SXSW Features

SEVERE CLEAR'S KRISTIAN FRAGA AND MIKE SCOTTI By Alicia Van Couvering

2009-03-25T23:06:00.005-04:00

Severe Clear premiered at SXSW this week, five years to the day after the US invasion of Baghdad. Back then, Kristian Fraga was just one of millions, watching events unfold on cable news. First Lieutenant Mike Scotti was crossing the Iraqi border in an artillery tank, and he had a video camera. Severe Clear is a chronicle of the Baghdad invasion culled from over 60 hours of this footage, edited from a pure first-person perspective to ensure that the viewer goes through an experience as close to Mike’s as possible. We first meet Mike and his unit in a desert camp, where they drink too much, curse too much, make gay jokes and fart jokes, shoot guns at stuff and otherwise prepare for war. It’s unsettling to see these men acting like such...

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FOR THE LOVE OF MOVIES' GERALD PEARY By Alicia Van Couvering

2009-03-24T12:17:00.004-04:00

Gerald Peary is not a cell phone person. He has witnessed a quarter century of films and criticism, from when Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris drew their lines in the critical sand to the currently expanding blogosphere. Gerald Peary is old school. A working film critic for 25 years, his work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Toronto Globe and Mail, The Chicago Tribune, Film Comment, Cineaste, Sight and Sound and Positif, to name a few. He is the weekly reviewer for the Boston Phoenix, one of a rapidly diminishing club of alternative weeklies as paper after paper fires their local critics and relies on a small cadre of nationally syndicated reviewers. This is the “crisis of criticism,” as Peary calls it, but his new film isn’t only...

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CREATIVE NONFICTION'S LENA DUNHAM By Alicia Van Couvering

2009-03-18T01:34:00.005-04:00

There is an actual college Creative Nonfiction class in Lena Dunham’s Creative Nonfiction, which premieres in the Emerging Visions section at SXSW this week. There is also the actual Dunham, who plays both Ella, a college student trying to get a grip on an ambiguous non-starter romance, as well as the heroine in the 16mm-filmed representation of the John Waters/fairy-tale screenplay Ella is writing. Dunham wrote the script, about her own real-life ill fated dorm-room non-romance when she couldn’t concentrate on her own fairy tale/John Waters script, which she was completing for writing class. In Creative Nonfiction we meet this boy when he claims that mold in his room has compelled him to sleep in Lena’s bed; he’s bewildered when Ella...

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THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF LITTLE DIZZLE'S DAVID RUSSO By Alicia Van Couvering

2009-03-15T17:00:00.000-04:00

David Russo’s The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle is not your average Seattle-based, night-shift janitors eating self-heating cookies as unwitting test subjects male pregnancy special effects-peppered butt fish movie. The film’s official synopsis is: “When Dory’s life seems like it’s going down the drain, a strange ‘new life’ takes shape inside him and he learns that sometimes you don’t have to find meaning; it grows in you.” But this is a film that defies description and transcends its bizarre title and bizarre-er premise to take you into a strange and beautiful place you never knew you wanted to explore (but are finally glad you did.) The film stars Marshall Allman as Dory, the new young janitor; Natasha Lyonne (The Slums of...

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ST. NICK'S DAVID LOWERY By Alicia Van Couvering

2009-03-15T15:00:00.000-04:00

There is almost no dialogue in the first half of David Lowery’s feature debut, St. Nick. A young boy and a girl enter an abandoned house, clean it up, build a fire, forget to open a window and fill the house with smoke, figure out a chimney and watch the embers turn into flames. They sleep, they forage for food; somehow they survive, until reality starts bearing down on them. It’s not clear why they ran away, or if anyone is looking for them. The film is stark and the house feels haunted, but you can’t stop thinking: this was my fantasy when I was a kid. This was all I wanted, to run away and survive on marshmallow sandwiches and sleep in pillow forts. Texas-bred Lowery is no stranger to SXSW, having showcased his short A Catalog of...

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BROCK ENRIGHT'S JODY LEE LIPES By Alicia Van Couvering

2009-03-14T17:00:00.000-04:00

When Jody Lee Lipes set out to follow his friend Brock Enright prepare a solo art show for the prestigious Perry Rubenstein gallery, he knew he wasn’t going to change anyone’s opinion about contemporary art. If you hate the art world, you might still hate it after watching Enright’s strenuous, stressful and altogether bizarre chronicle of several months putting a solo show together. But you have probably never seen art-making this up close; probably never witnessed the day-to-day negotiations for resources and time between an artist and gallery; probably never seen someone try to justify their art to their girlfriend’s brother while naked and covered in white paint. Shooting verite-style with seemingly limitless access to his subjects,...

