In Monday afternoon's round up of news briefs, SXSW is inviting audiences to propose panels for their 2013 event via online. BB takes a quick look at final weekend box office numbers. Samuel L. Jackson will host an upcoming awards show, while Fandango and MSN team up. And which book will be the next box office golden child?
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Grainger David's The Chair is the only American filmmaker to make the shorts lineup cut for this year's upcoming Cannes Film Festival, though U.S. territory Puerto Rico also made the list for the first time with Mi Santa Mirada by Alvaro Aponte-Centeno. The Chair debuted last month at South by Southwest where it won the Short Film Jury Prize. The 12-minute film revolves around a mysterious outbreak of poisonous mold in a small town and one boy's attempt to understand his mother's death, his grandmother's obsession with a discarded recliner and the roots of this mysterious plague.
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SXSW 2012 marked the starring screen debut of model-turned-actress Dree Hemingway – daughter of Mariel, great-granddaughter of Ernest, and at 24, a veteran of the fashion world -- as an airy Los Angeleno named Jane who befriends a cranky senior citizen (85-year-old newcomer Besedka Johnson) in Sean Baker’s Starlet, a surprisingly sweet tale comprised of a series of moving, naturalistic episodes … and one infamous hardcore sex scene. But as much as Starlet is a fantastically observed introduction to Hemingway, who possesses Evan Rachel Wood’s preternatural poise and Daryl Hannah’s leggy looks, sitting down with her in Austin – and indulging in a post-interview round of karaoke together -- offered greater insights into one of the more talked-about but hard-to-talk-about films of the fest.
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There was no shortage of stars coming through SXSW 2012, debuting films and projects as diverse as Joss Whedon's Cabin in the Woods to Lena Dunham's HBO series GIRLS. Take a look and see who else dropped in on Austin, Texas for the annual film festival, including: Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, and their 21 Jump Street crew, Willem Dafoe, Al Gore, Johnny Knoxville, Melissa Leo, Matthew McConaughey, Jack Black, Aubrey Plaza, Gabrielle Union, Bobcat Goldthwait, new director (!) Matthew Lillard, two Broken Lizards, model-turned-actress Dree Hemingway, and more.
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This week at SXSW Movieline caught up with director Gareth Evans, whose Indonesian martial arts actioner The Raid: Redemption is set to knock your socks off later this month courtesy of Sony Classics. (Haven’t heard of the martial arts form silat? You will, come March 23.) With his film steadily collecting kudos left and right, Evans is already thinking ahead to his Raid sequel (working title: Berandal), and an insane, dangerous-sounding four-on-one car fight he plans on working into the mix.
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Tuesday night the 2012 SXSW Film Festival jury awards went to Adam Leon's NYC-set drama Gimme the Loot and the rock doc-biopic Beware of Mr. Baker, about Cream/Blind Faith drummer Ginger Baker. Meanwhile, Audience Awards honored Megan Griffiths' Eden, whose star Jamie Chung (Sucker Punch) earned a Special Jury Award for her central performance as a human trafficking victim, and to documentary Bay of All Saints, about three single mothers living in an impoverished Brazilian bayside town. Full list of winners after the jump.
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Despite nabbing an Academy Award last year with her self-financed and controversial “Consider” campaign, Melissa Leo says that neither life, nor the frequency of juicy Hollywood offers coming her way, is much different now that she's an Oscar-winner. “The projects you think have been offered to me have not, I guarantee you,” she told Movieline this week at SXSW in Austin, where she and directors Melanie Shatzky and Brian M. Cassidy screened their minimalist character study Francine to critical applause. Still, Leo perseveres. And as the intimate acting showcase demonstrates, there’s plenty of reward to be had in smaller and more daring projects.
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Richard Linklater's latest film, Bernie, makes its SXSW debut on Wednesday, but Movieline will save you a trip to Austin by showcasing one of its finer highlights here. Take it away, Kay McCabe!
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It wasn't tough to spot Channing Tatum or Jonah Hill at the after party following the SXSW premiere of 21 Jump Street; they were the ones, beaming unselfconsciously in the middle of the crowd, wearing bicycle-cop uniforms. More specifically, wearing their costumes from the movie, in which they play a pair of bumbling rookie policemen sent undercover to high school -- a set-up that so delivers beyond its premise that the '80s Johnny Depp TV series adaptation is actually one of the best new films of 2012, comedy or otherwise.
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Those NMA TV wizards have done it again: Watch as the Taiwanese animators offer their take on the in-progress South by Southwest Music, Film and Interactive festival ("If you're watching this animation, that likely means you're not at SXSW. You're probably not even cool enough to go"). Tears, hippie DJs, 21 Jump Street, bands the rest of the world will hear about months from now... it's all here!
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SXSWers will get a peek at Will Ferrell's Spanish-language comedy Casa de mi Padre this week in Austin, but here's a quick taste of what you're in for: Ferrell as a Mexican ranchero singing the moonlit ditty "Yo No Se" in a scene from the film, which is best described as something of a Spanish telenovela satire grindhouse comedy.
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Avengers director Joss Whedon spent much of his weekend in Austin at SXSW pounding the pavement for The Cabin in the Woods (that is, when he wasn't busy dancing into the wee hours of the night) but he also managed to mostly deflect the laser geek gaze of the bloggerati when it came to divulging information about his upcoming Marvel superhero pick. That said, he did offer up one huge clarification on a matter Avengers fans have been trying to root out via various clues and tea leaves: Who are the villains under Loki's command?
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One of the great perks about working out of the Alamo Drafthouse's next door hangout spot The Highball between SXSW films? Listening to the dynamic stylings of Cuban-born musician CuCu Diamantes during her soundcheck on the back room stage. The Grammy-nominated singer is in town with a pseudo-doc/fiction film in which she stars as herself, filmed with live concert footage; just listening to her rehearse bumped Amor Cronico onto my want-to-see list. Trailer after the jump!
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Three days into SXSW and the biggest winner so far has been Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard’s geek-pleasing meta-horror pic Cabin in the Woods, which Lionsgate releases in April. But also in town in search of a SXSW buzz bump is Lionsgate/Summit's Ethan Hawke-starring haunted house pic Sinister, which debuted as a “secret screening” Saturday night – not the most spectacular secret title possible, especially in contrast to hopeful speculation for a sneak Avengers or Hunger Games debut, and not entirely secret, but fine enough.
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Last night at SXSW, Broken Lizard alum Jay Chandrasekhar debuted his latest comedy, The Babymakers, which features Olivia Munn as a woman whose not-so-potent husband (Paul Schneider) breaks into a sperm bank to retrieve his own, um, donations so they can get pregnant. Given the film's balls-out embracing of sex jokes and a subplot concerning racy photographs, one could view those recent hacked photos of Munn in provocative poses as brilliantly conceived viral marketing, a fact that hasn't escaped Chandrasekhar. He offered Movieline his two cents on the matter with a nod to Munn's own recently-released photo response.
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