Austin360 blogs > Austin Movie Blog > Archives > 2010 > February > 03 > Entry
Assessing the films screening at this year’s SXSW
During 17 years as one of the world’s iconic independent film festivals, South by Southwest has gone from scrappy and grungy to sparkly and a bit Hollywood-y. It’s grown up, luring more established filmmakers with more accomplished films. These days SXSW feels less like Slamdance and a lot more like Sundance, without betraying its devotion to low-budget underdogs and exciting new visions and voices.
SXSW’s 2010 film line-up, announced Thursday, demonstrates this easy- going mix of minors and majors. It begins with a mainstream bang March 12: the world premiere of the Lionsgate comedy “Kick-Ass,” based on Mark Millar’s comic book series and starring Aaron Johnson and Nicolas Cage (it opens theatrically April 16). Later, it unveils the world premiere of “MacGruber,” starring Will Forte and Kristen Wiig and based on the “Saturday Night Live” skit spoofing ’80s television show “MacGyver.”
Dropping big Hollywood comedies into its slate has proven extremely successful for SXSW in recent years. Premieres of “Knocked Up,” “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “I Love You, Man” have not only shown that the festival is hip to “edgier” mainstream fare but that it knows how to fill seats.
These films are joined in the fest’s “Headliners” section by five other titles, including recent Sundance hits “Cyrus” — an off-kilter romantic comedy by former Austinites Mark and Jay Duplass, starring John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei and Jonah Hill — and “The Runaways,” a biopic about the birth of the all-girl rock band, starring Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning.
This year’s festival boasts 119 feature films, including 55 world premieres, plucked from a record 1,572 submissions.
Some titles we’re most looking forward to have been road-tested at other festivals, including Austinite Bryan Poyser’s uneasy comedy “Lovers of Hate,” which earned good press at Sundance last month.
Others: the always-challenging Gaspar Noé’s Tokyo-set “Enter the Void”; “And Everything Is Going Fine,” Steven Soderbergh’s portrait of late monologist Spalding Gray; Cannes award-winner “Dogtooth,” an unsettling Greek drama by Giorgos Lanthimos; Tamra Davis’ documentary “Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child”; Harmony Korine’s reliably transgressive “Trash Humpers”; and Sundance Jury Prize winner “Winter’s Bone.”
Documentaries are a festival strong suit, and Austin viewers will take special notice of “American: The Bill Hicks Story” about the late cult stand-up comic who enjoyed a fervent local following. For film and pop-culture nerds (we all stand up) “The People vs. George Lucas” is described as an unflinching look at “the conflicted dynamic between Lucas and his fans.” Michel Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) offers a peculiar slant on his own family in “The Thorn in the Heart.”
Needless to say, music documentaries are top draws at SXSW. “Lemmy,” partly shot in Austin, takes an in-depth look at the gnarly Motörhead frontman/metal hero. Highlights of SXSW’s popular music-oriented “24 Beats Per Second” section include: “No One Knows About Persian Cats,” a feature about teenagers trying to form a rock band in modern Iran; “The Weird World of Blowfly,” a non-fiction chronicle of original foul-mouthed rapper Blowfly; and the David Byrne concert movie “Ride, Rise, Roar.”
Per tradition, Austin indie filmmakers are making a good show at the fest. “Mars,” a heady blend of live action and Day-Glo animation, is Geoff Marslett’s science-fiction romance, with Mark Duplass and Zoe Simpson. “Dance With the One,” a taut crime thriller produced by the University of Texas Film Institute, has its world premiere in the Narrative Feature Competition. And Simon Rumley’s gory “Red, White and Blue,” thrilling them this week at the Rotterdam film festival, stars Noah Taylor and Amanda Fuller and was co-executive-produced by the Alamo Drafthouse’s Tim League.
Speaking of League, his Fantastic Fest is presenting five special screenings of international genre pictures under the “SX Fantastic” heading, including midnight shows of “Monsters,” an alien thriller from the United Kingdom, Japanese vampire flick “Higanjima” and a yet- to-be announced “super secret” world premiere.
For those in a nostalgic mood, a trio of classic silent movies round- out the fest’s special events schedule, each with live musical accompaniment. Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 masterpiece “The Passion of Joan of Arc” screens with a live score played by English band The Nursery. The Invincible Czars perform with Tod Browning’s 1927 creep- out “The Unknown” and the Golden Hornet Project plays with Harry O. Hoyt’s marvelous dinosaur adventure “The Lost World.”
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Austin Film Festival 2010
Comments
Austinites love to be heard, and we're giving you a bullhorn. We just ask that you keep things civil. Leave out the personal attacks. Do not use profanity, ethnic or racial slurs, or take shots at anyone's sexual orientation or religion. If you can't be nice, we reserve the right to remove your material and ban users who violate our Visitor's agreement. Click here to report comment abuse.
By JP
February 12, 2010 2:17 AM | Link to this
Dance With the One…I went to the test screening of that about 6 months ago. It was an entertaining enough effort. I’d like to see it again in it’s final cut, if only to see which of our recommendations they took into account to improve the solid but rough cut we were shown.
By Louie
February 4, 2010 11:42 AM | Link to this
The Invincible Czars playing the Unknown is going to be mind-blowing and face-melting all at once.