Friday, March 20, 2009

Three day post.... by Adrian

Hello again.
Tuesday - We went to a panel in the AM for the TFPF grant through AFS. We learned some good stuff. Nothing new really, Bart already told us all about grants and how they worked.
We went to David Lowery's "St. Nick", which didn't have dialogue until 30 minutes in. It was awesome. I love kid movies. I talked to Savannah and her mother Amy after the screening and told them about Lemon. They seemed very interested in the project! Hooray!
Next we went to "We Live in Public"... It was a great documentary! Yipee! It was about this internet genius who was inventing stuff way before his time. Good stuff.
After that was "Trust Us, This is All Made Up". It was good. I felt like it was just a stand up comedy show, not really impressed with it as an indie feature, although the improv by the two main characters was amazing.
After the movies we went to the film after party where Daniel and I networked like cats in heat. Daniel downed a few drinks and loosened up and talked to eveyone he ever wanted to talk to and I took his lead and talked to everyone he was talking to and then... There was this girl... I saw this girl on Friday, the first day, and then everyday after, and every time I saw her, I was like, "Damn Gina!" Well, her name isn't Gina. It's Kristen, and she's a producer/actress in Austin. Love at first sight. She's nice, beautiful, friendly, and has amazing eyes and hair. I gave her my card and told her I'd be moving to Austin soon and that we should work together... She smiled at me. That's all it took for me to splurt out half sentences and broken words. Anyway, she's great. We're in love. Not really, she probably doesn't remember my name.
After the party we went to Kerby Lane with some new friends and made it home at about 3 or 4am. Damn us.

Wednesday - We started out the day with some shorts, then an INCREDIBLE movie called "Afterschool" that all of you will probably never see. There are SO many controversial aspects of this movie that the Church Lady would crap a Volkswagen! It was shot BEAUTIFULLY and had an AMAZING story of REAL LIFE that everyone hides from and tiptoes around. We sat next to a group of high school students who were shocked and offended by the obscenities and absurdities on the screen. They hated it, which made me love it that much more. There were some oddly composed shots that were absolutely amazing and I heard that the director is 23 and I want to kick him in the throat for being so awesome.
We met up with Chris Mangus for a little while. He was in town shooting some transportation legislation at the capitol and had some time to kill so he met up with us at a little mexican restaurant where we talked crap about school and filmmaking and graphic novels that have been converted to movies.
Next we slept through Experimental Shorts, then we went on to watch Texas Shorts which featured "Love, Sadie", our competitor at AFI at the end of this month. I can't lie, it was good... Really good. I liked the story and it was shot nicely. Keep your fingers crossed for "Sleet/Snow"... or just tell everyone you know it's amazing and hopefully it will get around to the judges before they even see it. Go Lobby Go!
After the Texas shorts we watched "Creative Nonfiction". For those of you who went to or or currently attending film school: Do you remember when your instructor said, "If the story is good enough, it doesn't matter how it's shot." Well, my friends, "Creative Nonfiction" is the shining example for that legendary statement. There are SOOO many technical errors in this movie that you would think it was an intro students "in camera edit". The story, however, is stupendous! The main character is incredible and the dialogue is fantastic and the movie in all is grrreat! I liked it a lot, and all the rules that were broken made me like it even more. Now this doesn't mean that you can go out and shoot something that looks like crap on purpose... you HAVE to have the story! I expect great things from this director in the near future.
After that we experienced the one... the only... "LESBIAN VAMPIRE KILLERS"! Hooray! This movie was all hotness and comedy and unexpected really good production value. The story was cheesy and the acting was cheese, and by the end I was feeling constipated. BUT a couple of the lesbian vampires were ULTRA hot and the "fat guy" was pretty funny throughout the movie... it was a "Shaun of the Dead" but switch the characters out with less-well known actors and all supporting actors with hot girls and change the undead to vampires... that's pretty much it... but completely different... figure that one out, geniuses.
I dropped Daniel off at Jeremy's and went to Erik's to go to sleep.

Thursday - The next morning Daniel called me and didn't know where he was. He had been "transported" in the middle of the night to a different location than he fell asleep in. So that was a little adventure in itself.
We started out our day with a Korean movie called "Daytime Drinking". It was funny. It made me miss Korea. I haven't actually been there, but I'm sure if I had been, I would have missed it by watching the pretty countryside pictures of this movie. It was about a guy and his weekend where everything bad that could happen to someone, happened to him. It was funny.
Then we watched some more shorts that were pretty frickin' good! There was one about these two boys in Italy or somewheres that swam around in the water and then went fishing and caught a dead guy. Find it and let me know what it is.
After that we slept through Garbage Dreams.
Then we went to some more shorts (Reel Shorts 3) and watched most of that showcase, there were some humorous shorts in this last package.
THEN we went to see "Sorry, Thanks". It was enjoyable. We had met the director at the closing party a couple of nights ago, her name is Dia Sokol. She is really cool and really nice. The main character was really funny. I liked his dialogue a lot and the main female actress was funny because her eyes were really big and so was her mouth and she made funny faces (not on purpose). So I liked it because I laughed with and at the movie.
DId I mention that we had lunch with Joe Swanberg? No I didn't... No big deal... He's only AWESOME and really down to earth.
That's like Andy Anderson having lunch with Ron Howard. How's that for perspective?
Tomorrow is going to be fun and hopefully I can dedicate one post to it instead of a three day post like this one...
Sorry. We've been staying up late and waking up early and it's hard to find time to keep up with this pooper.
My mom suggested we skip SXSW tomorrow and just go to Fiesta Texas and ride roller coasters all day. It sounds lovely to me, but we're on a mission and we can't take a detour!

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