Author Archives: afs.admin

1. “Looking For the Truth,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Porn-Adjacent” Epic, Boogie Nights

   June 25, 2018 8:43 pm Leave a Comment

   BOOGIE NIGHTS screens in 35mm at the AFS Cinema starting Saturday June 30th. Tickets and more info here.

   The opening shot of BOOGIE NIGHTS plunges you into the streets of late seventies California, lit up with neon-psychedelic billboards, pulsing with the sounds of Motown and disco.  As well as the mind of Paul Thomas Anderson, the twenty-seven year old director and writer of the ambitious 1997 film that changed his career, in this case a dramatic and envelope-pushing multi-decade epic following the boom and fall of the porn industry in the San Fernando Valley.

   Spinning out of a short mockumentary Anderson made as a young film school drop-out in California, BOOGIE NIGHTS was not a project that immediately made producers bite, let alone give the money needed to complete it. The original script had the heft of a telephone book and Anderson wanted it to be three hours long and have an NC-17 rating in order for his vision to come to life.

   Anderson was young too and looked it, and when calling for meetings his future collaborators often remember thinking he was pranking them, Adam Shankman the choreographer for the film recalled meeting with Paul and thinking “Where is the adult? Where is the person who’s making the movie? Why am I meeting with you, child?”

   Pre-conceived notions of P. T. Anderson’s porn-adjacent epic fell to the side as New Line Cinema took on the project. The crew found an era appropriate house in West Covina and a repertory cast assembled that included Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Don Cheadle, William H. Macy, Burt Reynolds, and newcomer Mark Wahlberg, many of whom would become Anderson’s longtime collaborators.

   

   PTA with Heather “Rollergirl” Graham

   While pre-production was rocky as Anderson adapted his original vision to a slightly less overbearing two and a half hour movie and rewrote the script for an R-rating, production proved to be even worse. Burt Reynolds wasn’t thrilled to be playing Jack Horner, a porn producer, and fought Anderson on anything he could. He was convinced the movie would go nowhere and wanted more opportunities to mess with the character, but PTA had a vision that was sacred to him and a script that had been in his back pocket for ten years.

   Despite Reynold’s complaints both verbal and physical, there were a few times the arguments moved to shoving and punching matches on set, he would go on to be nominated for an Academy Award for and win a Golden Globe for the role.

   PTA and Burt Reynolds

   BOOGIE NIGHTS was a success career-wise for Anderson, but not commercially. It turned out that a movie with a two hour plus run time and porn industry marketing scheme was still a deterrent to most movie-goers. But those who gave it a shot were welcomed into the meticulous world that Anderson crafted, with characters who forged new families and lost relationships at the years flew by.

   Watching BOOGIE NIGHTS is a constant reminder of the humanity in the world around us, and how our lives interchange and affect those who we come into contact with. It’s also a reminder of a time that seems lost to us now, the shift in decades transforms these character’s lives and careers in ways that people living in the new millennium today can’t quite comprehend.

   In one of the most tense scenes of the film, and maybe ever shot?, the camera stays on the lead Dirk Diggler, played by Mark Wahlberg for an excruciating forty-five seconds as chaos erupts around him. Emotions pass over Dirk’s face quickly and quietly as we understand the choices he’s made that led him here.

   This is the genius of PTA and BOOGIE NIGHTS. While other writer-directors want to set the fire themselves and watch the house become engulfed in flames, Anderson yearns to see how those flames both glorify and destroy real lives and what that loss looks like in the eyes of a spectator.

   And while we’re at it, this past March we honored Paul Thomas Anderson at the Texas Film Awards with the inaugural Jonathan Demme Award. Watch his conversation with Richard Linklater below:

   • This piece contributed by Claire Hardwick

2. The Zellner Brothers’ DAMSEL Opens This Week. Here’s What the Critics (and Robert Pattinson) are Saying

   8:14 pm Leave a Comment

   Star Mia Wasikowska and writer-director-costar David Zellner in DAMSEL

    

   Visit the AFS Cinema Thursday, June 28th for a special premiere screening of DAMSEL. Austin-based writer-directors David and Nathan Zellner will join us for a special screening with a Q&A and a special post-screening DJ Set by The Octopus Project. The film opens for a full run on Friday, June 29.

