- (if you didn’t read last week’s entry in this series, all of the short films that were meant to premiere at this year’s cancelled South by Southwest are currently streaming online for free and I’ve vowed to get through as many as possible)
- The first SXSW short film I watched was Sleep Paralysis, directed by William Tran. It had its moments, chiefly its brilliant final shot, but it lost me a bit with its simplistic characterisation and occasionally questionable acting, and it doesn’t quite reconcile its first half with its last, thematically or narratively. I think this was a high school production though, so props to them for making something semi-competent. I chose it first simply because the titular affliction has always been interesting for me. It didn’t win any awards from the SXSW jury.
- I then watched Heat, a dark comedy from the Netherlands directed by Thessa Meijer. It was part of the Midnight Shorts program and was fantastic. It had a great sense of dark humour, impressive visual effects and a stunning aesthetic. I don’t have a bad thing to say about this one and I highly recommend you check it out.
- After Heat I jumped back to another high school short, in this case Alex directed by Wilson Jones. This had a couple of problems (some of the dialogue was a little on-the-nose) but ultimately the character work and themes are strong enough for me to be able to say that I quite liked it. This is the most culturally important SXSW short I’ve watched so far – recommended.
- The first documentary of my home-based SXSW was Unveiled, directed by Sofia Bajwa, another high school short that recieved a Special Jury Recognition award. It’s a solid doco exploring an important cultural issue in a way that is mostly impactful. The only downside is that it had some poor audiowork at times and some of the editing was a little misjudged.
- I also managed to watch a feature this week: Michael Mann’s excellent 1995 thriller Heat (not to be confused with the SXSW short that I just wrote about). It was a great film with fantastic performances from Robert De Niro and Al Pacino and very well-directed action scenes.
- As for the news….
- Just as I was thinking it was bit of a slow news day on Tuesday, Sony announced that it’s pushing back a bunch of its summer releases to early 2021 – Morbius, Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Peter Rabbit 2. This might seem like overkill at first glance but it might actually be smart to take their movies out of the now-overcrowded late 2020 arena where they can’t possibly compete.
- They’ve also delayed Greyhound, with no new release date yet, Uncharted (like that’s ever coming out), an untitled Marvel-based movie and the 2021 film Fatherhood, which has moved from early to late in that year, presumably to clear space for the three 2020 refugees.
- At this point, the only big movies really left in summer are Top Gun: Maverick, Soul and Tenet, but I wouldn’t expect them to stay there for long.
- Edgar Wright announced another film. Maybe get Last Night in Soho (one of my most anticipated 2020 films) and your unnecessary Baby Driver sequel out of the way first, mate!
- Contagion is still king of the world as far as movie-watching goes.
- Twitter blew up because someone spotted a visible modern water bottle in Little Women. I imagine that this was intentional in a Marie Antoinette kind of way. If not, someone should get fired for that.
- Amazon Prime is streaming the SXSW features!… only in America.
- Disney snagged some release dates later in the year and early next year for their bigger films: Mulan is now happening on July 24th (sounds a bit brave to me – will the virus really be over by then?), Black Widow on November 6th in the Eternals spot, which in turn pushes that film back to February 12th next year, and Shang-Chi to Doctor Strange 2‘s spot and so on. Apart from the over-confident Mulan date, this all sounds pretty safe. Perhaps Mulan is going to be a streaming release a la Onward?
- Speaking of delays, The French Dispatch has been pushed back from July to October. I’m so happy about this: we all know this film’s going to be a banger, and putting it in October will give it serious awards buzz. This is now a probable Best Picture nominee.
- David F. Sandberg has taken quarantine as an opportunity to make a short horror film called Shadowed, reminding me that I should stop sitting around and make some shorts while I’m stuck at home. I haven’t got a chance to watch it yet, but it’s available here.
- To update you on some loose threads from last time:
- No, I still haven’t found The Host for free on YouTube yet.
- I read a couple pages of Spike Lee’s Jackie Robinson before completely forgetting about it. I’ll try harder to finish the screenplay this week.
- And that concludes this week’s Weekly Round-Up.
Beyond the Popcorn 