-D.

Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam

In a phrase: Young punk Muslims form up and starting pushing the boundaries.

This film was paired at the festival separately with a narrative feature “The Taqwacores”, both named for the book by Michael Muhammad Knight. I didn’t see the narrative, but I suppose it’s an adaptation of the novel.  The doc was  about the author himself and the movement of Islamic punk music of the same name that was partially inspired by his novel.  I knew absolutely nothing about the subject going in, so I was hoping to learn quite a bit from this film.  For starters, Wikipedia says that: “[taqwacore] is a portmanteau of hardcore and the Arabic word Taqwa, which is usually translated as “piety” or the quality of being “God-fearing”, and thus roughly denotes fear and love of the divine.”  The film itself covers a good amount of interview and background of Knight himself and then follows him and members of several Taqwacore bands as they go on a North American tour.   Midway through the film the story cuts over to time some of the members of this tour and Knight meeting up in Pakistan where they are trying out the limits of their movement/community in that context.  The structure of the film doesn’t provide any terribly compelling narrative structure in and of itself, and I didn’t find the following of some of the main subjects personal trials all that enlightening (though I suppose it does make the film more “rock and roll”).  The film does, however, offer a number of opportunities to witness what’s going on in this fairly interesting and unusual subculture.   The takeaway here is that many young Muslims are finding the punk aesthetic relevant to them as they find themselves caught between the sides of the greater culture war, the West that considers them suspicious and the relatively repressive East, neither representing their own kind of earnest belief in Islam.   And then they make some noise.

Parking Lot Movie

In a phrase:Post-slacker subculture do/ where have all the Gen Xers gone?

Not the most inventive title in the world, but this was one of my favorites at the festival this year.  Anyone who has served time in a thankless, dead-end service sector job could certainly appreciate this film.  The subject isn’t so much the Charlottesville parking lot itself as the subculture of the attendants that have worked there over the years.   How they dredged up this many current and former employees is a mystery to me. Perhaps to some degree by design of the lot’s owner, these guys come from a wide variety of academic disciplines (though they are often Anthro, Philosophy and such) at the nearby Univ of Virginia and are largely non-conformists and misanthropes.  Their observations about their experiences in the lot, mostly what they have observed about human nature in the laboratory of the lot itself, is what’s so interesting about this doc.  Needless to say, as it’s pretty critical of mainstream culture in general, I was hooked.  The film itself, though it’s composed largely of different shots of this one parking lot, moved along nicely, and didn’t suffer at all from a lack of overarching narrative.  The interviews of the over-educated and well spoken attendants oddly really carry this piece without collapsing from talking-head syndrome.

When You’re Strange, A film About The Doors

In a phrase:  Oliver Stone is not Enough.

Curiosty brought me to this doc.  I would have thought this subject pretty well played out at this point, but here we are again, sifting through the legacy of The Doors.  Much of the substance of this doc is tons of very good looking vintage footage of the band stitched together into an authorized history, narrated by Johnny Depp.  It comes off very much as a Jim Morrison aggrandizing exercise and though it tries to craft a story about the band’s timeline and personalities, ultimately comes out to be a very familiar story about Morrison’s genius and fragility.  I’m not sure how effective it was in making the case about the band’s legacy.  Generally speaking, pieces that attempt this usually rope in some kind of obvious line of influence to modern day though direct comparison or through artist testimonial.  This one tries to do the same but through continually pointing out how unique they were and formative of their own time.  This is kind of an overexposed idea at this point though and it has to stand on its own or not; no amount of archival band footage can prove or disprove such a supposition.  Anyhow, Robby Krieger showed up to Q&A the thing and he didn’t seem to mind at all that much of the questions were about Jim.  Mission accomplished.

Strummerville

In a phrase:  charity promotional / Joe Strummer tribute piece

I wasn’t sure quite what to expect from this one going in.  There was a fairly popular bio done of Joe Strummer a couple years back titled “Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten” I had in the back of my mind.  You would learn quite a bit more about Joe from that one, as this film is more about a charity organization set up in/with his name to support disadvantaged budding musicians.  A partnership with a related organization, Billy Bragg’s “Jail Guitar Doors” which works on music rehab for British inmates, is also prominently featured.  Unfortunately, as much talk about how all this is done in the spirit of Joe’s memory, the sprinklings about Joe in the film are a bit overblown and vainglorious and have very stock/superficial feeling.  It’s all a good cause, I’m sure, but the whole thing felt a little too much like a highly polished background fund raising pitch for my liking.  Meh. I admire music with a mission beyond just selling copies, but the lack of subtlety in the process of this film making its case just turned me off.

Saturday, March 20

World’s Largest

In a phrase:  big roadside attractions, disappearing smalltown America

This one is your classic Charles Kuralt “find a funny human interest quirk and doc it” piece.  It deals with giant novelty roadside statuary across America.  Honestly, as the last day of the festival, I was ready for something like this, but truth be told, I had pretty well run the schedule dry by then anyhow.  That said, it was a fun little doc.  I lived in a part of Michigan as a child that features giant Paul Bunyan / Babe the Blue Ox roadside statues and so have a soft spot for the subject.  The film achieves a depth beyond just cataloging strange or humorous examples of this though by using the statues they find and people they meet as a platform to effectively stitch together various views of contemporary small town America.  It’s an old story, sure, but small town America is still in the process of disappearing; this film takes a pretty good snap of where that’s at in the late 2000’s.

There are many examples of this statue phenomenon (giant fruit, wasps, cows, birds of various kinds seem very popular) that the film covers.  I really expected that this film would turn out to be a kind of distant but warm hearted freak show.  It turns out that, in covering this story, the filmmakers managed to catch a struggle in process for many of the these towns to either maintain a sense of identity or establish a purpose to exist as they shrink in population. The deepest focus is really on one town, Soap Lake, WA where some residents want to erect the world’s largest lava lamp.   In the case of Soap Lake, the hope is that the lava lamp will go so far as to revitalize the town economically, banking on the thing as a tourist attraction, the tourist popularity of their mineral lake having long since dwindled.  A struggle develops between the somewhat idealistic supporters and the skeptical detractors in the area that, in the context of the dying town, really underscores the desperation many of these residents feel.   This is a tone repeated in many of the places visited, where the industry that often inspired the statue in question is either endangered or gone.  The statues come to simultaneously represent an idealized past and a grim present/future.

Overall, I felt like this doc really let the subjects speak from themselves.  I sensed very little desire on the part of this film to advance any particular agenda, which is refreshing (and unusual) in this partisan day and age.  If you can get your hands on this one, I’d recommend a watch.  I think many of us either come from backgrounds like this or have family there and now live in larger urban areas where we’re often reductively accepting of the situation.   Documenting some of these towns’ self-created pride of place by way of their monuments seems like the least that should be done.

Texas Shorts

I don’t always make is to this reel, but as I didn’t make it to one of the regular narrative shorts screenings, I thought I owed myself one more trip to shortlandia.   This one, being grouped by region rather than tone or subject, tended to span the spectrum of comical to dramatic and conventional to experimental.  All of them stood out to me as being pretty unique.  I think my favorites must have been:

“Table 7″, a couple is in a restaurant having an unspecific and intimate conversation when you realize they are being monitored by a room of Asian people in a basement somewhere.   It’s not clear how this conversation could at all have any implications that a group of presumably Chinese spies would care about.  As the setting widens out a bit, you see the couple are in a Chinese restaurant, and as their conversation becomes more heated and divisive, one spy starts to type a report furiously and hands his report off to a collector.  In the end, you see the results of his report are served to the couple as fortune cookie messages designed to being the couple back together in the end.  Very clever narrative.