   The Zellner Brothers have been making wonderful, highly individual films for years, from their earliest short films, their breakthrough feature GOLIATH, KID-THING, the widely acclaimed KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER, and more. Along the way, they have become among the best-known and most appreciated independent filmmakers of their generation.

   In their latest feature, DAMSEL, the Zellners, and their cast; which includes Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, and a miniature horse; invest the Western genre with some really strange twists and of course their trademark narrative perversity.

   The film received the NYT Critic’s Pick stamp from Jeannette Catsoulis who says, “DAMSEL handily encapsulates the tone of a movie that turns the classic western into something wackily eccentric and entertainingly original.”

   Entertainment Weekly’s Dana Schwartz calls it “unpredictable and bizarre, stunningly beautiful and weird in the best ways.”

   In Richard Whittaker’s Austin Chronicle feature story, David Zellner says, “It’s fun playing with the gray areas. Most of the time people are a combination of good and bad, depending on the situation or the perspective.”

   David and Nathan have been making movies together since they were kids. In this interview on the No Film School Podcast, they look back on their early days wrestling with clunky VHS cameras. They talk us through their organic, collaborative method of writing DAMSEL, even name-dropping AFS a few times as a way for a young filmmaker to get access to professional film gear (thanks, guys). David ends the interview with advice to young artists, “Don’t be afraid to fail, keep exploring.”

   Meanwhile, on the Tonight Show, Robert Pattinson struggles to find the right words to define the basically undefinable comedy in DAMSEL, ultimately calling it, “Real, it’s real.” Watch the awkward exchange here.

   • Contributed by Shane Pfender

3. MARY SHELLEY Opens For A Limited Engagement This Weekend at AFS Cinema

   June 21, 2018 6:10 pm Leave a Comment

   The new film MARY SHELLEY begins a limited run at the AFS Cinema on Friday, June 22. Click here for tickets and more info.

   Author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was raised by her father, William Godwin, a radical philosopher and one of the earliest proponents of modern anarchism. Mary’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, wrote a groundbreaking book of early feminist theory, but died shortly after her daughter’s birth. Shrouded by death and informed by groundbreaking intellectual creativity, the events of Shelley’s life up until the writing of her most famous book, FRANKENSTEIN, are themselves as fascinating as a gothic novel.

   The new film by pioneering female Saudi filmmaker Haifaa Al-Mansour, MARY SHELLEY is the story of the life of the author – her life, loves, tragedies and works. Against the tide of a deeply conservative society, Mary Shelley (Elle Fanning) challenges the authority that works to stifle female voices as indelible as hers. Her affair and marriage with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (Douglas Booth) are shown within this context as well.

   DIrector Haifaa al-Mansour shares much in common with the film’s protagonist. Much like Mary Shelley in her time, the director of MARY SHELLEY faces the unique hardship of existing in a country where being a woman and being an artist requires a constant struggle to be heard. Al-Mansour herself reflects on growing up in Saudi Arabia, “the culture is such that women are invisible, they don’t matter.” In realizing the systemic sexism of her culture, the director took up filmmaking as a way of coping with these hardships when she made her first film.

