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January 20, 2009
Austin doc praised at Sundance
Variety has reviewed the documentary “Over the Hills And Far Away,” by Austin filmmakers Michel O. Scott and Rupert Isaacson, at Sundance this week, and the trade mag likes it.
The film will play South by Southwest in March.
We’ve provided the review, which happens to be written by Variety staffer Peter DeBruge, a UT alum who wrote movie reviews for The Daily Texan in the late ’90s.
When Western medicine fails to cure 5-year-old Rowan Isaacson’s autism, his parents travel halfway across the world to seek assistance from Mongolian shamans in “Over the Hills and Far Away.” Narrated by journalist father Rupert (whose companion book, “The Horse Boy,” will be published in April), this compelling docu presents its story via multiple access points: the subject of autism, the notion of alternative healing and the simple travelogue appeal of an excursion to remote, untamed Mongolia. Pic has the nerve to be spiritual without entering the minefield of faith, and through careful handling, could resonate strongly with underserved auds.
Enlisted to document the Isaacsons’ highly unusual trip, director Michel Orion Scott has the good sense not to suggest their extreme solution will work for others. No typical family would deal with autism in such a way, though even before Rowan was diagnosed, the Isaacsons’ life was far from normal: Rupert and his wife Kristin Neff met in India. She works as a psychology professor; he champions the rights of bushmen in Botswana.
Their son’s birth grounded their world-traveling ways, while the autism itself demanded even more of their attention: Rowan withdrew around others, refused to be toilet trained and suffered painful, extended fits. His only comfort seemed to be an uncanny connection with animals, so Rupert devised a plan to visit Mongolia, where they would travel on horseback across the country in search of shamans who might heal Rowan.
Because Scott’s involvement began at this late stage, he efficiently lays out what background auds need through interviews and homemovie footage of scenes both good (Rowan bonding with an old mare named Betsy) and bad (“Exorcist”-worthy fits of screaming and convulsions). He then manages to maintain that same level of intimacy and access in Mongolia, capturing moments of extreme emotional and physical strain as well as rare breakthroughs when Rowan’s condition appears to retreat. The first shamanistic ceremony appears downright brutal, but the “results” are striking, motivating the Isaacsons to continue their journey deep into Siberia.
Despite shooting much of the material either handheld or on horseback, Scott and his skeleton crew get remarkably clear sound and steady footage, which was then expertly edited by Rita K. Sanders. Rather than adopt a strictly linear format, she includes enlightening testimony from autism specialists and doubles back to the Isaacsons’ Texas home throughout, innocuously seeding ideas that mature and bear fruit later (from the family’s “Code Brown” nickname to the legend of a powerful shaman named Ghoste).
The trip itself could easily have gotten tedious, but Scott and Sanders strike a perfect pace, and their skepticism offsets whatever trite or mushy miracle-working Rupert is prone to impose on the experience through his narration (never on-the-nose, Kim Carroll and Lili Haydn’s piano and strings score encourages further introspection from the audience). What we’re left with isn’t whether or not shamanism cures autism but a more allegorical example of what happens when people seek solutions beyond the boundaries of Western thought.
You remember “Mystery Science Theatre 3000.” How can you forget, what with the Austin knockoff Mr. Sinus Theater?
Well the “MST3K” masterminds are back with a touring show, Cinematic Titanic, grounding at the local iceberg the Paramount Theatre on March 7.
Canned description: Cinematic Titanic is the new movie riffing show from the creator and original cast of “Mystery Science Theatre 3000,” live on-stage! Like “MST3K,” the show was created by Joel Hodgson and features the same team that first brought the award winning cult-classic series to life … Cinematic Titanic continues the tradition of riffing on ‘the unfathomable’, ‘the horribly great’, and the just plain ‘cheesy’ movies from the past.
Details HERE and tickets HERE.
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January 27, 2008
Doc shot by Austinite Raval wins Sundance
“Trouble the Water,” shot by Austin cinematographer PJ Raval, has won the Grand Jury Prize for documentary at Sundance.
Directed by New Yorkers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, the film is described thusly: “An aspiring rap artist and her streetwise husband, armed with a video camera, show what survival means when they are trapped in New Orleans by deadly floodwaters, and seize a chance for a new beginning.”
Jurors of the doc competition were Michelle Byrd, Heidi Ewing, Eugene Jarecki, Steven Okazaki and Annie Sundberg.