“Depth of Phil” was a piece about an older homeless guy getting ready for a big meeting.  Through flashbacks, we get to know him a bit as a teenager hanging out with a girl at the lake.  We eventually realize he’s manged to reconnect with her via internet social networking of some kind and she’s stopping though town to visit.  It’s clear though his conversations with other homeless compatriots that the guy is delusional, claims he is involved in some big company concerns, and a bit depressed, but otherwise lucid.  He eventually meets up with the woman at a bar and she claims that she doesn’t really remember him that well, that she had dated many boys.   They part and he snaps back hard into his delusions.  She drives off, clearly remembering him just fine, and probably not wanting to be associated with him in his state.   The story was incredibly subtle, not beating you over the head making sure you’re keeping up (attn: Spielberg).  It manages to communicate everything you need to know through the actors’ performances and lays down a really sympathetic human vibe to the situation presented.

There were many very funny well made shorts that usually take the cake, but my last stand out would be one that was more psychological, “Mnemosyne Rising”.   Really, story-wise it’s nothing new.  It’s basically a solitary space madness suspense piece.  The thing that was so amazing about it was how beautiful it looked, apparently having been made on a total shoestring.  Much of their fabulous spaceship set was repurposed bulk junk, and it really came together nicely.  I’ve seen many amateur sci-fi pieces over the years at SXSW, and the bar can be high for sci-fi in terms of production quality achieving enough suspension of disbelief, but this one really hit the mark.

World Peace and other 4th Grade Achievements

in a phrase:  children are animals, but they are often more civilized than adults / good teachers help

This is another I had semi-planned on and once I’d heard about in line it motivated me to get to it and go for the endurance testing 5-movies-in-one-day hurdle.   This doc covered an idealistic but not particularly young public school teacher, John Hunter, and his putting his students though a role playing exercise of his own creation called the World Peace Game.  The purpose of the game is to get the kids thinking about the world on a macro level before their perceptions are more hardened and politicized.   The film gives us a little bio/background on Hunter and the spends most of the time watching the students undertake the game for something like 8 weeks.  The game is a bit difficult to explain here, but the children collect into 4 different nations, a group of arms dealers, indigenous groups, a UN, and a “weather god/dess”, among which is hidden a political “saboteur” and they are given challenges to resolve either through conflict or diplomacy.   The game is set up to introduce real life global stresses and issues and the children only win if they find ways to overcome their nations’ differences and difficulties by the end of the game.

The documentary focuses more on the students interactions with the teacher and each other, and their general takes on the progress of the game than on the mechanics of the game itself, so you don’t get a lot of detail on how exactly the game itself is progressing.  You do get so see the seriousness and pride in how the children pursue achieving their game goals though and it’s clear that there is a general connection made to how the international world stage operates.   It occurred to me watching this that there were several interesting implications here.

First is the gaming angle.  Certainly there wasn’t a lot of difference between this and any other role playing I’ve been involved in except for the level of fantasy.  Funny how the context changes everything.  Second was how much we as a culture underestimate children.  I’ve often perceived this in children’s media; that many producers of works for children treat them as though they are stupid when really they are just inexperienced.  Media, or any experiences I should think, that ask children to rise to challenges are much more valuable to both their development and to our society than experiences that ask them to sit back, relax, and accept the status quo.  Third, was the nature of teaching.  The teacher profiled here definitely reminded me of my best teachers growing up, passionate and insightful about his profession and excited to continue to do so and to bring a professionalism to the trade.

All that said, I’m not sure there were any real epiphanies to be had.  I think we generally know that children can handle more than we give them credit for and that teaching is a profession under fire desperately in need of people like the man profiled here.  Still, it was nice to see the story of a positive example for a change.

Four Lions

In a phrase: four + British Muslims try to stumble their way into the terrorism biz, hilarity ensues, sacred calves slaughtered aplenty.

This is an extremely black British comedy that made some buzz at Sundance earlier this year.  The premise is that it’s a bunch of radicalized Muslims in the UK that are training to be proper terrorists.  The comedy part is that they are all incompetent, unlucky, and generally fated to fail. The black part is that although there are a lot of physical gags this comedy is not really total farce.  Characters are getting killed and all our loser protagonists manage to blow themselves up in the end.   I won’t reveal too much more; the purpose of this movie isn’t so much the plot destination as it is the journey getting to know the “lions” and seeing their path to destruction.  The most amazing part of the film is that it manages to achieve critique without resorting to overt racism.  Indeed, I found many parallels between this and “Taqwacore” in terms of religious and social politics.  I don’t think this film is for everyone by any stretch.  There are few Americans with a stomach for black comedy, much less one with British tone and with this much offense and edge.  It does make one squirm.

As for the film itself, I don’t think it’s any great treatise on domestic terrorism or anything, but as slapstick as much of the humor is I still felt like having the opportunity to spend some time with a cell of terrorists imparts a little different understanding of the phenomenon.  The fact that the more religious Muslims portrayed in the film are actually more peaceable than the comparatively more westernized characters and the view of the police as ineffectual and often misdirected certainly points to a larger view of the whole situation being fairly absurd.  I can’t say it was a totally satisfying experience, but if this marks the beginning of a more sophisticated and nuanced view of the “culture war”, I’m for it.

American: Bill Hicks

The last film of SXSW 2010, this doc covered the life of comedian Bill Hicks.  I’ve been a fan since shortly after he died and, having come to Austin only very shortly after his early death, I feel very unlucky to have missed him live.  Bill was an incredibly intelligent and insightful man, biting and incisive in his social commentary fueled act.  If you have never seen him, you really owe it to yourself to find some of his recorded performances.  I don’t think it would be overstating the fact to say that, as is often claimed, he stands easily alongside Bruce, Pryor, and Carlin.   Such is the tragedy of his career, as outlined in the film, that he never achieved their level of popularity in the US, though he did in the UK.  Perhaps that’s why this film was made by British filmmakers with the help of Hicks’ family.  Unlike many young performers, his life wasn’t cut short by a car/flying accident or by OD, but by cancer, made all the more tragic by the fact that he had recently conquered his previous personal substance abuse problems.   Perhaps had he lived he would have found that magic balance where he could get his material into a more populist place without compromising it too much.  We’ll never know.

I’m not sure the film was all that revelatory about the man.  It relies on a lot of friends and family interviews told though photo collage using stills broken into different elements and the focus/position between the elements moves slightly to give the still a sense of motion and excitement.  Perhaps that technique has a name, whatever it’s called, I personally found the quality of this a bit annoying and it gives the film a sort of disconnected unreal feeling, like an really extended animated Sesame Street sketch or something.   There is some interesting information imparted about his development as a young performer and his time spent in the clubs in Houston and later on tour nationally.  The film makes a good record of him and, I think, builds his legacy nicely.  I think he still exists as someone passed verbally from fan to fan, like some new sensation, some 16 years after his death.   I agree, Bill needs to be lionized a bit more than he is.  In a time when social criticism has been cast as being traitorous, his insights are needed more than ever.  You could accuse him of a lot of things, but you couldn’t accuse him of casually not caring about the state of things.

And so ended SXSW 2010.  Again, thanks to Mindy for covering the home front.  It’s more true than ever that I can’t do this week practically living downtown without her.  As for my volunteering aspirations, I think that’ll have to wait a few more years.  AS busy as this thing’s gotten, I’m not sure I’d be able to effectively use a film pass anymore.  There definitely seemed to be less people with them this year than previous, but maybe that’s just my perception.  Hope you enjoyed the little surveys I’ve typed up. Maybe a few of them will get loose and you;ll get to check them out sometime.  -D.

Documentary Shorts

Back to my shorts reel fix, Doc Shorts didn’t disappoint this year.  There were six films total, spanning quite a wealth of subjects.  Considering how each had me wanting more, I felt almost all of them could easily be expanded into feature-length pieces.

“Seltzer Works”, is a quick insight into a Brooklyn seltzer bottling and delivery operation.  Using vintage machinery, the owner and his one employee keep their old-fashioned family business going.  No twist here, but it was an interesting corner of the “death of handmade quality in the face of inferior mass production” world we occupy today.

“6″ is a doc about small town TX 6-man football. It was nicely shot, but really, football culture, even if it is often all that dying small town TX has left, really doesn’t appeal to me.  I know, I’m a commie.

