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Indie Memphis Madness
Nov. 4th, 2019 05:47 pmBeen a long, full weekend of Indie Memphis and now I have the job of recapping it all! I'm starting with Friday which was less Indie Memphis-infused than the other days, because I had a show to go to but that show was pretty action-packed in and of itself so that's something! I went up to Two Rivers. It was a show I set up but didn't play and I was a little worried about it being during Indie Memphis, but we had a pretty good turnout and it was a good show. Artificer was first and she was great as always. I said to her afterwards, that each time she plays, there's always a core that sounds like Artificer, but there'll be other featured elements that are surprising. And she agreed that that's what she's going for so that's cool. Civic Center, the touring band, was next and they were really good. To me, they're kind of like a cross between later 80s, dancey SPK and earlier, noisy SPK (played on a broken cassette player). Anyway, they were really good. Revenge Body was last and good as always. As I said, there was a good-sized crowd (for Two Rivers anyway) and what felt like a lot of camaraderie. There were a few new people as well which is always cool. I picked up a t-shirt and a dual cassette thing from Civic Center. I also poked around the bookstore and picked up Daughters of the Air by Anca L. Szilágyi.
In between one thing and the other, I finished reading Monsieur Levert by Robert Pinget. It was good, very much along the lines of The Inquisitory which I read earlier in the year, though without the formal conceit. Then it was off to my one Indie Memphis movie for the day, a midnight screening of Sorcerer. I'd never seen it before, even though it has my favorite Tangerine Dream score. And the movie did not disappoint! It was good, I was really into it. In spite of all its explosions and actiony trappings, it felt more along the lines of The Battle of Algiers than typical action film. Definitely "suspense" fits the bill. Well, it was long and late but worth it.
So was a little under for sleep on Saturday but that's okay. I started off going to see Cat People (the 1942 movie). I'd never seen it before either and I liked it. For me, the most revealing moment is when the love interest guy says, "I've never been unhappy before." Next I met up with Mary Beth for the one film we shared that day, Sleepwalk. It was part of a Sara Driver retrospective and she was there and did a q&a afterwards (she also picked the two cat movie classics I saw that day, at the beginning and end). Sleepwalk was really good. Had never seen her work before, but it had a great atmosphere and palate and visuals (for what was clearly a very low budget). Next, I watched another of her movies, When Pigs Fly. I wasn't sure about it at first, it starts off with a bit of goofy humor, but as it got into it I was convinced that it's really good! I liked the way it showed the ghosts and both creepy and unsettling and friendly and companionable. She did a q&a after that as well. This is where I had a little bit of a break and quickly ate some Five Guys on the way to the Playhouse on the Square to watch Mystery Train. It was as good as I remember (if not even better), though I guess I'll have to use "remember" loosely 'cuz I'd forgotten about the parallel stories and mostly just remembered the Japanese couple of the first story. But it was great to see it again. And Jim Jarmusch did a q&a afterwards that was good, but then got super super awkward at the end. Miriam was wrapping it up, but he was like "let's do one more question" and something along the lines of being a q&a whore (I don't think "whore" is the word he used, but you get the drift). Well, one person went on a long ramble about gentrification that wasn't a question and someone yelled out "that's not a question" but Jim was very polite and diplomatic saying he appreciated the comment and it's an important point, etc. Then someone was asking a standard question, something about his use of repetition. Well, as this guy's asking the question some other guy gets up in the front and as he's walking across the front of the stage on his way out yells, "The guy who's asking the question got fired from his job for beating his wife. Yeah, hi, [whatever his name was]." So things got a bit derailed there. Then it was back to Studio on the Square to see The World Is Full of Secrets. That movie was really good. It's a bit oblique. It's teenage girls having a sleepover while one's parents are out of town. They're telling each other stories about the worst things they know about. And the majority of the movie is long stretches of monologue, very tightly framed on the person telling the story's face. And you know it ends with something horrible happening, but it avoids that and never shows or tells what it is, you're just left with the details of the girls' own stories they're telling verbally. It does a lot of interesting things with double exposure and framing in the scenes surrounding the storytelling moments. It was really good. I ended with the other cat movie: Kuroneko. It's a movie I love so I was happy to see it on the big screen. It was another midnight movie. It was also great to be reminded of how visually striking it is. I did start to nod off a little bit in the last half (long day running on little sleep), but I didn't nod off too much, I don't think. And I enjoyed it a lot.
