Thursday March 13

“Humboldt County”

This was one popular movie. Mindy & I saw the lineup for this one at the Alamo Monday night. They twice opened another theater and, at least on Monday, sold that one out also. As for the film itself, think “The Graduate” meets “Harold and Kumar”. Actually, it’s much better than that likening makes it sound. The story follows the adventure of a young, burned out medical student from L.A. who finds himself among the off-the-gridders in northern California and their pot farms and, through various misadventures, finds some kind of personal salvation. Sure, the movie is reminiscent of the naturalistic 60’s/70’s style “drop out of reality, get redemption” story, but the characters feel real, not so ethereal, and the plot is well structured in terms of the main character’s travails.

So, the story wasn’t really a revelation, but the acting was at least top notch. In terms of recognizable names, Peter Bogdanovich plays the main character’s sullen but imposing father, and Brad Dourif very competently plays the eccentric old man father/leader of the pot farming family in the woods. Overall though, the performances all of the lead and supporting cast falls into place and their various relationships really work. I think I’ve just seen the rebirth/redemption story so many times I’ve gotten jaded; I didn’t really get to that place one hopes to by the end of the film where you vicariously own a bit of the redemption for yourself. I nevertheless enjoyed it, I guess a well done film can sometimes be its own reward.

“Body of War”

This doc, releasing nationwide at Landmark Theaters, was just downright excruciating, but in a good way, trust me. It follows the early recovery of Tomas Young, an Iraq war vet paralyzed by a gunshot and his subsequent entry into the war protest community. Directed by Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro, the former you know, the latter did the doc 2 years ago “Troop 1500″ about the girl scouts with imprisoned parents, Ellen is clearly no stranger with how to handle emotionally charged material. Watching Tomas and his family deal with his circumstances is hard enough, but when complicated by his feelings of betrayal by the Bush administration, it goes to a whole ‘nuther level. Tomas signed up two days after 9/11 thinking he would be able to go to Afghanistan to help “smoke out the bad guys” like the president had said they would but was instead sent to Iraq and caught in an open-backed truck turkey shoot 5 days into his deployment. Feeling slighted by this, as you might imagine, Tomas subsequently decided to join up with Iraq Veterans Against the War and has apparently been doing speaking tours ever since.

Yes, this film has a pretty clear political agenda. There’s a less than subtle progress through most the movie involving listing the results of the 2002 Senate vote authorizing the war and then a moment towards the end spent between Tomas and Senator Byrd reading the 23 names who voted ‘no’ ( I’m happy to say both Michigan senators voted against the war, sad to say both of Texas’ voted for it, of course). During the film time committed to tracking this, CSPAN footage of the so-called debate is included. It’s appalling to watch how much the pro-war elements relied on such obviously pre-digested talking points to make their case, including John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. More appalling that most people appear to have bought it. By contrast, they also played footage of Senator Byrd’s quoting of Herman Goering from the “Nuremburg Diary”.

Perhaps the strongest point of the film is that it’s fairly clear Tomas suffers greatly from his affliction, but it’s hard to conclude that his motivation is about collecting pity for himself. I think what we witness in terms of how hard it is for this guy to just get by much less travel and speak as an activist makes it clear, it’d be way easier for him to just stay home in bed and feel sorry for himself. So, the most difficult philosophical hurdle this film throws at you is the difference between Tomas’ experience and the pro-war faction’s fierce belief that that the casualties we sustain don’t suffer/die in vain. It’s clear that Tomas certainly thinks he does, and that if the cause had been worthy he would not. Frankly, I’m surprised that Dick Cheney’s (and Wolfowitz’s and Rummy’s…) commandos from the New American Century bunch hasn’t swooped down to finish these IVAW guys off. Sheesh.

Well, enough pontificating. So, if you’re in range of a theater running this one and are in the mood to be freshly enraged about this idiotic war, check it out.

