Hey folks, Harry here... I met the stunningly gorgeous Plain Jane at the fantastic Documentary feature, MAXED OUT, during SXSW and she's at a great university studying to be a film critic and I invited her to give us some coverage on the films she's seeing. I was partying with some folks till around 5:30am last night that saw AIR GUITAR NATION and literally lost their shit over how cool and awesome AIR GUITAR NATION was, claiming, "It's fucking ROCKY man, but with Air Guitars!" "Woah!" I said and did my best Keanu head shake! Here ya go....
AIR GUITAR NATION:
One of the better documentaries at SXSW, if only because there was resolution. With MAXED OUT, the debt problem has not yet been solved, so there is no resolution to the film. The same goes for THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED (a documentary I still thoroughly enjoyed).
AIR GUITAR NATION, however, is a documentary story with a beginning and an end. It starts with the idea of even having the competition in the United States (It's been going on all over the world for quite a while now.), then the following of the various competitors (focusing on two rival American air guitarists), all leading up to the climax with the world championships in Finland.
It’s essentially a sports documentary… with a very different kind of athletics. The competitors take their medium very seriously, which serves as humor and as the drive for the film. The movie overall was concise and funny. It wasn’t trying to convince anyone of anything. It just showed the motives and mindset behind the competition. It was often hilarious and the contestants were so good at air guitar that it was easy to forget that they weren’t actually playing instruments. This was absolutely one of my favorite films of the fest so far, along with...
EVE AND THE FIRE HORSE:
Finally! A narrative film!
EVE follows a Chinese family who, after living with a father with notoriously bad luck and the death of a beloved grandmother, encourages their two youngest daughters to convert from Buddhism to Catholicism. (The mother figures two gods in the house are better than one.) The story mainly focuses on the younger daughter, Eve, who has difficulty reconciling the two faiths and dealing with her sister’s eager conversion.
The film addressed religious themes without being either preachy or blasphemous, which is a tricky line to walk these days. Everything works here, from Eve's daydreams to the image-heavy ending. The direction of the film was extremely well-handled.
The child actresses playing the two daughters are really and truly amazing to watch in this movie. Their performances are really what made this film stand out for me. It may be just because I was craving a non-documentary film, but EVE AND THE FIRE HORSE was thought-provoking, funny, touching... and all-around fantastic.
Plain Jane
