AFF’S Morgan to be honored
Austin Film Festival executive director Barbara Morgan will be honored at the ninth annual International Film Festival Summit, which takes place this weekend in Austin at the Hyatt Regency.
Morgan will receive the IFFS Lifetime Achievement Award for her success in making the Austin festival a nationally recognized success that champions screenwriters.
“Barb has redefined what a film festival can be by focusing on screenwriters and has illuminated what lies at the core of a quality film,” IFFS executive director Laurie Kirby said. “It all starts on paper with the words of the screenwriter. She, like the screenwriter, is the architect of success, but humbly stays out of the spotlight. Her contribution to Austin is immeasurable.”
The IFFS is an industry event that brings together professionals from various arenas of the film festival, exhibition and distributions worlds and includes presentations, panel discussions and parties. This year’s festival features keynote speaker Ted Hope, executive director of the San Francisco Film Society. For more information about the festival and conference, visit FilmFestivalSummit.com.
Australian writer-director Andrew Dominik returns to the subject of murder and the men who commit them with his gritty crime drama “Killing Them Softly.”
He moves from the vast plains of the American West, which he patrolled in “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” to the concrete and detritus of urban America. His gunman/wingman once again is Brad Pitt, who delivers an icy performance as a hired gun in this gutter-trawler based on George Higgins’ 1974 novel, “Cogan’s Trade.”
The movie calls to mind ominous Scorsese heavies menacing with their fearless gravitas and quick-mouthed Tarantino featherweights exchanging verbal barbs in a slowly enclosing ring. Dominik delivers a filthy realism as he treads the scummy waters of the underworld in an unnamed city that sounds a lot like Boston (where Higgins’ novel is set) but looks like New Orleans. But the filmmaker loses his way when he tries to couch his crime drama in a greater philosophical message about greed and selfishness.
The film opens to the sounds of Barack Obama’s