I'm thankful for daylight savings ending and the hour we gained happening this weekend, as it let me cheat and actually get the right amount of sleep so I was not tired at all on Sunday. Well, up and at them. I went back up to Studio for my first movie which was I Was At Home. . . But. It was really damned good. I almost didn't go see it, but before Mary Beth was talking about it and how divisive it is and I guess I'm a sucker for checking out things that people tend to not like (I mean, it's also gotten lots of praise, but people who don't like it really don't, I guess). It's got lots of things I like, like a plot that isn't explained and just shown in disjointed segments that give some context but not all. There's lots of meta layers about acting and such that I need to go over as well. There's a recurring thing where kids in school are acting out Hamlet that it keeps coming back to. Then the main character goes on this rant to someone she meets about a movie he'd made and the choice to use actors along with real terminally ill people and she's angry about it how the fake next to the real ruins what's real. And just the mostly flat affectation of almost all of the actors (the main character has a few scenes like the one mentioned earlier and others...especially as it goes on). Anyway, it was a really great movie and I'm glad I saw it. Next was Boom for Real, the Sara Driver documentary about Jean-Michel Basquiat. It was really good. It focused only on his late teenage years, before he broke out into fame. It's also just as much about the New York scene around him as anything else. A nice story from it was that he was really into industrial like Test Dept. and Einstürzende Neubauten and would carry a boombox around blasting them (late at night and getting the person he was living with in trouble with her landlord). Next I met up with Mary Beth and we were together for the rest of the day! We met up at Hattiloo to see Downtown 81 (continuing, for me, the Basquiat thread). It was really good, I mean, it's definitely something aimed right at my interests! So much good music! (The documentary had a lot of good music too.) The q&a from the documentary (yeah, Sara Driver did a q&a for that too), they mentioned that the soundtrack to Downtown 81 was lost and had to be re-recorded, at least for the dialog (so it's not actually Basquiat's voice). But I digressed. The music! Especially DNA. You could feel the people in the audience getting uncomfortable when Arto Lindsay started singing. Anyway, that performance alone was a highlight of the festival for me (but then there's also Tuxedomoon, James Chance/White, The Plastics (who I wasn't familiar with but ruled)). Then we got our break. I had a hotdog with wing sauce on it from a food truck. It was okay. Then we went over to Theaterworks for the Departure Shorts #3 (that's the umbrella for experimental and animated shorts). This was the only thing I was disappointed in, mostly in how short it was. There were only three shorts and while some of them were a little on the longish side, the whole thing was still under an hour. Hopefully the other Departures blocks were chock full of great stuff. What we saw, wasn't bad but wasn't great. Nothing amazing like I've tended to see in the departures blocks in the past. But I don't see why they kept it so light and if they were going to open up an extra block like that, not include more shorts. Oh well. We ended the festival seeing Empty Metal. That was good too. That had some really awesome (new) music I need to check out. It was pretty weird, but overall I think I liked it quite a bit. Well, that's about it. We have a couple more encore performances we're going to see throughout this week, but that's it for the main event. Good time!
In between one thing and the other, I finished reading Monsieur Levert by Robert Pinget. It was good, very much along the lines of The Inquisitory which I read earlier in the year, though without the formal conceit. Then it was off to my one Indie Memphis movie for the day, a midnight screening of Sorcerer. I'd never seen it before, even though it has my favorite Tangerine Dream score. And the movie did not disappoint! It was good, I was really into it. In spite of all its explosions and actiony trappings, it felt more along the lines of The Battle of Algiers than typical action film. Definitely "suspense" fits the bill. Well, it was long and late but worth it.
