The Screengrab : elvis mitchell

SXSW Preview: Ten Must-See Documentaries (Part One)

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:00:00 GMT

The 2009 SXSW Film Festival kicks off on Friday, so what do you say we spend the week previewing some can’t-miss attractions? We’ll start with the documentaries – five today and five tomorrow – then move on to the narrative features.

ALONG CAME KINKY…TEXAS JEWBOY FOR GOVERNOR

From singing Jewish cowboy (“Asshole from El Paso,” “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed”) to mystery writer (A Case of Lone Star, Road Kill) to gubernatorial candidate, Kinky Friedman has done it all. Along Came Kinky chronicles Fridman’s 2006 unsuccessful run for the governorship of Texas.

(Screens March 19th at 7:30 pm, Paramount Theater)

AMERICAN PRINCE

The great lost Martin Scorsese film (note: not so lost) is American Boy, a profile of Steven Prince, who memorably played the gun salesman in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. Thirty years later, director Tommy Pallotta catches up with Prince, now living in Austin and still graced with the gift of gab.

(Screens March 14th at 7:30 pm, March 17th at 11 am, Alamo South)

BEST WORST MOVIE

I had no idea there was any such thing as a cult of Troll 2 until a few months ago, when the Alamo Drafthouse hosted a Rolling Roadshow screening of the movie in Morgan, Utah. Who would go all the way to Utah to see Troll 2? Find out in Best Worst Movie, the behind the scenes story of what some consider to be the worst movie ever made (but which is actually #41 in our Unwatchable countdown – perfect timing!).

(Screens March 14th at 9:30 pm, Alamo South, March 16th at 4 pm, Paramount Theater, March 20th at 9:30 pm, Convention Center)

DRUNKEN ANGEL: THE LEGEND OF BLAZE FOLEY

SXSW has a long, proud tradition of musical documentaries, particularly ones about eccentric or troubled musicians (The Devil and Daniel Johnston, You’re Gonna Miss Me), and here’s the latest. “Born in a tree house, killed in a friend's living room, 86'ed from his own funeral, Blaze Foley is now a bona fide country music legend.” He’s also the subject of the Lucinda Williams song that gives this documentary its title.

(Screens March 18th at 7 pm, Convention Center)

FOR THE LOVE OF MOVIES: THE STORY OF AMERICAN FILM CRITICISM

How’s this for self-indulgence? A film critic previewing a movie about film critics made by a film critic. Gerald Peary talks to many well-known film critics, including some who are still employed, about their love of movies and the history of film criticism. Participants include Roger Ebert, Elvis Mitchell, Andrew Sarris and, for some reason, Harry Knowles.

(Screens March 16th at 8 pm, March 18th at noon, Alamo Ritz, March 21st at 4 pm, Alamo South)

The Rep Report (August 1--5)

Phil Nugent — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK: Nobody can accuse Elliott Gould of having micromanaged his career to death. Gould scuffled for work for many years before 1970's M*A*S*H made him not just a star but a counterculture icon and a Time cover boy. Just a couple of years after his anointment by newsmagazine, bad career decisions and personal choices had left Gould with his head in a bad place and reputation for being not just borderline unemployable but, as Pauline Kael put it (not unaffectionately), an "anachronism." These days, Gould is regarded not as a superstar or a flake but a pretty solid pro--okay, maybe a flaky pro--and his best performances particularly the work he did for Robert Altman in M*A*S*H, The Long Goodbye, and California Split, hold up as well as anything done in front of a camera in the 1970s. (His Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye, once a lethal flop, is now widely remembered as one of the great comebacks of all time.) "Elliott Gould: Star for an Uptight Age (August 1--21) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music features all those pictures as well as Gould's first significant movie role, as one of the titular quartet in Paul Mazursky's 1969 satirical time capsule Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. In an interview in the current issue of Stop Smiling that centers on California Split, Gould calls himself "a jazz actor", and in these musical, improvisationl performances, which have a tossed-off feeling that belies their technical daring and emotional depth, it's easy to see what he means. The program is padded out with other early-'70s pictures that mostly serve to chart the course by which Gould contrived to stay employed in movies between gigs with Bob and Paulie. (The big exceptions are the limper than limp I Love My Wife and the overblown, hollow Harry and Walter Go to New York, which don't serve any purpose whatsoever.) Getting Straight, one of Gould's biggest hits, is a campus-unrest flick directed by Richard (The Stunt Man) Rush that provides a taste of what a thinking-young-person's exploitation movie was like circa 1970. Busting (1974), an attempt to package law-and-order politics in a loose, sort-of-comic Gouldian package, wound up being most notable as the movie that taught Starsky and Hutch how to dress. And Ingmar Bergman's 1971 The Touch, a movie that did Gould no good in any department--it didn't do Bergman any favors either--is worth checking out if you're a Bergman completist or would like to see just why so many people thought that, by that point, Gould had already worn out his welcome.

