Movies, Movies, Movies, Movies

[ateolf]

Yesterday was the final day of Indie Memphis! It was a packed one for me. I started by seeing The Cassandra Cat (or as I initially heard about it, The Cat Who Wore Sunglasses) with Mary Beth. It was some very good Czech new wave with lots of cat action, of course! Then a little later I watched Thank You Very Much, a documentary about Andy Kaufman. It was well made. It focused more on him personally and his family background and such than anything else I'd seen before. The director was there for a q&a too. On my way to the next movie, after being home for a little bit, I'm pretty sure I saw Peanut walking around carrying a squirrel. That's something you don't see often. Anyway, next I was over at Hatiloo to see Even Hell Has Its Heroes, a documentary about Earth. It was really an exceptional movie. It was the best documentary I saw at the festival. It was done in a pretty unique way that also fit the band. The producer was there and introduced it and let us know a couple things about it going into it that were definitely nice to know and you probably wouldn't have picked up on. Earth recorded a new soundtrack for it (a lot new and some rerecordings of their songs, since licensing pre-recorded music can be expensive and complicated). But each person they interviewed, the filmmakers gave the option of recording and providing their own background music. So all or most of the different people involved had their own music (and it all went together well and was definitely within the orbit of Earth!). So they interviewed all these people and it wasn't a talking-heads situation or even archival footage, but they shot new footage on some kind of old film stock (not sure if it was Super 8, but something like that anyway) often of the person they were interviewing but not in sync with the audio, just footage. Anyway, what was unique to me was each section they stayed on the one person and there wasn't editing back and forth between different interviewees. It kept this longer, sustained and reflective tone that fits with Earth's music. So yeah, it was just really good even if you're not a fan of Earth. It was the day after the awards ceremony and so we got to hear that it won the Sounds category, so that's cool. Karl was there and talked to him a little bit. Then I rushed over to Black Lodge to catch my friends live scoring Nosferatu (and I met Karl again over there as well). I hadn't seen Nosferatu in forever so that was cool to revisit and be reminded again how good the movie itself is. Eve Maret, Dream Chambers, and Belly Full of Stars came over from Nashville to do this score and they were really damn good. They play really well as a band together. It was just all pretty awesome. And it had a good turnout so that's nice. As I was leaving, I was getting something to give to Jacques from the back of my car and then...I locked my keys in my car! So I had him drive me home to pick keys up from Mary Beth (having to knock on the door like some hooligan since I couldn't get in the house either) and drive me back to the car. But it all worked out! My neck was really bad last night and I didn't think I was able to fall asleep. It seemed like it was better sitting up so after a while I went over to the recliner and did fall asleep for a little bit but then after maybe an hour I woke up and it was hard to get back to sleep that way. I did get back to the bed and then that was the best for the rest of the night. But I didn't get a ton of sleep with all that crap so, yeah.