Wrapping SXSW 09: Beats, Lone Star + Midnight.

By David Hudson on 04/02/2009

One last round of coverage of the coverage of this year's SXSW; earlier: features competitions, Emerging Visions and spotlights and specials.

24 Beats Per Second

At the AV Club, Leonard Pierce notes that "All Tomorrow's Parties" (site) is "actually 'directed' by fans, bands, event organizers, participants, and anyone else who felt like turning up, on an astonishing variety of media: 8mm film, video (analog and digital), cell phone cameras, and anything else that can capture moving pictures and sound. The film was edited together from seven years' worth of footage by over 200 people, and while the constant shifts in film and sound quality can be enervating, it does give a pretty enjoyable twist to what would otherwise merely be a serviceable concert film." More from Drew McWeeny at Hitfix.

"Anvil! The True Story of Anvil" (site) "would play perfectly on a double-bill with the Metallica documentary 'Some Kind of Monster,'" suggests, again, Leonard Pierce at the AV Club; "the latter film shows us a band that has reached unthinkable heights of success, and it's turned them into petty, unmanagable, petulant whiners. The former shows us a band that features two middle-aged working stiffs who travel all the way to Eastern Europe to play a show in front of 150 people, and still keep going forward every single day.... Who knows if 'Anvil!' will do anything for the band's career, but as a document of their perseverance, it's certainly something they should be as proud of as any of their albums." More from Zack Haddad (Film Threat) and Vadim Rizov (SpoutBlog).

"Intangible Asset Number 82": Site; David Cornelius interviews director Emma Franz for eFilmCritic.

"'Iron Maiden: Flight 666' isn't exactly a tour document, and it isn't exactly a music film, and it isn't exactly a biopic either, but whatever it is, it's infused with a sense of joy and energy that's found in the best of all these types of films," writes Leonard Pierce at the AV Club. "It won the Jury Award for best music documentary at SXSW this year, and for anyone who's seen it, it's pretty much impossible to argue the decision." More from Vadim Rizov at the SpoutBlog.

"Number One with a Bullet": trailer; director Jim Dziura.

"The Promised Land": Site.

"Brett Gaylor's 'RiP: A Remix Manifesto' [site] studies the paradoxes of copyright law and its discontents, but mainly it's a celebration of remix culture in the twenty-first century," writes Eric Kohn at indieWIRE. Alicia Van Couvering talks with Gaylor for Filmmaker. Online viewing tip. Boing Boing remixes RiP.

"Soul Power": "It's just awesome, especially if you love soul," writes texasinafrica. More reviews at IMDb.

"Still Bill": Site.

"'Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love' [site] was shown at SXSW in a 35mm print," writes Vadim Rizov at the SpoutBlog. "Director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi announced she'd brought it with her having last shown it in Burkina Faso three weeks ago, and it showed the wear-and-tear of having only one print to go around for a year: it was scratchy during the reel changes. But it was worth it: the doc had slow-burning visual texture and a sense of contextual place I don't really look for in documentaries anymore. I expect this to be the last time in my life I see a documentary screened in a print at a festival, and it was a good note to go out on. As the story of a controversy, 'N'Dour' takes its time: the first half gives you Senegalese musician superstar N'Dour's normal routine, the second the fracas around his 2004 album 'Egypt.' Vasarhelyi's obviously a fan, and she has enough concert footage to show why she was drawn to N'Dour before the drama started, but 'N'Dour' morphs into one of the more nuanced documentaries on modern Islam around." AJ Schnack rounds up reviews from Toronto.

Lone Star States

Scott Von Doviak at Screengrab: "Musician, author, comic, animal rescuer and self-described cowboy philosopher Kinky Friedman added another line to his resume in 2006: politician. Actually, that's a label he'd be quick to reject, but Friedman did mount a grassroots independent campaign for the Texas governorship then and now occupied by empty Republican suit Rick Perry. David Hartstein's engrossing, entertaining documentary 'Along Came Kinky... Texas Jewboy for Governor' follows the Kinkster and some of his opponents along the campaign trail, through the eyes of the staff and volunteers frustrated with the current state of the political system in the Lone Star State." And Jette Kernion talks with Hartstein.

