Author: Travis Keune

Hopeless film enthusiast; reborn comic book geek; artist; collector; cookie connoisseur; curious to no end

SXSW Preview: WORLD’S LARGEST

During the week or so leading up to the start of SXSW 2010, I’ll be providing a glimpse into some of the films I am looking forward to at the festival. SXSW will feature many great films, many more than I can cover, ranging from narrative fiction to documentary, comedy to horror, foreign to animation, independent to studio films.

SYNOPSIS: Desperate for tourism, hundreds of small towns across the U.S.A. claim the “world’s largest” something from 15-foot fiberglass strawberries to 40-foot concrete pheasants. Odd, funny and sometimes beautiful, the statues stand as testaments to the uniqueness and importance – the largeness – that all people feel, and need to feel, about their communities and their own existence. World’s Largest, a feature documentary, visits 58 such sites and profiles Soap Lake, Washington’s four-year struggle to build the World’s Largest Lava Lamp. By documenting these roadside attractions, World’s Largest captures the changing landscape of small-town America.

SXSW Preview: MARS

During the week or so leading up to the start of SXSW 2010, I’ll be providing a glimpse into some of the films I am looking forward to at the festival. SXSW will feature many great films, many more than I can cover, ranging from narrative fiction to documentary, comedy to horror, foreign to animation, independent to studio films.

SYNOPSIS: A new space race is born between NASA and the ESA when Charlie Brownsville, Hank Morrison, and Dr. Casey Cook compete against an artificially intelligent robot to find out what’s up there on the red planet. MARS follows these three astronauts on the first manned mission to our galactic neighbor. On the way they face adventure, self doubts, obnoxious reporters, and the boredom of extended space travel. This romantic comedy is told in the playful style of a graphic novel – using an animation process that director Geoff Marslett developed specifically for MARS. Underneath the silliness it is an exploration of exploration. Why do we want to know whatÕs out there? How do we react when we find it? Is it really that important? And where does love fit into the whole thing?

Official Website of MARS

SXSW Preview: AUDREY THE TRAINWRECK

During the week or so leading up to the start of SXSW 2010, I’ll be providing a glimpse into some of the films I am looking forward to at the festival. SXSW will feature many great films, many more than I can cover, ranging from narrative fiction to documentary, comedy to horror, foreign to animation, independent to studio films.

SYNOPSIS: For Ron Hogan, life is fine… not great, not good, just… fine, and on the verge of retiring any sort of dream heÕs harbored of a life less ordinary. Pushing thirty and working a thankless office job, internet dating is one more routine in Ron HoganÕs well-ordered life. God knows his lonely roommate and lonelier co-workers have tried, but not even a dart to the back of the head can shake him out of his funk. Until he meets Stacy, a fellow working stiff who disarms him by speaking the language of his loneliest moments. Featuring a score by acclaimed jazz composer John Medeski, Audrey the Trainwreck is Frank V. RossÕs 5th feature film, an exploration of what might happen if one manÕs silent desperation got a little bit louder.

SXSW Preview: SKELETONS

During the week or so leading up to the start of SXSW 2010, I’ll be providing a glimpse into some of the films I am looking forward to at the festival. SXSW will feature many great films, many more than I can cover, ranging from narrative fiction to documentary, comedy to horror, foreign to animation, independent to studio films.

SYNOPSIS: In this surreal comedy, DAVIS and BENNETT are a mismatched pair of traveling salesmen in the business of cleaning skeletons out of closets. Together they travel across Britain, performing ‘the Procedure’ whereby secrets and lies are exposed. Bennett is a stickler for the rules and finds that Davis has been using their special procedure illegally to reconnect with comforting moments from his past. Their boss, THE COLONEL assigns the pair to their biggest challenge yet, a graduation test that could see them moving up the company ladder. But when they arrive at a remote family home and can’t get the job done, they discover that you can’t always get away from your own skeletons and you can’t always leave and never come back.

SXSW Preview: MAN ON A MISSION

During the week or so leading up to the start of SXSW 2010, I’ll be providing a glimpse into some of the films I am looking forward to at the festival. SXSW will feature many great films, many more than I can cover, ranging from narrative fiction to documentary, comedy to horror, foreign to animation, independent to studio films.

