The winner of the Lone Star States section Audience Award at this year's SXSW Film Festival - Mark Landsman's THUNDER SOUL - appears, if early reviews are to be believed, to be the kind of crowd-pleasing smash that comes along every few years and runs off with the documentary art house audience. The film is set to touch down early next month at Full Frame and Variety (see below) is talking up prospects of a looming development deal.
The buzz for THUNDER SOUL, which is seemingly as strong as any doc coming out of Austin has been in years, began with a big, opening weekend world premiere at the Paramount.
Anne Thompson heard the word on the street - "Film Festival rule number one: ask people what they like, and when two in a row say the same film, get thee to the next screening" - and she concurs:
"You couldn’t ask for more dramatic and entertaining material. Landsman edits between period clips of benevolently demanding father-figure prof and the band in its prime, unexpectedly beating all the white bands, and contemporary footage of the 90ish prof, who was kicked to the curb by misguided school officials, and the grateful 50ish students whose lives he changed, who came back to practice for a benefit concert: four weeks rehearsal after 30 years. One thug credits Prof with saving his life. “Conrad Johnson taught us not just music but how to be men,” said one band member...
Assuming the movie lands a distrib (the band will continue to play gigs via Prof’s Music and Fine Arts Foundation), I wouldn’t be surprised if this movie wound up in the Oscar race. It has the right elements to appeal to warm-hearted Academy voters."
HitFix' Drew McWeeny headlines "Amazing new documentary will inspire smiles, tears" and later adds "one of the most joyous experiences I've had in the theater so far this year":
"If the entire film were just a look back, that would be enough. The way Johnson built his Stage Band, the way he broke through by composing original funk arrangements for them, the relationships he built with the students and the relationships they built with each other, the afterlife of the recordings from those glory days... that's plenty of story for any film. And director Mark Landsman does an incredible job of making you understand who the Kashmere Stage Band was, who Conrad "Prof" Johnson was, and how the story played out. But where the film makes the jump from very good to great is when the kids of the original era of the Stage Band decide to play together again so they can pay tribute to "Prof," and so he can see just how much of what taught them was retained. This is where Landsman really nails it as a filmmaker, expertly charting the emotional ride, never tipping his hand too much or reaching for cheap sentiment. He knows just how much power there is to this story, and he's smart enough to get out of the way of the people in the film. He doesn't have to ladle on the emotion, because the film builds a natural power out of the events that is more than devastating anyway."
At Film School Rejects, Neil Miller wants to evangelize - "It's the kind of movie that should be in the hands of every educator, school board member and parent in the country":
"In order to make an excellent documentary, you’d have to be many things. One thing is that you have to have a keen eye for story, and be able to anticipate where a real-world story may go. Before the most interesting things happen, you have to be able to identify an interesting subject, then convince that subject to allow you to film. Sometimes, you just have to be lucky. But in order to make a truly special documentary, you have to be both lucky and good. Sometimes there’s a perfect storm of subject and story, when you as the documentarian catch a subject at perhaps one of their most pivotal life moments. Such is the story with THUNDER SOUL and director Mark Landsman. He captured the story of a family, coming together to celebrate their patriarch, their history and their legacy. He then turned it into a documentary with unflinching heart, one that catches any viewer on a very essential level and may just bring them to their knees."
Chris Vognar at the Dallas Morning News calls the film "first-rate":
"The film hits all the right notes, from the funk milieu that gave KSB its mojo to the love and respect that Johnson commanded from his players. Even better: The Kashmere Alumni Stage Band, made up of '70s veterans, played the Austin Chronicle film party at La Zona Rosa after Monday night's screening. That they were even there was cool enough. That they killed it, jamming through original compositions and big-band takes on "The Theme From Shaft" and "Super Bad," wasn't surprising at all.
THUNDER SOUL is one of those great music documentaries that go way beyond the music. When it lands a distribution deal, it shouldn't have a problem crossing over to the large audience it deserves."
Posting one of the first reviews post-Saturday night's premiere, Cinematical's Eugene Novikov doesn't share the enthusiasm:
"The movie is heavy on talking head interviews singing Johnson's praises, and unfortunately scant on the sort of details that would have made this story interesting rather than generically inspirational. (Though the band members credit Johnson and the band for their life success, for example, we don't even learn what they now do for a living.) It is also, weirdly, scant on the music: we hear a lot about how awesome the Kashmere band's live performances were, but Landsman treats us to only the briefest snippets of archive footage. The big reunion performance as depicted here is also strangely short and anticlimactic."
Later in the week, amidst full buzziness, Novikov's Cinematical colleague William Goss offered another take on twitter:
"In a just world, someone like Roadside (Attractions) could pick up THUNDER SOUL and play it out like GOOD HAIR, even w/o Chris Rock. So wonderful."
Variety's Jennie Punter writes about the "uproarious" Saturday night premiere at the Paramount and quotes sales rep Josh Braun as expecting a distribution deal soon.
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