See all Sundance winners HERE.
Congrats to Raval, a UT alum and well-known Austin film talent.
Raval, left, last week at a Sundance party with Austinites Paul Stekler, Karen Skloss and Sativa January
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January 25, 2008
Sony grabs Austin-shot 'Baghead'
Breaking news out of Sundance, courtesy The Hollywood Reporter:
Sony Pictures Classics has picked up all North American rights to “Baghead,” the sophomore feature from brothers (and UT alums) Mark and Jay Duplass.
The specialty label paid what is said to be low- to mid-six figures for the film, which follows a group of four friends on a weekend getaway who or may not be tormented by a stranger wearing a bag over his head. Submarine Entertainment repped the sale.
The writer-director team of Mark and Jay Duplass currently have deals with both Universal and Fox Searchlight. They created a stir at Sundance three years ago with the road-trip relationship dramedy “The Puffy Chair,” a movie they turned into a significant festival-circuit hit over the last few years. The movie was released theatrically by Netflix’s Red Envelope Entertainment.
Like “Chair,” “Baghead” also takes a look at the everyday lives and conversations of twenty- and thirty-somethings; the brothers are part of the loose affiliation of young writer-directors known as the mumblecore movement.
“Baghead” also adds genre touches, paying homage and sending up horror films like “The Blair Witch Project.”
IFC and Picturehouse were among those said to be circling the project.
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January 22, 2008
Reviews of Austin movies at Sundance
Just now trickling in are reviews of some of the Austin-related titles at Sundance.
About Margaret Brown’s doc “The Order of Myths” — which is nominated for the Grand Jury Prize — The New York Times’ Manhola Darghis writes:
There was the usual complement of fine documentaries this year too, including the celebrity-stuffed “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired” (about that filmmaker’s 1970s rape trial) and the more downtown “Patti Smith: Dream of Life.” The documentary that left the strongest impression is “The Order of Myths,” Margaret Brown’s examination of the history and present-day reality of the segregated worlds of Mardi Gras in Mobile, Ala. Handsomely shot and intelligently edited, with none of the maddening sloppiness that distorts too many nonfiction projects, the film explores the secret societies, the fancy-dress balls and the celebratory parades for a story that is at once very site-specific and seemingly simple and as big and richly complex as the United States itself.
And a take from IndieWire:
Many here were looking forward to Margaret Brown’s second feature after her well-regarded music doc “Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt,” but Brown surpassed expectations with her remarkably assured “The Order of Myths.” Beautifully shot by Lee Daniel and Michael Simmonds and expertly edited by Brown, Michael Taylor and Geoffrey Richman, the film examines the time-honored tradition of Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama, where celebrations remain segregated between white and black residents.
With a deft, observant touch, Brown does what several recent acclaimed nonfiction films have done (“Street Fight” and “Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?” among them) by approaching issues of race from a side angle. But Brown surpasses her predecessors with a level of craft that stuns. But it’s clear from screenings here that “The Order of Myths” has the potential to spur conversations about race relationships that are simmering beneath the surface.
‘Order of Myths’
Variety’s Robert Koehler says this about “Trouble in the Water,” which was shot by Austin cinematographer-filmmaker PJ Raval:
A survivor of Hurricane Katrina gets it all on camera in “Trouble the Water,” a blend of DIY footage and filming by co-directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal that considers the impact and aftermath of the New Orleans catastrophe from the perspective of a family that stayed at home during the storm.
Though tinged with the sheer gumption and personal resolve of amateur vidmaker and would-be rapper Kimberly Roberts, this is ultimately a minor doc contribution to the bulging library of Katrina-related films and TV reports. Roberts’ own material will be the major selling point, with buyers in cable arena more likely than theatrical.
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January 20, 2008
Scenes from Sunday's Sundance
Park City, Utah — Everyone is blasted tired at this point during the first weekend of the festival. Except me. Carry on!
Finally saw Austin doc-maker Margaret Brown’s “The Order of Myths,” a lyrical, layered and provocative look at race relations in the context of the annual Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama, which happens to be the oldest Carnival in America.
The obligatory Q-and-A was vivacious and probing, as the audience rained passionate questions on Brown and several of the films’ subjects, who came from Mobile.
