The first full day for the Indie Memphis Film Festival has been thrown for a bit of a loop as the series of free screenings at the Levitt Shell in Overton Park have been cancelled due to weather concerns. The screenings — Elvis Presley’s “’68 Comeback” special and The Big Lebowski will still go on, but maybe not on the original rain date of next Friday. We’ll let you know when the event has been rescheduled.
The Memphis Music at SXSW documentary that was supposed to screen in between Elvis and Lebowski has been moved onto the schedule at the Brooks Museum Saturday at 3:15 p.m., replacing a planned sneak preview for the shot-in-Memphis MTV web series Savage County.
The Shell cancellations will probably send more viewers over to Studio on the Square, where a packed lineup awaits. Our picks for the day, all screenings at Studio on the Square unless otherwise noted:
Pick of the Day: Alexander the Last (7:45 p.m.)
- Jess Weixler holding tight in Alexander the Last
Joe Swanberg is one of the names most associated with the so-called “mumblecore” genre, but Alexander the Last is the film where he breaks out into something newer and better. The film retains the intimacy of Swanberg’s earlier work, but combines it with a more polished and ambitious filmmaking style that flaunts mumblecore’s stylistic and generational constraints, using the medium to create rather than just capture. This aesthetic shift is marked by poetic/sardonic opening and closing imagery, provocative character symmetries, and one bravura stretch of crosscutting.
