The people of Afghanistan, who have endured millennia of invasions, have a saying: “You have the clocks; we have the time.” These words open up this depiction of three years in the forgotten war from a group whose voice is seldom heard – the Afghan National Army.
Dysinger liberates the compromised term “embedded journalism” and uses her incredible access to depict a war of inertia and ancient feuds. As foreign forces come and go, the only constant is the haunting central figure of Gen. Fazil Ahmad Sayar. Continue reading Review: Camp Victory, Afghanistan (2010)→
Are you afraid of the dark? “Grim Grinning Ghost”, producer/director Axelle Carolyn’s segment for new horror anthology Tales of Halloween
When Axelle Carolyn was a kid, she had a cousin who would tell her the most terrifying urban myths. Now, as one of the 11 directors known as the October Society, through their new anthology horror Tales of Halloween she gets to share a small but perfectly formed spooky tale of her own. She said, “Horror lends itself to bite-size chunks of spookiness.”
The bones of the October Society were laid a few years ago, when Carolyn was living in London and commuting regularly to Los Angeles. There she met a cabal of horror enthusiasts, including Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II-IV), Adam Gierasch (Toolbox Murders), Lucky McKee (May, All Cheerleaders Die), and Neil Marshall (The Descent, Game of Thrones). The undectet joined together to conjure mini-nightmares for their hybrid creation. Carolyn said, “We’ve seen anthologies that have 26 stories and anthologies that have three, and we’re in the middle.”
Starring: Peyton List, Cameron Goodman, Cullen Douglas, Dave Power, James Snyder, Tony Curran
There’s no sinking feeling like taking a cab and the driver going left instead of right, into a bit of town that just can’t be the quickest route. That loss of control is the start of Shuttle‘s horrific road trip, where five travelers get picked up by an airport shuttle, putting their increasingly gory fate in the hands of the stranger at the wheel.
It starts as a dry, subdued thriller, where small acts of violence happen offscreen or silently; the film incrementally ratchets up the tension into a realm some may dismiss as torture-porn.
Starring: Eagle Pennell, Chuck Pinnell, Lin Sutherland, Lou Perryman, Richard Linklater
The restoration of Austin movie classic The Whole Shootin’ Match for last year’s SXSW reintroduced the world to the work of mercurial director Glenn Irwin “Eagle” Pennell: The King of Texas is his nephew René’s attempt to explain the man. Through interviews with those that knew, loved, and sometimes fought with him (including his family, collaborators, and the Chronicle‘s own Louis Black), René portrays an artist who was both role model and cautionary tale. Just as Willie Nelson proved a successful country musician didn’t have to go Nashville, Pennell proved the power and artistry of regional cinema.
Starring: Jocelin Donahue, Greta Gerwig, Tom Noonan, Mary Woronov
There are three theories about how Ti West made House of the Devil evoke the 1980s so successfully. One, time machine. Two, deal with the horned one. Three, astonishing horror director. Considering what a masterful retro supernatural chiller it is, option two seems reasonable.
This isn’t just an homage to early 80s creeping horror: It’s a reproduction so exquisite that some members of the audience were convinced that they must have rented this on VHS in 1986. West has channeled that Satanic cult scare that Geraldo Rivera whipped up and the whole cinematic genre of unease that it summoned. As West told the audience attending Monday night’s Fantastic Fest screening, there’s a lot more to recreating a decade than “some douchebag flipping a Rubik’s Cube.”
Starring: Dylan Moran, Mark Doherty, Keith Allen, Amy Huberman
One death is an accident. Two are a coincidence. Three and a dead dog, well, that’s just bad DIY. In this coal-black farce, set among the elegant but crumbling Victorian apartments of Dublin, the luck of the Irish is all dreadful. Indolent actor Mark (Doherty) and his neighbor, failed film writer and failed recovering alcoholic Pierce (Moran), are wastrels with no lives. But they quickly become the only characters left alive as a series of avoidable deaths in the ill-repaired house they share claims everyone they would have a motive for killing. Continue reading Review: A Film With Me In It (2009)→
Starring: Talia Zucker, Rosie Traynor, David Pledger, Martin Sharpe
As Blair Witch is to The Shining and Cloverfield is to Godzilla, so Lake Mungo is to Picnic at Hanging Rock. In that Australian gothic classic, four schoolgirls went into the Outback; only one came back. This time, the four members of the Palmer family go for a swim, but only daughter Alice (Zucker) never makes it back to shore.
What makes a man want to build the world’s biggest lava lamp? From the 40-foot metal stalks of wheat in Williston, N.D., to the bull-sized fiberglass killer bee of Hidalgo, America’s heartland has long been a home to giants. Continue reading Review: World’s Largest (2010)→
A few Texas hearts got broken when it was announced that Whip It, Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut set in Austin’s Roller Derby community, was filming around Detroit. But whatever the location, scriptwriter and derby player Shauna Cross said, “It’s a total love letter to Austin” – and to its derby girls.
Austin and its derby scene are as much the film’s stars as Juno‘s Ellen Page. She plays reluctant pageant queen Bliss Cavendar from Bodeen, Texas, who straps on her skates to become Babe Ruthless, the ass-kicking jammer for the Hurl Scouts banked-track Roller Derby team. Before signing on as producer and then director, Barrymore’s derby experience was restricted to a montage/homage sequence in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. She explained, “I knew that the sport had different evolutions of being real and being staged, but I didn’t know about the new revolution of these leagues cropping up across the nation until I met Shauna.”
That would be former Austinite Shauna Cross, aka Maggie Mayhem of the L.A. Derby Dolls and a part of that modern derby revolution. Quick recap: In 2001, a group of Austin women joined together to revamp the lost sport of Roller Derby, a mash-up of speed skating and rugby. After a major internal rift in 2003 (well recorded in Bob Ray’s rink-rash-and-all documentary Hell on Wheels), they split into the banked-track TXRD Lonestar Rollergirls and the flat-track Texas Rollergirls. Both leagues have remained the godmothers of women’s Roller Derby, now at roughly 400 skater-run and skater-owned leagues internationally and counting. Although Whip It concentrates on a semifictionalized version of TXRD, Cross said: “I was really scared about the whole flat-track/banked-track thing. There are more girls that skate flat track, and I hoped that they would be supportive or at least see that it’s still great both ways and not feel left out.”
Martin is a nonentity, a failed radio engineer who dreamed of being a deejay. As played by Healy, he hangs onto a shadow of his dream of being “something” in music. With Holliday’s gregarious Clarence, he’s dispatched by a record firm as a talent scout. At least, that’s what they think they are. Really, they’ve been duped into scamming wannabe musicians. They are “song sharks,” getting hopeful nobodies to hand over cash for a record that will never be released. Continue reading Review: Great World of Sound (2007)→
Directed by Carol Dysinger