“Big Birding Day” is a bout a pair of friends and their entourage as they participate in an international competition to see how many bird species they could see in 24 hours.  Believe it or not, for a bird watching film, it was surprisingly gripping.  It helps that the pair are interesting people and fairly articulate on the subject of their hobby.

“Quandrangle”, the doc shorts award winner, is a really interesting piece about what you learn in the end is the filmmakers own parents discussing their experiences in the 70’s having swapped spouses.  Her mother and father are interviewed separately but are brought together simultaneously in wide split screen as focus shift between one or the other, a very ingenious and unusual format.  Seaming the otherwise disparate interviews together into a coherent stream must of been quite a task, but it really was clean, and told with pathos.

“Mr. Hypnotism” is about “Dr.” Ronald Dante, and old hypnotist entertainer and some time con man.  This one was a quick survey of the subject and was kind of unsatisfying on depth, but still interesting.  There’s probably at least another hour of material in anecdotes alone that could be captured from this guy.

“White Lines and The Fever: The Death of DJ Junebug” is set in early 80’s New York covering the nascent Hip Hop scene and one of it’s apparently most talented but lesser known talents, DJ Junebug. They got some really great interviews here, but the story sadly isn’t really all that strange to us these days: talented kid makes good but gets mixed up with thugs, winds up dead.

Richard Garriott:Man on a Mission

In a phrase: A heartwarming story about a rich guy wanting to be an astronaut like his dad, strangely adds a bit of nobility back to being an astronaut.

I’d heard about this one screening in Austin along with a conversation with Lord British himself a few months back and decided I had to check it out.  On it’s surface, it’s a doc about Richard’s purchased flight on a Russian rocket and his stay on the ISS.  The film covers a bit of bio background on Richard and goes through his training in Russia, launch, stay in space and return to Earth.   Honestly, the way it was shot, I felt like I was watching one of the warmer biographical Nova (PBS) episodes.  Who knows, maybe that’s where they’ll sell it.  In between the more straightforward scenes advancing this plot, there’s also a strong undercurrent about Richard’s passion for space tourism and opening private space travel and, though impressive, not a small amount of building on his own personal myth.  You see, his father was an astronaut who was aboard Skylab back in the day and he’s always dreamed about getting to space despite his non-perfect vision.  The phrase “space dynasty” was uttered more than once, and seems more than a bit melodramatic, but I guess they’ll be the ones laughing when we’re buying lunar real estate from his progeny down the road.   Still, the insight into what “the right stuff” really looks like was pretty cool, especially if you’re a space travel buff at all, and Richard seems to be a pretty personable if geeky guy, so it’s a fun ride.  Watching this film, you definitely get absorbed by the arc of his personal adventure and feel a little wistful about the space business, something NASA of late had beaten out of most Americans.  Make sure to stick around for the credits to catch Richard’s cleaned up explanation of toilet physics in space.

Narrative Shorts 3

Sorry reel 2 and animated shorts, I just couldn’t fit you in this year. Still, I had time for just a couple more shorts reels, and reel three often seems to offer some of the stranger content to be had without diving all the way into experimental territory.  The standouts from this reel were  “The Hardest Part”, “Teleglobal Dreamin’”, and the narrative shorts award winner “Cigarette Candy”.

“The Hardest Part” is about an aging British actor on his way to a rehearsal.  His career hasn’t been doing much since his turn as a butler on a TV show years before and he’s clearly excited to be auditioning for a hot young Guy Ritchie-esque director.   Unfortunately the audition turns into a demeaning exercise in futility and disrespect as the role he’d prepared for, a hard-hitting gangster boss, has already been taken.  The director asks him to put on a butler costume and recite lines from his TV show days, then leaves.  Crestfallen, the actor returns home and on the way is mugged.  He appears defeated and thoroughly humiliated, but then starts to audition the role he’d prepared for again and scares the mugger off.  My synopsis doesn’t do the piece justice.  The acting and sense of restraint in this short kept it really tight and interesting throughout.

“Teleglobal Dreamin’” was about an American actor sent to the Philippines to work as a motivator in a company call center.  He’s obviously weary and bedraggled, but also a bit smarmy.  One of the female call workers takes a shine to him and offers to help him around the city as a sort of guide and companion, but clearly hopes to impress him romantically.   So they hit the bar, do some karaoke, hang out with her friends.  Along the way, our Filipina has led people to believe this actor is actually Brendan Fraser and they’ve managed to attract some unwanted attention.  As a result, on the way back to his hotel they get “busjacked”.  In the confusion, the actor makes a break for it and apparently gets shot by one of the robbers.  This recounting isn’t very funny I suppose, but the effect was this sort of Office-like mildly black comedy.   The character development was mysterious but still compelling to watch unfold.

Lastly, “Cigarette Candy” was about a marine fresh home from the Middle East and attending a backyard picnic in his honor.   You can tell he’s uncomfortable with all the family members sidling up to him, predominantly his dad, and telling him what a hero he is and how much folks would like to hear some war stories.   He runs into a young woman at the party who looks like trouble and they start flirting with each other from across the yard.  They eventually wind up in the basement going at it when the soldier’s dad walks in on them.  He insists that his son rejoin the party and commence with the hero act.  The marine then goes out and regales the assembled crowd with a truly horrific encounter of a firefight that he’d been in where he was temporarily blinded and feels he accidentally shot a fellow superior marine, paralyzing him.  Said victim then orders our marine to finish him off, but the medics arrive first.  Obviously, this is a bit upsetting for all involved and the soldier retreats back into his room in the house where his is joined by the girl he met earlier, now somber, sitting on the edge of his bed sharing a cigarette with him.  Although this was the first year in many at SXSW I had seen no Iraq docs out, this short narrative might have nailed it’s subject better than any other.  It manages to simultaneously rise above the political rhetoric of the war’s circumstances, belting out a very powerful story about the human toll and criticize the rationalizations, pervasive in our culture, that we all tell ourselves to make that all OK.  Well done.

The People vs. George Lucas

In a phrase:  Organizing fans’ grudges with GL’s screwing the proverbial Wookie.

Anyone who knows me knows I couldn’t resist this one. The subject, clearly, is the case against Lucas and his careless handling of the Star Wars franchise from the special editions through the prequels.  Evidence to this effect, as it turns out, is not hard to come by.  From midichlorians to “Han shot first”, it truly mounts against him.   Much time is devoted to the ranting of Gen Xers lamenting the damage, some going so far as to accuse him of raping their childhoods.  Many of the interviewees fall short of this radical a take though and are a bit more level headed than that, suggesting that they were bad, and damage was done, but it was “no Rwanda”.  Some interesting discussion of Lucas’ right to alter his work after the fact of it’s release and the artist’s contract with his fans takes place, and by the end of the piece, the filmmaker has led us to a resting place of some relative equanimity. Their ultimate take is that all evidence against him aside, what is often not appreciated is that Lucas is just a person, to some degree a victim of his personal circumstance, has been historically fairly generous with letting people fan-fic and parody his work and that in the end we should be grateful there is a Star Wars at all.  That said, if this “Squishies” rumor turns out to be true, someone needs to stop the man.  LUUUCAASSSS!  Anyhow, anyone in on this debate won’t likely learn too much from this film, but it does put a level-headed and relatively coherent voice to summarizing the discussion.

Narrative Shorts 1

There were a number of good shorts in this reel.  Two of those that stood out were titled “Equestrian Sexual Response” and “Girls Named Pinky”.   The former was a story about a nearly pubescent girl living with her father on a horse ranch.  She perceives a sort of romantic relationship between two of their horses and confides her insecurities to the male (Red).  She stumbles upon and is upset by her father’s effort at  breeding the female (Mollie) with a stud brought in for the purpose and senses an resulting aloofness between the Red and Mollie.  This, combined with growing sexual conflicts with her classmates at school and on the bus sets up from what I recall to be a fairly accurate tension and mood of being at that age.  The film was beautifully shot and I thought captured early teen turmoil in a way neither trite or judgmental nor watered down by comedy.  To be fair, judging by the credits, this one had some pretty decent funding and although a thesis film, definitely had a refined production air about it.