   Here are some selections from the reviews of the film:

   “The director and her star make their point… plainly, cleanly, and with fire.” Ty Burr, Boston Globe

   “The tumultuous stew of emotions inside Mary grows to a roiling boil before it all comes pouring out.” Katie Walsh, LA Times

   “Rather than smother Mary Shelley — author of “Frankenstein,”daughter of two eminent writers and wife of another — with soft cushions of antiquarian cultural prestige, Ms. al-Mansour and the screenwriter, Emma Jensen, sharpen the sense of Shelley’s modernity. It helps enormously that she is played with alert sensitivity and acute intelligence by Elle Fanning.” – A.O. Scott, New York Times

   “Elle Fanning deftly shades the trials and tribulations of the young writer and her complicated relationship with Percy Shelley…Fanning and Booth’s chemistry is blindingly intense. Through it all, Al-Mansour sharply captures this makeshift family’s wild swings from revelry to desperation to inspiration.” Jason Bailey, Village Voice

   • Contributed by Shane Pfender

4. New Chef Doc THE QUEST OF ALAIN DUCASSE Opens This Friday at AFS Cinema

   June 20, 2018 9:10 pm Leave a Comment

   THE QUEST OF ALAIN DUCASSE opens on Friday June 22 at the AFS Cinema. Tickets on sale now.

   With 23 restaurants across the globe and now 18 Michelin stars under his belt, master chef and restaurateur Alain Ducasse is showing no signs of stopping in his quest to bring artful cuisine to the world.

   In the new doc THE QUEST OF ALAIN DUCASSE, director Gilles de Maistre follows Ducasse from country to country as he forms schools to mentor the culinary geniuses of tomorrow and opens new restaurants in places like Versailles, all while continuing his quest to find (and taste) the best produce in every pocket of the world

   Sound appetizing? We think so too, but don’t just believe us. Here’s what the critics are saying:

   “Gorgeously shot for the big screen, this absorbing documentary explores what makes the eponymous globe-trotting chef-businessman tick.” – Alissa Simon, Variety

   “In his astute look at the artistry and business of food, de Maistre makes the case that haute cuisine serves the same function as haute couture, creating an indelible experience while encouraging new ideas to filter through the industry.” – Serena Donadoni, Village Voice

   “Be forewarned that a second-hand rush of exhilaration and inspiration will occur – as will a hunger for haute cuisine.” – Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction

    

   Watch the trailer for THE QUEST OF ALAIN DUCASSE here:

   
   

   • This piece contributed by Claire Hardwick

    

5. Mondo Belmondo: From New Wave Darling to France’s Greatest Action Star

   7:21 pm Leave a Comment

   “I don’t know what they mean” was Jean-Paul Belmondo’s response to being touted as the face of the French New Wave after his turn in Godard’s BREATHLESS. Despite his confusion about this unexpected ascendancy to the top rank of the art-house star-system, Belmondo would go on to achieve worldwide fame among the smart set before realizing his true passion of becoming France’s most iconic action star, harrowing stunts and all.

   A scrappy street-fighter from the outskirts of Paris, Belmondo grew into his no-bullshit persona quickly and casually, studying and mimicking his fellow denizens of the street and pool-hall. He went undefeated as a boxer for only a few matches before his mirror showed the physical toll it was taking on his face, and he turned his eyes to a new goal, performing.

   And he was good at it too, spending time at a French conservatory for acting at the end of his teenage years and raising a fuss when he didn’t win the coveted Best Actor award at the end of the year.

   But that didn’t stop Belmondo from finding fame. A chance meeting with writer-director-critic Jean-Luc Godard led to him acting in a short film of his at the end of the fifties. Godard was impressed and wanted to work with him again. And they did. Belmondo was cast across from Jean Seberg in BREATHLESS, the film that would become synonymous with the French New Wave and the shifting tides of how filmmakers could reconcile real life and the artifice of the movies in the shifting cultural landscape of post-war France.

   While Belmondo flourished as the darling of critics and espresso-sipping aesthetes, his own personal interests were less highbrow. He was a fan of sports matches, detective novels, and Hollywood comedies. The French New Wave saw Belmondo as the face of philosophical debates and silent love affairs, he saw himself as a fun loving goofball.

