Purely by likelihood, it appears, the streaming service, The Criterion Channel is presenting greater than 25 breakthrough motion pictures, movie shorts, documentaries and early experimental efforts by three, Texas-born independents.
Several of these 25 films and movies can be found for lease on different streaming companies or can be watched totally free on Vimeo or YouTube.
But these films are supplemented by the Criterion-requisite interviews and commentaries. And the channel additionally occurs to be showcasing three motion pictures from the Nineteen Eighties, all of them very completely different however all of them landmark films set in (and about) Texas: Joel and Ethan Coen’s Blood Simple, Wim Wender’s Paris, Texas and Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line.
Collectively and individually, they underscore the modifications in the business and in the display screen picture of the Lone Star State.
Three by Eagle Pennell
The misplaced, tough diamond on this assortment is director Eagle Pennell. The UT movie college dropout turned a pioneer of indie Texas filmmaking. In 1977, he used the earlier field workplace success of Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to snag financing for The Whole Shootin’ Match, his on-the-cheap, shot-in-Texas story of a pair of get-rich-quick schemer-losers. A unfastened, ingratiating yarn, it was launched the identical yr the TV present Dallas started and supplied a counterpoint as one of the first films about scrambling, blue-collar, Texas life.
The Whole Shootin’ Match impressed Robert Redford to create the Sundance Institute as a seedbed and coaching floor for indie filmmakers — what Pennell by no means had.
Pennell’s subsequent movie, Last Night at the Alamo, is a snapshot of Houston’s wildfire-fast improvement destroying a beer-fueled, honky-tonking approach of life. Funnier, extra targeted than Shootin’ Match, the movie stars Pennell’s basic Mutt and Jeff, the duo who ought to have grow to be nice Texas character actors: Sonny Carl Davis and Lou Perryman. Its cost-saving, shot-mostly-in-one-bar method impressed Quentin Tarrantino’s method in Reservoir Dogs.
Pennell’s subsequent Hollywood profession sputtered partially as a result of of his addictions and his harmful remedy of others. He was all the time one thing of a Hunter S. Thompson-type wild man, making an attempt to be bigger than life. Sometimes, he succeeded. He died in 2002 in Houston, age 49.
A Hell of a Note (1977)
The Whole Shootin’ Match (1978)
Last Night at the Alamo (1983)
The King of Texas — 2008 documentary on Pennell’s life and work directed by his nephew, Rene Pinnell, and Claire Huie.
15 films by Richard Linklater
All of the early shorts, films and documentaries included right here virtually make up a profession retrospective of director Richard Linklater. Along with Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, Spy Kids), Linklater has been the most diversely gifted, most profitable of the Austin-trained-or-based filmmakers — from early experiments to his off-the-wall breakthrough, Slackers, plus quirky, fashionable fare like Bernie and acclaimed, arthouse award-winners like Boyhood. (What’s lacking listed here are his massive Hollywood hits, together with Bad News Bears — however these can be found throughout the streaming companies.)
Woodshock (1985)
It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (1988)
Heads I Win/Tails You Lose (1991)
Slacker (1991) — Linklater’s affectionate however long-winded day-in-the-life of Austin’s college students, road characters and oddballs. Not simply a profession breakthrough, it was a main step for the Texas indie scene, together with Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Whole Shootin’ Match and Bill Witliff’s early efforts, like Red Headed Stranger.
SubUrbia (1997) — More slackers however of a completely different, darker order. Adapted by off-Broadway playwright Eric Bogosian, it tracks younger misfits at a comfort retailer.
The Newton Boys (1998) — interval comedy-drama about a real-life household of Texas financial institution robbers in the ’20s.
Tape (2001)
Live from Shiva’s Dance Floor (2003)
A Scanner Darkly (2006) — animated sci-fi.
Inning by Inning: A Portrait of a Coach (2008) – documentary about UT baseball coach Augie Garrido.
Me and Orson Welles (2009) — pre-Citizen Kane, the nice director is seen from the POV of a younger actor he casts in a theater manufacturing.
Boyhood (2014) — groundbreaking, coming-of-age movie shot over 12 years with Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette.
Bernie (2011) — comedy starring Jack Black as a small-town funeral director, based mostly on an oddball, true homicide case.
Fire Ted Cruz (2018) — 5 political assault advertisements/satires. A tip of the hat: Sonny Carl Davis from Eagle Pennell’s films stars.
Another Day at the Office (2019) — commissioned by the Pompidou Centre, this brief stars Linklater himself on a convention name with a studio exec and a therapist.
7 films by Terrence Nance
The 40-year-old Dallasite might be worst-known for final yr’s failed re-boot of Space Jam. (He was government producer.) But he is best-known for his mesmerizing, groundbreaking HBO anthology sequence, Random Acts of Flyness, which not too long ago re-upped for a second season.
An actor, director, author, editor and composer, Nance creates the cinematic equal of jazz-funk-hip-hop: a fusion of the pressing and the dreamy, of documentaries and fantasias. He smash cuts via completely different types of animation, straight-ahead drama, surreal ruminations and tongue-in-cheek humor. (“No known blues song has been written about donuts.”) His type has been labeled “Afro-futurism” however that does not actually embody his wild, but completely casual-seeming, creativity.
No Ward (2009) — unclassifiable doc about New Orleanians displaced to Texas by Hurricane Katrina.
Native Sun (2011) – one other mind-bending doc, this one set in Africa. Typically, it is each a brief movie and an album.
Their Fall Our All (2014) — a younger Black ballet dancer enters a dream state and sees her violent future. With authentic music by Beyonce.
You and I and You (2015) — dance movie to a single by the band Dig.
Swimming in Your Skin Again (2015) — made along with his brother, musician Norvis Junior, a movie about non secular symbols and rituals.
Univitellin (2016)
Jimi Could Have Fallen from the Sky (2017) — a brief, whimsical bio of Jimi Hendrix.
Visit Seattle | Sundance Project Five by Five | Jimi Could Have Fallen from the Sky
Bonus: Three transformative, Texas-based films from the ’80s at present on Criterion
Paris, Texas (1984) — Wim Wenders’ sun-blasted story of a misplaced wanderer (Harry Dean Stanton in a career-topping efficiency) in search of redemption (Sam Shepard’s story was tailored by Texas screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson). Perhaps as a lot as the approach the movie seems, it influenced the approach Texas sounds. Ry Cooder’s lengthy, lonesome slide guitar conjures empty Texas highways and darkish strip joints as a lot as Robby Muller’s cinematography.
Blood Simple (1984). A neo-noir thriller set in Austin, it launched the Hollywood careers of writer-directors Joel and Ethan Coen. Just as Austin was extolling its ‘redneck rock’ music, the Coen brothers used the metropolis as each a small-town and big-city backdrop for his or her seedy, cynically humorous neo-noir. The top-notch solid options Frances McDormand and Dan Hedaya as the dishonest couple and M. Emmet Walsh as the sleazy non-public eye (following his breakthrough in Blade Runner).
The Thin Blue Line (1988). Set in Dallas, that is one of the most important documentaries ever made. It caught the Texas justice system at its worst and helped get an harmless man out of jail. A revolution in true-crime tales, it is maybe director Erroll Morris’ most hanging movie with its chilled-out blue-glass skyscrapers and its churning, ominous rating by Philip Glass.