“Girls Named Pinky”, so we were told during the Q&A, was a film about how to tell a story with a minimum amount of information given to the audience and then pulling out the rug with a twist.  The film begins with a geek suit, insurance salesman looking guy sitting at the end of a bar drinking Diet Cokes (he’s diabetic).  In walks the red-dressed femme fatale with the Euro accent, alone.  The suit takes a beating rescuing her from am upsetting unwelcome suitor and gets her attention.  They hit it off and spend enough time together for us to learn that she fears for her well being as her husband is the violent jealous type.  She also thinks he’s been sleeping around as she’s heard him whispering on the phone to someone named “Pinky”.   We also learn how lonely the man in the suit is, apparently being a traveling salesman or somesuch thing.  Our suit winds up taking her back to his hotel to chill out, apparently with no ulterior motives.  Just as he’s taking his overdue insulin shot, our drunk femme puts the moves on him.  Cut to the pillow talk, they intimate how nice it was to connect with another person when she’s see’s part of a tattoo on the man’s arm.  As she get’s a closer look, he jabs her in the neck with an insulin syringe and she dies.  We see on close up the man’s tattoo says “Pinky” and he calls her husband to tell her the job is done.  End credits, we see him leave the motel and the suitor from the bar drives up with an array of cleanup equipment.  Overall, a very successful twist execution.  Just when you think this thing was going to be about how these lonely innocents come together, it’s a murder story.  Bam!  I have to admit, I have always been a sucker for pulling one over on the audience.

Other films in this reel, all were really pretty good: Brave Donkey, Bikini Lighters, Pancake Breakfast, The Mess Hall of an Online Warrior, Snapshots, Jean-Paul Luc Sebastien Rene

Dirty Pictures

In a phrase: another slightly lamer stoner doc.

This one had a lot more promise in the schedule blurb than came to pass at screening.  Dirty Pictures was a mixture of bio / history of psychedelic chemistry centering around the man who introduced MDMA to the modern world, Dr. Sasha Shulgin.  The man is revered in the psychedelics community (both chemistry and consumption) as a god.   He is also getting on in years and has apparently spent decades in his own home lab synthesizing many new psychedelic compounds (the diagrams of which are the “dirty pictures”) and then experimenting on himself and his wife with them for the purpose of publishing his extensive findings into an index.  Although he makes some good and surprisingly sober points about the nature of psychedelics (although a devotee of Burning Man, apparently he doesn’t approve much of rave culture or the name “Ecstasy”) most of the movie is spent on a collection of talking heads managing to make almost no coherent point on either his legacy or on the politics of psychedelic drug research.  This one seems to have been an otherwise can’t-lose premise squandered.  And to think I gave up the film about Osama Bin Laden’s driver for this.  Even the silly mushroom festival doc from last year was more coherent than this.

Monday, March 15

Lemmy

In a phrase: Yet another music bio doc, only with Lemmy in it.  Yeah, but it has Lemmy in it.

Lemmy was a pretty standard musician biopic, the likes we have seen many times at SXSW.  Still, somehow, I never get tired of them.  “Smile” and “The Wrecking Crew” at past festivals come to mind.  Whenever I see one on the schedule I am helplessly drawn to it, and this one didn’t disappoint.  I can’t say this one was any great cinematic achievement, but it seems like they did a pretty good job of getting at some of the complexities of Lemmy as a person.  I certainly went into this film aware of Lemmy by reputation but can’t confess to an extensive knowledge of either him or his music.  The film definitely cured me of that.  Sure, there is also a definite agenda solidifying his legacy as a (the?) godfather of metal.  Twisting Ozzy’s arm on camera goes a long way to making that point.

Overall though, I think this angle is subsumed by the human story about what a startlingly simple, regular guy he is despite.  Don’t get me wrong, he is a flamboyant character, and now an L.A. rock scenester.  At the same time, he’s a guy who lives in a crappy two room apartment packed to the gills with Lemmy memorabilia and trash (as well was Nazi war trophies) situated a few blocks from his favorite bar where he can apparently be frequently found abusing the trivia video game.  I guess it’s not exactly news that a rock and roll hero like Lemmy lives his life unapologetically by his own rulebook.  Still, when we see him talk about how he forsook family for his career, or about he was kicked out of Hawkwind, or his diabetes diagnosis a few years ago, you get the impression he is far much more than this indestructible, Nazi-uniform loving, thousands of women bedding noise demon many of us assume are the limitations of his character.  Dave Grohl of all people kind of nailed it in his interview, as showcased in their movie trailer.  Far from the pirate he portrays, he seems incredibly gracious to his fans and much deeper of feeling and thought than I would have initially assumed.   In a boy band / American Idol world, Lemmy really does seem to be one of the few remaining old paragons of Rock.

Wednesday, March 17

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

I actually wandered into this screening by accident. I’d screwed up my schedule and found myself in line in front of the Ritz, known for occasional silent film screenings with live accompaniment (I’ve seen “Metropolis” there with 3 or 4 different scores, “Nosferatu”, “Aelita Queen of Mars”, “The Golem”, always a good time).  People in line were buzzing about how incredible this film was, so I decided to join in.  The score this time would be performed by a British electronic duo “In the Nursery”, who have apparently done a number of such silent film performances.  I have to say, they really nailed it.   As for the film itself, the performances both of the actress playing Joan and the cast playing her twisted ecclesiarch judges were incredibly powerful.   The pacing, the bold composition and mise en scene, all of it completely sucks you in which is saying something for it having no audible dialog.  This film expresses the desperation of an innocent person trapped in a kangaroo court about to be unjustly executed like nothing I’ve seen.   Seriously, anyone serious about film really ought to check this one out.

Life 2.0

In a phrase: Yet another freaky gamer doc. At least this one is less abusive.

OK, so I’ve made it a point to go see the rash of gamer docs that have come out over the past few years.  Like “Darkon” from years ago, or “Second Skin” , or “The Dungeon Masters” last year, this one takes on the delicate subject of gamers. Online gamers again this time, this one takes on players of Second Life.  This is an MMO unique in that it isn’t in a fanatasy/sci-fi setting, not does it feature any combat.  It’s really just a reality building game, fairly realistic in tone.  From the get go, my feeling about this game was that it’s nearness to real life lent itself to some pretty upsetting scenarios of people dropping out and choosing to live their lives in game. I suppose that’s a stereotype non-gamers have of all gamers really, but as Second Life would apparently appeal to a much different non-geek demographic, it represents a new “threat” I suppose.  I’ve gone after several of these documentaries in the past for being indelicate with their subjects, choosing to put on a freak show for the hipster indie film consumer rather than trying to do any real analysis or reporting.   This one does a little better in its selection and treatment of subjects.  One is a pretty vanilla white couple who have met in game and are in the process of divorcing their real life spouses in order to pursue a life together.  Another is a chain smoking black woman in Detroit who lives in her parents basement, but appears educated and runs a brisk design business in game, netting her a reported six figure salary in out-of-game currency.  The third is a white couple who are struggling with the husband’s game addiction made more complex by the fact that he plays a pre-teen girl in game.

There’s no question there’s a sensational freakshow element to the narrative of this doc.  We watch as the first couple take tentative shots at pursuing their new out of game life and fail.  We follow some of the business trials the second subject encounters in game as someone start to steal her IP and destroy her business, which in real life helps support her family.  This leads to a real-world lawsuit, being a bit of a double take in that the good in question don’t really exist.  In the case of the man playing the girl, we learn that it’s not about what we might quickly presume is some pedophilic motive but about his own identity confusion and eventually beginning to come to terms with some abuse he suffered as a child.  So, though there’s a titillating aspect to this cast, it’s certainly a fairly human story over and over.  As they include interview time with one of the game’s creators, there’s certainly a big idea pretense in the film about nailing down the nature of these games and what it means to society going forward.  It’s certainly a question brought up by all the real world consequences we see happen in these people’s lives.  Still, I think it’s too easy to see these people as being a bit flat and pathetic, sadly, and to end the lesson there.

