Tag: Steve Martin

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Indie Memphis Announces 2022 Audience Awards

Sam Now won the Audience Award for Best Poster at the 2022 Indie Memphis Film Festival.

The 25th annual Indie Memphis Film Festival wrapped on Monday night with Shaft. The juries’ decisions were announced at a raucous awards ceremony on Saturday night, but it’s taken until now to tabulate the results for the Audience Awards, which are determined by votes from ticket buyers, who are asked to assign each film a letter grade of A through F.

Audience and jury opinions lined up this year for three films which swept both awards. Our Father, The Devil by director Ellie Fombi won both of the Narrative Feature awards, and currently holds the coveted 100 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Here’s a sample:

Kumina Queen by director Nyasha Laing similarly repeated its jury win in the Sounds category.

In the Hometowner categories, director Lauren Ready repeated in Documentary Shorts with “What We Will Never Know.” This is Ready’s fourth Indie Memphis trophy for documentaries, making her one of the most decorated filmmakers in the festival’s 25-year history.

The National Documentary Feature Audience Award went to Butterfly In The Sky, the story of the beloved PBS show Reading Rainbow by directors Brett Whitcomb and Bradford Thomason.

From the exceptionally crowded nine-film field of Hometowner features, audiences voted for Show Business is My Life — But I Can’t Prove It, director G.B. Shannon’s biography of legendary comedian Gary Mule Deer. The crowd-pleasing film about the crowd-pleasing funny man features appearances from comedy luminaries such as David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, and Steve Martin, and dramatic recreations of some of Gary Mule Deer’s jokes and stories starring a who’s who of Memphis-based actors.

The audience’s favorite Hometowner Music Video of 2022 was “Imagine That” by Tailbah Safiyah, directed by Zaire Love. Check it out:

The Departures Audience Award, which includes experimental and generally “out there” works honored Maria Judice’s Elephant.

“Stress Dreams” by Greensky Bluegrass, directed by Grant Knolton, won the National Music Video Audience Award.

In the Short film categories, “F*** ‘Em R!ght B@cK” by Harris Doran won the National Narrative category, and “Call Me Anytime, I’m Not Leaving The House” by Sanjna Selva won the National Documentary category. Caleb Suggs’ “Homeboys Haunted 2” took home audience gold in the Hometowner Narrative Shorts. Audiences also chose Reed Harkness’ Sam Now, which won the jury award for Best Documentary, in the poster category.

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Film Features Film/TV

Thanksgiving Pix

Two things are certain about Thanksgiving: We’ll all eat too much, and at some point we’ll all find ourselves in front of a TV for an extended period of time. But what happens when you just can’t take another second of millionaires giving each other concussions on national television, as exciting as that is? Here are some things you can watch when you finally give up on football and switch over to the Roku.

MST3K Turkey Day

A television tradition from the 1990s returns online as Shout! Factory is streaming classic episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) all day on YouTube. Joining Joel, Mike, Cambot, Gypsy, Tom Servo, and Crow on the Satellite of Love is like watching crappy movies with the witty old friends you never had, but in a good way. If it’s been a while since you visited the world of Torgo, Manos, Side Hackers, and Gamera, you’ll be surprised at how well the humor holds up. And with a Joel Hodgson-helmed revival on the way, it’s a good time to get back into the groove. Rowsdower save us!

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Halloween and Christmas get all of the movie love because of their flashy acoutrements, but there are a few films set during Thanksgiving. John Hughes ventured outside the high-school setting and into the hellish world of Thanksgiving travel with the fifth movie he directed in the 1980s. Steve Martin stars as a neurotic executive trying to make his way home to his family in Chicago while being beset by cancellations, overbooking, bad weather, and the attention of a shower curtain ring salesman played by John Candy. In a textbook case of slow escalation, the frustration builds as the two are forced to work together to get home. Martin and Candy are both at their best here, and you’ll wish they had worked together more often as you dread the drive back home from grandma’s.

Los Angeles Plays Itself

If you’re completely sick of all things Thanksgiving and looking for something completely different, this legendary documentary by Thom Andersen will take you away to the West Coast. A film professor and Los Angelino, Andersen put together this retrospective of how his city has been portrayed (and, he would say, betrayed) by the film industry that put it on the map. Since it used clips from more than 200 movies, the 2003 film was long thought to be unreleasable, even though it was a huge hit when it debuted at the Toronto Film Festival and has enjoyed a cult following from sold-out holiday screenings in L.A. But after 10 years of legal wrangling and a recent digital remastering, Los Angeles Plays Itself has finally found its way onto Netflix. It’s a fascinating journey connecting images you know by heart to their real-life counterparts, revealing vanished landscapes, and making strange observations along the way, such as the way directors tend to give their villains architecturally interesting Mid-Century Modern homes. If any almost-three-hour personal essay about the filmmakers’ hometown can be called an editing tour de force, this is it.

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Steve Martin, Edie Brickell and the Steep Canyon Rangers at Snowden Grove Amphitheatre Saturday

“(I’m walking away), Let’s always remember the good times.

(I’m walking away), Like when you were out of town.

(I’m walking away), But the sex was great!

(I’m walking away), At least that’s what my best friend’s brother said”

— Steve Martin, “Jubilation Day”

In 1976, Gong Show host Chuck Barris stood near a puddle of spilled milk and broken glass left by a family magic act called the Magicians Three and introduced the next performer. “I hope he doesn’t slip on the milk,” Barris said, clapping for a character called the Mad Banjo. The curtains parted to reveal that “wild and crazy guy,” comedian Steve Martin in a frill-fronted tuxedo, wearing an arrow-through-the-head headband gag and playing Earl Scruggs’ classic bluegrass instrumental “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” The effect was comic, but the picking was serious until Barris interrupted Martin saying he can’t be both a contestant and a panelist.

Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers

Banjo has always been a part of Martin’s comedy act. He’d play and chuckle to himself, “Hey, that’s good.” And then he’d adjust his bunny ears and insert non sequitur jokes about his grandfather purchasing prophylactics. Today, the live Steve Martin experience has been inverted. It is first and foremost a blues and bluegrass show with some of Martin’s sly comedy snuck in between the tunes. Martin, who abandoned live performance 30 years ago, has described musical performances being easier on him than an hour-and-a-half of solo stand-up.

Although songs like “Jubilation Day” and “Atheists Don’t Have No Songs” are funny, Martin remains serious about his music with the Steep Canyon Rangers. In January, Martin and musical collaborator Edie Brickell won a Grammy Award for American roots recording for their song “Love Has Come For You.”