I saw 19 films at the SXSW film festival (Steven saw 20). Here is a list of them and a one minute writing exercise about each.
1. Sisters
it's a horror movie. there's lots of blood. chloe sevigny is in it. i liked her. i liked the movie. i didn't know what kind of movie it was gonna be so i went in totally ignorant. i like to do that whenever possible. it was kinda cheesy. it was a remake of a 1960s movie, or was it 1970s?
2. Third Ward TX
this is cool. there's a bunch of row houses that were owned by a chinese businessman and a group of artists hunted him down and bought the houses and paid the back taxes and turned the row houses into an art project, lots of different galleries that different artists, eight at a time, i believe, get to show work for six months. it's constantly---
3. Does Your Soul Have a Cold?
slow moving. japanese people with depression. that didn't used to be the case. they didn't used to have depression in japan. apparently an american drug company introduced the idea and now there are a lot of depressed japanese people taking drugs. it was slow moving, depressing. i'm not sure i liked it. i don't know, it was by the guy who did---
4. What Would Jesus Buy?
performance art. political theater. this was the best experience because the reverend billy and the stop shopping choir were in the audience seeing the film for the first time with us. then they all got up on stage and got talked into singing their stop shopping gospel theme song. it was fantastic. we sat in the balcony at the paramount. it was beautiful, and a great message, too---
5. Fall From Grace
i almost can't remember what this was about. oh, yeah, it was a student film about fred phelps. it was about a hateful man and his hateful followers, mostly family members. it got kinda confusing because fred phelps protested homosexuals and he protested the war. or was that what he was doing? they were saying thank god for the iraq war or something like that. i was confused. it was---
6. Elvis and Anabelle
joe montegna was really the only thing i liked about this movie. the other actors were good, but the story was weak. but somehow joe montegna took his part, as a brain damaged mortician with a hunchback, and made it really sweet and funny and believable and likable. not much else about the film was believable. it was pretty---
7. Manufacturing Dissent
how many people love michael moore? how many hate him? how many have come to this movie with an open mind? i was part of the latter group. it was okay, but it wasn't a real surprising documentary. i kind of hated the fact that michael moore seems to have turned out to be like this. it's disappointing. it's like when clinton got elected. it seemed like it was gonna be good, but nothing---
8. Reel Shorts 2
this will be hard to write about. i don't remember a lot of the short films. do i remember any of them? i don't even know where i was to see this. i don't think it was at the dobie because we had to go to the dobie for the experimental shorts. which i liked better. oh, how sad, i can't think of a one, but it was so long ago when we saw them. three four five minute movies, how are we expected to remember?
9. Experimental Shorts
there were some really good shorts, a couple of bad ones. one called the color of lemons and something else, was the best. it resonated with me the most. the guy who did it was sweet, young, a film student maybe. the main character in the film was based on his life. he was gay, or was he? he didn't seem to know. i liked that. and the puppet one with silky doing the voiceover---
10. Smiley Face
okay, we were really stoned because it was a film about a woman who was really stoned. it seemed like a good idea. and it was, apparently. we laughed. i was nauseous because i laughed so much, so hard. i guess it's good we weren't going to see trainspotting or something because we would've been in real trouble! but really, it was a fun movie. i want to see it again to look for the alphabetical clues that i believe are there---
11. Billy the Kid
i loved this film. it was about a fifteen year old kid, an outcast in high school. the director was there. she was sweet and cool, and pretty. the film is hard to describe without saying something about it that the director would rather not do, put a label on billy. he has some emotional problems, and some of them can be put into clinical terms. but i was---
12. Zoo
you know a film about a man dying while getting fucked by a horse is gonna be fully packed. just because of the subject matter. steven was much more disappointed in the movie than i was. i don't know if he wanted to see more. i did not. i think i saw enough. they didn't really show anything, but it was all reenactments, steven didn't like that. i was like "why not?" of course. and it---
13. Monkey Warfare
oh, yeah, this was a good one. i liked the actors, i liked the story. i liked the direction and the cinematography. it was a sleeper, perhaps, an indie film deluxe. very nice. it was made in canada. it had a couple that were likable. it was a good film. sweet, touching. all those things you'd hope for. (oops, i forgot to set the alarm so it's not gonna go off...!)
14. Last Days of Left Eye
i thought i was going to see this so i could laugh once again at the woman who made me laugh so much with a song like "waterfalls." i couldn't get enough of it, it was so bad. but i was surprised that i really enjoyed this self-made film. of course, it was edited by somebody else because left eye died in the making of it. that was pretty shocking, the camera was on when the car wrecked. i knew it was coming but i didn't expect---
15. Reign Over Me
this was the most disappointing film of the festival that we saw. and adam sandler and don cheadle were both there. it was more about the audience adoring them than really paying attention to the bad writing, the homophobia, the misogyny. i wish we hadn't seen it with an audience that loved adam so much, laughed so hard at every little thing he said. it was ridiculous. and steven and---
16. The Unforeseen
this was okay, but it was another experience that was definitely not made better by the audience. the director is a local woman, and it's about how austin is getting gentrified, basically, but specifically about the barton springs issues that have been going on for years. i learned some stuff, but the audience hissed so loud that i missed things. they were kind of silly to act like that in my---
17. Nick Drake: A Skin Too Few
i wept throughout this film. nick drake's music is so sweet, so delicate. i knew it would be kind of sad. there was no film of him, just photographs, and when i heard that at the beginning i thought i was going to be bored, but i was engaged, and as i said i wept because it was just so sad, his life. it was beautifully filmed, it's an old film. it seemed really---
18. Greensboro: Closer to Truth
another depressing documentary. it had to do with the kkk. and i thought it would be more engaging than it was. but i was a little bored by it, and i think put out by the fact that it pointed out how little things have changed, how racist this country still is and probably always will be. it was disappointing. i'm sure the filmmaker didn't expect it to turn out this way but what could he/she---
19. Helvetica
i'm glad the last film we saw was enjoyable. and what an unlikely subject matter, a font! i do like graphics, though, and i really wanted to see this. almost didn't because steven and i were bickering a little bit and tired from seeing all the movies and just not enjoying each others' company, but we came around and it was a funny, interesting film. one of the better either of us saw in the festival. and we were okay---