After all these years, I’ve decided this subject is certainly interesting, but the complexities are almost impossible to portray in film.  I’m not sure that this film would be substantively different if these people were alcoholics or addicts of some other fairly socially acceptable vice, and as such, I’m not sure we learn all that much about the nature of gaming or the gamer at large.

Get Low

In a phrase: Bill Murray and Robert Duvall get their grumpy old men act on.

I decided it was time for some narrative candy at this point in the week. “Get Low” is a nice piece starring Robert Duvall, Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek and the lesser known Lucas Black.  Set in the 1930’s South, Robert Duvall plays a pretty grumpy old hermit, widely hated by the townsfolk who comes into town looking to stage a funeral before he dies.  Bill Murray plays a funeral director who takes up his unusual request.  Overall, it’s a redemption story, but I don’t want to say too much more as there is a bit of dramatic tension in how the plot unfolds.  Suffice it to say, it was a nicely put together slow boiler with some great mood and very decent acting, a good mix of suspense and comedy.  If you get a chance to see this one in the event is is released widely, I’d recommend it.

Saturday Night

In a phrase: Actor hangs out with famous friends while SNL happens.

This one stirred some controversy in line.  It’s an insider doc about the making of one episode of Saturday Night Live, in this case starring John Malkovich.  The controversy surrounded the fact that it was done largely by James Franco, celeb friend of the show, in both a fairly annoying often dark, blurry camera style and a fairly casual conversational approach.  Certainly, by itself, learning how an episode of SNL comes together is pretty compelling premise.   I had no idea just how frantic the weekly struggle is to make this show go.  It’s also quite a bit of fun in that you feel like you’re spying on a very rare, very fleeting secret.   Still, the criticism is valid.  You certainly get the impression that the coverage of the subject could have been more comprehensive and that the visual element could have been better done.  A bit of cotton candy in the SXSW grind doesn’t hurt IMNSHO, but it definitely let some people down.  Unless you’re a super fan of the show or just can’t get enough casual celebrity contact, I’d skip it.  I will say, Malkovich was really game.

Nevertheless, here is the beginning of my annual posting on my SXSW experiences this year.  My friend Steve talked me into doing some SXSW Interactive panels this year, so my film will be weighted more towards the end of the week.  Thanks again to Mindy for holding down the fort as I through myself into the jaws of the festival.  So yes, I got another badge this year.  Volunteering is still very much in the back of my mind but will have to wait for the kiddos to be a bit older I think.

Friday, March 12

Kick-Ass
In a phrase:  “Kill Bill” meets John Hughes. Dash of Apatow potty humor.

This was one of those larger mainstream film screenings.  SXSW tends to land a couple of films every year that are about to open and screens ‘em at the festival.  I don’t usually go in for those, but I thought this one sounded fun.  The premise up front: dorky teenager decides to become a superhero.  Director Matthew Vaughn is known for his films “Stardust” and “Layer Cake” (both of which I very much liked), so that helped suck me in.  The line into the Paramount snaked all the way around the block, and I stood next to a girl who was raving about the film for the hour we waited.  So, I managed to wait it out and got a balcony seat.  I mention all of this as it probably had some impact on my eventual opinion of the film.

So, the thing was lively, no question, and had some truly stunning action scenes.  Well paced overall, and competently composed. The comedy, although it occasionally fell to pretty low humor, was generally pretty well timed and chuckle-worthy.  Still, something nagged at me while I watched it.  There’s no question I identified on some level with the premise; I spent a lot of energy wanting to like what I was seeing.  I didn’t exactly expect going in for the acting to bowl me over or for the plot to be transcendent.  The bottom line is, the premise gets mixed in with some pretty fantastical elements and the audience is asked to buy into these being able to coexist, and it ultimately just doesn’t blend.  The main character (that would be David, A.K.A.  Kick-Ass) in his superheroic misadventures runs into “Big Daddy” and “Hit Girl”, a father/daughter team we find out, via comic book montage, is out for revenge against the city’s apparent main crime lord (played by Mark Strong, recently Lord Blackwood in the Sherlock Holmes film from last year. I love this guy), whom Kick-Ass has mistakenly run afoul.   These two existing superheroes are simultaneously plausible regular folk but also possess superhuman fighting skills. This just never really gelled in my opinion.  I had similar problems with pre-climax climax, when Kick-Ass is caught and to be unmasked on TV.  I don’t think anyone who lived through the Geraldo “Al Capone” thing in the 80’s really buys this kind of media event could happen again.  That note just rang a bit false, even though it led up to the most spectacular little girl kill frenzy in the film.

Also, as the superhero paragons of this universe (espeically Big Daddy, who very purposefully resembles Batman, and has Nicholas Cage doing a thinly veiled Adam West imitation), they kill almost every foe they come across.   It’s corny, I know, but it’s a bit troubling to see figures like this reinterpreted as common vigilantes / murderers.  At the same time, this whole plot is mixed in with a fairly elaborate teen sex farce, mocking the Spiderman/Mary Jane thing a bit as David allows his high school crush to believe he is gay so he can be her gay BFF.   Actually, I almost found this story thread more compelling than the “A” plot.  On this note, the cast of characters is pretty wide, and fairly interesting in conception, including the villain’s family and organization, which is a rare treat these days.  The breadth of them was another glaring weakness though; I never really felt I got to know any of the characters well enough to really buy into what is at base a pretty ridiculous story.  Suspension of disbelief with any superhero move is critical, even if it is an otherwise well crafted and well intentioned parodic twist on the genre.

It’s hard to recommend this one, but it’s not a total waste of time.  Weaknesses aside, the story pulls off without any major non-sequiturs and actually attempts to do some villain development, which always puts it a film a notch up in my book.  Still, I’m wondering if the open ending begging for a sequel is just a stylistic flourish to make it fit the superhero movie genre form or if they’re serious about franchising this thing.  I hope the former; I don’t see how this fairly hybrid premise doesn’t collapse under it’s already considerable weight of absurdity by taking it out any further than they already have.

White Stripes Under the Great White Northern Lights
In a phrase: Jack White keeping it real, solidifying his seat next to Dylan.

So, this is a pretty decent emulation of rock docs that have gone before.  More than one whisper of “Pennebaker” has been uttered about this piece.  Ultimately, it’s a highly stylized “get to know the White Stripes” bit.  We follow them on tour though Canada a couple years ago.  The really interesting part is they decide to hit some really remote places in their quest to do every Province and also do some free day shows for the locals in addition to their normal act.

This has the effect of humanizing Jack and Meg (mostly Jack) as they hang with the hoi polloi, an interesting take considering about how much strange speculation has been made about them over their 10 year career, mostly relating the nature of their personalities and their relationship.  In interview, Jack addresses this head on, freely admitting that the band is a construct, but goes to great pains to point out that the music is still genuine.  The cognitive dissonance on this is a powerful force in the film.  I mean the thing is shot in predominantly white, red, black, and white.  I don’t think it would be a stretch to consider the film equally a construct of the band.  That being the case, it’s a little hard to not take this behind the scene’s look at Jack and Meg as a cynical exercise.  And I’m a fan.

The music sounded good, but this is by no means a concert film. This is much more about putting flesh on the bones of the White Stripes mythology.  As much as I enjoy them musically, I find marketing in the form of art to be a bit objectionable. I guess I’m just not feeling the postmodern groove much this week.  It’s hard for me to like the character Jack White if I feel like I’m being manipulated to do so.  Maybe that’s just naive though, all entertainment is based on this silent contract really.  I guess this just came across to me as working a bit hard to earn my trust, which then produced the opposite effect.  Maybe Jack is the mastermind he is made out to be and this was the intended effect, but I doubt it.

All that said, I suppose this is still a must see for fans.  If for no other reason, you may gain a bit of insight on Meg and her apparently crippling shyness. At least I feel a bit vindicated about the ACL no-show that happened that year.  One lingering question not addressed at Q&A:  what was up with that guy napping on the bed behind them during the interview segments?

