SXSW hosted the premier of the restored classic, The Breakfast Club, written and directed by John Hughes. But the event wasn’t so much a premier as it was a celebration of a movie that has touched a generation or two. With its upcoming special theatrical showings and release to Blu-ray and video, it is sure to touch a few more. When the doors opened, we were given Breakfast Club t-shirts and treated to a breakfast of donuts, coffee and mimosas. Thank you, Universal Studios.
t’s a rare moment when two artistic talents you have admired for decades intersect in your presence. Robert Rodriguez has been one of my favorite directors since I saw ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’. Frank Frazetta has been my favorite artist since his paintings began appearing on the covers of Tarzan and Conan books in the 1960s. At SXSW, I participated in a tour of the Robert Rodriguez Museum, conducted by Rodriguez. He explained how, like many others, he found the paintings of Frank Frazetta amazing and inspirational for his own art. He recalled how when he first met Frazetta, and saw his original paintings up close, he was amazed at the depth and detail that never appeared in any of the prints or book covers.
Attending SXSW (pronounced South by Southwest), the annual Austin, Texas, technology, film and music festival should be on everyone’s bucket list.
(Originally published on Blogcritics.org) Two famous Hollywood names, Zane and Eastwood, helped producer Jeffery Patterson score a hat trick (the hockey kind, not the cowboy kind), winning two awards at the International Family Film Festival this month in Hollywood, California. Patterson won the Best Feature Drama award for Hot Bath an’ a Stiff Drink, and […]
(Originally published on Blogcritics.org) Two films at the International Family Film Festival, Centurion AD and Leaving Limbo took two radically different paths to get you in touch with things spiritual, although they both involved a character out of their normal place in time. Centurion AD is billed as a sci-fi action adventure, set in current […]
(Originally published on Blogcritics.org) Not everything that comes out of Hollywood is full of sex, violence, and drugs. That is especially true of the 19th annual International Family Film Festival (IFFF), which took place at Hollywood’s Raleigh Studios (the former United Artists lot), November 7-9, 2014. The IFFF (“I triple F” is the cool kid […]
An attack on Vietnam veterans – I suddenly felt like I was back at UCLA in 1971. Beyond Courage: Surviving Vietnam as a POW brought back questions, controversies, and anger from a war which was the model for the Chinese Communist vision of the peasants in the countryside rising up and overcoming the city. Empire State Divide brought viewers into the world of today and a war by the city on the countryside.
Two of the documentaries at the Anthem Film Festival caused my brain to do a reboot.
This is an amazing 11 minutes of film. In the space within which most films are still on the titles, Australian Writer/Director Jason Kempnich gives us a “save the cat” moment, a character flaw (despair), an inciting incident, a character arc, conflict and a resolution. And the special effects are good, too. I saw Cough at the Anthem […]
Two films — two questions about America’s future
It is a rare experience to have a documentary film move you emotionally as narrative films often do. New York Times bestselling author Dinesh D’Souza’s defense of America did just that.
If you thought Edward Snowden was the first NSA whistle blower, you need to see this film.
(First published on blogcritics.org) Filmmaker Reaves Washburn quoted Oscar Wilde: “Wilde said, ‘If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise, they’ll kill you.’ For us,” he continued, “that means give them good themes, peak their interest, ease people in and make it fun in every way.” Washburn, whose film Knocked Down won the short […]
(First published on blogcritics.org) Since l was old enough to comprehend such things, sometime in the 1960s, I’ve heard stories of how bad things can be in countries with socialized medicine. Until Saturday, July 13, 2013, at the Anthem Film Festival, I had no idea just how bad it could be. Logan Clements in his […]
(First published on blogcritics.org) Two sci-fi films with different twists on dystopian futures made the Anthem Film Festival a scary place. The Pilgrim, winner of the festival’s Audience Choice Award, by filmmaker Sean Buttimer, creates a global-warming-freaks-gone-wild world dominated by EPA bureaucrats. Silver Circle, by Pasha Roberts, takes us into a world where individual rights are crushed by an out-of-control […]
(First published on blogcritics.org) This is my second year at the Anthem Film Festival; when I registered I received the typical conference bag of goodies. To my delight, this bag include a DVD of The Conversation, the film that stood out most in my mind from year one. The Conversation, by Korchula Productions, does what most people might […]
(First published on blogcritics.org) There no shortage of either documentaries or polemics at the Anthem Film Festival, and they serve their role to advance the cause of Libertarian thought. But, and I heard this message last year and even more this year, before you can have an impact on the political system, you must change […]
(First published on blogcritics.org) Two approaches to serving up the truth were offered on Thursday, July 11, at the Anthem Film Festival: the gutsy, gritty, in-your-face truth of main stream media vitriol in Hating Breitbart, and the complex, subtle and intellectual economic truth of I, Pencil. Hating Breitbart Filmmaker Andrew Marcus began filming Andrew Breitbart’s life two days […]
(First published on blogcritics.org) You don’t have to do anything wrong to be destroyed by litigation. That is the message of The Last Week, a documentary which screened the first day of the Anthem Film Festival, in Las Vegas. It chronicles the last week of Blitz USA, a company that manufactured gas cans and provided jobs […]
This article originally appeared on blogcritics.org I started reading works by Ayn Rand in high school 50 years ago, and I’ve never been able to shake entirely free of her ideas. Now I go to the desert to contemplate those ideas. OK, it’s not quite as mystical as it sounds, because that part of the […]