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November 2007
More Austin links at Sundance ‘08
We reported in the entry below about Margaret Brown’s new doc “The Order of Myths” vying in the documentary competition at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
But there are, as always, more Austin filmmakers earning spots at one of the most important film fests in the world, all of whom graduated from UT:
Cinematographer PJ Raval shot the doc “Trouble the Water,” about an aspiring rapper and her family’s travails during the Katrina floods in New Orleans, which competes against Brown’s doc and 14 others in the doc contest. Tia Lessin and Carl Deal directed the film. (Raval also shot Kyle Henry’s feature “Room,” which played both Sundance and Cannes in 2005.)
Brothers and Sundance veterans Mark and Jay Duplass’s “Baghead” is “a comedy in which two couples intent on writing the great American screenplay find their log cabin retreat stalked by a man with a bag on his head.” (The Duplasses are best known for “The Puffy Chair”).
Brothers David and Nathan Zellner’s “Goliath” is “a look at a man who hopes to find salvation by locating his missing cat after his entire life has collapsed around him. The brothers co-star in the film, too.
The Duplass brothers
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Austin’s Sundance star
Austin filmmaker Margaret Brown’s new documentary “The Order of Myths” will vie in the documentary competition at the Sundance Film Festival.
Brown’s film, about this year’s Mardi Gras celebration in Mobile, Ala., competes against 15 other docs, including portraits of Patti Smith, Hunter S. Thompson and Roman Polanski, and was selected from 953 entries. Brown’s first feature doc was 2004’s critically acclaimed “Be Here to Love Me: A Movie About Townes Van Zandt.”
Sundance runs Jan. 17-27 in Park City, Utah.
Read the full report, including the list of Brown’s prestigious competitors, HERE.
Stay posted for more Austin auteurs at Sundance as films are announced.
Update, Nov. 29: The Sundance site describes Brown’s film like this: “In 2007 Mobile, Alabama, Mardi Gras is celebrated … and complicated. Following a cast of characters, parades, and parties across an enduring color line, we see that beneath the surface of pageantry lies something else altogether.”
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Austinites make mark at Independent Spirit Awards
Yet again Austin shines bright-like at the annual Independent Spirit Awards, the anti-Oscars that exalts smaller, grittier, more honest, sometimes great, sometimes entirely annoying movies.
In recent years, local darlings “Dear Pillow” and “Room” were nominated for major honors.
This year, besides a wad of titles that enjoyed their regional bows at SXSW and the Austin Film Festival, two Austin-specific movies are in the running.
Austin fave Laura Dunn and her Barton Springs doc “The Unforeseen” is up against two other doc-makers and their movies (Gary Hustwit and “Helvetica” and John Maringouin and “Running Stumbled”) for the Axium Truer Than Fiction Award.
Austin writer-director Jeff Nichols and his rural drama “Shotgun Stories” are up for the John Cassavetes Award, which honors the best feature made for less than a half million dollars. Nichols’ film won best narrative feature at the Austin Film Festival in October.
‘Shotgun Stories’
For the record: Both local movies fall in the “great” category. They are not at all “annoying.” And we’re not just saying that.
Look HERE for all the 2008 nominees.
The awards ceremony airs live Feb. 23 on IFC, and we’re pulling for our homies.
We wrote a grab-bag blog Monday of local film news, and so did the estimable Austinist. Theirs has great stuff, including this wowzee bit about former revolutionary Alamo programmer Kier-la Janisse, who’s back in Canada and flourishing.
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Another one’s a-coming
Six years, running strong, the Austin Jewish Film Festival has announced its roster, which plays Jan. 26 through Feb. 1 at the Arbor, UT and Texas Hillel Center.
The films are an “entertaining and thought-provoking blend of dramas, comedies, and documentaries from around the world focusing on the joys and complexities of Jewish life,” says the fest.
Titles include: Oscar-nommed “Steel Toes,” with director David Gow in person; “Making Trouble,” with Director Rachel Talbot in person; Oscar winner “West Bank Story”; Sundance winner “Sweet Mud,” and more.
Complete info and ticket/badge purchases, including early-bird deals, right HERE.
‘Jellyfish,’ Camera d’Or winner at Cannes this year, also plays the fest
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Crumbs, bits, clips and squibs
Svelte birthday suits are the hook in “Naked Boys Singing!,” the stage musical revue, which is now a movie that screens at 7 p.m. Dec. 4 at the Alamo South.
Presented by the Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival, Funny Boy Films and Human Rights Campaign Austin, the musical “sings the praises of male nudity.”
Oh, my.
Tickets are $10 HERE.
“The Hottest State,” the critically thrashed romance written and directed and co-starring Austin-born Ethan Hawke, comes to DVD Dec. 4. Just so you know.
Get all Xmasy and stuff at Reel Women’s “BIG Holiday Event” from 7 to 11 p.m. Dec. 3 at Hi-Lo (301 W. Sixth St.).
Five-buck admission includes happy hour drink prices, snacks, DJ blasts and the expected lively film-community networking. Oh, and dancing. And raffle. And silent auction. Man, this thing’s jamming. Call 971-1663 for more. Or hit THIS.
Just in time for awards season, ON Networks and South by Southwest Film are bestowing worthy digital entertainment projects The Greenlight Awards, “a competition aimed at discovering the next great, original and episodic Digital Series.”
Info, submissions criteria, etc. will be ready next month at SXSW.
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Spiro might win this ‘War’
Austin doc-maker Ellen Spiro and her co-director Phil Donahue might just take home Oscars for their Iraq-themed documentary “Body of War,” which has been shortlisted with 14 other films for best documentary feature at next year’s Academy Awards.
