Thompson on Hollywood

#SXSW: Tiny Furniture, Brotherhood Win Dramatic Jury and Audience Awards

At the SXSW closing awards ceremony Tuesday night, Lena Dunham's offbeat autobiographical drama Tiny Furniture won the narrative feature jury prize. Shot in November and edited in December, the filmmakers finished the micro-budget drama last Monday, and flew into Austin with a tape in hand. Dunham also won the Emergent Narrative Woman Director Award.

By Anne Thompson
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March 17, 2010 1:20 AM
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#SXSW: Gore-Epic Centurion Makes World Debut

Monday night I squeezed into the last seat at Fantastic Fest's midnight surprise screening of Neil "The Descent" Marshall's Romans vs. Picts epic Centurion at the Alamo Draft House.

By Anne Thompson
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March 16, 2010 5:28 AM
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#SXSW : Gondry Goes Animated with Daniel Clowes' Megalomania

Michael Gondry is a marvel--and I would have loved a longer chat than this flip-cam quickie, which skates across his SXSW doc The Thorn in the Heart, about his school teacher aunt Suzette, who the family used to visit deep in the country in the summer. He wanted partly to capture a vanishing world.

By Anne Thompson
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March 15, 2010 4:59 AM
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SXSW: CMG Buys Foreign Rights to Brotherhood

Foreign sales company Cinema Management Group has acquired all rights outside America for Will Canon’s college thriller Brotherhood, which premiered at SXSW Saturday night. The film began ten years ago as Canon's NYU short film Roslyn. He co-wrote Brotherhood, about a frat initiation ritual gone wrong, with Doug Simon. Chris Pollack, Jason Croft, Steven Hein and Tim O’Hair produced with executive producers Jamie Patricof, Kevin Iwashina, Darryn Welch and Chris Ouwinga.

By Anne Thompson
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March 14, 2010 10:49 AM
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#SXSW: First Hit is Cold Weather

At the SXSW opening night party, Jason Reitman showed me the trailer (below) for Aaron Katz's third feature Cold Weather on his iPhone. Reitman was psyched to see it, and I was intrigued, but it was up against Michel Gondry's Cannes doc Thorn in My Heart, which I needed to see in order to interview him Sunday.

By Anne Thompson
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March 14, 2010 8:50 AM
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#SXSW Perfect Venue for Kick-Ass

SXSW has a casual young, male vibe. At the Kick-Ass opener, the fest's Janet Pierson and director Matthew Vaughn were both wearing jeans and sneakers. So it makes sense SXSW was perfect venue for Kick-Ass, which has a primarily young male --and less female-- appeal. It's a nasty hard-R super-hero spoof designed to outrage and delight. And it will destroy at the b.o. when Liongsate opens it April. (It opens first in the U.K. in two weeks.)

By Anne Thompson
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March 13, 2010 2:10 AM
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SXSW Preview: Rodriguez, Kick-Ass, Predators

Gold Film/Interactive Badge and packet of party tickets in hand, I'm plugged into a power strip in the main courtyard at the Austin Convention Center. (The wi-fi sucks.) On my way downtown, I drove the wrong way onto several one-way streets, including a train track. I am safely parked in the convention lot, which costs $7 a day, but the guy let me in for free when I offered an out-of-state check.

By Anne Thompson
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March 13, 2010 12:06 AM
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SXSW: Texas Film Hall of Fame: Tarantino Acceptance Speech

For ten years the Austin Film Society's Texas Film Hall of Fame has handed out awards to the state's own--and deserving outsiders like Quentin Tarantino, who after 17 years of premiering his films and doing his QT Fests in Austin, was inducted by best buds Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez, who gave him a cowboy hat. (His speech is below.) "I start relaxing tomorrow," he said. Another refugee from the exhausting Oscar race was Jason Reitman, who on a whim took off in his car to decompress and wound up here to watch some movies (he's shown his shorts here in the past) before heading home to rework the first draft of his new screenplay.

By Anne Thompson
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March 12, 2010 2:33 AM
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Tribeca Film Hot Topic

The hot topic of conversation at this Friday's Independent Spirit Awards will be the role of film festivals in distribution, as Tribeca Enterprises honchos Jane Rosenthal and ex-Sundance director Geoff Gilmore announce their plans to actively engage in distribution for indie films with backing from investor Jonathan Tisch and American Express. Gilmore has long indicated that this was a direction he wanted to take. Now he's acting on it. (Here's the NYT.)

By Anne Thompson
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March 4, 2010 2:26 AM
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#SXSW: Austin Regular Rodriquez First-Looks Predators

The SXSW attractions are mounting up. Now Austin-local producer Robert Rodriguez and director Nimrod Antal will unveil footage from their upcoming remake of the Schwarzennegger flick Predators on March 12 at the Alamo Ritz at 10 pm. SXSW will also host the world premiere of Géla Babluani’s 13 as part of the SX Fantastic midnight section. The 2010 SXSW takes place March 12 – March 20.