Holly Hunter – Memphis Flyer

Yogi Chris Makoto, creator of ‘A Still Place’

Indie Memphis’ move online has been a necessity during the COVID pandemic. But it has also turned into an opportunity to expand the geographic reach of the festival, and introduce innovative programming.

“We wanted to offer something midway through the festival, after hopefully so much binging of films, for viewers to have a different relationship with their screen,” says Indie Memphis Artistic Director Miriam Bale.

The Goundings screenings are here to help people unwind a little bit from the cares of the outside world, to “counter screen fatigue with meditative installations, music, pets and other tools to remember to feel connected to your body and surroundings.”

The centerpiece of Groundings is “A Still Place”. “It’s an hour-long meditation in Akiko’s zazen studio on the big island of hawaii, watching the sun rise, listening to the world awaken,” says Bale.

Chris Makoto Yogi is the writer and director of August at Akkiko‘s, which appeared at Indie Memphis 2018, about a young man seeking his roots in Hawai’i who befriends a yogi deep in the forest. He filmed “A Still Place” in the same meditation studio. The hour long video of Akiko Masuda’s dawn meditation is meant to immerse the viewer, similar to the Norwegian “Slow TV” concept. “This is something that would normally be a video installation,” says Bale. “But we want people to experience it together online.”

“I see the piece as an offering, turning any space into a still place in Hawai‘i so that we can all pause and reflect on sound, light, our selves,” says Chris Makoto Yogi.

“A Still Place” live watch party is at 2 PM on Saturday, with viewers incouraged to use the slowly changing light and natural sounds to enter a meditative state. It will be followed by an interactive talk on Embodiment in Digital Spaces at 4 PM.

As the sun goes down, the outdoor screenings get started at the Levitt Shell with the Hometowner Narrative Shorts competition, including Michael Butler’s pandemic panic story “Empty”; Matteo Servante’s “La Sirena”, written by Melissa Anderson Sweazy; Jon Crawford’s “Taffy”, starring Curtis C. Jackson; “Barley” by Daniel R. Farrell; “Rebirth: A Film by Chenay Barnes”; Abbey Myer’s sexual assault drama “Orifice”; recipient of a 2019 Indie Grant; Martin Matthew’s period piece of Black love in the 1950s “A Beautiful Tragedy”; R. Jason Rawlings’ story of Hurricane Katrina survivors coming home in “Natives”; and Justin and Ariel Harrison’s “The Little Death”, a heartfelt story of miscarriage.

Hawai’i returns to the spotlight with the first ever Indie Memphis screening at the Grove at the Germantown Performing Arts Center. Cane Fire is a documentary about the troubled history of one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Kauaʻi, known as Hawai’i’s “Garden Isle”, was the center of Hawai’ian agriculture. As the center of power of the planter class, it became a crucial player in the coup that toppled the native monarchy and the eventual pushed for statehood. Not coincidentally, it also became the center of the Hawai’ian labor movement, and the site of a number of bloody battles between pineapple company security and strikers. Director Anthony Banua-Simon mixes the personal, historical, and political in this insightful film.

CANE FIRE – Trailer from Anthony Banua-Simon on Vimeo.

Indie Memphis 2020: You Need To Relax

The early show at the Malco Summer Drive-In is Gillian Hovart’s delicious black comedy mockumentary thriller I Blame Society, which you can read about in my Indie Memphis cover story.

The late show couldn’t be more appropriate drive-in fare. Crash is David Cronenberg’s 1996 adaptation of the J.G. Ballard novel about a group of people with a particularly dangerous technofetish—they get off on automobile accidents. Holly Hunter stars in this relentlessly transgressive psychological thriller that has taken on new meaning in the age of the online death cult.

Indie Memphis 2020: You Need To Relax (2)

By the way, Ballard’s most controversial novel, which he called “a psychopathic hymn”, was also the inspiration for a technopop song that is often cited as the progenitor of Industrial music: The Normal’s “Warm Leatherette”. Join the car crash set.

Indie Memphis 2020: You Need To Relax (3)

Tickets and more details can be had at the Indie Memphis website.

This is the fourth superhero movie review I will write this year. People have been asking me, are you sick of them? The answer is yes.

But I still get excited about a sequel to The Incredibles. The Brad Bird film is a top tier Pixar creation, one of the best superhero movies ever made, and, since it was released in 2004, clearly way ahead of the curve.

Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl, Dash, Violet, and Jack-Jack are back after a 14 year hiatus.

Incredibles 2 opens pretty much immediately after the events of the first film. Tony (Michael Bird), a classmate of Violet (Sarah Vowell), is recounting the events of the attack by the Underminer (John Ratzenberger) that served as the original’s coda. His audience is Rick Dicker (Jonathan Banks), a government operative whose job it is to keep secret the true identities of superheroes. Dicker dutifully erases the memory of moment when Tony saw Violet without her domino mask on, which has the unfortunate side effect of erasing all memory of her, including the fact that they had a date tomorrow night.

The battle against the Underminer provides the bravado opening action sequence any self-respecting superhero movie wants to have, and it immediately outdoes most all of them. The kinetic sections of The Incredibles, like the fight with the Omnidroid, were groundbreaking, and in the five-superhero-movie-a-year timeline we find ourselves in, frequently copied. Fourteen years worth of Pixar technological advances get splashed up on the screen in the first ten minutes, and it’s, well, incredible. A few jokes seem to be written just to show off the water modeling advances. The depth of the image in some shots is mind blowing, even in 2D. IMAX is definitely the preferred format for this one.

With the help of Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson), Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson), Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), Violet, Dash (Huck Milner) and Jack-Jack stop the Underminer’s destructive rampage, but they still run afoul of the secret bane of every superhero—massive property damage liability. About to be cut off by their government benefactors, the heroes are contacted by Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk), a telecom tycoon who wants to mount a campaign to legalize superheroes once and for all. He and his sister Evelyn (Catherine Keener) have crunched the numbers, to discover that the least destructive super hero in existence is Elastigirl. They offer to back her with a generous salary, a new Mid Century Heroically Modern house, and most importantly, insurance.

Holly Hunter voices Elastigirl, who gets to go all Batman in this long-awaited sequel.

After a heartfelt talk, the Parrs decide to accept the offer, even though it means that Mr. Incredible will be a stay at home dad to three super kids of varying ages. From there, the film falls into what is now a familiar episodic pattern. Pixar’s studio mates Marvel have succeeded by emphasizing character over plot, and Incredibles 2 follows suit. Mr. Incredible’s parenting tribulations are put on a equal footing with Elastigirl’s increasingly perilous confrontation with Screenslaver. Incredibles 2 once again proves that the key to truly great superhero films is a strong villain with the timely Screenslaver, who uses smartphones and TV screens as tools of mass hypnosis.

Judging from the responses of opening night audience, Jack-Jack is the breakout star of the picture. Trying to keep tabs on a toddler is hard enough for Mr. Incredible, but Jack-Jack is exhibiting all kinds of new superpowers, like eye lasers and shape changing. His ability to travel through parallel dimensions provides a great opportunity for Bird to stage a Poltergeist callback with Nelson, who plays the beleaguered dad in both films.

Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson, center) is called to help Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) parent the super toddler Jack-Jack.

Bird, who returns to voice super-designer Edna, makes a major comeback after his last film, the disastrous Disney corporate branding assignment Tomorrowland. Incredibles 2 fires on all cylinders, but now that we’re all immersed in the expected beats of the superhero movie, it lacks the shock of the new felt in 2004. But it’s a genuine crowd pleaser that rewards viewing on the big screen, which is what a summer movie is all about.