Comedy Festival

Austin's longest-running comedy festival breaks boundaries in 2017

Out of Bounds Comedy Festival runs August 29 through September 4.

Beginning in 2002, a small festival to showcase Austin’s burgeoning comedy scene has now exploded into a seven-day festival with over 500 performers from all across the globe with 130 shows and 10 venues. Out of Bounds is Austin’s longest-running comedy festival and the largest multi-disciplinary comedy festival in the South.

CultureMap chatted with executive producer Ruby Willmann and senior producer Dave Buckman for a sneak peek of this year’s festival and why Sen. Wendy Davis might be Out of Bounds' 2017 breakout star.

CultureMap: I love a good origin story, how/when did you start working for Out of Bounds?

Ruby Willmann: I started taking improv classes a few weeks before the 2010 Out of Bounds Festival. Our classes were cancelled that week and I was highly annoyed. I didn’t attend the festival, but then at my next improv class, one of my classmates announced she saw 13 shows. Everyone was talking about the fest and I had the ultimate FOMO.

Dave Buckman: I was simply a performer for Out of Bounds from 2005-2009, and I was asked to help be a producer in 2010. Since then, I've booked headliners, screened submissions, planned parties, done airport rides, hosted shows, ran staff meetings, expanded the workshops program … and eventually hired and recruited friends to take on all those facets of the festival.

CM: How has the festival changed under your stewardship?

DB: We've gone from primarily improv-focused to comedy-focused. Finding the right balance between the expectations that improvisers have about a festival and the expectation that sketch troupes have about a festival and what stand-ups expect from a festival has been the big recent growing pain. We are just now starting to learn how the city of Austin and the state of Texas and the entertainment industry and corporate sponsors expect from us as an entertainment festival. Tackling those things to maximize our footprint is our next big hurdle.

RW: We are a magnifying glass created to highlight the prospering community that exists before, during, and after us. Diversity is a core value of Out of Bounds. Creating space for different perspectives is a very important aspect to me. As a result, we go out of our way to proactively seek out diverse performers and content to make sure our festival is making space for as many different perspectives as possible. This year, we’ve pushed the envelope even further, and I’m extremely excited.

CM: Speaking as a fan, any acts you’re particularly looking forward to this year?

DB: Marcella Arguello is a stand-up that I have become a huge fan of from her work on @midnight, may it rest in peace, winning six out of seven matches. Her stand-up is tight and fierce. We also just booked Sen. Wendy Davis to be our storyteller [for the storytelling/improv show MegaPigeon]. I’ve been trying to book her for this show for the last three years and she has always politely declined. This year it’s finally happening and I can’t calm down about it. Also looking forward to seeing my dear old friends Katie Rich (Saturday Night Live) and Holly Laurent (The Reckoning). Katie got such a bullshit raw deal this past January from Twitter and NBC. Very happy she’s back at SNL for the summer, as she should be.

RW: Dave did such an amazing job curating headliners this year. I’m unbelievably excited about the Defiant Thomas Brothers, who are a sketch troupe from Chicago. They are critically acclaimed and will be bringing brand-new material to our stage. I’m also very excited for Chickspeare (Los Angeles), which is an all-female group who improvise full-length Shakespearean plays. It’s a ton of fun and super hilarious.

CM: What does success look like for Out of Bounds in 2017?

RW: Amazing shows. I’m really excited to see the powerhouse lineup flaunt its muscles — it will be a truly amazing seven days of talent.

DB: Fuller houses, buzzier shows, bigger footprint. Can’t lose.

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The Out of Bounds Comedy Festival runs August 29 September 4. For schedules and badge info, head here.

comedy

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.

movies film