SXSW Review: David P. Zucker’s ‘Your Friend, Memphis’

refugees, and his melting pot musical mix ranges from Eastern European folk and Yiddish theater to Jimmy Buffett and John Prine.Heifetz’s voice could be mistaken for Steve Goodman’s, and there’s a twinkle in his twangy tenor as he finds humor in the immigrant experience. But it’s not all yuks as he reflects on outliers and outsiders, dislocation, disorientation and striving to belong in the land of plenty.“I’m foreign as the fourth day of July,” Heifetz sings.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticFor an actor, there’s an obvious showboat appeal to playing a serious out-of-control drunk. You can fight, you can rage, you can tap your inner party animal, you can rotate through emotions like a human mood ring, you can descend into the kind of degraded dishevelment that’s the lower-depths version of an awards-bait transformation. Yet to give a truly remarkable performance as an alcoholic, you have to make good on the old line about it — that someone who’s drunk is working hard not to act that way.

Wilson Chapman editorHospitality industry veteran David Michael Jerome has been named president and CEO of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, the organization that administers the Hollywood Walk of Fame and holds the trademark for the iconic Hollywood sign.Jerome takes the reins as of April 18. He succeeds previous Chamber president Rana Ghadban, who parted ways with the organization last September.

couple Jovi and Yara are making the best out of things that are out of their control. In this exclusive clip from Monday's new episode of, the couple celebrates their daughter, Mylah's, first birthday in Dallas, Texas, which definitely didn't turn out to be how they planned.Mylah and Jovi wanted a big party but because of hurricane Ida, they had to leave their home in New Orleans and go to Dallas while waiting for the power to be restored.

This story just keeps throwing us twists, and each one makes it all the sadder.

Dolly Parton takes the stage in a studded rose denim look for a performance at ACL Live during Blockchain Creative Labs Dollyverse event during the 2022 SXSW Festival on Friday night (March 18) in Austin, Texas.

This story just gets more and more shocking…

X (★★★☆☆) peers into some kinky, kooky crevices of sex and violence.Set in 1979, and shot and styled to evoke films of the era, from Deep Throat to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, X doesn’t upend, but leans into, the tried-and-true formula of nubile young things fucking and screaming their way to bloody deaths. It ups the ante with a self-aware wit, and a set of eccentric killers we’ve never really seen in the genre.The porno film crew led by producer Wayne (Martin Henderson) and director RJ (Owen Campbell) certainly doesn’t anticipate what’s in store for them at the remote farm compound of grizzled, gun-toting Howard, and his decrepit, white-haired wife Pearl.The porn-makers and their stars — stud Jackson (Scott ‘Kid Cudi’ Mescudi), girlfriend Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow), and Wayne’s girlfriend, Maxine (Mia Goth) — are all admirably focused on making their production, The Farmer’s Daughters, the hottest adult flick of their careers.In fact, their shoot is so steamy, that the film’s timid sound recordist Lorraine (Scream queen Jenna Ortega) feels inspired to join the cast.

In Houston 1979, a small film crew arrives to make a porn film in a rented cottage on a farm belonging to an aged couple, one of whom greets the producer at the door with a shotgun and — unaware of their cinematic ambitions — an order for “discretion.” What could possibly go wrong?But in Ti West's “X,” it's never in doubt that a bloodbath is to follow. The aftermath is glimpsed in the movie's opening scene, when a police detective steps timidly through hallways strewn with bloody sheets covering corpses and a black-and-white TV blares with a local televangelist preaching about “a world of sin.”Sex has long been a punishable offense in slasher movies but “X" cleverly flips the script.

Dierks Bentley’s daughter can really command the stage.

Joe Leydon Film CriticBradley Jackson’s “Facing Ryan” tells the story of an agreeable fellow from small-town Texas who married his high school sweetheart, followed his dream of playing major league baseball, pitched for four MLB teams over a 27-year career while operating a cattle ranch during off-season, set records for no-hitters and strikeouts that remain unbroken to this day, held high-profile executive positions with two of his former teams more than a decade after his retirement from the game, and currently resides on the ranch where he and his wife, the loving and supportive life partner he wed back in 1967, are frequently surrounded by their children and grandchildren.If you were to present this scenario at a pitch meeting, you’d likely be shot down for failing to hype your narrative with suspenseful setbacks, intense conflict and a slew of obstacles for your protagonist to overcome. And if you somehow managed to get your film made anyway, critics would almost surely complain about the many and varied ways credibility was stretched to the breaking point while the hero accomplished one extraordinary feat after another.

young Houstonians with aspirations of fame, fortune, and artistry decide to have a go at making “The Farmer’s Daughter,” a low-budget dirty movie aimed at boosting the cast and crew’s dreams of fame and fortune.Maxine (Mia Goth), a coked-up stripper working at Bayou Burlesque, thinks this is just the ticket to international stardom. Her boyfriend, Wayne (Martin Henderson, “The Gloaming”), acts as the archetypically gung-ho executive producer who talks a great game.

It’s a little surprising that “X” marks director Ti West’s first film for A24 since his approach to horror — emphasizing character and mood over jump scares, building slowly and steadily to a big bloody blowout — is so synced up with their house style. “X” is also his first feature since 2016, and his first horror film since 2013’s “The Sacrament”; he’s kept busy in the years since with plenty of television work, but this is what he does best, and it’s about time he got back to it.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticIf I had a dime — or maybe a drop of blood — for every movie that tried to recreate the vibe, the situation, and the high anxiety of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” I’d have a pretty big bucket of blood. For decades, I’ve been watching movies that open with a handful of obnoxious kids in a vehicle, tooling down a redneck roadway, and then…well, you know what happens then.

Richard Linklater’s periodic forays into animation (Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly) have been distinctively imaginative, and that goes double for Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood. A nostalgic but not in the least sentimental look at Texas life when the American space program was at full thrust, this highly personal but entirely accessible account of growing up in a culture both historically momentous and banal has something to offer all audiences in terms of its vivid portrait of a very specific place and time. But most receptive of all will be viewers in their 60s and beyond who have personal memories of the July 20, 1969 moon landing and a of milieu both memorable and banal.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticEverybody knows the name of the first man to step foot on the moon, but how many have heard the story of the kid who walked there before him? Richard Linklater’s “Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood” reflects one of the director’s childhood fantasies, informed by growing up in South Texas, a stone’s throw from Johnson Space Center, at the time NASA was trying to do the impossible. “Houston, we have a problem,” he playfully imagines the organization’s top scientists saying, “We accidentally built a lunar module a little too small.” Ergo, they need a 10 1/2-year-old to go up in Neil Armstrong’s place.As someone slightly younger than Linklater who also spent his formative years in Texas, it’s impossible to overstate how much I adore that premise and the collection of associations it brings up for the “Boyhood” director.