SXSW 2009: Film Report

Here are a few of my favorite films I saw at this year’s SXSW Film Festival:

• Lesbian Vampire Killers (Trailer, IMDB) – Narrative. As the name implies, it was awesome. To clarify, the vampires are lesbians, and there are people who attempt to kill them (as opposed to a group of lesbians who attempt to kill vampires). Destined to go down as the Shaun of the Dead of vampire movies.
• Trimpin: The Sound of Invention (Trailer, IMDB) – Documentary. There is an artist in Seattle who makes cool musical sculptures, and his name is Trimpin. This is his story. I have added him to list of people I would hire if if I got rich –  Trimpin would be in charge of doing Awesome Musical Stuff. The next time I am in Seattle, I will have to stop by the Experience Music Project and check out the gigantic self-tuning guitar sculpture. Apparently a few of his pieces were on display during the fest, but I missed seeing them. Dang!
• Anvil! The Story of Anvil (Trailer, IMDB)- Documentary. Yes, this is a documentary, not a mockumentary. It follows a Canadian metal band that’s been around since the 80’s but never broke through. Just watch the trailer. Oh, and here’s an interview with the lead singer, Lips.
• The Dungeon Masters – Documentary. Follows the lives of three different Dungeons & Dragons game masters. This is one of those documentaries that starts off focusing on an interesting topic and then quickly pushes it to the background in order to do a character study. Regardless of the quality of the film, this style always feels like a bait and switch to me. While I think that the filmmakers chose some very interesting and strange people to focus on, I am not particularly thrilled that they are effectively representing the gaming scene. Hopefully audiences will realize that not all gamers like to paint themselves black and have extremely large dice collections – For example, my dice collection is only medium-sized. That being said, I did enjoy the film.