Spiro, a University of Texas film professor, is ecstatic but acutely aware of the pitfalls of getting the movie seen outside of the festival circuit.
“We have been getting amazing responses from critics and audiences, but we’ve had to do our own kamikaze theatrical distribution because of the supposed glut in the market for Iraq War related docs,” Spiro, a UT film professor, told us Tuesday.
“Distributors are running scared from a down market for indie films in general, and it is even worse for docs and Iraq docs in particular. But if I ran my life based on marketplace realities, I never would have become a documentary filmmaker or a professor in the first place.”
Spiro says the film, which has wowed crowds at festivals, will open theatrically in the spring, “even if we have to do it guerrilla indie style.”
Other Iraq-flavored docs on the shortlist include “No End in Sight,” “Taxi to the Dark Side” and “Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience.”
Five films from the shortlist will be selected as official Oscar nominees in January.
See more about “Body of War” HERE.
Spiro at work on ‘Body of War’
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Share your 2007 Top 10 or Top 20
With the addition of the six movies seen this week, the Out & About 2007 Top 20 (or so) films is revised to include, somewhat in order of 1 to 20:
“No Country for Old Men,” “Knocked Up,” “Into the Wild,” “Gone Baby Gone,” “The Nines,” “Eastern Promises,” “Michael Clayton,” “3:10 to Yuma,” “Manufacturing Dissent,” “The Darjeeling Limited.” “Transformers,” “American Gangster,” “Crazy Love,” “Superbad,” “Once,” “300,” “Waitress,” “Shooter,” “Hairspray,” “The Namesake” and “Hot Fuzz.”
Not yet seen but promising before the end of the year on the big screen or DVD: “In the Valley of Elah,” “Ratatouille,” “Sweeney Todd,” “La Vie en Rose,” “His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass,” “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “Dan in Real Life,” “We Own the Night,” “Across the Universe,” and “Rescue Dawn.
Share your Top 10 or Top 20 in the commentary box…
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Poyser poised for success
We’ve been out of town for a spell, so some of our news bits might be a wee dated. Still, this one boasts a hearty shelf life.
Austin auteur Bryan Poser (“Dear Pillow,” now on DVD) was honored last week at the first annual Lone Star International Film Festival in Fort Worth. Other honorees are Martin Sheen and, of course, Robert Rodriguez.
Here’s what they say:
UP AND COMER AWARD - Bryan Poyser: Bryan Poyser is a filmmaker and mentor to filmmakers. He graduated from the UT Austin RTF school in 1996, the same year he co-founded the highly-rated Cinematexas International Short Film Festival. In 2001, he wrote and directed the award-winning short PLEASURELAND. Three years later he shot his first feature, DEAR PILLOW, a darkly comic, coming-of-age story about a teenager who tries to get a job writing pornography. “Pillow” was named one of the 15 Undiscovered Gems of 2004 by Indiewire. In 2005 Bryan was nominated for the Independent Spirit Someone to Watch Award. We had no trouble electing him for out similarly-themed Up-And-Comer Award.
Poyser on the set of Austin-made ‘The Cassidy Kids,’ which he co-wrote and co-produced
Congrats, Bryan! Check out the busy Austin film scenester’s blog, too, HERE.
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Beesley’s up a ‘Creek’; paddle optional
Hot Austin doc-maker Bradley Beesley’s latest is “The Creek Runs Red,” a chronicle of toxic waste in rural America, and it airs at 9 p.m. Tuesday on KLRU channel 9 for PBS’ Independent Lens series.
“Told from the perspective of residents in Picher, Oklahoma, the one-hour doc examines the impact of urbanization, a failing local economy and the distinction of living amidst one of America’s most toxic landscapes,” say the flacks.
There’s lots more to this tapestry of textured Americana, an emblematic story of rights, waste and eco-tragedy.
Beesley is best know for the cult-fave docs “Okie Noodling” and the Flaming Lips fandango “The Fearless Freaks.”
Get the scoop at www.thecreekrunsred.com.
We really don’t know what this means, but it intrigues unfailingly:
Artists Relations Group, an Austin based company that provides casting, consulting services and co-production solutions, announced today that they have signed a movie deal with Fidel Castro’s daughter, Alina Fernandez. Fernandez has been living in exile in Miami since she escaped Cuba disguised as a Spanish tourist. …
The film, based on Fernandez’ non-fiction memoir that has been published in at least 11 countries, is expected to be very powerful with a worldwide audience reach. ARG’s creative team is planning on a film budget in the range of 10 to 20 million dollars and have an end of 2008 goal to move into production.
Discover a teeny bit more, all wide-eyed and agape, HERE, at the world’s least-content-heavy Web site ever.
Chris Cobb at The Herald-Zeitung in New Braunfels reported this on Nov. 2:
Cameras will be rolling in New Braunfels for the next few weeks, as crews are in town to shoot Oak Film’s production “The Kings of Appletown.”
It features Cody and Dylan Sprouse from Disney’s “The Suite Life with Zach and Cody,” and is directed by Bobby Moresco, who earned an Oscar for best original screenplay for the 2004 film “Crash.” The 15-year-old twins will be the stars of the adventurous coming-of-age story set almost entirely in New Braunfels.
See this article and a picture HERE.
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Sneak screening of ‘Darfur Now’
Director Ted Braun is in town today to screen his documentary “Darfur Now” for the Strauss Center International Security Film Series. The free screening is 7 p.m. tonight at Chemical/Petroleum Engineering ( CPE ) Building 2.214 on the corner of Speedway and Dean Keeton Street on the University of Texas campus. The movie is promoted as a call to action to end the Darfur tragedy and focuses on six individuals inside the Sudanese region. www.RobertStraussCenter.org. It opens next week at the Arbor.
