Back in the year 2000, when the rest of the world for worrying about the Y2K bug, we were making the decision to get a broadband connection to enable us faster access to the worldwide web. A big driver of this decision was a new service we had discovered called Napster which enabled us to share music that we had purchased with our friends. More importantly it gave us access to a world of music we had never been exposed to. Imagine my delight then when at this year’s SXSW, the movie Downloaded was playing. Welcome to one of my favorite films of the SXSW 2013 Film festival.
downloaded
Downloaded written and directed by Alex Winter (yes, that Alex Winter of Bill S Preston fame – Bill and Ted) focuses on the advent of digital media sharing, including the rise of game-changing company Napster and controversial pioneers Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker. The digital revolution ultimately created a technology paradigm shift and upended the music industry. This great documentary has insights from well known music artists and figures within the music industry including: The Beastie Boys’ Mike D, Noel Gallagher, Henry Rollins, former Sony Music Chairman, Don Ienner, former record producer and Island Records founder Chris Blackwell and Hilary Rosen, former CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America.
Alex Winter masterfully documents an account of a time and events that in my mind changed history. More importantly he has shared the profile of a young Sean Fanning who has previously been portrayed as an anarchist as a thoughtful and rather lonely young boy who just wanted to push and understand the boundaries of the technology of the time. In addition, we see a very different Sean Parker to the one portrayed in last years hit The Social Network. What particularly resonated with me through the entire movie was the story of the genius young minds behind Napster and what motivated them and it’s not always what you may think it was.
Watching a group of brilliant young minds come together and create something that not only changed the public perception of what they were willing to pay for and which ultimately brought the music industry as it had been for years to it’s knees but also how these young men defend themselves against corporations is fascinating. This is a David vs. Goliath story that is definitely worth a watch.
The biggest treat for me came during the Q and A after the movie when we got to meet Alex, Winter and both the Seans in person. The interaction between the three and especially the Seans just solidified how brilliantly Winter had captured the essence of these incredibly talented young men. If you have any interest in music, entrepreneurialism, dot com or milestones in history, this is a must see documentary
Choreographer/Dancer/Writer/Director Dayna Hanson brings us Improvement Club – a hybrid feature film that uses dance and music to tell a story of the exhilaration and humiliation of making art in America today. When their New York gig falls through, a ragtag, avant-garde performance group with a political message struggles to find their audience– and the motivating force behind their work. This mockumentary includes Hanson’s live, dance-driven rock musical inspired by the American Revolution, GLORIA’S CAUSE and traces the fictional creation of the actual musical and choreographed dances. Their desperate desire to express themselves takes the Seattle-based ensemble into the backwoods of the Pacific Northwest on a surreal pursuit of trust, togetherness, and the true meaning of creativity.
This is a great example of life imitating art as we get a sense of what seems like an autobiographical account of Hanson’s personal struggles as an actor. The film follows the performance group as they present their art for critics and audiences who just don’t seem to understand how Avant-garde they really are and don’t really appreciate what they are doing.
I must say as I was watching the movie I did find myself questioning what exactly I was supposed to be getting out of the movie as the narrative cleverly dissolves into some experimental dance numbers which are quite entertaining at times. Incredible direction and clever camera angles kept me engaged enough to follow the film to completion when I realized that the joke is really on us as the audience, surely the question this movie is asking us “Are we ready for this?” I especially appreciated the fact that the score for the movie is integrated and comes from the real band playing in the movie.
Ultimately I came away with a sense of the trials and tribulations that many such performers must face on a daily basis, the constant battle between the desire to follow you H-art or get a real job that pays a decent wage. If you are a fan of dance or alternative performance or just an alternative movie, make sure you view this one.
This is a great example of life imitating art as we get a sense of what seems like an autobiographical account of Hanson’s personal struggles as an actor. The film follows the performance group as they present their art for critics and audiences who just don’t seem to understand how Avant-garde they really are and don’t really appreciate what they are doing.
I must say as I was watching the movie I did find myself questioning what exactly I was supposed to be getting out of the movie as the narrative cleverly dissolves into some experimental dance numbers which are quite entertaining at times. Incredible direction and clever camera angles kept me engaged enough to follow the film to completion when I realized that the joke is really on us as the audience, surely the question this movie is asking us “Are we ready for this?” I especially appreciated the fact that the score for the movie is integrated and comes from the real band playing in the movie.
Ultimately I came away with a sense of the trials and tribulations that many such performers must face on a daily basis, the constant battle between the desire to follow you H-art or get a real job that pays a decent wage. If you are a fan of dance or alternative performance or just an alternative movie, make sure you view this one.
My most surreal experience at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival occurred during the screening of EVERYBODY HAS A PLAN.
Everybody Has A Plan
At one point in this movie, there are two Viggo Mortensens on the screen; he plays twin brothers. And the actual Viggo Mortensen, who was attending the Toronto premiere of the movie, was in the seat directly behind me. There were literally Viggo Mortensens everywhere I looked. Two full-screen Viggos in front of me, and the real-life one behind me. Mortensen is somebody I have long respected as an actor, from his The Indian Runner days in the early nineties, through his remarkable run of David Cronenberg films (A History Of Violence, Eastern Promises and A Dangerous Method) and of course his most visible turn in the Lord of the Rings franchise. Is there such a thing as too much Viggo? Based on that surreal moment at the Toronto screening, I am happy to report, the answer is ‘no’.
EVERYBODY HAS A PLAN (Todos Tenemos Un Plan), an Argentinian film, takes film noir and carries it through its fullest possibilities.
Mortensen plays the dual roles of Agustin, a well to do Buenos Aires pediatrician who is coming untethered from his wife, and Pedro, the far less fortunate twin brother living in the impoverished water-logged islands of El Tigre delta who has his hands dirty with involvement with the local crime leader. The swampy islands in the movie bear a striking resemblance to the setting of the recent Beasts Of The Southern Wild.
Throw into this story Pedro’s younger lover, hard-scrabble criminals who will stop at nothing to recover lost money, switched identities, and bee-keeping as a metaphor for the perils of getting too close to something dangerous – and you have a viscous, steaming brew of film noir set in South America. To reveal too much more about the plot is to take away from its pleasures. Suffice it to say that after one brother is forced to take on the identity of the other, he momentously fails to appreciate the nightmare he is walking into. The film has a brooding slow burn that makes the sporadic, sudden bursts of brutal violence that much more effective when they occur. Rigidly realistic with the look of the region where the story is set, the cinematography of the scenes in the El Tigre islands in particular are effective; the film has a very definite sense of geography. There is also a studied realism to the emotional connections between the main characters – who are complex, irrational and damaged, and all the more believable because of that; this film is miles away from the traditional movie experience. All of which is surprising considering that this is only the first film from the young director Ana Piterbarg.
Mortensen has to do much of the heavy-lifting here, being in practically every scene, and in this Spanish-language movie he demonstrates that he is just as compelling an actor in any language. Just like in the film, during the Q and A session after the screening, Mortensen performed double-duty. While on stage he translated audience questions into Spanish for his director. And then translated what she had to say back into English for the audience. Lets see some other actors who claim versatility match that.
Using the familiar premise of mixed-identity as only the springboard to tell a complex, violent, obsessive crime story, this film will particularly resonate for those seeking respite from the bland Hollywood fare. EVERYBODY HAS A PLAN opens in New York City and Los Angeles this Friday, March 22, 2013 with wider national release in the following weeks.
