Abe's SXSW Wrap: Top Ten + Best Performances

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

Jay Duplass and Tatiana Maslany star in the romantic drama "Pink Wall"

The SXSW Film Festival is officially over, and the official winners have all been announced. I managed to catch 34 titles this year, but just three of them won prizes: Alice, the story of a mother who becomes an escort after learning her husband spent all their money on them (which just barely missed my top 10 best of the fest), the comedy Yes, God, Yes and the doc Running with Beto, which was cool to see with an audience of Texas liberals.

Nathaniel likes us to do "jury of one" wrap-ups if we see a lot of festival films so here are my picks for the best in multiple categories, including acting honors... 

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Stage Door: Kiss, Me Kate

by Dancin' Dan

“I hate men,” sings Kelli O’Hara in the Roundabout Theater Company’s revival of Kiss Me, Kate, and the audience applauds in agreement. It may be a bit counterintuitive, but right now feels like exactly the right time to revive this golden age musical, about a formerly married, constantly bickering couple starring in a musical version of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. It's the right time to go to the theater and see a farce where a woman gives as good as she gets from a powerful, abusive man. And Scott Ellis’s sparkling revival delivers, with a little bit of help from some “additional script material” by Amanda Green, and a lot of help from its dynamite leading lady.

This is the best Kelli O’Hara has been since her performance as Nellie Forbush in Bartlett Sher’s 2008 revival of South Pacific...

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The winning films from SXSW and SLO Festivals

Austin's SXSW extravaganza (it's not just films there but music and comedy festivals simultaneously) and San Luis Obispo's 25th anniversary film festivals are both a wrap. And with festival wraps come jury and audience prizes! While each year's mainstream gold rush culminating in the Oscars sometimes get snarky reactions in terms of all the back-patting of already über successful people, festival prizes are different. They can be career-making or at least significantly augmenting moments for indie filmmakers, who don't have the benefit of millions in P&A budgets or A list careers to bolster public interest. Awards are often the way artists can begin to forge a creative career. So keep an eye out on these titles and people in case they work their way around to you.

SXSW WINNERS

Saint Frances

NARRATIVE, AUDIENCE AWARDS
• Main Slate: Saint Frances (Alex Thompson) This dramedy is about a young woman who takes a job as a nanny shortly after having an abortion.
• "Headliners": Longshot (Jonathan Levine) New comedy starring Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen
• "Spotlight": The Peanut Butter Falcon (Tyler Nilson, Michael Schwartz) <-- Abe reviewed this one for us. Shia Labeouf stars...

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Beauty vs Beast: Won't You Remember Me

Jason from MNPP here on this chilly March afternoon thinking of leaving it all behind and boarding a train out to Montauk -- tomorrow marks the 15th anniversary of one of the Great Films of the new century (née millenium), Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which rescrambled our brains for the first time on March 19th 2004, and we've never been the same since. Have you watched it lately? I watch it basically once per year, which guarantees I have one great big sobbing session at least once per year. Anyway we've already done one of our "Beauty vs Beast" contests for the film's leads before, so today we'll dive a little deeper into the film's exceedingly fine stable of supporting players -- on one side we have the delectably weaselly Patrick (Elijah Wood) and on the other the more-confused-by-the-minute Mary (Kirsten Dunst), who both enrich the film's main romantic thrust in surprising and sad ways...

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PREVIOUSLY Y'all truly surprised me with last week's contest that pit Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool's lead lovers against one another -- Jamie Bell took the lead early on and never looked back, taking 65% at the end; it's very rare for actresses to lose here on TFE! Why do you think it happened this time? Said Mareko:

"I'm #TeamGloria in life (what an underrated talent) but lean toward #TeamPeter in this movie. Annette and Jamie really are sublime together, and isn't it interesting that she did back-to-back movies set in 1979? Imagine Dorothea Fields and Gloria Grahame in the same universe, living a mere hour away from each other!"

What did you see this weekend?

The top of the box office charts this weekend (and a few comments thereafter)

Weekend Box Office (Actuals) (March 15th-17th)
W I D E	PLATFORM / LIMITED
1 Captain Marvel $69.3 (cum. $266.2) on 4310 screens REVIEW	1 🔺  No Manches Frida 2 $3.8 on 472 screens *NEW*

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