SXSW 2006 - Monday, March 13 - Day 4

Saw 6 more films today... only one of them was bad, and it was made up by an amazing doc that I saw early-on in the day.

Live Free or Die
Director: Andy Robin & Gregg Kavet
SXSW Summary: An offbeat comedy about a would-be criminal who's struggling to escape the dreariness of his northern New Hampshire hometown. He finds himself in real trouble when he teams up with a dim-witted high school friend and attempts to prove his chops as a local outlaw.

Decided to go back for a second screening of this one, and am glad to report that it holds up to a second viewing. Check out my day two coverage for my initial thought, and more importantly, keep an eye out for the eventual DVD release. Viva Lagrand!

Summercamp!
Director: Bradley Beesley & Sarah Price
SXSW Summary: Summercamp! invites the viewer into the day-to-day drama at Swift Nature Camp. Within this subculture the filmmakers submerge themselves by capturing raw emotions through camp rituals, homesickness, and counselor mutiny.

As someone who grew up going to summer camp (both as a camper and a counselor) this movie was right up my alley. The director really nailed the feel of camp... the naming of the cabins, sharing meals together, bundling up around the campfire, writing letters home, doing arts & crafts, ackwardly meeting members of the opposite sex... makes me want to go back right now. My favorite moments in the film were when the cameras captured little moments of the children just having fun... air guitaring to Iron Maiden on a canoe oar... quoting Star Wars... singing camp songs to themselves... studying various bugs and critters... Although the film initially introduces several campers, it's ultimately the story of just two, Cameron and Holly.

Cameron is a overweight kid who just doesn't know how to relate to other campers, and despite his honest attempt to fit in, the other campers (and to some extent, the counselors) just won't let him be. Holly is a breathtakingly cute young girl who is obsessed with chickadees... she talks about them, draws them, and obsessively looks for them. At first it seems like a childish fascination, but a revalation by Holly late in the film absolutely floored me, and the rest of the audience. It's a completely heartbreaking moment that only a hack would put into a scripted film... one that can only work in a good documentary. Summercamp is right up there with the best kid-focused docs like Spellbound... and it's much better than last year's disappointing (to me) Mad Hot Ballroom. Beesley previously made Okie Noodling (which I liked) and the Flaming Lips doc, Fearless Freaks (which I didn't), and Price worked on American Movie. I'm assuming that this one will get distribution on some scale, and it's definitely worth checking out.

LOL
Director: Joe Swanberg
SXSW Summary: Alex, Tim, and Chris all view the women in their lives through the dimensions of a computer screen or the lens of a camera-phone, but they must learn to balance their online fantasies and addictions with the demands of real life.

Before heading to LOL I attended the Blogging About Films panel, where Swanberg talked a bit about how blogs affect his films, and mentioned that it only cost $3000 to make. It tracks three friends, and the effect that technology has on their relationships. One guy is carrying on a long-distance relationship via cell phone and voice mail, another is so obsessed with a potential internet girlfriend that he cannot relate to the girl in his town who likes him, and the third is in a relationship, but his girlfriend is increasingly frustrated with the amount of time he spends on his laptop. This movie struck a cord with me... like a lot of guys my age, I get jittery whenever I can't access my email for more than a few hours at a time, and have had fights about the amount of time that I spend online. Like me, one of the characters was rendered speechless when a girl in the film admitted that, since her only internet access was at the library, she only checked email once every few weeks. The movie has a very natural feel to it, probably because the movie was wholly improvised and based on actual relationships/conflicts. Swanberg directed last year's SXSW favorite Kissing on the Mouth, and seems to have a real talent for capturing realistic depictions of relationships. For a guy who hates relationship movies, I really liked LOL.

The Oh in Ohio
Director: Billy Kent
SXSW Summary: Priscilla Chase seemed to have everything going for her with one small private exception.... She never thought much of sex. When her husband unexpectedly leaves her to regain his manhood she embarks on a wild journey that leads her to satisfaction and love in the most unlikely place.

"This film is pretty freakin' sexy" said Matt Dentler when he intro'd this film. Dentler was right. If you're like the majority of film geeks who have a crush on Parker Posey, this film is for you. Parker's married to Paul Rudd's character, who's terminally depressed because his wife is unable to orgasm. Rudd sees it as an attack on his manhood that he can't make his wife orgasm, and a depressed Paul Rudd is OK in my book. Posey doesn't have the sense that she's missing anything, but when Rudd leaves her to run off his Mischa Barton, Parker visits an adult novelty store (run by Heather Graham) to buy a vibrator. From there on out, Parker becomes obsessed as her new electronic buddy opens up a new world to her. Unfortunately, she's unable to duplicate the experience with another human, and its at this point that the film gets a little too angsty for my taste. I enjoyed the first half's "A Dirty Shame"-lite vibe, and Rudd is great whenever he's on screen.