Margaret Brown, at mike, and subjects from her doc “The Order of Myths” conduct a sometimes heated Q-and-A following a Sunday screening of the movie
Jay and Mark Duplass and an actual baghead, for their comedy “Baghead,” premiering this week at Sundance
Greta Gerwig and Steve Zissis, co-stars of the Duplass’ “Baghead”
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Tim League's rip-roarin', karaoke-in' Sundancin' bash
Park City, Utah — There will be hangovers.
Tim League, Alamo Drafthouse and Fantastic Fest honcho, hosted the big Friday night party for the Sundance premiere of Nacho Vigalando’s sci-fi thriller “Timecrimes,” which was purchased by Magnolia during Fantastic Fest in September.
The party’s buzz laced through the late-night festival crowd like a virus, and people kept pouring in well after 3 a.m. Some shots:
Tim League strikes some ‘tude as he plays karaoke DJ on Friday night during his orgiastic all-night Sundance party. He later crooned to Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets.” It was not pretty.
SXSW Film Festival producer Matt Dentler annihilates the great Pulp song “Common People” during kara-ouchy
Morgan Spurlock of “Super Size Me” fame broke his finger snowboarding Friday. He still came to the party. He’s at Sundance plumping his new doc “Where In the World Is Osama Bin Laden?”
Austin actor Wiley Wiggins (“Dazed and Confused,” “Waking Life”) has a part in the Zellner brother’s festival feature “Goliath.”
Cerebral funnyman David Wain of comedy troupes The State and Stella and the films “Wet Hot American Summer” and “The Ten” mugs ‘hello.’
League, as DJ Dufus, insists on filling the house with fake fog that quickly overcomes every room and every guest. The fire alarms go off, the fire department shows up. This is the kitchen area caked in a chemical weather occurrence and the fire dude, who actually came on two occasions. The second time, Tim cries, “OK! It was a bad idea!” to pump more fog.
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January 18, 2008
The festival, smashing as an Anvil
PARK CITY, UTAH — I’m the loser sitting in a corner right now during the swarming PBS bash this Friday night, second day of Sundance. Diet Coke, finger grub and my petulant lap top. Here we are in the official “Entertainment Weekly Cafe,” where alcohol runs free, liberally and, soon, into my belly.
PBS party. Lots of PBS-y documentary types
Earlier today, as the sun dared to wink from the clouds, I finally ran into David and Nathan Zellner, the Austin filmmaking brother team, who are enjoying their fourth year in a row at the festival — they’ve had three shorts here — but this is their first time arriving with a full feature film. That film is the dark, deeply strange and creepy-funny “Goliath,” shot in Austin. (We will talk to them at length later for a feature story.)
The Zellners, David and Nathan (with a post card of their movie)
And then I found a self-described exhausted Margaret Brown, who says she just got her film in the can, completed and ready, 48 hours ago. Her doc, “The Order of Myths,” premieres Saturday in the Documentary Competition, a very big deal.
Margaret Brown, feeling fried, but ready to rock Saturday with her film, the post card of which she hoists
We saw another excellent movie today, Sacha Gervasi’s doc “Anvil! The True Story of Anvil,” about flash-in-the-pan Canadian ’80s heavy metal band Anvil that recently staged a feeble comeback, which is chronicled here with huge heart, passion, empathy and humor. It’s a story of strenuous resurrection in the face of time, age and lousy odds.
The sold-out crowd bestowed a standing-O to the Spinal Taptastic film, Gervasi and the still-shaggy subjects, including drummer Robb Reiner and singer-guitarist Lips, who gamely attended (along with interview talking heads Scott Ian of Anthrax and Slayer frontman Tom Araya.
Slayer’s Tom Araya with his wife at the “Anvil!” screening
The effusive, downright giddy crowd response had director Gervasi (who wrote Steven Spielberg’s “The Terminal”) and Anvil’s bald guitarist wiping away tears as they thanked everyone and answered questions, which they’re doing here (that’s Lips at the mike and director Gervasi far right in parka):
See a vintage ’80s clip of Anvil in concert that’s in the documentary HERE, and do the band a favor and visit its site HERE.
Random ambience from Sundance — the land of slush, pink fingers and red-tipped runny noses — on Friday:
Coveted Sundance tickets
Main Street, glistening
Shuttle-bus blues
Ice-cold tautology
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January 17, 2008
A snowballing festival
Park City, Utah — The chatter here at Sundance, Day One, is all about film and television, actors and studios and distributors, the writers’ strike, what’s good, what’s overrated. All spoken with sonorous authority.