Starting August 2 and running through most of the month, the Museum of Modern Art's "Collaborations in the Collection" series spotlights Joel and Ethan Cohen, a pair of filmmakers whose collaborative creator was kind of inevitable. But as the programming points up, the Coens have also made a virtue of repeatedly teaming up with those they've done good work with, including cinematographers Barry Sonnenfeld (Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing) and Roger Deakins (everything else, basically) as well as the composer Carter Burwell and such actors as John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Jon Polito, and Frances MacDormand, whose collaboration with Joel Coen extended to matrimony.

CHICAGO: At the Gene Siskel Film Center, the 14th Annual Black Harvest International Festival of Film and Video --"The Midwest’s biggest and best celebration of the black experience on film, Black Harvest highlights talent from around the nation and around the world, with a special emphasis on our own Chicago-based filmmakers"--will run from August 1 through the 28th. On August 5, critic and interviewer Elvis Mitchell, last seen on the Turner Classic Movies series Under the Influence, where he barely managed to overcome his shock at hearing Quentin Tarantino confess that he has never seen the Judy Garland A Star Is Born, will swing by with a print of his new HBO film The Black List, Vol. 1 tucked under his arm, and the night after that will include a special screening of the monumental new Katrina documentary Trouble the Waters. A smaller but still very affecting documentary touched by Katrina, Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans, is also among the many feature films and shorts.

From August 2 through the 24th, the Siskel Center will host "Paradjanov the Magician", a celebration of the vibrantly colored, strange and moving work of the Soviet-Armenian director Sergei Paradjanov. It includes a new print of his masterpiece, Shadows of Our Fogotten Ancestors.

SAN FRANCISCO: Kent MacKenzie's The Exiles, a stunning, black and white semi-documentary look at a group of Native Americans drifting through a dazed, aimless existence in Los Angeles's Bunker Hill, was recently plucked from forgotten obscurity by some hardy restorers and, "presented by" Native American novelist Sherman Alexie and Charles Burnett, recently started making its way across the country thanks to Milestone, the same company that brought Burnett's Killer of Sheep back from the dead. It plays the Castro August 1 through the 7th.

BERKELEY: Pacific Film Archives' "Streets of No Return: The Dark Cinema of David Goodis" (August 1--23) boasts an impressive array of films inspired by the writings of the cult pulp writer. Although Goodis was American and many of the films included here were Hollywood productions, the best known titles are both French: Francois Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player (1960), based on Goodis's Down There, which remains one of the freshest and most thrilling products of the New Wave, and Jean-Jacques Beinex's 1983 The Moon in the Gutter, which remains one of the ghastliest things ever brought into the world by the misguided will of man.

LOS ANGELES: August 1 and 2, the Los Angles County Museum of Art presents "Two Comedies by Pietro Germi", and they're the right two: the justly famous Divorce Italian Style (1961) and the even funnier follow-up Seduced and Abandoned (1964), both featuring the luscious comedienne Stefania Sandrelli. The only way to imagine a better package for a hot weekend would be if the museum would spring for a lemonade waterfall.

Greta Gerwig and the SXSW Invasion

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:30:00 GMT

In approximately 24 hours, the bars and hotel lobbies of Austin will be crawling with filmmakers, actors, publicists, studio weasels, and, lowest of the low, film bloggers. Yes, your Screengrab pals Leonard Pierce and yours truly will be on the scene to bring you up-to-the-minute news, reviews and free booze. No, wait. The free booze is for us. But you’ll reap the benefits when you get to read our semi-drunken posts.

In anticipation of SXSW Film 08, this week’s issue of the Austin Chronicle is jam-packed with coverage. The cover girl is Greta Gerwig, which is entirely appropriate as the leading lady of mumblecore is practically the face of SXSW these days. The 2006 festival featured the premiere of LOL, in which Gerwig made her screen debut (granted, it was only her voice on an answering machine, but it was a start). Hannah Takes the Stairs premiered at the following year’s SXSW, which also showcased Gerwig in an amusing series of promos that screened through the festival.

This year she’s everywhere: Sunday night you can see her in both Baghead (the mumblecore horror movie from the Duplass brothers) and Nights and Weekends (which she co-wrote and co-directed). The following night she’s starring in Mary Bronstein’s Yeast as a “maddeningly oblivious, tyrannical and emotionally stunted young woman.” The Chronicle’s Spencer Parsons talked to Gerwig on the eve of her Austin takeover and found that success hasn’t spoiled her yet. “I still haven't figured out how to make money out of this, but it's more of my life, and it's real, and it's great. Now I think, yeah, it's not impossible, but you've also got to be pragmatic. I'm smarter now about how I earn my money in New York, having a job, and even if I can't fully support myself doing this, I can still do it if I want to, and that's great.”

