SLO Film Fest: Katharine Ross and Hollywood Dynasties

by Nathaniel R

The opening night event about to begin

Film Festivals are a joy so we rarely pass up the opportunity to discover a new one. We're here in sunny but brisk San Luis Obispo (it's March in California) for the 25th annual edition of their film festival. San Luis Obispo was once named "the Happiest Place in America," by Oprah Winfrey, and at least four locals (kid you not!) tell us this within hours of our arrival! Does it live up to the title? It's hard to say but we did meet a gorgeous super nice 30something couple (hi Connie & Michael) who invited us to sit at their table at the opening night party and they seemed pretty happy to be there. Everyone else did, too. The fairly universal thing about film festival gathering is that everyone seems happy to be right there. Films were meant to be seen in groups, something we hope we don't lose with  'watch it on your phone / at home' ease of streaming.  It's the primal sitting 'round the fire' to listen to stories instinct. 

Speaking of old forms of storytelling, the opening night festivities went way back, pairing spoken word with music...

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SXSW: Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever in "Booksmart"

Abe Fried-Tanzer reporting from the SXSW Festival

Everyone loves a buddy comedy – usually. It’s rare that such films are both crowd-pleasing and critically well-received, since entertainment value doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with quality. Though its detractors would surely disagree, Superbad is a great example of a film that, while inherently stupid, manages to be intelligent and funny in its portrayal of two teenagers trying desperately to have sex before the end of high school. It’s fitting that Jonah Hill’s younger sister Beanie Feldstein, who is close to the age he was when he made that film in 2007, is one of the two stars of a new buddy comedy that feels particularly forward-focused.

In Booksmart, Feldstein plays Molly, the class president and valedictorian whose need to point out other people’s mistakes and shortcomings earns her few friends. She has the only friend she needs in Amy, played by Kaitlyn Dever, who shares her passion for homework and whose social skills are only moderately more palpable...

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SXSW: "Olympic Dreams"

Guest contributor Tony Ruggio reporting from SXSW...

Olympic Dreams, starring comedian Nick Kroll and real-life Olympic athlete Alexi Pappas, is both innovative and a little mundane. Shot behind the curtain in Olympic Village during Pyongyang, it’s a romantic two-hander set against the 2018 games. It also doubles as a real deep-dive into an unknowable subculture. Blurring the lines between narrative and documentary, with many athletes and employees playing themselves, director Jeremy Teicher is a one-man band capturing the unglamorous side of the games. The dorm-like bedrooms, spare game rooms, and impending doom of life after it’s all over...

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Doc Corner: Fyre Festival, Jean-Luc Godard and Eureka in First-Quarter Round-Up

By Glenn Dunks

We sometimes get so carried away with Oscar and all things award season adjacent that we forget there are very real movies being released in those first couple of months of the year. After last week's very topical Leaving Neverland review, we're going to back back into January and February and pluck out a few titles we have seen: Fyre, The Image Book, and The Gospel According to Eureka. 

FYRE 
It's not very often that Shoah comes up in conversation at a party, but there we were when somebody asked me about Fyre, the new documentary from the director of American Movie, Chris Smith. I had said I would rather watch all nine and a half hours of Holocaust testimonials than I would watch another 90 minutes of Fyre (including the adjacent Hulu documentary Fyre Fraud that I have no endured). I may have been several margaritas down and it may come off as unnecessary flippant, and yet here I am weeks later and it is a sentiment I would stand by...

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