SYNOPSIS: An epic behind-the-scenes journey with the video game legend as he becomes the first second-generation astronaut. We see how he made his fortune and spent it – $30 million! – to reach the International Space Station via Russian rocket. From secret training in Moscow, to a rumbling launch from Kazakhstan, to 12 glorious days onboard the ISS, the adventure is captivating. And for the first time ever, a camera is rolling in the capsule during the fiery return to earth. Owen Garriott, his astronaut father, is there to greet him, welcoming us all to the next generation of human space travel.

SXSW Preview: JIMMY TUPPER VS. THE GOATMAN OF BOWIE

During the week or so leading up to the start of SXSW 2010, I’ll be providing a glimpse into some of the films I am looking forward to at the festival. SXSW will feature many great films, many more than I can cover, ranging from narrative fiction to documentary, comedy to horror, foreign to animation, independent to studio films.

SYNOPSIS: Jimmy Tupper is a loser, a tramp, a go-nowhere-do-nothing-type of guy. Until one night he sees something… something no one else has seen before. Did he witness a century-old urban legend come to life? Or was it merely a drunken hallucination? Well Jimmy is determined to find out.

SXSW Preview: CRYING FROM LAUGHTER

During the week or so leading up to the start of SXSW 2010, I’ll be providing a glimpse into some of the films I am looking forward to at the festival. SXSW will feature many great films, many more than I can cover, ranging from narrative fiction to documentary, comedy to horror, foreign to animation, independent to studio films.

SYNOPSIS: Joey Frisk is a stand-up comic whose life just stopped being funny. In the most important week of his career, with a talent scout coming to check him out, his ex-wife threatens to take custody of his daughter and his landlord promises to evict him. Joey retaliates that night during his act and threatens the landlord in front of a captive audience. The next morning, his landlord is in the hospital with a fractured skull and Joey is arrested for Grievous Bodily Harm. To make matters worse, he has no memory of what happened. Looking for help, Joey turns to Frank Archer, a school friend who has recently walked back into his life. Frank is keen that he and Joey get reacquainted and offers to take him into his home. But as Joey finds out, friendship is the last thing on Frank’s mind.

Official Website of CRYING WITH LAUGHTER

SXSW Preview: LEMMY

During the week or so leading up to the start of SXSW 2010, I’ll be providing a glimpse into some of the films I am looking forward to at the festival. SXSW will feature many great films, many more than I can cover, ranging from narrative fiction to documentary, comedy to horror, foreign to animation, independent to studio films.

SYNOPSIS: The film LEMMY delves into the personal and public lives of heavy metal icon and Motorhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister. Nearly three years in the making, and featuring appearances by such friends/peers as Metallica, Dave Grohl, Billy Bob Thornton and pro wrestler Triple H, the film follows Kilmister from his Hollywood bedroom to the hockey arenas of Scandinavia and Russia.

Official Website of LEMMY

SXSW Preview: EARTHLING

During the week or so leading up to the start of SXSW 2010, I’ll be providing a glimpse into some of the films I am looking forward to at the festival. SXSW will feature many great films, many more than I can cover, ranging from narrative fiction to documentary, comedy to horror, foreign to animation, independent to studio films.

SYNOPSIS: Judith is a teacher going through a crisis. She can’t get pregnant, and it’s causing a rift in her life. On an orbital space platform, a crew picks up a strange object during a routine mission. It appears to be a living seed of some sort. One of the astronauts comes in contact with the seed causing a PULSE that sends a global brown-out on Earth. Judith is drastically affected. Dreams begin. She’s haunted by visions of the astronaut who survived the encounter with the seed pod. Eventually a group of people having the same dream locate her. They slowly realize that they are members of a stranded alien race, living on Earth disguised as humans. After many years, they’d forgotten what they were. They band together to seek out the seed, which may be a way back home.

Official Website of EARTHLING

SXSW Preview: TRASH HUMPERS

During the week or so leading up to the start of SXSW 2010, I’ll be providing a glimpse into some of the films I am looking forward to at the festival. SXSW will feature many great films, many more than I can cover, ranging from narrative fiction to documentary, comedy to horror, foreign to animation, independent to studio films.

SYNOPSIS: A film unearthed from the buried landscape of the American nightmare, TRASH HUMPERS follows a small group of elderly ‘Peeping Toms’ through the shadows and margins of an unfamiliar world. Crudely documented by the participants themselves, we follow the debased and shocking actions of a group of true sociopaths the likes of which have never been seen before. Inhabiting a world of broken dreams and beyond the limits of morality, they crash against a torn and frayed America. Bordering on an ode to vandalism, it is a new type of horror – palpable and raw.