The issue also contains interviews with Elvis Mitchell, who discusses his documentary The Black List, Crawford director David Modigliani, and the ever-popular Zellner Brothers, who sum up the festival’s appeal perfectly: “South by Southwest takes place during the best time of year, which gives visitors an interesting misconception that Austin's always really pleasant and wonderful to live in [laughs]. Sure the weather is perfect today, but in two months it's going to be hell. But they won't ever experience that.”

Sundance Roundup: Day 2

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Robert Redford addressed the troops last night as the Sundance Film Festival kicked into gear. He hailed the filmmakers as “agents of change” and warned those desperately seeking buzz to expect the unexpected, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. He might have a point, as this L.A. Times look at last year’s highly touted Sundance crop portends.

The buzz-seekers went on to ignore Redford’s advice anyway. With the WGA strike dragging on, studios are eager to find readymade product to fill holes in their release schedules. The first big deal has already been made, with HBO snapping up the rights to The Black List: Volume One, a documentary collaboration between photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and former New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell. For a handy cheat sheet of the rest of this year’s buzz flicks, head over to Defamer.

If you’re looking for something to see in Park City tonight, the highlight looks to be Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired at the Holiday Village at 6:15 pm. Co-writer/director Marina Zenovich writes about her experiences making the documentary for Filmmaker. If midnight movies are more your speed, George Romero’s Diary of the Dead screens later tonight.

I.R.S. to Wesley Snipes: "I Got Your Blade Trinity Right Here, Pal!"

Phil Nugent — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:04:00 GMT

If, like some of us, you have fond memories of Nino Brown and White Men Can't Jump, then today wouldn't be the worst day to go to Ocala, Florida, and hang out in front of the courthouse holding a sign reading "Free Wesley Snipes!" As noted here previously, Snipes, who in the Blade movies worked so hard to rid Los Angeles of blood-sucking vampires [insert joke here], but who has been increasingly M.I.A. in Hollywood, is facing off against an enemy that might have made even Dracula blanch: the Internal Revenue Service. Snipes, who has been charged with attempting to defraud the government, goes on trial today. The talented and charismatic actor, who was once described by critic Elvis Mitchell as looking "so chiseled that his six-pack abs look stocked with 16-ounce cans," appears to have been taking his tax advice from Willie Nelson, or perhaps at a seance where he was able to consult with the spirit of Gordon Kahl. Snipes is said to have simply stopped paying taxes for six years starting in 1999, and is also charged with filing a false claim for a seven million dollar refund in 1997. (He is also said to have written the I.R.S. a total of fourteen million dollars in rubber checks.) Snipes's position is that he doesn't owe the government squat, and to back that up, he's cited "the 861 position." This, as David Kay Johnston explains in The New York Times, is not a direct-to-video sequel to Passenger 57 but a crackpot theory that's been gaining traction in tax deniers' culture: "Adherents say a regulation applying the 861 provision does not list wages as taxable, though it does say that 'compensation for services' is taxable. The courts have uniformly rejected all such theories, and eight people have been sentenced to prison after not paying taxes based on the 861 argument."

However, in a few recent high-profile cases, juries looking to side with the little guy against big gummint have frustrated the courts by turning tax deniers loose. It's hard to imagine the steroid-addled gargantua who might regard Wesley Snipes as a little guy, but he does have his celebrity on his side, and because of that, the trial has the potential to attract unprecedented attention to the tax deniers' movement. J. J. MacNab, a Maryland insurance analyst who works on tax denial cases, told the Times that if Snipes emerges victorious, the case "will get more press and attention than any other victory by the tax deniers, and the growth in new members will be exponential.” As the aptly named MacNab points out, the star is a pioneering tax denier in another way: "“Snipes is already drawing whole new demographics to the movement. Tax protesters used to be white, 50 or older, blue-collar, rural and often connected to racist movements, but Snipes is young, urban and famous.” (Snipes also has connections to a group called the Nuwaubians, "a quasi-religious sect of black Americans who promote antigovernment theories.") Sitting in the dock with Snipes are his tax advisers, Douglas Rosile, who lost his accounting license ten years ago, and Eddie Kahn, who "has served prison time for tax crimes". Not for nothing, but my sister does my taxes for me for free, and so far she's managed to keep me out of prison, to the general astonishment of the rest of the family. I'm sure she'd do Wesley's for him, in exchange for his agreeing to come to the house sometime in full costume to scare her kids.