AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL

Family feuds, comics – and cricket – have starring roles in fest

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, October 10, 2007

'Shotgun Stories'

Austinite Jeff Nichols makes an auspicious debut as writer-director in "Shotgun Stories," a film so self-assured we'll choose not to resent that it was made in his native Arkansas. The tale of decades-old resentments that bubble into a lethal feud, it pits two sets of half-brothers — one fathered during a man's alcoholic youth, one sired after his rehabilitation — against each other after the patriarch's death. Not as purely harrowing as some advance reviews suggest, the film cuts its menace with a rural, unhurried (even half-comic) attitude that's appropriate for characters who don't mind living for a spell in a pup tent or broken-down van. That approach will satisfy those drawn to "Stories" by its critically beloved producer, David Gordon Green ("All the Real Girls"), whose sensibility is echoed here; it should also keep "Stories" from being lumped into a genre ghetto where it doesn't belong.

10:15 Friday and 9:15 p.m. Tuesday, Bullock Theater

— John DeFore

'Gearing Up: The Fire Within'

Sheetal Agwaral's brief but bloodless documentary presumably plays better in the regions that produced it, India and Hong Kong, former British colonies that exalt the game of cricket. Cricket, darn. Right there we're lost, because Agwaral, attuned to his native audience, explains zip of the sport's mechanics, granting us blind-folded entree into the impassioned subculture. Mostly, cricket is the backdrop for a classic story of human struggle — "Rocky" with shin pads — focussed on 14-year-old Ugrasen, who's left home to train in faraway Mumbai. Agwaral dilates Ugrasen's microscopic personal fight to climb the game's ranks to a universal scope, but the flaccid story curdles universality into dreary familiarity. Sports dramas demand rip-snortin' on-field action and the contagious spirit of screaming fans. None of that is here, and you never feel the stakes. Worse, I still don't know what a wicket is.

5:30 p.m. Friday, Stephen F. Austin Theater; 7 p.m. Thursday, the Hideout

— Chris Garcia

'Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist'

Despite the fact that his work is more praised than read these days, Will Eisner — creator of "The Spirit," inventor of the label "graphic novel" — is a seminal figure in comic-book history, and "Portrait" makes the most of that, using old and new interviews with legendary cartoonists (Jack Kirby, Joe Kubert, Harvey Kurtzman) that shed light simultaneously on both subject and interviewee. Today's comics stars chime in as well (including "Sin City" creator Frank Miller, who's planning to direct a "Spirit" film), testifying to his enduring influence and recounting the amusing story of the patriarch's unlikely involvement with the taboo-treading Underground comix industry. An essential doc for comics fans, "Portrait" will also enlighten the curious (fans of "Kavalier and Clay," for instance, whose author Michael Chabon appears) and would make a fantastic bonus feature when Miller's "Spirit" makes its way to DVD.

5 p.m. Friday, Dobie; 2:15 p.m. Sunday, Alamo Lake Creek

— John DeFore