So was a little under for sleep on Saturday but that's okay. I started off going to see Cat People (the 1942 movie). I'd never seen it before either and I liked it. For me, the most revealing moment is when the love interest guy says, "I've never been unhappy before." Next I met up with Mary Beth for the one film we shared that day, Sleepwalk. It was part of a Sara Driver retrospective and she was there and did a q&a afterwards (she also picked the two cat movie classics I saw that day, at the beginning and end). Sleepwalk was really good. Had never seen her work before, but it had a great atmosphere and palate and visuals (for what was clearly a very low budget). Next, I watched another of her movies, When Pigs Fly. I wasn't sure about it at first, it starts off with a bit of goofy humor, but as it got into it I was convinced that it's really good! I liked the way it showed the ghosts and both creepy and unsettling and friendly and companionable. She did a q&a after that as well. This is where I had a little bit of a break and quickly ate some Five Guys on the way to the Playhouse on the Square to watch Mystery Train. It was as good as I remember (if not even better), though I guess I'll have to use "remember" loosely 'cuz I'd forgotten about the parallel stories and mostly just remembered the Japanese couple of the first story. But it was great to see it again. And Jim Jarmusch did a q&a afterwards that was good, but then got super super awkward at the end. Miriam was wrapping it up, but he was like "let's do one more question" and something along the lines of being a q&a whore (I don't think "whore" is the word he used, but you get the drift). Well, one person went on a long ramble about gentrification that wasn't a question and someone yelled out "that's not a question" but Jim was very polite and diplomatic saying he appreciated the comment and it's an important point, etc. Then someone was asking a standard question, something about his use of repetition. Well, as this guy's asking the question some other guy gets up in the front and as he's walking across the front of the stage on his way out yells, "The guy who's asking the question got fired from his job for beating his wife. Yeah, hi, [whatever his name was]." So things got a bit derailed there. Then it was back to Studio on the Square to see The World Is Full of Secrets. That movie was really good. It's a bit oblique. It's teenage girls having a sleepover while one's parents are out of town. They're telling each other stories about the worst things they know about. And the majority of the movie is long stretches of monologue, very tightly framed on the person telling the story's face. And you know it ends with something horrible happening, but it avoids that and never shows or tells what it is, you're just left with the details of the girls' own stories they're telling verbally. It does a lot of interesting things with double exposure and framing in the scenes surrounding the storytelling moments. It was really good. I ended with the other cat movie: Kuroneko. It's a movie I love so I was happy to see it on the big screen. It was another midnight movie. It was also great to be reminded of how visually striking it is. I did start to nod off a little bit in the last half (long day running on little sleep), but I didn't nod off too much, I don't think. And I enjoyed it a lot.
I'm thankful for daylight savings ending and the hour we gained happening this weekend, as it let me cheat and actually get the right amount of sleep so I was not tired at all on Sunday. Well, up and at them. I went back up to Studio for my first movie which was I Was At Home. . . But. It was really damned good. I almost didn't go see it, but before Mary Beth was talking about it and how divisive it is and I guess I'm a sucker for checking out things that people tend to not like (I mean, it's also gotten lots of praise, but people who don't like it really don't, I guess). It's got lots of things I like, like a plot that isn't explained and just shown in disjointed segments that give some context but not all. There's lots of meta layers about acting and such that I need to go over as well. There's a recurring thing where kids in school are acting out Hamlet that it keeps coming back to. Then the main character goes on this rant to someone she meets about a movie he'd made and the choice to use actors along with real terminally ill people and she's angry about it how the fake next to the real ruins what's real. And just the mostly flat affectation of almost all of the actors (the main character has a few scenes like the one mentioned earlier and others...especially as it goes on). Anyway, it was a really great movie and I'm glad I saw it. Next was Boom for Real, the Sara Driver documentary about Jean-Michel Basquiat. It was really good. It focused only on his late teenage years, before he broke out into fame. It's also just as much about the New York scene around him as anything else. A nice story from it was that he was really into industrial like Test Dept. and Einstürzende Neubauten and would carry a boombox around blasting them (late at night and getting the person he was living with in trouble with her landlord). Next I met up with Mary Beth and we were together for the rest of the day! We met up at Hattiloo to see Downtown 81 (continuing, for me, the Basquiat thread). It was really good, I mean, it's definitely something aimed right at my interests! So much good music! (The documentary had a lot of good music too.) The q&a from the documentary (yeah, Sara Driver did a q&a for that too), they mentioned that the soundtrack to Downtown 81 was lost and had to be re-recorded, at least for the dialog (so it's not actually Basquiat's voice). But I digressed. The music! Especially DNA. You could feel the people in the audience getting uncomfortable when Arto Lindsay started singing. Anyway, that performance alone was a highlight of the festival for me (but then there's also Tuxedomoon, James Chance/White, The Plastics (who I wasn't familiar with but ruled)). Then we got our break. I had a hotdog with wing sauce on it from a food truck. It was okay. Then we went over to Theaterworks for the Departure Shorts #3 (that's the umbrella for experimental and animated shorts). This was the only thing I was disappointed in, mostly in how short it was. There were only three shorts and while some of them were a little on the longish side, the whole thing was still under an hour. Hopefully the other Departures blocks were chock full of great stuff. What we saw, wasn't bad but wasn't great. Nothing amazing like I've tended to see in the departures blocks in the past. But I don't see why they kept it so light and if they were going to open up an extra block like that, not include more shorts. Oh well. We ended the festival seeing Empty Metal. That was good too. That had some really awesome (new) music I need to check out. It was pretty weird, but overall I think I liked it quite a bit. Well, that's about it. We have a couple more encore performances we're going to see throughout this week, but that's it for the main event. Good time!
