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Aaron Katz’s third SXSW premiere in as many years, Let’s Get Down to Brass Tacks continues the filmmaker’s tradition of catching our attention with genius titles––somehow simultaneously catchy, evocative and a little tongue-in-cheek. Brilliant branding aside, the debut of Brass Tacks‘ debut flew somewhat under the radar this year; the twelve-minute short was tacked in front of screenings of the Emerging Visions entry Bootleg, Wisconsin, and many Katz fans seemed unaware that the film was even in the festival.

This is maybe for the best, because Brass Tacks is the kind of thing that needs to be seen without the influence of puffed-up expectations. Definitely slight but surprisingly satisfying, it’s a twelve minute short, staring the director, set in a Days Inn in Mystic, Connecticutt. Katz films himself eating, watching TV, taking a bath, taking a phone call, going to sleep, and waking up. Is that it? Yes, but of course, it isn’t. In long takes that pay special attention to colorless homogeneity of his “set,” Katz delivers a self-contained portrait of the eerie calm endemic to just hanging out, alone, in the type of business traveler room that’s really not meant to be hung out in.

A phrase I found myself saying a lot at SXSW this year: “I liked it. It’s not gonna change the world, but it’s good.” This definitely applies to Let’s Get Down to Brass Tacks, but unlike some of the other films I saw at SXSW, I think that description matches its aspirations. It’s not a grand statement, but as a sketch of a moment, a place, a feeling, it’s virtually perfect.

Under discussion:

Paper Covers Rock  (2008)

In his Q&A following the premiere of his feature film Paper Covers Rock, director Joe Maggio noted that he set out to make a disposable film. That is, a film made with no money, the barest of bones, with no pressure and no expectations. Naturally, the absence of some factors liberates others; Paper Covers Rock is a simple, lovely expression whose quote-unquote disposability is hardly evidenced by the care that’s been put into its execution. The film treads a familiar path, but does so with nary a false step: it serves as a reminder that narrative predictability isn’t such a bad thing if it provides room for something more interesting than traditional plot.

In this case, it is a gateway to intimacy. Occupying nearly every frame of this film is Sam (Jeannine Kaspar), a twenty-something single mother whose winsome face we first glimpse, wrapped in plastic, when her daughter discovers her laying in bed with a ziploc bag over her head. The suicide attempt is not successful and, in short order, Sam is revived, committed, and then released to the care of her older sister Ed (Sayra Player). As sisters in films generally go, Sam and Ed are diametrically opposed; one being successful and shrill, the other mopey and in shambles; the former trying too hard to mold the latter into her own image and the latter withdrawing even further as a result. It’d be novel to see those roles reversed one day, but to the credit of Maggio and Player, it’s subtly hinted at that Ed is dealing with her own form of instability. By the time the sisters reach the end of the film, they’re two peas in a pod.

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Under discussion:

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo  (2008)

I was definitely a little hard on Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay in my review. But I’ll admit, though I kind of already did there, that it is a pretty funny movie. And as with any movie that I know will be popular despite anything I write negatively about it, I wanted to raise a discussion, here specifically of the racial issues the comedy deals with. Fortunately, I was able to do so with the filmmakers and actors, themselves, during a “roundtable” interview at Austin’s InterContinental Stephen F Austin Hotel on Saturday afternoon.

Of course, I realized by the end of the talks, which came in two parts — first with co-writer-directors Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, then with co-stars John Cho, Kal Penn and Neil Patrick Harris — that by simply bringing up the “issue”, I was encouraging and continuing a racist perspective of addressing ethnicity as an issue, which is certainly more a part of the problem than I mean it to be. Basically, I should have been more celebratory of the sequel, like I have always been with the original, because overall I should be thankful Cho and Penn were again allowed to star in their own movie. I just hope this isn’t the best Hollywood can do for them or other Asian-American actors trying to find non-typecast work in the movies.

My first indication that I was taking Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay too seriously was earlier in the day, during the SXSW panel actually titled “Race, Politics and Drugs: a Harold & Kumar Panel,” where Hurwitz and Schlossberg flat out said they have no bigger agenda with these movies than to be a showcase for vagina jokes. Yet ever the one to press matters, I later asked the pair about their decision to deal more with race in the sequel.

Check out the conversations with both groups after the jump.

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