Actualités

SXSW Film 2012 will open on March 9 with the world premiere of screenwriter Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods, produced and co-written by Joss Whedon. Featuring Kristen Connolly, Fran Kranz, Anna Hutchison, Chris Hemsworth, Jesse Williams, Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford, the film, promises the festival, "takes the horror genre, shakes it down, and smacks it upside the head."

The festival's also thrown six more titles into this first round, all of them world premieres. And they are, with descriptions from Team SXSW:

Kevin Macdonald's Marley. "The definitive documentary on the life, music, and legacy of Bob Marley."

Neil Berkeley's Beauty Is Embarrassing. "A funny, irreverent and insightful look into the life and times of one of America's most important artists, Wayne White."

Jonas Åkerlund's Small Apartments. "When Franklin Franklin accidentally kills his landlord, he must hide the body; but, the wisdom of his beloved brother...

Olga Tschechowa points the finger.

It's a listless country house gathering, broiling with intrigue under the surface: Bertie Wooster might appear, except we're in Germany. The hunt is rained off: nobody has anything to do except read the paper or gossip. And then Graf Oetsch arrives, suspected of murder, and they really have something to gossip about...

I first saw F.W. Murnau's Schloß Vogeloed (1921), under the misleading title The Haunted Castle, on a grey-market VHS bought on eBay. Grey was the word: the washed-out images were devoid of clarity, life and atmosphere, and the only thing that struck me asides from the pervasive theatricality was a double dream sequence which crashed into the plot for no real reason.

The first dream is scary, although the dreamer is the film's comedy relief character, "the anxious gentleman" played by Julius Falkenstein. As he slumbers, the window blows open and the diaphanous curtains blow in the gale.