Now in its 20th year, South by Southwest has become a unique fixture in the festival circuit, characterized by three components with ample correlation: music, film, and interactive media. Each spring, hundreds of performers, films, and panel speakers gather in Austin, Texas, to acknowledge and celebrate the state of virtually all media.
The film conference commences on March 9th with Scott Frank’s The Lookout, the first of over sixty world premieres screening at the festival. A trade show will coincide, and will include panelists (and Austin natives) Robert Rodriguez and Richard Linklater, as well as a variety of industry personalities.
2007 will introduce a special focus on music documentaries entitled “24 Beats Per Second,” including films centering Robyn Hitchcock, Scott Walker, and the Silver Jews, among others. This will precede a mini-retrospective of Ron Mann’s Imagine the Sound, D.A. Pennebaker’s Monterey Pop, Bruce Weber’s Let’s Get Lost, and Eagle Pennell’s The Whole Shootin’ Match.
Park Chan-wook’s I’m a Cyborg, but That’s OK will close the festival.
Refer to this page over the next few weeks for reviews of select Festival films.
Sebastian is introduced indirectly, in a duffle bag set somewhere near the front door in anticipation of an exit. His host admires it as he would a lover’s body: embracing it, nuzzling his chin in to it. This veneration is purely artificial, which speaks a legion for his — and that of the film’s — subsequent masochistic motives.
Chris’ utility in crime is his reliable unreliability. He is easy to recruit, easy to manipulate, and easy to discredit. But there are nuances that can project the trajectory of his days into directions unexpected; this is to say his inclusion in any dishonorable equation for profit is a potentially, if not certainly, caustic element.
Moore is such a domineering presence in his films he seems capable of conjuring controversy at every turn; co-director Melnyk, as the emcee herein, is totally passive. She comes face-to-face with Moore at several instances, and in each seems a bit frenzied and speechless, her questions faltering, and Moore’s excuses to leave imminent.
The first perfect game in Pac-Man is among a handful of near-insurmountable records that Mitchell holds in arcade gaming. He speaks of his accomplishments with total conceit, and his demeanor is at least partially earned, having enamored him with an immense, if peculiar, celebrity in a circle obsessed with keeping score.
The Ten is cohesive in the irreverence of its scenarios. In sum, they will involve sodomy, Roberta Fleck, as many CAT scan machines as can fit in a two-story home, and Winona Ryder in Thou Shalt Not Steal
At each match — held between two teams that tally points as both encircle an oval rink — the scanty fashion is ruined in wonderful glory, as women topple over one another, some of them jettisoning each other of the rink entirely. The concept is ingenious, at once a catalyst for feminism and an embellished entertainment for men.
For much of its duration, the film is a relentless exhibition of awkwardness and anxiety. These aspects begin to become instilled in the viewer; exiting the film becomes a concentrated effort to deter one’s sudden depression after having sit through it. And yet, as disheartening an experience as this was, it remains a beautiful film.
This film is all nuance, unpredictability, and non-sequiturs. It is comprised exclusively of conversations, in bathrooms, kitchens, or apartment doorways, and the precocious Hannah is at the center of all of them, a hub to which every other character is intermittently connected.
Ron would eventually settle with his beloved animals, tending to them at his private ranch. We see how ferociously they’ll devour helpings of raw meat for lunch, and later how Ron approaches them so nonchalantly, as pets and not wild animals. They are essentially his last friends, simultaneous reminders of his accomplishments and his losses.
Hustwit’s film remains austere and distant, concerned with articulating the arguments for and against Helvetica’s use via a series of interviews with internationally renowned typographers and designers. The film will neither endorse nor condemn these debates, but in its distance — retained in placid photography and an anonymous electronic score — it will reinforce the typeface’s idealism or familiarity, depending upon which camp you’re in.
The setting is regularly scenic, comprised of rural Washington state locales found at dusk or twilight, the sun or stars framed above in some picturesque composition. It is a relaxing film to watch, austere and comforting in such a way that Zoo’s aural components will become unexpectedly, uncommonly troubling.
