speak of other than the unmarked passing by of the summer, I think the trick here was to try and kind of sink into the world the film makers were trying to present. Gah, I wish I’d gotten that a lot sooner, I’d have liked to speak with the film makers about their decision to go this way. I think this style of film is fairly unpopular here, but perhaps is more so in the UK. I’d have to see more British docs to verify that suspicion, but you can have my wild speculation for free. 
This here is a straight up concert video of Lou Reed performing his otherwise overlooked since release “Berlin” album, with a somewhat expanded supporting band, including a youth choir, a star backing vocalist, a horn section, keyboard, Bob Ezrin conducting, a bass and two guitars, which Lou called “two guitars, bass, drums on steroids”. The look of the movie itself was nice. A richly decorated set (including a couch hanging from the ceiling?) with back projected film corresponding to the story told in the music helped give it an “Evening with Lou” kind of feel. Competently shot and edited with good angles and coverage, this too was a slam dunk. I’ve never heard “Berlin” before, but this was the whole experience. Not having heard the original, it still felt pretty familiar. I don’t know how much to attribute that to it being Lou post-”New York” performing it, or if that was emblematic of his sound back in 1973, but it was classic Reed nevertheless. The man is not afraid to cover some seedy, ugly, (one thinks urban with Reed, but not necessarily) subjects.
Lou came on with Hal Willner afterwards and discussed the film a bit. As it turns out, Lou is every bit as cranky as I’d learned to expect. Maybe he’s not too thrilled to still be promoting a film that’s been running worldwide now for several months, maybe not all that crazy about reliving the commercial failure of something that 30-odd years later is just now being realized. Maybe he’s just a cranky old man, he’s got the right. It’ll be interesting to see if he perks up for his SXSW music keynote or not. The poor music industry really must not know how to deal with this guy. Heh heh. More power to you Lou.
A ground level Ken Burns-style doc about a seminal American tattoo artist known as Sailor Jerry. The film maker got some great interviews from Jerry’s protégés and did a good deal of archival research to put this film together. Not a topic of any great importance really, but it was entertaining to see the torn expressions of old timers who inside must be happy that tattooing has lost much of its former stigma as a criminal enterprise and yet outwardly chastise the popularity among newer generations. The film maker did an excellent job of putting the subject in context with a brief but effective history of tattoing in the US, and an equally good job getting fun anecdotes about, quotes from, and photos of his subject. As it turns out, Sailor Jerry was not only a legendary if surly tatto artist, he was also hard core right-wing libertarian racist, and yet was a forerunner of incorporating Japanese styles in his work. Go figure.
More reviews to come.
-D.
Posted on March 14th, 2008 in Film, SXSW by Dave | No Comments »
