So far the score for Fantastic Fest is one okay day, one good day. I’m talking about the films themselves, not the Festival itself. With the opening of the Highball, this years feet is rocking it as the most fun yet, though I admit to a bit of lamentation for the days of standing in long lines of filmlovers and meeting new people. But now I can actually get into the screenings I want, so that trumps the nostalgia factor.
Here’s something my close friends know about me, but others don’t: I fall asleep in movies. I know I’m a filmmaker myself, but I have a problem that if my mind isn’t actively engaged and stimulated, on come the sleepitimes. In the reviews below, I’ll be rating things in how many sleeepies I had and the how many stars from 1 to 10.
If something gets one sleepy that’s not the kiss of death. Just something to note.
First Squad – Mix Russian historical fiction with Anime mixed with some Nazi’s and live action, documentary style interviews to add verisimilitude. The story circles around a young orphan girl with psychic powers who is the last living member of her paranormal warfare squad (interesting sister piece to The Men Who Stare at Goats I saw on Friday). The film is handled like traditional anime, with crazy hair and characters, demons and ghosts, but tries to keep tethered to the real world. I don’t think the mixing of the two was effective and their goal of keeping the battles realistic and accurate essentially melded together to make a snooze fest. Most everyone that saw it with me said it made them sleepy. I personally fell asleep 4 times, which is pretty damn bad. Ultimately, if you love anime for the sake of anime, you can may enjoy the film, but it definitely wasn’t for me.
5 out of 10 Stars / 4 Sleepies
Gentleman Broncos – Take Wes Anderson and John Waters, mix them together in a blender and filter through uber strict Mormon ethics, and you’ve got the filmmaking style of Jared Hess. Gentleman Broncos is an absolute mess of a film. Never that funny, never that heartfelt, and never, ever believable. Napoleon Dynamite worked because Hess and the cast were able to do the rarest of things in filmmaking: creating genuine, original, quirky characters that you buy. Wes Anderson is the master of this. Royal Tennenbaums does it perfectly. Waters is on the other end of the spectrum – he makes movies so compellingly entertaining that you’re willing to go along for the ride and love each minute. Hess doesn’t do this. Gentleman Broncos has stupid, goofy, surfacely quirky characters with poor motivation in a world that is wholly boring and I consequential.
All this being said, Jermaine Clement’s Chevalier and Sam Rockwell’s Bronco/Brutus sequences are enjoyable, but not worth the price of admission. Wait till a friend buys it on bluray and catch it then. Or on cable. This movie is already so sanitized thatit could probably run on any network and the FCC wouldn’t bat an eyelash.
4 out of 10 stars / 0 Sleepies
Paranormal Activity – Not since the Blair Witch Project has a film been this scary and cringe-worthy. Not because of copius amounts of gore or crazy squirm-enducing torture porn, but for the same reasons Blair Witch worked: the fear of what you can’t see and the inability to get away from your location specific horrors. Handled with one cMera the entire time, in the style of someone goofing around with shooting footageof their own family, Paranormal Activity affords you the ability to truly put yourself in the shoes of the main characters and exist in the world. There are only three actors in the film: the female lead who has been followed by a spirit since the age of 8, and he live-in boyfriend who buys an HD camera to document the noises and odd things that happen to her.
And document it he does. The camera is handheld through most of the film, except in nighttime bedroom time lapse shots on sticks. This creates a perfect device to build dread, because everytime we cut to this shot, you know bad things are about to happen. This is a great film that deserves a full release and not to be remade (as is rumored) with bigger name stars. It works because of the situation and the unknown actors, like a Blair Witch before it, and audiences will respond equally positively. And no one will ever look at powder the same way again!
No, Dave, we’re not talking about any sort of sexual proclivity. It’s a new project we’re involved with, and it’s amazing. Fantastic stuff being done here in Austin, but this is all you can see for now….
The name of the project is Sodom: The Prophecy Armageddon, though we’ve discussed simply branding it as Sodom as it’s much more stark.
The first version of the website has been approved and will be launched shortly, at which point, I’ll post more here.
I just finished directing my first feature film. The movie’s called Conflict of Interest and for a self-professed political junkie like myself, it was right up my alley.
The film was initially the brain-child of David Cuddy, owner of Ranch Studios in Kyle, Texas, a place where filmmakers can go, work, foster their ideas by utilizing the numerous set-houses by day and the hot-tubs (6ft deep) for relaxation at night. Elements that can help inspire some seriously creative ideas.
David brought me onto the project to help fill in some of the gaps and the organic process of creation spurned the Case of Katie Douglas.
What’s in a Name
Katie Douglas (Danielle Rene) was previously named Katie Combs, a name that caused me much chagrin due to it’s similarity to the name Katie Holmes. Within the course of the film, Katie witnesses a major crime and serves as the sole witness to the incident. The only one that took time to pay attention instead of just taking information at face value. But this brings her to the attention of some heavy people, in particular crooked Senator John Mordire (Michael Madsen).
Originally she was handled a little haphazardly. I nearly made the same mistake, but realized that an integral scene with her needed to be rethought. As often happens, the best things lie in the execution and not in the conception. Once the scene was shot, it was clear that its emotion resonance and significance were much stronger.
As a result, other planned scenes were modified to match the gravity of the reborn Katie Douglas scene, creating a strong seeming sub-plot which directly changes everything. One can sit down, plan out, think they know the ultimate outcome of a situation, but once the collaborative process of film starts to work its magic, greater things are born.
Only in filmmaking is it okay for artists to so heavily rely on each other in a primordial bath of ideas.
Last night, I went to the wonderful Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar and attended a screening of Oliver Stone’s new film, W.. As is usually the case with Drafthouse, there were various related bits of media shown before the film, to entertain the audience.
If you’re uninitiated, Drafthouse is a great chain of theatres here in Austin that serves great meals during your moviegoing funtime and has strict ’shut the hell up and keep the kids outta’ here’ policies that make it one of the best places to watch movies. One of the things they do is find interviews, televisions shows, web videos, etc. that are related to the feature, and play them before the movie starts for the audience as they’re sitting there waiting.
So last night we were treated to Colbert’s Presidential Roast from 2006 (I think that’s when it was), as well as the web video for “Oliver Stone’s P.” – a flash trailer that jokingly shows us what an Oliver Stone biopic about Palin would be like. I’d seen it online, but it was interesting to see it on the big screen. All in all, that’s Drafthouse.
The main show came on, and I sat there, enjoying Brolin’s turn as George W. Bush, Dreyfuss as Cheney, not loving Tandy Newton as Condoleeza Rice (but not hating it either) and just soaking in Stone’s particular viewpoint on what the life of GWB must have been like. As a film, it did it’s job. It entertained me, it made me laugh, it gave me a protagonist I could sympathize with, and while it didn’t give me an ending, that was okay, because the ride had been good enough.
But something about the movie didn’t sit right with me. I’ll confess I was a W. supporter in 2000 and 2004. In fact, in 2000, I was a John McCain supporter, but when he lost the bid, I became a Bush backer. I lived in Texas, our surplus was high, the state was in a good position, and everyone loved W. Most of all, the guy was likable, and while he fumbled his words on occasion or maybe made up a few of his own, he seemed to understand the problems the country was facing and had an idea of how to fix them.
Imagine a film about your life, where the director & writer ignored how you got to where you were, what you had done right, and the good about you – and focused only on the mistakes, and hid your journey. This is W.
