Free to watch ’til May 6 –
SXScreeners: Shorts and soundtracks rule this Amazon-hosted digital film fest
Partnering with entities like Mailchimp (shorts-only) and Amazon (any film willing), any project selected for the festival was invited to become available digitally for a limited time so all that hard work could still find an audience this spring. The resulting Amazon initiative started this past week and runs through Wednesday, May 6, no Prime subscription required
. Ultimately … the selection feels a little lacking. Major studio films like Judd Apatow’s (The King of Staten Island) declined in favor of forging their own path (that one will go straight to VOD this summer with a theatrical run out of the question ), and smaller but compelling movies like the arcade-documentary (Insert Coin have kept the rights to their debuts for now in the hopes that a festival season will still exist later in (since a good debut there can help facilitate lucrative distribution deals and theatrical runs if all goes according to plan). As more film festivals face this reality — Tribeca is already digital, Canada’s Fantasia Festival just announced its intention to do the same — hopefully the industry warms up to the idea.In total, the Amazon / SXSW initiative hosts only seven feature films out of the originally planned – titles -plus feature-film lineup. Even so, there are a few unique offerings (plus Amazon series’ Tales from the Loop , which debuted in full shortly after it was supposed to originally screen at SXSW Worth queuing up for a weekend in these quaran-times. And we’re only counting the stuff we’ve been able to watch so far: Shudder documentary series Cursed Films , about doomed horror productions , has gotten good buzz, and (Selfie) sounds like (ideal satire for these Internet-times.)
Le Choc du Futur : Jodorowsky’s tune Le Choc du Futur , like any film focused on a fictional musician, has a big challenge right off the bat — the song this person or group will inevitably perform / write / release has to be good , or at least believably good within the film’s world. ( That Thing You Do would have simply crashed without the late Fountains. of Wayne songwriter Adam Schlesinger penning the catchy title track , for instance.) Here, young composer / musician Ana (played by Alma Jodorowsky, granddaughter of the (would-be) (Dune) filmmaker ) writes commercial jingles and does masseuse work on the side to make ends meet, but she really wants to be a full-time recording artist writing a brand of electronica not really popular at the time. Fortunately, her manager has gotten a local record producer to RSVP to Ana’s next house party, so the young musician just needs to get her tape together quickly so she can get it in front of industry ears. A new, cutting-edge (Roland CR -) (factors) prominently.
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