Meanwhile, we goofed off in the snow.
I snatched a fistful of snow — a chunky ice dirt clod — to heave at Austinites Paul Stekler and Karen Skloss, as Louis Black, editor and honcho of The Austin Chronicle and associate producer of Margaret Brown’s documentary “The Order of Myths” (which premieres Saturday morning) ambled ahead of us.
Skloss spotted my snowball and made a pre-emptive strike, beaning my back in a spray of shattering stars. I hurled my weapon and inadvertently nailed Stekler, who actually cried, “Ouch! That hurt!” For the next four days, he will not hear the end of it.
When I whined about frost bite of the hand, Black tsked, “Don’t pick up snow without gloves, because it’s not a good idea.” This wuss will not hear the end of it.
Earlier, we joined former New York Times film critic/current NPR critic Elvis Mitchell and Village Voice/Dallas Observer film critic Robert Wilonsky — both enduring friends of Austin and SXSW — to fetch our press credentials at the Marriot Hotel.
Mitchell floated to the festival on the news that the documentary about major black figures and celebrities he produced, co-wrote and appears in, “The Black List,” — which premieres at Sundance — was picked up by HBO this week.
Though not pinching his signature cigar at this early hour, Mitchell still wears those long crazy dreadlocks and remains a natty dresser. He promptly made fun of my decidedly un-snow-worthy sneakers.
Mitchell and Black
Among other thickly coated celebs, Colin Farrell is definitely in town for his smashing good crime comedy “In Bruges”, and a shuttle driver said he spotted Napoleon Dynamite himself, Jon Heder, a Sundance superstar of recent vintage.
On the shuttle bus to the press screening of “In Bruges” — which blends the blood and profane humor of Tarantino with ironic British crime-flick sensibilities (and made many in the audience laugh out loud, me included) — a woman prattled with a professional photographer who was returning from shooting Farrell on the red carpet.
She asked if he was paparazzi. “Paparazzi,” he replied. “That’s sort of like calling someone an ax murderer.”
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Taking the scenic -- and chatty -- route to Sundance
PARK CITY, UTAH — I’ve been in subarctic Utah for about 30 minutes waiting for a shuttle at the Salt Lake City airport (“waiting for a shuttle” will be my mantra this bustling cold weekend, along with: Brrrrrr), but my Sundance experience began some three hours ago in Austin, inside a 50-seater Delta jet.
The 8 a.m. take-off time meant a 6 a.m. wake-up time, so the plane fast filled with red-eyed zombies (save for the gleaming business commuters, who always look so fresh and perky and obnoxiously happy). I take my tiny seat and suddenly notice that joining my row is PJ Raval — one of the reasons I’ve come to the Sundance Film Festival, which runs today through Jan. 27. My seat is 11D. His is 11C. We are cramped-leg mates.
PJ Raval, shoehorned into plane seat, still on Austin tarmac
Then, stars aligning madly, we spot at the front of the plane, ducking and stowing, Matt Dentler, South by Southwest Film Festival producer and man about town, who’s also heading to Sundance, as he does every year to keep abreast of the constantly shifting festival culture.
I’m here for four days to follow around Austin filmmakers, namely: Raval, the cinematographer for the competition documentary “Trouble the Water,” which follows Hurricane Katrina survivors and is directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal; Margaret Brown, whose doc about race relations in the context of the Mobile, Alabama, Mardi Gras is also in the doc competition; David and Nathan Zellner’s dark feature comedy, filmed in Austin, “Golitath”; and Mark and Jay Duplass’s follow-up to “The Puffy Chair,” the comedy-thriller “Baghead.”
Same plane, same plan. Raval, Dentler and I meet at baggage claim, surrounded by scruffy hipsters, skinny pretty people and moneyed ski bums. Our trio zonked out most of the flight, and we all need caffeine, or a really good movie.
PJ and Matt Dentler, ready to PARTY
We go our ways, with firm plans to hit the IndieWire opening night party after the opening night film, “In Bruges,” a violent crime caper starring Colin Farrell and Ralph Fiennes, written and directed by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh.
Everyone must hire a shuttle to get where they’re going in this mountain-girdled, snow-bluffed, ashy-skied valley. My van is packed, so I sit shotgun next to our dimly hippie-ish driver, Christopher. As I board, some of the passengers warn me that he’s a wee eccentric, maybe cuckoo.
