TheWayWeGetBy Tagged Articles at Cinematical
SXSW in 60 Seconds: Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Filed under: Awards », SXSW », Festival Reports », Cinematical Indie »
St. Patrick's Day at SXSW meant a sea of green t-shirts on the backs of attendees and big smiles on the faces of the jury and audience award-winners, announced in the evening.
Awards: The Documentary Feature Competition jury awarded their prize to 45365, director Bill Ross' examination of a small town in Ohio, with honorable mention to Aron Gaudet's The Way We Get By, which our own Eugene Novikov described as "a lovely, uncondescending look at three lives enriched by kindness."
Judi Krant's Made in China took home the Narrative Feature Competition award; the film follows a novelty toy inventor from East Texas who travels to China to get his invention made. Scott Teems' That Evening Sun received a "Special Jury Award for Best Ensemble Cast." Hal Holbrook plays a displaced Tennessee farmer drawn into a grudge match with an old foe. The cast includes Ray McKinnon, Mia Wasikowska, Walton Goggins, and Carrie Preston.
Audience Award winners included Jennifer Steinman's Motherland (Emerging Visions), an account of six women from the US who travel to rural South Africa to help children in need; Geralyn Pezanoski's MINE (Documentary Feature), which accumulates power as the bonds between human and animal are put to the test by Hurricane Katrina and its disastrous aftermath; and That Evening Sun (Narrative Feature).
Cinematical Coverage: In Observe and Report, Seth Rogen gives "a lead performance that could change a whole lot of minds," says Scott Weinberg. "This is an aggressively unpredictable dark comedy." Will Goss notes: "Some of the actors in the legendarily awful Troll 2 still leave it off their resumes," while others have come to embrace it. "It's this curious development that makes the documentary Best Worst Movie such an effortlessly interesting watch."
SXSW Review: The Way We Get By
Filed under: Documentary », SXSW », Theatrical Reviews »
Documentary filmmakers and the elderly don't always mix well. As a corollary to the "profane grandma" phenomenon, documentarians face the overwhelming temptation to make senior citizens doddering and cute – to prod us to laugh at them. The nadir of this trend might be Young@Heart, last year's minor hit about a choir of seniors who perform modern pop hits for adoring crowds, where the director spent the film's entire running time treating people fully twice his age like toddlers. It's insulting.
So I was a bit concerned about The Way We Get By, a doc about a group of senior citizens in Bangor, Maine ("where Stephen King lives") who spend their time greeting and sending off the stream of American troops who parade through Bangor Airport on their way to and from Iraq and Afghanistan. The greeters are constantly on call, and often end up shuffling off to the airport in the middle of the night; they shake hands and give hugs and shout teary "thank you"s and "welcome home"s. I feared the worst: "They're old and their lives are empty, but look how adorable they are!" But The Way We Get By turns out to be a lovely, uncondescending look at three lives enriched by kindness.
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