Wednesday March 18

“Still Bill”

I am embarrassed to say that I would not have recognized Bill Withers by name before I saw this doc. I certainly recognized his songs though, and even more embarrassingly, subsequently realized I always thought of him as having been a commercial flash in the pan and not much more.  Like any good musician doc, you get to know the person a bit better.  In this case, we find out that, though he is a very musical person, his relationship with fame is bitter and complex.  His interviews are filled with philosophical, oblique answers to personal questions, so we aren’t allowed to know what event/s led him to largely drop out of the music biz, but we do get a sense that he is probably better off for it.  This is a pretty interesting point, in that the public’s response to a celebrity that shuns fame is usually selfish, perhaps even near
Read the rest of this entry »

Sunday March 15

“Reel Shorts 3″

Another nice reel.  The standouts:  “Thick as Thieves”, a comedy where a mugger holds up a guy in an alley and they hit it off.  So much so that they team up, hijinks ensue.  Also, “Wing It”, where two guardian angels guarding two respective parties in a drug deal gone bad try to reason with the other’s angel, but wind up having to stand their man up to fight it out.  Sounds kind of tragic written that way, but the Angels are crude and against typical convention, and the comic timing was perfect.  Last, “A. Effect”.  This one is a bit difficult to describe, but it’s set in a community college and the main characters are a loser playwright wannabe and a human
Read the rest of this entry »

Year 13 is upon me, and so are the annual writeups of what I’ve caught. I’ve slowed down my pace a bit, and downgraded myself back to a Film Pass, but I’m still doing it. No volunteering yet for me this year, but I’m still considering it, depending on how the demands on my time go next year. Mindy has continued to be very supportive of my traditional habit of nearly disappearing for a week every year for this event.   Right, so here’s what I’ve seen so far this year.

Friday March 13

“Strongman”

Honestly, I’m not sure what attracted me to this one in the schedule. Perhaps the potential for it to be an entertaining freak-show doc, the kind that so often seem to show up at SXSW, drew me in. It turned out to be a quasi-cinéma vérité style documentary, just following the aging “Stanless Steel”, whose ambition is to continue to be, well, a strongman in the carnival sense, though not literally in carnivals. The

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, the subs are in and are doing up the plumbing/electrical. Hopefully we’ll get inspected this week / early next week by the City and get underway with the drywall and finish work. There’s some new pics up, but most of it is pretty unglamorous at this stage. You can get a glimpse of the new cabinet color there at least.

Sorry for no new baby news. The next big appt. is on 4/4, so we’ll have more then. Mindy reports sensing quite a bit of internal movement. I’m trusting at this point it’s not an alien parasite or anything. Too much scifi/horror for me, clearly.

After that big bitchy post I made about “Second Skin” during SXSW, I was turned on to “The Guild” on youtube. It’s 8 eps so far, and rather humorously addresses the MMO gamer stereotypes. I have to admit, much of the slagging off is deserved. I think one of the more interesting characters is a gamer stereotype I’ve not personally met: the stay-at-home mom gamer. Check it out.

-D.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

First, I would like to thank everyone for all the wonderful support and comments from my e-mails and blog entry. At this point there is not much news on the baby front – right now I am trying to get everything done that I can before I get too big to crawl around my workshop.

As you can see from the photos, we are in the midst of the kitchen remodel, and due to the film festival we have not been eating at home too much (not too bad when your kitchen is a 6-foot table). Its a good thing that all of the Alamo venues serve food or we would be starving our way through SXSW. Dave has dedicated the most time to movies (see reviews below), but I have not done too badly this year. There have been years past when I had to opt out almost entirely, but I have managed to squeeze in a few at nights this past week. Maybe someday I can take a week off too.

My greatest responsibility at this point is to get the cabinetry done in time to be installed in the kitchen. The uppers are done and ready for a final coat of paint, but the base cabinets need a little more work. Slowly, we will get there. The most complicated thing with the kitchen remodel at the moment is the fact that the house is out of square in some places, as it is with most older homes, so making sure the cabinets will line up and the flooring is level is the biggest obstacle.

However, one fortunate side effect of all this is that we had to get off our buts and get rid of some furniture. Both Dave and I had our respective rocker/recliners that were purchased by our parents the year of our birth (1971 for those who don’t know) and after 35+ years they were getting a little rough around the edges. It has been long past time we finally got rid of them, but laziness and the expense of new furniture have prevented us so far. But, we needed room in the living room to store all the boxes of stuff and the appliances we are keeping, so they finally had to go. Goodbye old companions! – we will probably never see your like again.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Friday, March 7

“Goliath”

Our first film of the year (year 12 for me, hard to believe): a narrative done by some local favorites and previous creators of shorts, the Zellner brothers. This story features a very lonely guy, working a dead end job, just completing a divorce whose final straw is his cat “Goliath” going missing.

Read the rest of this entry »