"American Violet": Eugene Novikov (Cinematical) caught it in Telluride and found it to be "a very ordinary film about an extraordinary woman."

"Drunken Angel: The Legend of Blaze Foley": Site.

"'ExTerminators' [site] despite its nasty premise, is dishwater-gray comedy when it should be pitch-black," writes Leonard Pierce at the AV Club.

"'The Eyes of Me' [site] follows four blind teens over the course of one dynamic year at the Texas School for the Blind in Austin, TX," writes director Keith Maitland for Filmmaker.

"The Least of These": Site.

"Austinite and University of Texas graduate Michel Orion Scott's 'Over the Hills and Far Away' [site] documents the lengths local residents Rupert Isaacson and Kristin Neff go to in an effort to heal their autistic son - literally to the ends of the Earth." Matthew Odam interviews Scott for the Austin Movie Blog. So did the Austin Chronicle's Marc Savlov in January when the film screened at Sundance.

"Sunshine": Sarah Jean Billeiter talks with director Karen Skloss for the Austin Chronicle.

Midnighters

Richard Whittaker (Austin Chronicle) on "A Film with Me in It": "Hiding the bodies has rarely been so bleakly hilarious."

"The Ceremony": Site.

"Paul Solet, director and screenwriter of the post-natal splatterpunk shocker 'Grace,' obviously knows what he want an audience to take home with them after seeing his film: nightmares." The Austin Chronicle's Marc Savlov: "And not just any nightmares, either, but the pre-partum sort that can derail an impressionable couple's decision to procreate, or trust a midwife, and which pretty much calls into question the whole of the American birthing process in all its gory glory."

"Lake Mungo" (site) "conditions you to doubt, growing less suspenseful, less atmospheric, and less frightening as it progresses," writes Rumsey Taylor at Not Coming to a Theater Near You. "It is by design an anticlimactic film, a jack-in-the-box that operates reliably at scheduled intervals." More from Leonard Pierce (AV Club) and Richard Whittaker (Austin Chronicle).

"Zift": Site.

SXSW Presents Fantastic Fest at Midnight

"A groovy 70s-style adaptation of Richard Strauss's 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' (you know, the theme music from '2001: A Space Odyssey') sets a funky tone for the opening of 'Black,' which moves briskly and efficiently from a slickly-shot 'armored car robbery gone bad' in Paris to a modern update of 'Shaft in Africa' to a lunatic, witchy, bastard offspring of 'Cat People' and 'Ssssss.'" Peter Martin at Cinematical: "It's gloriously lunatic." More from Quint at AICN.

"The Haunting in Connecticut": See "Also in theaters, 3/27."

"It doesn't feel accurate to describe 'The Horseman' [site] as a 'thriller' because there's nothing in it that provides typical action movie thrills: no car chases, no wisecracks to relieve the tension, no triumphant moments of celebration." Peter Martin at Cinematical: "It's a movie to be endured rather than enjoyed, which doesn't mean the film lacks artistry or restraint. Writer/director Steven Kastrissios creates a pulverizing experience, yet for all the blood, broken bones, and brutality, 'The Horseman' holds back at key moments, allowing the mind to fill in the blanks of (most of) the money shots. Make no mistake, however: the pit of my stomach was pleading for release from the very first sequence." More from Quint at AICN. Hollywood Bitchslap interviews Kastrissios.

"Jet Li and all other leading action men take notice, Tony Jaa is back and taking over the reigns as the best on screen fighter working in cinema today," writes Blake Ethridge. "With its impossible to match epic fighting finale, 'Ong Bak 2' is the de facto high point of 2009 action cinema." More from Peter Martin at Cinematical.

"Lesbian Vampire Killers": Reviews from the UK.

"Pontypool": Site; Daily.

[Photos: "All Tomorrow's Parties," Warp X, 2009; "A Film with Me in It," Parallel Film Productions, 2008; "Black," Chic Films, 2008]

Tags: SXSW 2009