   When Jackie Chan was interviewed about the biggest influences on his style of kinetic, comedic action-adventure films, many are surprised to hear him invoke the name of Belmondo alongside Buster Keaton. Few Francophones are shocked by this, as Belmondo carved out a place for himself among the very great masters of physical comedy and action in his output of the 60’s, 70’s and ‘80s.

   Roles like Adrien Dufourquet in THAT MAN FROM RIO were the most fun for him. Jumping from planes, fighting off bad guys, chasing or being chased, and protecting the damsel in distress were the kinds of things he found came easily to him, and he eventually made this kind of fast-paced, humorous action his stock in trade as an actor.

   He was willing to go along with the likes of Godard, Truffaut, and Melville, on their artistic journeys, but it wasn’t about what Belmondo liked or wanted. Belmondo wanted to be himself, sometimes brooding, sometimes comic, always charming, and this kept the audiences coming through the cinema doors. It made him a household name in both art house cinema and mainstream media forever.
   
   Mondo Belmondo: The four film series celebrating the great actor and wildly popular action star Jean-Paul Belmondo kicks off at the AFS Cinema on July 6th.
   
   As a special bonus enjoy this stunt from THE BURGLARS, probably Belmondo’s most insane and death-defying stunt gag of all:
   
   

    

   • This piece contributed by Claire Hardwick

6. AFS Viewfinders Podcast: A Dialogue With Master Film Programmer Kier-la Janisse

   June 19, 2018 7:11 pm Leave a Comment

   Austin Film Society Lead Programmer Lars Nilsen here, using the first person singular for once in introducing a pretty remarkable dialogue we recorded a few weeks ago with programmer-author-editor-publisher-educator Kier-la Janisse.  Kier-la has done an awful lot in all of these arenas, from creating the Cinemuerte Film Festival, programming for Alamo Drafthouse during its most formative years (during which time she mentored poor lost benighted me), turning genre film scholarship on its head with the brilliant and influential autobiographical film critique HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN, starting the Miskatonic Institute Of Horror Studies and publisher Spectacular Optical and more.

   Her insights and anecdotes are fascinating and hilarious even if you have little or no interest in film programming. I hope you’ll enjoy this (too-brief) discussion.

   Listen to the podcast here or in your iTunes app.

   This seems like a good place to drop this in too. Kier-la is funding her newest book COCKFIGHT, and her research is uncovering a hitherto unknown world of weirdness connected with the 1974 Monte Hellman outlaw classic COCKFIGHTER. You can get in on the ground floor by contributing to the project and pre-buying your copy of the book here.

7. “Vivid, Evocative & Surreal” New Film SUMMER 1993 Opens This Friday at AFS Cinema

   June 12, 2018 6:58 pm Leave a Comment

   SUMMER 1993 opens on Friday June 15 at the AFS Cinema. Tickets on sale now.

   Spanish writer/director Carla Simón tells her own story in the dreamlike new film SUMMER 1993. In the film, we follow Frida, a precocious and observant six-year-old whose life is dramatically changed after the death of her parents.

   Frida and her young cousin Anna play and fight together during lazy days of summer as Frida struggles to understand her circumstances.

   Aided by cinematographer, Santiago Racaj, Simón uses her camera to bring us the unique perspective of life through the experience of a young girl. Instead of dramatizing a childhood tragedy, Simón explores a deeper experience of life during upheaval and the ways in which we make sense of these events.