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AMERICAN PRINCE'S TOMMY PALLOTTA By Scott Macaulay

2009-03-14T15:37:00.007-04:00

Even if you consider yourself a literate, well-viewed, cinema completist, you may not remember the name “Steven Prince.” I could jog your memory and tell you that he was influential to the films of Quentin Tarantino, Rick Linklater, and, most directly, Martin Scorsese, and the name still might not ring a bell. If that’s the case, don’t stress — I didn’t recognize the name either, even though I vaguely remembered that there exists a Scorsese film, American Boy, that I’ve never seen, and that Prince’s one scene in Taxi Driver, in which he plays Easy Andy, a fast-talking gun dealer, is one of the movie’s most memorable. If you’re like me then and can’t place Prince, Tommy Pallotta wants you to see his new short feature, American Prince,...

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RIP!: A REMIX MANIFESTO'S BRETT GAYLOR By Alicia Van Couvering

2009-03-14T15:00:00.000-04:00

It was a calculated move on Brett Gaylor’s part to not only make a movie about fair use, intellectual property and copyright, but to make a movie that you could dance to. It begins as a case study of the mashup musician Girl Talk, whose music is comprised of thousands of samples from artists as disparate as Madonna, Elton John, Rihanna, the Jackson 5 and Muddy Waters (and doesn’t hesitate to try to make you dance). Then Gaylor jumps off into his Remixer’s Manifesto, the points of which are: 1. Culture Always Builds 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 the Control of the Past. These issues are part of a very big and monied argument...

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ALEXANDER THE LAST'S JOE SWANBERG By Alicia Van Couvering

2009-03-12T10:01:00.002-04:00

If there were to be a mumblecore parade, Joe Swanberg would be the man in the shiny red convertible, waving to onlookers and trailing a team of baton twirlers in his wake. His films – LOL, Hannah Takes the Stairs, Nights & Weekends – have helped to define a genre that was never supposed to be a genre at all. Alexander the Last, his latest, was executive produced by Noah Baumbach and stars Jess Weixler (Teeth), Barlow Jacobs (Great World of Sound, Shotgun Stories), Amy Seimetz and Justin Rice (Mutual Appreciation), as well as Jane Adams and Josh Hamilton. It’s already been snatched up by IFC for release, and its On-Demand roll-out coincides with its SXSW premiere. While Swanberg’s previous films were about the awkward margins of...

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BREAKING UPWARDS' DARYL WEIN & ZOE LISTER-JONES By Alicia Van Couvering

2009-03-12T10:00:00.005-04:00

In Breaking Upwards, Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones play a young New York couple named Daryl and Zoe. The film was written by the two of them, plus Peter Duchan, directed by Wein, and produced by all three. Zoe plays an actress, starring in an Off-Broadway play; Julie White plays Daryl’s mother, and was cast after appearing in an Off-Broadway play with Lister-Jones. To say that this film is autobiographical is, to be brief, an understatement. It’s a romantic comedy that borrows its hyper-articulate, hyper-intellectual style from Woody Allen just as much as do the actual semi-Jewish, overly-educated New Yorkers upon whom Allen’s films are based. Both NYU graduates, Wein was also a professional actor before heading behind the camera for...

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A CONVERSATION WITH YOU WONT MISS ME'S RUSSO-YOUNG & EDMANDS

2009-03-12T09:50:00.001-04:00

Ry Russo-Young’s You Won't Miss Me was one of our favorite films at Sundance this year. It is a free-wheeling, lyrical but sometimes jarring depiction of a few months in the life of young and struggling New York actress navigating both harsh auditions and her own chaotic emotional relationships. The film has a deceptively casual feel as it avoids obvious plot points and melodramatic narrative contrivances. By its conclusion, however, it feels full — an honest portrait of character we haven't quite seen on screen before at a very specific moment in her life. Following its Sundance premiere, the film screens at SXSW, where Russo-Young won a special jury prize in 2007 for her first feature, Orphans. The following is a short conversation...

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