He sports a graying, frizzy ponytail, mirror sunglasses and an Indian blanket across his legs as he drives. He also offers quite a bit of narration. Disney’s “The Jungle Book” soundtrack spins on the stereo (“The Bare Necessities” on to “Never Smile at a Crocodile”), as he explains, “I am a creative person,” which means, naturally: a screenwriter. A Native American “dream-catcher” dangles from the rear-view mirror.
The feathery dream-catcher, with snowy Utah mountains. It has caught all of my dreams, but one: To drop me off at the Holiday Inn, pronto.
“We’re all connected, even the animals,” Christopher says, and then tells us about the Sasquatch that resides in these powdered mountains. It’s name is Wegwawamohend, and, yes, he did spell it for me.
“He” — meaning the Bigfoot — “spoke to me back in my wild days, when I had my hair long. He said I was from the Clan of the Bear Cats.”
The women seated behind me …
Hello!
… chimed in, joining my intrepid questioning of our woolly driver. As we went around an elevated bend, suddenly he blurted, “This is where your ears start poppin’!”
He was — pop! — right.
“There’s elk on that side,” he said, pointing right, “and moose on that side.”
We drove past Lambs Canyon. “Ted Bundy killed people in that valley,” our trusty guide declared.
Oh. Here he is, by the way:
As we approached Park City, Christopher announced we were no longer in Utah.
“We are in the Independent Republic of Park City!” he said. “Here, we are ‘Parkites.’ And we speaky ‘Parky.’
“We are,” he added, “outside of Mormonia.”
As I write this, a bit later, in a funky-cool-organic cafe/bookstore — The Spotted Frog, which’d be right at home in Austin or Berkeley — my new cell phone tinkle-jingles (my very first cell, acquired expressly for the fest). It’s Paul Stekler, Sundance-winning documentarian (for “George Wallace: Settin’ the Woods on Fire” in 2000) and University of Texas film professor.
He’s smack on Main Street in the heart of Sundance with Austin filmmaker Karen Skloss, and he tells me they are looking for a Wal-Mart or Radio Shack, “because that’s what you do when you’re at Sundance.”
Sounds like they need help. I will be right there …
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November 29, 2007
More Austin links at Sundance '08
We reported in the entry below about Margaret Brown’s new doc “The Order of Myths” vying in the documentary competition at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
But there are, as always, more Austin filmmakers earning spots at one of the most important film fests in the world, all of whom graduated from UT:
Cinematographer PJ Raval shot the doc “Trouble the Water,” about an aspiring rapper and her family’s travails during the Katrina floods in New Orleans, which competes against Brown’s doc and 14 others in the doc contest. Tia Lessin and Carl Deal directed the film. (Raval also shot Kyle Henry’s feature “Room,” which played both Sundance and Cannes in 2005.)
Brothers and Sundance veterans Mark and Jay Duplass’s “Baghead” is “a comedy in which two couples intent on writing the great American screenplay find their log cabin retreat stalked by a man with a bag on his head.” (The Duplasses are best known for “The Puffy Chair”).
Brothers David and Nathan Zellner’s “Goliath” is “a look at a man who hopes to find salvation by locating his missing cat after his entire life has collapsed around him. The brothers co-star in the film, too.
The Duplass brothers
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November 28, 2007
Austin's Sundance star
Austin filmmaker Margaret Brown’s new documentary “The Order of Myths” will vie in the documentary competition at the Sundance Film Festival.
Brown’s film, about this year’s Mardi Gras celebration in Mobile, Ala., competes against 15 other docs, including portraits of Patti Smith, Hunter S. Thompson and Roman Polanski, and was selected from 953 entries. Brown’s first feature doc was 2004’s critically acclaimed “Be Here to Love Me: A Movie About Townes Van Zandt.”
Sundance runs Jan. 17-27 in Park City, Utah.
Read the full report, including the list of Brown’s prestigious competitors, HERE.
Stay posted for more Austin auteurs at Sundance as films are announced.
Update, Nov. 29: The Sundance site describes Brown’s film like this: “In 2007 Mobile, Alabama, Mardi Gras is celebrated … and complicated. Following a cast of characters, parades, and parties across an enduring color line, we see that beneath the surface of pageantry lies something else altogether.”
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