Category: SXSW 2010

SXSW Preview: MICMACS

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: Bazil was raised an orphan and has a bullet lodged in his brain from an accident years ago. A gentle natured dreamer, he is adopted by a motley crew of junkyard dealers living in a veritable Ali Baba’s cave, whose talents and aspirations are as surprising as they are diverse: Remington, Calculator, Buster, Slammer, Elastic Girl, Tiny Pete & Mama Chow. With the help of this faithful band of wacky friends, Bazil sets out to creatively take revenge on the weapons manufacturers that caused his accident. Underdogs battling heartless industrial giants, our gang relive the battle of David and Goliath, with imagination and fantasy reminiscent of Buster Keaton.

Official Website of MICMACS

SXSW Preview: LEAVES OF GRASS

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: When Ivy League professor Bill Kincaid receives news his estranged twin brother, Brady (both played by Edward Norton), has been murdered, he travels back home to Oklahoma to find that his brother’s death is greatly exaggerated, and he’s soon caught up in the dangerous, unpredictable drug world of the Oklahoma back waters. In the process, he reconnects with his eccentric mother (Susan Sarandon), meets a wise and educated woman who bypassed academia for a simpler life (Keri Russell), and helps his brother settle a score with a pernicious drug lord (Richard Dreyfuss) who uses Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Jewish community for a cover. Leaves of Grass follows a twisting path merging crime drama and drug comedy in pursuit of answering one of our oldest questions: What does it truly mean to be happy?

Official Website of LEAVES OF GRASS.

SXSW Preview: THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

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: Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her beloved uncle is convinced it was murder and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) and the tattooed and troubled but resourceful computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) to investigate. When the pair link Harriet’s disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from almost forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vanger’s are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves.

Official Website of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO.

SXSW Preview: DOGTOOTH

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: Winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth is a darkly funny look at three teenagers confined to their parentsÕ isolated country estate and kept under strict rule and regimen. Terrorized into submission by their father, the children spend their days learning an invented vocabulary and living in an absurdist, nightmarish experiment – until a trusted outsider, brought in to satisfy the son’s libidinal urges, starts trading VHS tapes for sexual favors. A hyper-stylized mixture of physical violence and verbal comedy, Dogtooth’s ruthless satire of middle-class mores heralds the arrival of an important new voice in world cinema.

Official Website of DOGTOOTH.