Bickford Shmeckler's Cool Ideas
Director: Scott Lew
SXSW Summary: Bickford Shmeckler's Cool Ideas is a college comedy about the misadventures of Bickford Shmeckler, a brilliant but troubled freshman whose prized journal full of "cool ideas" is stolen. During Bickford's attempts to reclaim it, his "cool ideas" become a popular phenomenon and he falls in love for the first time.

I'm not sure if I liked this one or not... while I was watching it I kept thinking how it was similar, but not as good as, other movies that I liked. It's got the mental disorders and dead mothers of Garden State, the odd-ball, oddly likeable loner protagonist of Napoleon Dynamite, and the episodic quest that gets progressively crazier of Dude, Where's My Car. But since the movie ended, its been rolling around in my head, and I've got an overall feeling for the film that seems much more positive than any feelings I had during the film. Strange, huh? Anyway, as you can see from the synopis, Cool Ideas is about a guy named Bickford Shmeckler who writes, then loses (or actually gets robbed of) a book of cool ideas. Bickford describes his book early on: "It's basically a unified theory of everything... it's no big deal." Bickford is unable to cope without his book, and he has to run around his college town in an attempt to track it down. Along the way he gets help from an insanely sexy Olivia Wilde... it's actresses like this, with razor-sharp features and striking beauty, that HD was made for. In the same way that color film changed the types of actresses that were adored by the masses, HD is going to completely change what the next generation of leading ladies looks like. Anyway, I digress. There's a bunch of fun cameos in the movie, including a memorable appearance by two of the cops from Reno 911. I think the reason I didn't get into it as it was screening was that Bickford was supposed to be a geeky character, but the guy who played him, Patrick Fugit (who was actually really good), looks more like Bam Margera than a geek. So, I dunno... I didn't really get into it while it was on, but I somehow want to watch it again. Go figure.

Population 436
Director: Michelle MacLaren
SXSW Summary: Census worker Steve Kady is sent to Rockwell Falls to uncover the error that has caused the town's population to be recorded as 436 for over one hundred years. He discovers an idealic community with deep-rooted traditions and a very precious secret. No one leaves Rockwell Falls.

Oh boy... first The Lost, and now Population 436. Between these two, and last year's 'horror' entry The Roost, I think SXSW should consider placing a moratorium on booking non-comedy horror flicks, because whoever's booking them clearly has no grasp on what makes a good horror flick. Population 436 is based around a potentially kickass concept: a town where 'equilibrium' is honored above all else, to the point where citizens voluntarily give up their lives when a new baby is born so that the town's population can remain a constant 436. The movie makes it's first mistake when it decides to cast a US Census Bureau agent as the hero... we're apparently to believe that the Bureau is conducting a nationwide census by hand, because there's no indication that our hero was sent to this town to investigate anything out-of-the ordinary... he doesn't even discover the odd equilibrium concept until about an hour into the film. I could write a lot about what is wrong with this movie, but the main thing is that it's just boring.

Just like at The Lost, the audience seemed restless and eager for an end that just couldn't come soon enough. The director (a Canadian chick) did a Q&A afterwards, and I'm convinced that she exists in a different reality than our own. Someone asked her why she chose to cast Fred Durst in the film (did I mention that Fred Durst was the co-lead? No? Well he is. And he's as good an actor as he is a musician), and she felt the need to tell us "Good question. I don't know how many of you are familar with Fred Durst, but he's a rock and roll singer." Durst's metamorphasis into a national joke was apparently lost on her. She went on to tell us that Durst has, and I quote "a really incredible presence." With the exception of one really great scene (where the townspeople throw a party for the ceremonial killing to maintain the balance), almost everything in the movie is bad. The actors, the script, the pacing... there's also a laughably bad CGI'd fire that breaks out in the film's 4th (5th? 9th?) reel.

Before the film we were treated to a really cool short called Monster that's from New Zealand, or Whales, or Australia, or some shit. It was really scary, and helped to underscore how freaking bad the feature was.

- Micah