Friday March 14

Reel Shorts 3

Finally got the last regular shorts reel fit in, still missed the Texas and Animated shorts though. This reel had some much longer pieces, and they were all quite good. “The Second Line”, a post-Katrina N.O. story about a couple of black friends living in a FEMA trailer park who take on work gutting a white guy’s house. The main character starts out with some hard luck, and stress of being mistreated on the job sends him over the edge. “Kid”, looks to have shot locally in Austin about a Hispanic boy at his 13th birthday. His estranged father takes him out, and he’s none too thrilled. They barely communicate, and when they do, it’s the father giving him his own father’s buck knife telling the boy me has to kill a young goat for purposes of cabrito on the occasion of his 13th bday. Again, he’s not too thrilled. Though the father is proud, the boy is silent, and in the car on the way back to his mother’s, you see him quietly slip the knife into the gap in the car set as if to lose it. Very nicely done. “A Catalog of Anticipations” was a very quirky piece, almost totally done in stills except for a bit of stop motion. A young girl wanders in a meadow behind her house, collecting object from nature: bones, bugs, insect nests, etc. Eventually she happens upon an increasing number of dead fairies. Violently killed fairies. Tiny little winged people, yes, mutilated. She starts boxing them up until one night, she find out one wasn’t quite dead. In the middle of the night, it gets out of it’s box and just kind of stares at her. The next day, she takes her whole collection out and buries it n the meadow. Heh heh, damned fairies. Lastly, “Glory at Sea”, an almost expressionistic piece, a retelling of the Orpheus myth. This time, the underworld is an underwater grave, and when one escapes back to land, the rest of the living fashion a weird boat and try to get them back. Seriously, I have no idea how to explain beyond that. This is one of those films where the dialog itself is moody and incidental, so you have to pay attention to what’s happening and fashion your own sense of plot. Ic ould never make a movie like this, it would drive me mad. But I will say this was fairly well done. And ambitious being shot mostly on or in the water. In the Q&A they said their art director made the ocean grave in a disused swimming pool; I seriously couldn’t tell. Well done.

“Shine a Light”

This is Martin Scorsese’s concert doc of a recent Rolling Stones show in NYC at the Beacon theater apparently tied to Bill Clinton’s charity or birthday or something like that. This one will be all over shortly, but as I hadn’t yet been to our hometown IMAX, I decided to try and get in. There’s also some weird symmetry here in that I caught their 1989 tour both live in Detroit and on IMAX in San Antonio a couple of years thereafter. I’m not a rabid Stones fan or anything, but classic rock, as worn out as it is, amounts to being almost a folk music for many of the working class folks of the Midwest (from whence I came) and beyond. That and heavy metal, of course. Film-wise, there isn’t anything too surprising to report here. It’s big, it’s flash, it’s a nicely done concert film. There’s a bit of fun with Martin himself being neurotic before and after the concert, there’s some archival footage moments, there are some musical guests, and the remainder of the Stones themselves on a surprisingly small stage overall. The bit of background reading I did on the website afterwards suggests that this was one of the earliest bottlenecks in the production: that Mick wanted it bigger, that Scorsese wanted it more intimate.

So, Mick can certainly still strut, but his vocal range is certainly decreased. Keith looks just as undead as he has for decades. It being an IMAX, you could literally see Mick’s dental work, the time on Ron’s watch, the timeless depths of the wrinkles on Keith’s face. Being that the boys are pushing near 70, that might be a bit too much visual detail overall, but I will say that the sound was exquisite in our IMAX, which is good considering how much “Texas: The Big Picture” probably gets played there. One weird thing I noticed was the level of an intstrument in focus of a given shot was occasionally boosted to the fore. I’ve heard/seen this technique before, but I found it kind of jarring here in terms of enjoying the musical performance itself. Then again, when is a Stones show solely about the music?

Saturday March 15

“Bananaz”

Alright, I’ll admit, this one was a guilty pleasure. It’s basically a doc on the behind the scenes action of those behind the album creation, live performance, and promotion of the animated band Gorillaz. Mindy got me hooked on them a couple years ago, so I thought this one might be fun for us to go see. Overall, it had a perhaps unintentional “This is Spinal Tap” kind of feel, owing largely to the casual “hanging out with the band” way of putting scenes together, and the fact that the central two Gorillaz creators are really just incredibly juvenile and prone to the pranks and hijinks that follow.

To be fair, Gorillaz are kind of a unique phenomenon in that, having an animated presentation with a constructed little universe they occupy, are a virtual band. I’m not so excited about that in and of itself, but it does then suggest that there’s a fairly unique creative process that goes into making what they do. Sadly, I can’t say I’m all that more informed than by what I could infer from the action I was watching; there wasn’t much by way of interviewed explanations happening in this film. It was fun though, and you got to see a bit of the magic, but having to listen to that long a movie full of a bunch of un-miked biritish accents, there should be a bit more payoff in terms of take away.

