The shortlist has been announced for the 2009 Cinema Eye Honors. The list includes a number of titles that many felt were unjustifiably snubbed from the Oscars shortlist, some based on qualification quibbles, including Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, My Winnipeg, The Order of Myths, Stranded: I’ve Come From A Plane That Crashed Into The Mountain, and Waltz With Bashir. Omitted: Dear Zachary, a number of Oscar shortlisted titles including I.O.U.S.A., and each of the top five highest grossing non-fiction films of 2008, including Religulous.
I’ve pasted the full shortlist after the jump with links back to previous coverage of the films on SpoutBlog. Though I haven’t personally seen all of these, between everyone on the Spout team we’ve previously covered all but two.
The nominations for the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards are out, and there are a lot of causes for excitement. IndieWIRE has the full list; here are a few of the many reasons to celebrate:
Silent Light, which still hasn’t officially been released in the US (although a run at NY’s Film Forum is pending), was nominated for best Foreign Film, alongside Cannes winners Hunger, Gomorrah and The Class, and the upcoming IFC release The Secret of the Grain.
Three big nominations for Medicine for Melancholy: director Barry Jenkins and producer Justin Barber were nominated for Best First Feature, Jenkins was named alongside Nina Paley and Lynn Shelton as contenders for the Acura Someone to Watch Award, and James Laxton earned a nomination for Melancholy’s distinctive cinematography.
Sean Baker competes against himself for the John Cassavetes Award for the best feature made for under $500,000; Prince of Broadway and Take Out were nominated alongside The Signal, Turn the River, and In Search of a Midnight Kiss.
SpoutBlog favorites The Order of Myths, Encounters at the End of the World, The Betrayal and Man on WireUp the Yangtze join in the Best Documentary category; Myths director Margaret Brown was also nominated for the Lacost Truer Than Fiction prize, which goes to an upcoming nonfiction filmmaker.
On the bigger film front, Rachel Getting Married, The Wrestler and Vicky Cristina Barcelona were amongst the most nominated films; Woody Allen will compete in the Screenplay category against fellow Oscar winner Charlie Kaufman.
The full list of nominees can be found here. The Spirits will be handed out, as per tradition, the night before the Oscars in Santa Monica.
Margaret Brown’s The Order of Myths opens at the IFC Center in New York on Friday. This review is adapted from our coverage of the film at the SXSW Film Festival, where we also interviewed the director. Above: Brown shops and talks at Sundance.
Margaret Brown’s The Order of Myths offers an immersion into the archaic miasma that is Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama. It’s the world’s oldest celebration of its kind, and tradition mandates that the two weeks worth of parties and parades are mostly racially segregated. Using Mardi Gras season as a microcosm for a portrait of contemporary race relations in the city, Brown gets a filmmaker’s dream gift in the black and white Mardi Gras associations’ selection of their queens.
Queen Stephanie, a black schoolteacher, is a descendant of a group of slaves who were transported on the Clothilde, the last slave ship to enter the US. When the Clothilde came ashore, there was a fire and the passengers escaped into the woods, ultimately settling in an area that came to be known as Africatown. Queen Helen Meaher, whose family now owns most of the land in Africatown, is a descendant of the company that brought the Clothilde over. “My people was on her people’s ship,” Stephanie says, with a slow, matter-of-fact nod. That nod confirms the film’s thesis: racism isn’t an outrage or even a spoken issue Mobile––it’s casual, habitual, and historically excused.
Margaret Brown’s documentary The Order of Myths delves into the secret societies of Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama. I talked to Margaret about segregation, access to forbidden parties, and shooting in formal wear.
Be sure to check out Karina’s review of the film here.
