Arts
Kid-Thing
Ten-year-old Annie is an aimless child with an emotionally absent father who lives outside of Austin. Her dad is a goat farmer who spends his time scratching lotto cards, shooting fireworks with his dim-witted friends and competing in demolition derbys. He doesn’t do much parenting. Annie fills her time with a variety of destructive activities such as smashing birthday cakes, hucking dough at cars, paint-balling dead cows and wandering the woods near her home … read more
I Want My Name Back
Roger Paradiso documents the rise and fall of hip hop pioneers Wonder Mike and Master Gee, original members of The Sugarhill Gang, the group responsible for the seminal record “Rapper’s Delight.” After the release of the world’s first commercial hop hop composition, Wonder Mike and Master Gee’s artistic credit and monetary earnings were taken by Sugar Hill Record execs, throwing the two into a 30-year struggle to reclaim their place in hip hop history. … read more
Danland
“I’m in love with the concept of being in love,” says amateur porn producer Dan Leal, aka Porno Dan, in the beginning of this documentary following his unrelenting search for love amid porn conventions and gangbangs. But for co-dependent sex addict Porno Dan, love is hard to come by when sex with hundreds of women is business as usual. … read more
Hope. You Like Crap.
20 years ago, Shaun Parker made a horrible student film. In Hope. You Like Crap., Parker shows the film in its entirety, talking shit on it and his former pretentious self with amusingly scathing, self-depreciating commentary. … read more
Wild in the Streets
Peter Baxter, the current president of Slamdance and one of its founders, revealed his latest documentary in a special screening during the Slamdance 2012 festival. Narrated by Sean Bean, Wild in the Streets focuses on the town of Ashbourne, Derbyshire, England, built along the Henmore River, where the townspeople have been playing a game called Shrovetide for over 1,000 years. … read more
Bindlestiffs
A riotous and irreverent tale of three high school virgins and their quest to “fuck shit up,” Bindlestiffs is like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Superbad on crack—literally. Suspended from school for graffiti after The Catcher in the Rye is banned, Andrew, Luke and John check into an inner-city motel, determined to experience the world, Holden Caulfield style. What follows is a week of debauchery as the boys go looking for love, good times and poon. … read more
About The Pink Sky
The story is undoubtedly a unique one, as is the execution. Filmed in black and white and completely void of a musical soundtrack, About The PInk Sky might seem to deceive with its title, but upon completion of the film, I found that it was a conscientious and poetic decision. … read more
On Tender Hooks
We hear Ozzy Osbourne wailing in the background as Damien rises into the air, hanging several feet above the ground from the hooks in his back. Then the film fades to black—at least for me, because I passed out cold. I came to as the end credits rolled—apparently I had slumped over onto the audience member to my left and had missed the end of the film. … read more
Heavy Girls
Daniel, a middle-aged man with a wife and son, serves as 90-year-old Edeltraut’s caretaker while her son, Sven, works during the day. When Edeltraut, suffering from dementia, locks David out on her balcony and takes off, David and Sven search the streets of Berlin to track her down. Thus begins the start of their unspoken secret romance. … read more
Buffalo Girls
In this challenging documentary, director Todd Kellstein gives us a sympathetic look into the world of Stam and Pet, just two of the 30,000 professional Muay Thai fighters in rural Thailand’s underground child boxing circuit. Stam and Pet, both eight years old, are prodded into the boxing circuit by their parents, who use the large prize sums to support each of their families in a struggling farming community. … read more