For this, Ro got a cool bib:

Also check out this pic:

http://picasaweb.google.com/dpapas665/AuroraPics#5318053662191355410

“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

cannibalistic, and we rarely get to see the issue from the other point of view.  So, he’s a sensitive man, and though his anecdotes are often vague, I think we still develop a sense of respect for his introversion and his choices. Interesting guy really, I’m glad I got to know a bit more, even if the biographical details were a bit light.

“Blood Trail”

I admit I came to this one with a bit of expectation for the sensational.  It’s about war photographer Robert King and the course of his career, from his start in 1991 Sarajevo to Chechnya, Moscow, and eventually OIF.  This film in fact starts out with some sensational material, but I ultimately had some trouble with this one, and I’ve been worried that it’s simply that I don’t much identify with or like the subject.  I hate to criticize a doc for such a trivial reason, but on the other hand, surely part of a competent documentarian’s job is to draw his or her audience in, hook them and get them interested in their subject despite their personality (see: “Winnebago Man”).  On some reflection I think that, I think it’s less a case of my inability to appreciate a somewhat unlikeable character as a subject and more, despite something like 15 years of on and off filming, the director failing to really capture the development of the subject over time.

This film starts out showing King, a poor, callow, young, but hungry photographer showing up in Bosnia to learn the trade, sure of his destiny of being put on earth to deliver an important message.  Fair enough, but the development of the character kind of goes off the rails from there.  We learn that his background is troubled and that his career, and related self abuse through drink and womanizing, is the result.  It is even suggested that he’s out there looking for something among the many current day inter-cuts to him deer hunting with his friends and family in his native Tennessee.  Despite several tense moments with him in action, the film’s narrative drifts, and about all we learn about him is that he semi-settles down, while keeping his job, and that many of his friends report that they never thought he would still be alive.  By the end, we’ve had some pretty grisly visuals, but we still haven’t had all that much insight into either the world of Robert King or the larger world of war photography for that matter. So, I’m left to consider, were the dots the director was connecting through King’s various experiences a narrative so subtle I couldn’t detect it, or was my inability to identify with the subject keeping me from getting it, or was it just not there.  Honestly, I don’t know.  I tend to think of myself as a fairly sophisticated viewer, and am not easily led to believe that I can’t pick out a simple subtext, but I suppose I really can’t be sure unless someone else, whose opinion I respected, had also seen it and was able to challenge me on it.  Such are the evil wages of going SXSW solo.

“The Yes Men Fix the World”

Those familiar with the Yes Men won’t be disappointed by their second film adventure.  For those that aren’t, let me say that the Yes Men , often referred to as culture jammers, are involved in high-profile corporate pranking/hoaxing, something they call “identity correction”, targeting companies or organizations companies whose policies most starkly favor profit at the expense of the environment or poor.  This amounts to public shaming, usually exposing some act the company in question can’t deny, but doesn’t want the world to know about.  In the past, they’ve done the likes of the WTO & McDonald’s, this time they’re on to Dow, Exxon, Halliburton, & HUD.  I don’t want to oversell this, as your enjoyment will likely depend largely on how you feel about the current state of globalization and the rise of corporate power, but if that even remotely sounds up your alley, I suggest you check their now 2 movies out.

Thursday March 19

“Know Your Mushrooms”

The latest from Ron Mann, popular from his past SXSW entries, such as “Grass” and “Tales of the Rat Fink”, now covers, of all things, the humble mushroom.  I fully expected this to be a strictly magic mushroom related affair, but was delighted to see that it in fact focuses instead on some characters that are part of a much larger pro-fungus subculture.  As it turns out, they have a mushroom festival every summer in Telluride, populated largely by eccentric mushroom loving hippies.  We follow one in particular, Larry Evans, a professional mushroom hunting “gypsy”, who guides us through the mushroom hunts, parades, and informal chats that are part of the festival.  The film is also sprinkled with enough mushroom fun-facts that, if you haven’t learned a little bit about mushrooms, you at least come to appreciate a bit how some become so obsessed with them.  From cooking tips to outer-space conspiracies, to mushroom trip stories, this film pretty well appears to cover the mushroom culture gamut.  Like his other works, this piece keeps up a good pace, has a fun narrative, and makes you hungry for mushrooms.  Check it out.

“Soul Power”

This was a single screener at the Paramount (most movies screen 2 or 3 times during the festival) so, given the subject matter, I expected a packed house.  I was dismayed to find it was not, and it really was one of the more unique pieces I’ve caught over the years.  The director of this film was an editor for “When We Were Kings”, and made this concert film entirely from archival footage of the music festival preceeding the famous 1974 fight between Muhammad Ali & George Foreman in Zaire that was not used for “When We Were Kings”.  The film includes some inspired performances from James Brown, B.B. King, Bill Withers, Celia Cruz and Miriam Makeba, among others.  In addition to the performances themselves, a good amount of footage shot during the festival setup with some of the artists and festival producers and crew, is used to put the event in context.  The legacy of the event is debatable, but the director uses a couple of Muhammad Ali rants that in particular help to show the feelings of black empowerment that surround the place and time.  The downside: each artist only gets one song.  The director said he chose them on the basis of the contrast from the other performances, as well we their relative strengths.  A little disappointing, but the film overall holds up as a document of the event, so it’s a reasonable trade-off. There is reportedly enough footage to do a much longer movie, found as it was apparently dumped in boxes and poorly stored, but as the festival was something like 12 hours long, that would be a much larger effort. So, see it as an addendum to “When We Were Kings”, surely, but see it also for the music.

Friday March 20

“Winnebago Man”

This doc took some doing to get into.  I was shut out of it the first screening I tried to get into, and it filled the Paramount the day of its last screening, well after SXSW Music had started, a rare event indeed.  It helps that the filmmaker is local, but it turns out also to have been a pretty interesting piece as well.  “Winnebago Man” is a reference to the film’s subject, one Jack Rebney.   Outtakes from an industrial video Jack shot in 1989 for the Winnebago company have circulated almost as long, first by video tape, but most recently by YouTube.  His performance in these outtakes is legendary largely for his constant swearing and bitter demeanor, which is where another title for the legendary video comes from: “The Angriest Man in the World”.  The filmmaker goes to some trouble to point out how unintentional internet celebrity like this is problematic, citing the psychiatric problems of the “Star Wars Kid” and the hounding and death threats some other “outed” people have received.  So, in an effort to find what ever became of Jack, it is discovered that he has disappeared, only to go live as a cabin caretaker in the wilderness of northern California. From there, the filmmaker develops a strange relationship with the man, first relating to his reaction to his internet fame and then dealing with his conflicting desires to be a hermit, but also to clear his name.   As this is a doc about an eccentric misanthrope, once again we confront the entirely too likely possibility that indie cinema is once again mining for comedy gold in exploiting some poor unsuspecting subject.  I’m not sure that’s the case here though.  For one, Jack is a former CBS news man, and therefore obviously at least a little media savvy.  Also, the desires of the filmmaker to help Jack redeem himself seem genuine and able to transcend what might be produced by clever editing.  There are plenty of scenes where they butt heads in a way that it’s clear Jack can take care of himself.  Still, would Jack have been just fine if he’d been left alone?  Probably.  Although he does come to some peace with his internet fame with the filmmakers help (by getting him to guest star at a found footage screening in San Francisco), there is a lingering question of how the subject was changed through the filmmaker’s and our observation. So, overall, it’s a nice story:  young documentarian helps older hermit come to terms with the circumstances of his life.  It’s a postmodern dilemma though: how much of the benefit derived is the artifice of the work itself?

