deadCENTER Film

Pop Culture Junkie – Episode III: “deadCENTER 101: Comics by a Couple of Knuckleheads”

I’m a comic book nerd.

I’ve been one since I first peeled open the cover of an issue of Fantastic Four when I was five years old way back during the Ford administration. And this sadly misunderstood God Bless American art form has imprinted itself on me like a baby chick and has influenced the entirety of my career path (I’m a multi-hyphenate copywriter-graphic designer-broadcast producer-all around creative guy).

And I make no secret of my pushing-40 comic nerditude, a fact which led deadCENTER ladies Kim & Cacky to invite me to help create a comic book page to explain the elements of the film festival to the potentially unaware masses.

A “deadCENTER 101” if you will.

Since I’m the writer and have less of the burden of work to fulfill, I happily agreed, and brought in one of my creative collaborators, OKC artist Robert Wilson IV, to illustrate it.

Keep Reading

A Look Back With Dwight Edwards of The Filmcake: The 2006 Festival

But, alas, a film festival is more than its brilliant intro spots. For this week, I take a look back at Maxed Out, Outside Sales, Mr. Malikai Battles the Aeroplane, and Secession.

Keep Reading

A Look Back With Dwight Edwards of The Filmcake: The 2005 Festival

The Birth of Big Air is coming to deadCENTER!

Legendary BMX pioneer and favorite native son Mat Hoffman will help kick off the 10th annual deadCENTER Film Festival on Wednesday, June 9 with a special free, open-to-the-public outdoor screening of “The Birth of Big Air,” the highly acclaimed documentary about his life and career.

Academy Award nominee Spike Jonze and extreme sport fanatic Johnny Knoxville, along with director Jeff Tremaine, showcase the inner workings and exploits of the man who gave birth to “Big Air.” Partially shot in Oklahoma, the film was created for ESPN’s 30 for 30 series.

Keep Reading and Watch Trailer

A Look Back With Dwight Edwards of The Filmcake: The 2004 Festival

In the Guest Spot today, we have Dwight Edwards, the man behind the very cool Okie-film website The Filmcake. Dwight has attended deadCENTER every year since 2002 (we’re willing to forget the two years he was absent, as he was there in spirit), and even contributed to our live blog of the festival in 2009. Every Wednesday until the festival, we’ll feature his look back at the deadCENTER film festivals of old, starting with 2002. This week: 2004

I may have missed the 2004 festival, but I don’t plan on missing another. I found three short films that screened at the 2004 festival that I figured I would take a look at now. All three were nice surprises and I would highly recommend them all. That I might never have seen any of these three if I hadn’t been doing this blog feature certainly makes it all worthwhile. This week: two documentaries (Banned in Oklahoma and Farmingville) and a short (Flip).

Keep Reading

A Look Back With Dwight Edwards of The Filmcake: The 2003 Festival

In the Guest Spot today, we have Dwight Edwards, the man behind the very cool Okie-film website The Filmcake. Dwight has attended deadCENTER every year since 2002 (we’re willing to forget the two years he was absent, as he was there in spirit), and even contributed to our live blog of the festival in 2009. Every Wednesday until the festival, we’ll feature his look back at the deadCENTER film festivals of old, starting with 2002. This week: 2003

When deadCENTER moved from the lovely confines of UCO to downtown Oklahoma City, I somehow missed out in the transition. Now it seems almost inconceivable that I would miss two festivals in a row. I returned in 2005 and have attended every one since. But just because I missed out then, doesn’t mean I still can’t go back and revisit a couple of films from that 2003 festival. For this week, I watched two short films from that festival–Five F***ing Fables and Nice Night for Murder.

Keep Reading

A Look Back With Dwight Edwards of The Film Cake: 2002

In the Guest Spot today, we have Dwight Edwards, the man behind the very cool Okie-film website The Filmcake. Dwight has attended deadCENTER every year since 2002, and even contributed to our live blog of the festival in 2009. Every Wednesday until the festival, we’ll feature his look back at the deadCENTER film festivals of old, starting with 2002.

This year I’ll attend my seventh deadCENTER Film Festival. Once again, I await that week in June with boundless anticipation. Familiar faces, great and not-so-great movies, flowing beer. What more does one need? The 10th Anniversary edition of the festival arrives in just eight weeks. In anticipation of that, I’m going to go back and rewatch some of the festival movies that I remember fondly, remember quite UN-fondly, or just flat out missed the first time around. I’ll start with the 2002 festival and work my way up weekly to this year’s festival. Here we go!

Keep Reading

Coffee. Mexican Food. Lots of Films. Arguments. Programming Day is Tomorrow.

Tomorrow is my favorite deadCENTER-related day outside of the festival itself: programming day. Yup, tomorrow is the day we program the entire festival, setting the schedule and venue selections for features and panels. The really fun part, though, is putting together the shorts programs. We get so many quality shorts of all different kinds and lengths that it becomes a struggle to slot them all into related sections. And it’s not just that putting this stuff together is logistically difficult – we all have our personal favorites, and since we’re all passionate about film, things can get heated. It’s like Christmas morning for people who like to argue a lot.

Personally, I’ve got a few films I’m ready to defend to the death tomorrow. One of them, a feature, I know I’m going to have a hard time convincing the others to program. But that’s the fun/point of programming day. It’s your chance to make deadCENTER your own. Winning an argument over whether or not a short makes it in to the festival means you’ve just put your own personal stamp on the festival. Cooler than that, it means that an independent film you saw at random during bag swap will now be up on a screen and thousands of people will now have the opportunity to see it. Very cool.

This will be my fourth programming day, and like the first three times, I’m going to lose some battles (ask me sometime about the fight I lost last year. I loved the film so much I stole the only screener copy we had after it was decided it wouldn’t make it), but hopefully I’ll win one or two as well. Whatever happens, though, we’ll all go get lunch at La Luna, enjoy the films we watch, and, at the end of the day, feel really excited about the great films we get to show to all you lovely people.

And that’s programming day.

-Ian

P.S. – We’ll be tweeting about all of this tomorrow. Follow us @deadcenter

deadCENTER at SXSW: SXSaturday Wrap-up

The good thing about SXSW is that it is non-stop action … which leaves little time for blogging. But here what happened from 1pm-1am yesterday:

Barry Munday: Charming movie staring Patrick Wilson and Judy Greer (both in attendance – no calling in sick for them!). Check out the synopsis and remember this title for when it shows up on VOD. I wish this was the kind of film that would open in theaters everywhere – it’s a much better date movie than anything Jennifer Aniston has been in lately – but who knows? That kind of jackpot doesn’t happen very often.

Keep Reading

Opening Night Schmooze-a-thon

Where’s my sunglasses? My laptop screen is too bright… standby.

OK, much better. The party.

This is my very favorite party during SXSW because EVERYONE goes. It’s at Buffalo Billiards, and both levels are packed. I know the tons of people who didn’t get in don’t feel this way (HEY! Chris! You’re awesome! Hope your screening went well!), but this party is so inclusive. The stars of the big opening attend (the film was Kick-Ass and everyone said it was great), along with all the pals we’ve accumulated over the years. It’s the touchstone party of the weekend. And here’s who we schmoozed with in chronological order, starting with the upstairs:

Keep Reading