South by Southwest’s film portion runs from March 9-17 this year, and the Cardinal’s own film columnist David Cottrell is in Austin taking it all in.
Day 1: Gloom and Doom
Rain, gloom and a chill in the air. Not exactly the welcome I expected from the Longhorn State. Texans certainly do movies differently. Five of the festival's film venues are located in the Alamo Drafthouse theaters.
Each Alamo theater has rows of standard movie theater seats, but each row also features a bench-like table spanning the entire length. That's because Texans love to eat and drink, and during movies is no exception. Waitstaff run surreptitiously, hunched over to maintain sight lines, filling orders written out by patrons on white slips of paper, delivering the sustenance or inebriant right to the seat of its summoner.
As Madisonians who have patronized summer movies on the terrace or any other WUD Film screening in the Unions know well, beer and movies were a match made in heaven. But Texans certainly know how to turn it up a notch—now you don't even have to leave your seat.
Despite my perpetual dampness resulting from several long waits in outdoor lines in rainy Austin, all was forgotten during my first midnight screening of the festival: the self-dubbed "post-feminist" tale of revenge, "Girls Against Boys.”
The flick follows a beautiful, naive college girl working her way through school as a bartender in NYC. Repeatedly hurt, betrayed and abandoned by the men in her life, then sexually assaulted, she is pushed to the edge and then dragged over it by a mysterious stranger who offers to help her work out her frustrations. The two girls then embark on an odd, meditative-yet-surreal killing spree through New York, exacting revenge from the gender they feel has given them nothing but misery.
Given the deliberate attractiveness of the deviants, the flick gives new meaning to the oft-used phrase "torture porn,” though it packs much more thematic density behind it.
Day 2: Documentaries and Personals
Today I got to sit in a dark press screening room with four other writers and see an early screening of “We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists,” one of my most anticipated films of the festival, which premiered Sunday. It was an enthralling documentary presenting the story of Anonymous and the digital political protest movement redefining the paradigm of social and political movements in the early 21st century.
I enjoyed the documentary thoroughly, but feel like there might be a bit of a learning curve for the unfamiliar that could have been smoothed out with a bit more explanation of certain matters.
My first time in Austin’s ancient, beautiful movie palace from the early 20th century, the Paramount, was seeing the Aubrey Plaza/Mark Duplass time-travel comedy “Safety Not Guaranteed.” The film featured a witty script inspired by a real-life personal ad placed in a newspaper requesting “Somebody to go back in time with me... Bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed” which became a viral meme on the internet and an unexpectedly poignant performance by Mark Duplass.
Duplass expertly weaves his character out of equal parts hilarity and sad reality, as the man who would place such an ad, believing he really can go back in time.
The film becomes a light-hearted meditation on regret and missed opportunities, but ends up as a crowd-pleasing chuckle-inducer. Aubrey Plaza plays her usual deadpan, sassy self and was absolutely mobbed outside the theater by fans and camera flashes after the screening. In the land of the techie, pop-culture geeks, she’s certainly found her fanbase.
Plaza’s “Parks and Recreation” costar Nick Offerman also has a flick at the festival called “Somebody Up There Likes Me” that I hope to catch later in the fest.
Day 3: Mumblecore
I had to sit front row today for the world premier of the Duplass brothers’ (“The League,” “Cyrus”) new movie, “The Do-Deca-Pentathalon,” but the strain in my neck was worth it.
Two brothers, estranged since their teenage years when they competed in a 25-part homemade Olympic Games that ended in controversy, reunite twenty years later at a weekend family gathering and secretly compete once again in “The Do-Deca-Pentathalon” to determine once and for all who is the superior brother.
The story feels like it could have been a much larger studio picture with a multi-million dollar budget, but as always the Duplass brothers Mark and Jay make it work on a shoestring budget, shooting most of the film at their parents’ house with a crew of their friends.
The characteristic improvisation the Duplass brothers are known for in their productions is on display here, eliciting some hilarious scenes from the cast with the naturalistic dialogue characteristic of the mumblecore style of filmmaking.
During the Q&A after the film, the Duplass brothers explained that the “Do-Deca” was a real competition created by two brothers that grew up down the street from them in Louisiana, and that they are hoping to have the real-life brothers compete once again to be documented and featured as an extra on the DVD release in the future.
—David Cottrell