   We like the film a lot. But don’t just trust us. The critics are pretty much unanimous in praise of the film, as the 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes attests. Here’s what they’re saying:

   “Movingly understated and beautifully acted.” (NYT Critics Pick) – Jeanette Catsoulis, New York Times

   “An extraordinary and beautiful work of grief and memory.” – Kyle Turner, Village Voice

   “A uniquely vivid and evocative kind of storytelling… SUMMER lives, breathes and succeeds on the expressive, instinctive work of its young lead actress.” Gary Goldstein, LA Times

    

   “Simón achieves the rare feat of faithfully recreating the mysterious consciousness of a child… It’s a surreal spectacle, monstrous yet magical, combining qualities of childhood that are too often obscured by sentimentality.” Peter Keough, Boston Globe

   Watch the trailer for SUMMER 1993 here:

    

   • Contributed by Shane Pfender

8. Newly Restored Straub-Huillet Masterpiece Starts Sunday

   June 8, 2018 10:26 pm Leave a Comment

   The new restoration of the unconventional and austere music biopic by Jean-Marie Straub & Daniéle Huillet, THE CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH, plays this Sunday and the following Tuesday at the AFS Cinema.

   Straub & Huillet take slow cinema to a new level with the film, which places the viewer into the same tempo of life that informed J.S. Bach’s creation. This is a film that begs the viewer to stop and listen to Bach in a way you never have before, and to experience the life and times of J.S. Bach’s wife and collaborator Anna Magdalena Bach.

   Produced by Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette, CHRONICLE stands as a nearly forgotten gem of French cinema.

   Here’s the trailer:

   • Contributed by Shane Pfender

9. Acclaimed ‘Dark Nail Biter’ BEAST Opens Today at AFS Cinema

   6:58 pm Leave a Comment

   It’s true. Most scary movies just aren’t that scary. Atmosphere is often conveyed by a bunch of well-worn cliches, and the jump-scare is relied upon to create the thrills.

   In the new British thriller BEAST, writer-director Michael Pearce avoids these superficial pitfalls and instead delivers a creepy work of real tension and fresh situations. It’s half lovers-on-the-run story and half psychologically fraught murder procedural, and that’s all good.

   As a series of murders plague the strange island of Jersey, our protagonist Moll (played wonderfully by Jessie Buckley) entrenches herself in a world of love and violence. This is a good, smart, very scary movie. See it while you can at the AFS Cinema.

   But don’t just trust us, trust these professional movie critic people:

   “The film is not so much a psychological thriller as a performance-driven portrait of a vulnerable-yet-ferocious woman in a very dangerous predicament, and the electrically intense Buckley is the actress to carry it.” Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune

   “Bathed in a shadowy beauty and slippery psychological atmosphere, BEAST soars on Ms. Buckley’s increasingly animalistic performance… This is lurid stuff, yet Mr. Pearce miraculously holds things together until the end” –Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times

   “This dark nail-biter eschews the obvious at every turn and is less a whodunit than a twisted moral meditation grounded by its mesmerizing leading lady.” –Barbara VanDenburgh – Arizona Republic

   “BEAST is, first and foremost, an inquisitive and empathetic character study, focused on the psychologically possessive qualities of belatedly unleashed sexuality.” –Guy Lodge, Variety

   “Immaculately composed yet skittish, edgy and surprising, BEAST emanates a chill that will have you hugging your sides… Just when you think you’ve got it pinned down, it hairpins off in a new direction.” –Philip De Semlyen, TimeOut

   Here’s that trailer:

    

   • Contributed by Shane Pfender

10. The Noir Canon Series, This June at AFS

    June 1, 2018 6:17 pm Leave a Comment

    For the second year, the AFS Cinema brings a summertime dose of shadowy moral ambiguity and proto-existential dread to movie screens with our Noir Canon series. These are the foundational, quintessential works of Film Noir, and before the first screening of each title, AFS Lead Programmer Lars Nilsen will introduce the work and explain some of the themes and their importance to the genre as a whole. The series begins tonight, Friday June 1, with a special screening of the Library Of Congress’ excellent 35mm print of Jacques Tourneur’s OUT OF THE PAST.

    About the series:

    In Paris, after the World War II Nazi occupation, American crime and detective films flooded back into cinemas after a four-year absence. The moral and visual darkness of these films caused French critics and audiences to coin a new term, film noir, to describe them. The narrative directness, visual sophistication and dark humor that characterized these films have made film noir enduringly popular. With this series, we hope to share some of the foundational films of film noir and, in our introductions to these screenings, help people understand what characterizes the genre, what it meant to audiences of its time, and what it still says to us today.