SXSW 2008 Interview: Margaret Brown of Order of Myths [5:55m]: Play Now | Download
Margaret Brown’s The Order of Myths is an immersion into the archaic miasma that is Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama. Mobile’s Mardi Gras is the oldest in the world, and in keeping with tradition, its two weeks worth of parties and parades are mostly segregated. Using Mardi Gras season as a microcosm for a portrait of contemporary race relations in the city, Brown gets a filmmaker’s dream gift in the black and white Mardi Gras associations’ selection of their queens. Queen Stephanie, a black schoolteacher, is a descendant of slaves who were transported on the Clothilde, the last slave ship to enter the US. When the Clothilde came ashore, there was a fire and the passengers escaped into the woods, ultimately settling in an area that came to be known as Africatown. Queen Helen Meaher, whose family now owns most of the land in Africatown, is a descendant of the company that brought the Clothilde over. “My people was on her people’s ship,” Stephanie says, with a slow, matter-of-fact nod. That nod confirms the film’s thesis: casual racism is not an outrage in Mobile, it’s an institution.
AJ Schnack has some notes on the lineup for the 2008 True/False Film Festival, which I’m super excited to be attending for the first time this year. While the line-up features several holdovers from previous festivals (including Sundance hits American Teen and The Order of Myths, and Cat Dancers and Audience of One, both of which screened at SXSW in 2007), and a “Secret Screening” that sounds suspiciously like one of my favorite films from last year, there’s also, according to AJ, “more than a dozen” films having their US premiere at the festival. Some of the titles that caught my eye after the jump. True/False begins on February 28 in Columbia, MO.
I did not expect to wake up this morning to a feed reader and email inbox full of stories about the full lineup for the 2008 SXSW Film Festival––the press release was not supposed to arrive until sometime this afternoon. But The Hollywood Reporter apparently broke the embargo on the information yesterday evening, so now it’s here. And it’s a LOT to process before coffee.
In a nutshell: we’re looking at new films from Michael Almereyda, Ashley Sabin and David Redmon, Joe Swanberg, Mary Bronstein, Lynn Shelton, and Frank V. Ross; Sundance hits American Teen, Gonzo, The Order of Myths, Baghead, and Goliath; and a number of buzzy films culled from recent international fests, including Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Stones doc Shine a Light, Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely, Christophe Honore’s Love Songs, and Heavy Metal in Baghdad. All of that should be enough to make anyone happy, but of course, there’s also much, much more.
The full lineup is after the jump. We’ll have sickeningly exhaustive coverage of SXSW starting soon. The Festival itself begins March 7.
In this video, shot at the Sundance Film Festival, Joe Swanberg goes shopping for Western wear with Margaret Brown, who talks about her excellent documentary, The Order of Myths. Brown talks about sleep deprivation, how filmmaker Michelange Quay provoked an “emotional” Myths Q & A, and why, “like it or not,” Sundance is a valuable launching pad for independent film.
If you’ve watched the last twoepisodes of our Sundance video coverage, you’ve learned a little bit about the spoils of Sundance swag. Designer pooper scoops are great and all, but I always like to see filmmakers passing out something that promotes their film in a clever way. In the industry lounge a few minutes ago, I stumbled over a friend of filmmaker Margaret Brown, who was affixing stickers for Browns’ The Order of Myths to a carton full of Mini Moon Pies. Moon Pies play a surprisingly significant role in Brown’s film, which is otherwise about race relations and Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama. It probably goes without saying, but this kind of thing is so much more interesting and valuable to a weary journalist than a bag full of random corporate stuff.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
The shortlist has been announced for the 2009 Cinema Eye Honors. The list includes a number of titles that many felt were unjustifiably snubbed from the Oscars shortlist, some based on qualification quibbles, including 
The nominations for the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards are out, and there are a lot of causes for excitement. IndieWIRE has the full list; here are a few of the many reasons to celebrate:
I did not expect to wake up this morning to a feed reader and email inbox full of stories about the full lineup for the 2008 SXSW Film Festival––the press release was not supposed to arrive until sometime this afternoon. But The Hollywood Reporter apparently 