“Crawford”

This is a doc about the eponymous town in TX adopted by our loving President (I’ve always wanted to use the word “eponymous” in writing, itmakes me feel like a rock critic ). I was sure this was going to turn out to be yet another lefty W-bashfest, but it turned out surprisingly even handed. The filmmakers managed to get pretty good interviews from all 3 sides of the issue: the blindsided natives, the anti-war protesters, and the pro-war counter protesters. I don’t think we get a whole lot of insight about any particular angle, but that doesn’t appear to be the main purpose of the doc. By profiling both some of the residents of the town and then cataloging the changes the town and it’s natives go through as a result of the President and his retinue’s presence, it manages to capture a slice of place and time, from which you can draw what conclusions you will. That, and it had a talking W. statue that spouted some of his more delightful Presidential wisdom. I probably won’t sleep well for a week after seeing that. Anyhow, it’s one of those films that kind of takes the lid off a subject that suffers horribly from the shallow media soundbite approach and dares to look a little closer.

“The Night James Brown Saved Boston”

This one will be on VH-1 here on April 5, perhaps not accidentally to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the assassination of MLK. This film does a modest amount on separate backgrounds of both the civil rights movement and JB himself. It keeps a good, quick pace through the history lesson there for good reason: it sets up the story of how JB was set to do a concert in Boston that night after rioting had already broken out in Roxbury for several days prior. In short, city leaders had to decide first whether or not his presence would cause more or less trouble for them, and therefore whether or not to cancel his show. Convinced that the show would actually be a boon, they decided to go on with the show, but to have WGBH televise it, costing JB some $50,000. So, two crucial dramatic moments come to pass: whether or not he’ll go on with the show and, once he was convinced by the city to go on, how he would handle a near riot that threatens to break out in Boston Garden. The end result, at least as this doc would suggest, was that he became a more solid proponent of MLK’s philosophy (he was not previously a believer in non-violence) as well as one of the most important public black figures of his day. All this well before I first knew him as of Rocky IV. Also, you should know that when this comes out on DVD, it will include the original concert as well.

“The Wrecking Crew”

Ah, the saddest moment of any festival, the bitter, final screening. I thought it would be cool to go out with a nice music doc. This one is about a group of studio musicians in L.A. who worked primarily in the 50’s & 60’s who were at some point nicknamed “the Wrecking Crew”. Out of all the docs I saw this year, this one actually shocked me the most. As it turns out, a good number of rock albums made in L.A. during those years were cut by these guys and not by the respective bands. Sure, I knew plenty of singers of the era were backed up by session musicians, and even some of the novelty acts like the Monkees, but I had no idea that the same went for groups like the Beach Boys. Indeed, this bunch was apparently responsible for a hefty number of 50’s & 60’s rock hits, not to mention jingles, TV themes, and various other side projects. Check out the song list just from the movie here.

The film was made over a period of 12 years by Tommy Tedesco’s (a guitar player with the Wrecking Crew) son, and he managed to interview a good number of the surviving members. The most heartbreaking aspect of their whole story was that, though they were well payed by the studios for their work, and they were extremely flexible and capable musicians, well respected in their field, they went uncredited for most of their work. Work so good that when bands had to learn the songs to reproduce live often could not.

Movies I Missed

Other films that I either had on my schedule and couldn’t fit in and/or heard a lot of good comments about while standing in line. Look ‘em up on the SXSW website, they may have websites of their own.

Woodpecker
Heavy Load
Heavy Metal in Baghdad
Secrecy
The Wild Horse Redemption
Young@Heart
Stop-Loss
Flying on One Engine

Well, another successful year in the bag. I can’t say I saw anything too stinkerific this year, but I hate to say, in some ways, this is becoming kind of routine, and definitely expensive. It’s *really* nice with the badge not to have to worry so much about timing which queues to jump into, but I still did. Too many years of training to just let go I guess. At least I still talk to people in the pass and ticket queues, unlike many of the industry snobs I was lining up with. So, I got to talking to one lady in line about maybe volunteering next year, see a different side of the festival. I’ll think it about it again when the time comes back around later this/early next year. Hope y’all enjoyed the write ups this year.

-D.