    

     

    OUT OF THE PAST (June 1 and 3)

    USA, 1947, 1h 37min, 35mm
    Jacques Tourneur, best known for his atmospheric horror films for producer Val Lewton, directs a superb cast (Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, Jane Greer, Rhonda Fleming) in this story of a former low-rent detective, established in a new, wholesome life, who is drawn back into the world of darkness he barely escaped.

    

    IN A LONELY PLACE (June 8 and 10)

    USA, 1950, 1h 34min, 35mm
    Whatever genre he happened to be working in, director Nicholas Ray always found a way to make artful, psychologically rich work. Here, Humphrey Bogart plays a cynical, sardonic screenwriter suspected of murder. His neighbor (Gloria Grahame) is fond of him and provides an alibi, but is his darkness more than surface-deep?

    

    THIS GUN FOR HIRE (June 13 and 17)

    USA, 1942, 1h 21min, 35mm
    The king and queen of noir, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, are paired for the first time in a thrilling, lightning-paced noir based on a Graham Greene novel. Ladd plays a blackmailer and murderer who is being shadowed and investigated by Veronica Lake, who has been enlisted by police to crack his shell.

    

     

    THE BIG HEAT (June 22 and 24)

    USA, 1953, 1h 29min, DCP
    One of director Fritz Lang’s masterpieces and a Hollywood film of rare depth and expression. Despite his department’s lax attitude towards the matter, tough cop Glenn Ford goes nose to nose with crime boss Lee Marvin. When the gangsters strike back, Ford must fight to save what he has left. With Gloria Grahame, in her greatest performance.

     

    

    RAW DEAL (June 29)

    USA, 1948, 1h 19min, 35mm
    The German-American director Anthony Mann was a master-craftsman, and, in collaboration with cinematographer John Alton, created some of the best looking and most economical down-market noir. RAW DEAL stars Dennis O’Keefe as a con who escapes and tries to go straight, but must first contend with his adversary, played by Raymond Burr. With genre great Claire Trevor as the bad girl who loves O’Keefe.

11. Watch This: Jay Duplass visits AFS Cinema for OUTSIDE IN, Now Playing at AFS Cinema

    May 25, 2018 11:05 pm Leave a Comment

    A few weeks ago, our friend Jay Duplass stopped by the cinema for a special sneak preview of his latest film OUTSIDE IN, which he co-wrote with Director Lynn Shelton, and also co-stars in with Edie Falco. He was happy to answer some audience questions about his creative process.

    Watch the interview below then join us this weekend at the cinema to catch festival favorite OUTSIDE IN.

12. Noir City Starts Tonight at the Ritz, Noir Canon continues in June at AFS

    May 18, 2018 6:40 pm Leave a Comment

    Carole Landis and Victor Mature in I WAKE UP SCREAMING (aka THE HOT SPOT)

    The Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller, legendary writer, scholar and preservationist of Film Noir culture is in Austin this weekend to present Noir City Austin 2018, a special weekend of Noir classics and restorations at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz.

    Grouped into a series of double features with the ‘A’ movie (typically a prestige title with stars and a decent budget) paired with a ‘B’ movie (a lower budget film with non A-list stars) being shown in tandem, this promises to be yet another extraordinary learning experience, and an entertaining one.

    You can see the full line-up here. Tickets are still available for all shows. Be there.

    If this doesn’t satisfy your taste for Noir, and in fact just makes you crave more of it, we have just the ticket for you, our Noir Canon series, starting on June 1 with a special archival print of the Jacques Tourneur classic OUT OF THE PAST on loan from the Library of Congress. You can see the schedule for the Noir Canon shows here. See you out there on the mean streets.