“The Dungeon Masters”

My last film of the year, I couldn’t let this one get by me.  As I mentioned last year in my writeup for “Second Skin” , I’m drawn to docs about gamers and gamer communities.  Since “Darkon” a few years back, I’ve made it my business to see how the film community treats the gamers.  Being a gamer myself of one kind or another over the past 27 years myself, it’s a subject near and dear.  Like “Second Skin”, this doc follows the extra-game lives of three subjects.  The filmmaker wasn’t available for Q&A,  but I suspect he would say his intent was to study and perhaps humanize his subjects.  Unfortunately, once again we are presented with the most sensational of possible targets, and the film winds up if anything reinforcing the uglier stereotypes about gamers.  Out of our three subjects, we have two friendly but overweight older white guys and one younger white woman who, for much of the movie, we see only dressed as a drow (evil, black-skinned elf in D&D).  One of the men is an aspiring author, otherwise barely employed, living in a dumpy apartment with his wife and young son.  The other, employed, but lives with a wife unsympathetic to his gaming habits.  We also learn that he has killed entire parties of player characters because he disagree with the morality of their choices, had walked out on a previous family and marriage, and is a nudist.  The woman seems like she largely has it together except for her obvious LARP/cosplay habit, though we learn she now lives in a trailer with her gamer boyfriend after coming from a relationship with a abusive husband and digs the drow thing in particular for their matriarchal philosophy.   Through the film, as we rotate though incidental scenes with these characters, the filmmaker effectively presents more and more incidental evidence making the case that these people are all effectively losers.  Honestly, I have known gamers like this, but I don’t believe they are the majority.  It just so happens that any time a film dork points a camera at a group of gamers, they are always going to be the thing that makes the most humorous, most spectacular splash on film.  Though the fad of the gamer doc may be on its way out, my challenge to filmmakers wishing to do this subject is this:  make an informing piece that will dispel people’s fear and disdain, and show the poor gamer geeks as the good, upstanding people they largely are.  Otherwise, leave them alone.

Saturday March 21
I took the day off to hang with friends and see a little music at the SXSW Music festival.  Looking back, I think this is the first year I got away with seeing almost all documentaries, and I enjoyed it.  Once again, I’m contemplating maybe trying out the volunteer side of things for the festival next year.  Having the new baby kind of kept me from committing this year, but maybe I’ll be a little more available next year, we shall see.  I think it would be fun after 13 years to see how thing works on the inside.

“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

film-encyclopedia dork.   As our playwright friend musters the courage to make a play for an apparently interested girl in their mutual acting class, things go awry.  She falls for our straight man, the unassuming film encyclopedia dork.  Very subtle tension and delicate black comedy for a short, but all effective.

“Animated Shorts”

Not sure how much I can discuss what I saw here.  Animation is obviously very largely about visual effect.  Like a good animated reel should, these spanned the spectrum from surreal and insane, to ephemeral and dreamy, to just plain funny.  The stand outs, should you be so lucky as to encounter them:  “Luca Brasi Sleeps with the Fishes”, a funny musical piece about Luca Brasi’s experience, well, sleeping with the fishes.  “Sweet Dreams”, perhaps my fav of this bunch, a stop-motion work that features our main character, a cupcake, living in a land of other sweets.  This cupcake is a dreamer though, and sets sail into the unknown in his boat of sugar cubes.  Yes, the boat leaks and our cupcake arrives in the land of veggies.  Long story short, the cupcake goes native and learns some veggie skills that later will prove to save his sweet cohorts from a flood. “‘Here’s the Stapler if You Need It”, is kind of simple, but deals with a copy store that contains a forbidden industrial sized paper cutter with some strange properties and a new clerk who tries to deal with the public getting access to it. Last, “Shaman” was the winner this year, a very dreamy piece, perhaps described best by it’s own blurb: “Waiting for the bus on a rainy day in Copenhagen, the old shaman Utaaq sees a rare bird from his past. This makes him reminisce his youth, and a beautiful tale about the forces of nature begins.”

“RiP: A Remix Manifesto”

Ah, but this one is a thinker.  On the surface, a Morgan Spurlock-esque, fast paced and entertaining political piece about the nature of copyright as it exists today in the US.  The filmmaker gets at this through the framework of the points of his manifesto ( 1. Culture always build on the past. 2. The past always tries to control the future.  3. Our future is becoming less free.  4. To build free societies you must limit control of the past) and an examination of the work of “Girl Talk”, a popular mashup artist who composes his work solely from samples.  He explores a brief history of the concept of copyright and how it has evovled over time in American law.  That is to say, how it seems to be perpetually re-extended by the government at the behest of corporate interests (primarily Disney) and the consequences of this on expression in our culture.  The premise here is that the corporate anti-piracy movement has become so shrill and out of scale (like the RIAA lawsuit campaign) that it comprises an unacceptable level of control over media and expression.  He fleshes this idea out through interviews of the likes of Lawrence Lessig, Giberto Gil, Cory Doctorow, Dan O’Neill (as well as many others) and through examining ideas like copyleft / creative commons, and the nature of our relationship to intellectual property.  The crux of the argument comes down to where the line of “fair use” of previous works lies. More importantly, at what point is crossing that line genuinely piracy if that line is, in fact, a constantly moving target controlled by the increasingly few corporations who own most media?  Is remixing then a legitimate form of expression and cultural commentary?

I could go on all day about this issue.  Fact is, this movie is not even remotely objective, and often appeals to the audience on some fairly shaky logic.  I believe a lot of these ideas are pretty radical in such a stridently Capitalist society, and will take some time to be digested to find out which are worthwhile ideas and which make less sense to adopt.  It troubles me, though, that corporations currently involved in the increase of copyright powers seek to use their influence to squelch this very conversation.  This isn’t what a free society should look like.  Last I checked, that’s called oppression.

Anyway, if you’re curious, the filmmaker has put his money where his mouth is, perhaps literally.  His film is available for both view and remix opportunities by chapter at http://www.opensourcecinema.org/book/rip-remix-manifesto .

Monday March 16

“Mine”

I honestly have no idea why I chose to see this doc.  I guess I’m kind of a sucker for “current events” pieces, even when the events aren’t so current.  This one is at heart a hurricane Katrina story, though one about the rescue of pets made homeless by the storm.  I really thought this would turn out to be an animal nut piece pitched to a fairly narrow set of potential viewers, but I confess, this story really grabbed me.  The film follows the plights of several pet owners separated from their dogs by circumstances around Katrina and the eventual reunion (or not) with them.  This narrative is nicely sprinkled with background on how the purely volunteer rescue operation took place and how the pets were then distributed to shelters all over the US to help manage the immense load of the undertaking.  This resulted in many pets being both lost to their owners but also frequently adopted by families in their new locale.   You might then imagine the built in tension of the situation when an original owner wants their dog back and the new adoptive family had grown attached and doesn’t want to relinquish them.  We are taken through the strange process, which apparently involves no small amount of luck,  of the various owners attempts at being reunited with their pets.  Every profiled case seem to resolve differently, based solely on the temperaments of those people involved.  This gives the filmmaker a chance to really do an objective job of capturing all the different sides of a surprisingly complex issue.  We get to watch as one man beats his head against the proverbial brick wall trying to track his family dog down, going so far as to hire a P.I..  We even get a chance to see one of the adoptive owners experience change of heart over the course of the film about returning their dog.   I definitely recommend this one if you can find it.

“Severe Clear”

This was the only Iraq doc I saw this year, I guess the wave of these has finally begun to subside.  This one is a diary-style piece combined from the personal footage of Marines involved in the initial assault and the effort to take and hold Baghdad.  The narrative is strong, and strange enough to hear me say it, maybe a little too strong.  It’s hard to combine what is effectively home movie footage and put a coherent structure to it with voice-overs and not make it sound a little stilted.  Some of this may be based on the fact that our main character does his own voice-overs.   Still, that’s a pretty small complaint.  The subject states that his goal is to capture a more realistic side of the war than the media can likely do, including the tedium and the terror, the personalities of his peers and impact of their experiences on their humanity.  Not a bad piece, but I can’t say I had any real epiphanies watching this one.  I might just be jaded from all the Iraq docs I’ve absorbed at SXSW over the past few years.

