sxsw 2012

SXSW Film announces 2012 Features lineup, including Closing Night andCenterpiece screenings

SXSW Film, which runs from March 9 – 17 this year, has released their 2012 Features lineup, which includes the highly anticipated 21 Jump Street remake as the fest’s esteemed Centerpiece film and Emmet Malloy’s rock doc Big Easy Express as the Closing Night film.

The world premiere of 21 Jump Street will screen on Monday, March 12. The film stars Channing Tatum and (Oscar nominee!) Jonah Hill as newly-minted police officers going undercover to bust a high school drug ring.

Big Easy Express follows the 2011 tour that took Mumford & Sons, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros and Old Crow Medicine Show on a train ride through the West (including a stop in Austin). Closing out the film conference, the world premiere of the doc will be Saturday, March 17.

The Narrative Feature Competition and Documentary Feature Competition are each comprised of eight world premieres, all in the running for Grand Jury Prizes and Audience Awards.

The eight films in the Narrative Competition are Booster, directed by Matt Ruskin; Eden, directed by Megan Griffiths; Gayby, directed by Jonathan Lisecki; Gimme the Loot, directed by Adam Leon; Los Chidos, directed by Omar Rodriguez Lopez; Pilgrim Song, directed by Martha Stephens; Starlet, directed by Sean Baker; The Taiwan Oyster, directed by Mark Jarrett.

The eight films in the Documentary Feature Competition are Bay of All Saints, directed by Annie Eastman; Beware of Mr. Baker, directed by Jay Bulger; The Central Park Effect, directed by Jeffrey Kimball; Jeff, directed by Chris James Thompson; Seeking Asian Female, directed by Debbie Lum; The Sheik and I, directed by Caveh Zahedi; The Source, directed by Jodi Wille & Maria Demopoulos; Welcome to the Machine, directed by Avi Zev Weider.

Additional programming highlights include Nelson George’s The Announcement, Gotham Chopra’s Decoding Deepak, Jay & Mark Duplass’ Do-Deca-Pentathalon, Mark Ford’s Uprising: Hip Hop & The LA Riots, Patrick Forbes’ Wikileaks: Secrets & Lies, Adam Sherman’s Crazy Eyes, Jacob Rosenberg’s Waiting for Lightning, Tom Kingsley & Will Sharpe’s Black Pond, Kristen Sheridan’s Dollhouse, Gareth Huw Evans’ The Raid, Ben Shapiro’s Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters, Kristy Guevara-Flanagan’s WONDER WOMEN! The Untold Story of American Superheroines and William Friedkin’s Killer Joe.

Previously, SXSW Film announced their Opening Night film, The Cabin in the Woods, plus narrative features Citadel and Small Apartments, and documentaries MARLEY and Beauty is Embarrassing.

Attendees will also get a sneak peek at HBO’s new series Girls — the first three episodes of the show, written by and starring Lena Dunham, will screen at SXSW.

Additionally, we’re excited to see the much-hyped The Comedy, starring Tim Heidecker; Casa de mi Padre, a Spanish-language film about a drug lord, starring Will Ferrell, Nick Offerman, Gael Garcia Bernal and Deigo Luna; the innovative Girl Walk // All Day, which follows dancers around Manhattan as they improvise moves to Girl Talk’s All Day; and Austinite Bob Byington’s Somebody Up There Likes Me.

You can check out the full lineup at sxsw.com/film.

The festival received a record-setting number of submissions this year; of the 1,957 submitted features, 130 will screen. 51 of those are from first-time filmmakers, and attendees will be treated to 65 world premieres (plus 17 North American premieres and 10 US premieres).

The Midnighters features and the Short Film program will be announced on Feb. 8, so stay tuned for more SXSW Film news.

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Movie Review

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 really knows its audience: fans of the game

Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Sonic the Hedgehog (Ben Schwartz) in Sonic the Hedgehog 3

The first Sonic the Hedgehog movie in 2020 was one of the few video game adaptations that managed to appeal to both fans of the Sega game and those who just want to watch a fun movie. As the series moved into a second and now third film, though, it’s become increasingly reliant on giving the video game fans what they want, with not as much attention paid toward simply telling a good story.

In Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz) continues to live with human friends Tom (James Marsden) and Maddie (Tika Sumpter), as well as Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey) and Knuckles (Idris Elba), who stuck around after the events of the second film. Dispensing with any kind of narrative coherence, the trio is called away by an undefined military force to help with the escape of Shadow (Keanu Reeves), another alien hedgehog who has been locked away off the coast of Japan for many years.

Suffice it to say that the trio does not initially fare well against the powerful Shadow, forcing Sonic to do the unthinkable: Ask his nemesis, Dr. Ivo Robotnik (Jim Carrey), for help. What Sonic doesn’t anticipate is that Shadow has a history that left him with a grudge against most of human society, and he’s intent on using his powers — with a little help from his former mentor, Gerald Robotnik (also Carrey) — to exact his plans for revenge.

Made by the same team of director Jeff Fowler and writers Pat Casey, Josh Miller, and John Whittington from Sonic the Hedgehog 2, the film is a combination of manic action, jokey sequences, and a dash of heart. The addition of Shadow ups the mayhem considerably, and the filmmakers rarely slow things down (although, oddly, the super-speed of Sonic and company feels lessened this time around).

The initial casting of Carrey gave the comic actor permission to indulge in whatever wackiness he could imagine, and giving him two roles in this film means double the nonsense. Ivo and Gerald (who’s Ivo’s grandfather, for the record) face off in a number of silly scenes, none more absurd than a dance sequence aboard a space station threatening to explode Earth (yeah, this movie is a lot).

Does the plot make a lick of sense? Absolutely not, but the filmmakers seem to acknowledge that fact, throwing anything and everything at the screen to try to entertain kids and/or fans of the video game series. It should come as no surprise that the end credits tease yet more characters from the video games joining the franchise, making it abundantly clear who is expected to get the most enjoyment out of the series going forward.

In addition to Carrey, the voice actors continue to make the characters fun. Schwartz and O’Shaughnessey provide the cartoon-style acting, while Elba and now Reeves give a nice counterbalance with their deep and serious voices. Marsden and Sumpter aren’t given much to do this time around, and Krysten Ritter shows up as Director Rockwell, a character who’s mostly there to move what little plot there is further along.

A four-quadrant movie is one that appeals to all ages and genders; Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is a one or maybe two-quadrant movie at most. But it’s more fun than the other family-friendly offering this Christmas season, and fans of the video game will likely love the depiction of their favorite characters on screen, so it’s doing something right.

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Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is now playing in theaters.

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