SXSW: "Sister Aimee" and an actress to watch

Abe Fried-Tanzer reporting from SXSW

It’s fitting that the last film I got to see at SXSW is actually one I missed at the Sundance Film Festival, brought to Austin as part of the “Festival Favorites” section which also included buzzy titles like Apollo 11 and Little Monsters. Billed as a comedy, drama, musical, romance, and western, Sister Aimee is certainly ambitious. It's also one of the most intriguing films currently on the festival circuit. In its opening title card, Sister Aimee bills its story as five and a half percent truth; the rest: imagination...

Click to read more ...

SLO Film Fest: Wolves, Sharks, and that "Delicate Balance"

Nathaniel R reporting from the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival

After a delightful trip back to 1969 iconography and disturbing peek back at 1933 fascism, the San Luis Obispo's 25th festival threw us directly into the immediate now with three engaging documentaries exploring very real, very urgent problems with our ecosystems, relationships with animal life, and the dehumanizing dangers of globalism and late stage capitalism. That may sound depressing, and it was to an extent, but all three films were suffused with enough passion and optimism to make their bitter pills easier to swallow.

The shortest and "lightest" of these with Collin Monda's hour-long documentary The Trouble With Wolves, which is locked but not quite finished (needing funds to complete its rights clearances and such). It's a surprisingly nuanced look at the success and aftershocks of a 1995 federal program to reintroduce gray wolves to the US via Yellowstone National Park.

Click to read more ...

SXSW: "X & Y"

Abe Fried-Tanzer reporting from SXSW

X & Y's stars Mikael Persbrandt and director Anna Odell

If you’ve ever wondered what the Scandinavian version of a Charlie Kaufman movie would look like, here’s your answer. The Oscar-winning writer of such imaginative explorations of inner machinations within the movie business as Being John Malkovich and Adaptation and director of Synecdoche New York. The latter serves as the best comparison for this film, featuring a copy of New York City built inside a warehouse designed to have life truly imitate art, or rather the other way around, for his new play. Synecdoche is broader and more tinted with science fiction than this film, but those who have seen it will see an immediate parallel...

Click to read more ...

SLO Film Fest: Franchot & Fascism

by Nathaniel R

Walter Huston a fascist American president in "Gabriel Over the White House"

Those of us who live in big cities with dozens of theaters and access to films from around the world sometimes forget the need for communities of dedicated cinephiles elsewhere. Likeminded cinephiles are easy to find online and share obscure movie-watching with but IRL outside the biggest cities you often need a regional film festival to find them. Community, and not just of cinephiles, is what film festivals thrive on. The best regional festivals find ways to incorporate local groups and artists of multiple kinds. SLO Fest does that with local filmmakers of course and also local musicians like the Malibu Coast Silent Film Orchestra. But sometimes local groups sponsor specific festival selections.

For instance we were completely puzzled at the inclusion of a 1933 movie we'd never heard of in a festival that mostly centers around new films, docs, and discoveries, so of course we scheduled it. We arrived to Gabriel Over the White House completely curious. We knew only that Franchot Tone was in it (you know about our Franchot Tone problem. Ahem) and that is usually enough. And here's where the regional community feeling comes in...

Click to read more ...

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...

Click to read more ...