Tuesday March 17

“Letters to the President”

This was another vérité style doc set around President Ahmadinejad of Iran.  I hesitate to say that this doc was at all sympathetic, but I do think it was a fairly realistic view compared to the one-dimensional representation of the man in the American media.  I think we don’t get any sense of the populism he enjoys in Iran, and why.   Following him during his travels around the Iran and listening in on some of both his ardent supporters and doubters certainly provides a little more window on why is not such an apparently simple country.  The title refers to a custom that seems to have sprung up around him that he and his staff will take people’s pleas for help (usually economic) in letters and put them through the Iranian bureaucracy to try and guide relief efforts.  It’s clear that this is more propaganda tool than effective governance, but for the filmmaker, it does allow a glimpse at the concerns of the somewhat more diverse than commonly believed Iranian people.   If there was a take-away from this film, I would say that, if what the news in the U.S. tells us about Iran is the extent of our understanding, then we have a lot of work yet to do.  As they are quickly becoming a nuclear conundrum, it might be best to pay attention.

“Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo”

I hadn’t originally scheduled this, but heard good things in line, so I thought I’d check it out.  It’s a new doc from Bradley Beesley (of “Okie Noodling” fame) about the now 69 year old prison rodeo in Oklahoma (there is only one other still existing in the US  at Angola, LA) shortly after the inclusion of female prisoners.  The narrative is kind of a given: prisoners, both male and female train up for the annual rodeo while enduring personal setbacks and triumphs.  Still, the characters are intriguing; the filmmaker did manage to capture an impressive depth from these people.  They don’t seem so much “other” as we typically think of them in our everyday lives, and yet some of them are murderers.  We also get some interesting information on the state of female incarcerations in OK.  They apparently jail women at a much higher rate than the national average, mostly for drug-related crimes.  I think I recall hearing that they also have the highest rate of battery, hard to say if that’s related, but it sounds like a pretty crap time to be a woman in OK.  Nevertheless, it’s an admittedly feel-good kind of film.  We get to see how the rodeo represents redemption for some of the main characters and a taste of freedom for others.  Still, I don’t think the dismissal of this as a quasi-gladiatorial event by some of the prisoners is lost on the public audience of either this film or the rodeo itself.

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

film delves deeply into his relationships with those around him, including his family, his peers, and his girlfriend. It also focuses heavily on his earnest quest for self perfection, mostly of physical strength. As we follow him through his days and his various experiences and tribulations, it’s seems like he’s a bit of a feckless, but lovable dolt. His heart in in the right place, but he is incredibly absorbed by his need to be a better, and more popular and bankable strongman entertainer. After leaving this one, it occurred to me that independent docs are often guilty of victimizing subjects/people like this, taking advantage of their naive natures to exploit them for entertaining material. This piece transcends this a bit, seeing something about his creative impulse and struggle that is identical to that which is presumably at the core of anyone involved in the creative enterprise of independent film. It’s subtle, but the subtext is definitely there. I confess, I usually prefer docs with a strong narrative current, which this one lacked, but I think the treatment of the subject was relatively fair yet unflinching, and if you were paying attention, you might learn something before it was all done.

“Monsters From the ID”

This doc suggests that the 50’s were something of a scientific golden age for America. It points out that, although the conventional understanding now is that the science fiction cinema of the era was largely about fear of Communists and the Bomb, that many of these films: (“Forbidden Planet”, “Them”, and one of my favs: “The Day The Earth Stood Still”) also lionized scientists as heroes, something not often seen since, and this had a knock on effect of inspiring people of that time to pursue science, and thus drive the county on to great scientific achievement. He also goes on to draw the conclusion, mostly though his interviewed experts, that there is something of a connection between the lack of this glorification of scientists these days and the decline of scientific education and ability in this country.

I went along with this premise, mostly out of the sense that we’ve just emerged from 8 years of a government fairly disdainful of things intellectual, and that American science could use some bolstering right about now. Still, I’m troubled by the flag-waving aspect of this. We are a wealthy and powerful nation, and as such, we surely have a responsibility to support and contribute to science. However, since the subject was limited only to a discussion of a history of America’s scientific prowess, one implication there is that science should be used to secure our own advantage in the world. The film does not overtly suggest this, but I think the inevitable conclusion from the notion that America is in danger of being left behind intellectually is that Americans should then pursue science for our own benefit. I frankly find this to be a fairly shallow point of view. Thinking about science in tems of national engagement kind of misses the point. Good science should be about the free exchange of ideas unimpeded by borders and what have you. I understand that some things will be considered to be military secrets or whatever, but what about when we’re talking about clean energy or pharmaceutical research? Surely science at it’s best must include inputs from and benefits to everyone rather than just one country or just the First World. So, I guess I came away feeling like trying to look at 50’s sci fi as being some kind of inspiration for us now to be a bit specious. I understand needing to limit a subject for purposes of discussion, but this one left me feeling like the discussion had unceremoniously been ripped out of context to a point so as to be useless. It doesn’t help that the title kind of points to the aspect of the discussion least developed by the end of the film. Seems like this film might have gotten away from it’s masters when it crawled off the slab.

“Ong Bak 2″

No need to belabor this one, it’s more Thai martial arts from Tony Jaa. If you saw the original, you’ll probably like this one. It has the same film speed-ups and florid slo-mos of the original as well, but it was pretty enjoyable overall if you’re a martial arts film fan.

Saturday March 14

“Reel Shorts 1″

My annual readers might recall that I do loves me some shorts programs. There’s something about the form that makes for a sort of “pure” cinematic experience. There is absolutely no room for dead wood in a short. Either you hit your mark or you don’t. When they do, they seem so satisfying somehow.  Fortunately, many in this reel did.  Strange as it is, if there was a theme to this reel, it would be semi-experimental black comedy. “Winter Lilacs” is about a man living with his aged mother who appears to be near catatonic with dementia.   Oddly, yes, they found a bit of humor in this.  Also true for “Countertransference”, about a milquetoast antique store worker and her relationship with her boss, but also her twisted, abusive therapist helping her with her low self esteem issues and “Cochran”, about a loser who hates his delivery job, bit whose true love of skeet shooting and hunting leads him towards a hunting accident that leaves him unable to deliver, but allowing him to work at the gun range. The stand out from the black comedy take would be “Isis avenue”, about a crime scene cleanup company emptying a house of its contents left behind by it’s dead owner.   I suppose the commonality here was that though the subject was undoubtedly morbid, the interviews with the workers were surprisingly upbeat.  Go figure.

“AMAC @ The Hideout”

This was a shorts program Jordan turned me on to populated only by works from students of the Austin School of Film.   I have to say, it was surprisingly solid.  In particular: “Remains”, a narrative about a woman who is in town to clean out the house of her recently deceased, estranged mother and her interaction with her mother’s neighbor, who had had some kind of relationship with her. It was really well acted and fairly compelling, especially for a narrative short. Also, “Blade Throwers”, a very short doc about a regional knife throwing competition. Nicely polished and put together, your typical “get to know a subculture” doc. Lastly, “Headcheese”, a somewhat longer horror piece where the young worker of a butcher shop starts to lose it and starts taking orders from a pig head, Son-of-Sam style.  Not shy with the fake blood.

“The Last Beekeeper”

Knowing a little bit about this subject, I was curious to see this filmmakers take on the state of the bee industry, if you will, in light of the recent troubles with honeybee populations in decline. This one was really well put together, had a nice little narrative to it as we follow three beekeepers on their annual trek to the almond pollenation in California, and their struggles to keep it together. As it turns out, there’s quite a bit of passion and heartbreak in the bee biz. The only thing that left me unsatisfied were the scientific underpinnings of the film. There are some interviews with apiarists trying to explain Colony Collapse Disorder, often heard about through brief mass media science-scare stories, but as there’s no explanation, no theories are really advanced. We learn that the almonds in particular are instructive as they, unlike many other crops, depend totally on bees for successful pollenation, and to accomplish this takes 75% of the US supply of beehives. There are therefore some stabs made at an explanation implicating the constant, long-distance transport of hives into monoculture areas, such as the vast almond orchards of California , are to blame, combined with the stressed of environmental pesticides and imported bee parasites.   I guess if you assume that we’re in the grips of a national bee holocaust, that beekeepers are having a rough time of it, interesting as their stories might be, isn’t excatly a surprise.