Best Film Festival 2013 | Phoenix Film Festival | People & Places | Phoenix
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Best Film Festival

Phoenix Film Festival

Every city should have its own independent film festival, and even we were surprised by the talent at this year's Phoenix Film Festival. The weeklong event at Harkins Scottsdale 101 featured limited-release films — ranging from horror and sci-fi to comedies, love stories, and dramas — from all over the country. The best part was the post-screening Q&As with directors, actors, and producers, which gave Phoenicians a chance to mingle with up-and-coming talent in the movie industry. It's well worth the money to splurge for a full-event pass for $150, so you can hit up every movie. A further splurge to become a VIP pass holder ($250) will get you first access into every movie. However, you can also purchase single movie tickets for $12 if you just want to see one or two films during the week. Next year's event is slotted for April 3 through 10, and we can't wait to see the talent it brings to town.

Best Independent Movie Theater

FilmBar

When indie film buffs and cult classic connoisseurs want to see their cinema on the big screen, there's no cooler destination than downtown Phoenix's FilmBar. The Roosevelt Row film house, which doubles as a bar, caters to a less-mainstream crowd of movie watchers, offering a selection of foreign, independent, old, new, and local films that might otherwise be hard to find in Phoenix. When the screen goes black, the evening carries on in FilmBar's low-lit yet colorful front-of-house lounge, where First Friday patrons and the nightly theater crowd can socialize over live music, DJs, and the bar's selection of craft beer and wine. Whether they're sipping imported beers in the lounge or watching imported films on the screen, locals can agree that FilmBar is a petri dish of Phoenix culture.

Best Luxury Movie Theater

iPic Theater

In the age of online streaming, movie-watching has become an all too casual affair. For most of us, seeing the latest flick boils down to a Netflix account, microwave popcorn, and a pair of threadbare sweatpants. Which is why if we're going to put on real pants, we're going to go all out with our movie-screening experience. At Scottsdale Quarter's luxury iPic movie theater, filmgoers can feel like Hollywood VIPs with reserved spacious leather seats, craft beer, a self-serve wine bar, optional in-theater service, and an extensive menu of substantial theater fare like filet sliders, firecracker shrimp, and cheesecake brûlée. Guests can even enjoy some pre- or post-show entertainment at iPic's conjoined Tanzy restaurant or its stocked bar, Salt. For filmgoers who love convenience as much as they do the finer things, admission to the iPic theater is a high-value ticket well worth the purchase price.

Best Budget Movie Theater

Super Saver Cinemas 8

One of the most important assets to any good movie theater is the popcorn. Super Saver Cinemas 8 has great popcorn. Oh, yeah, and tickets are just $3 every day except for Tuesday, when they're only $1.50. There are eight movies running at any one time, ranging from children's fare to horror flicks. So, if you don't want to pay about $10 per ticket, just wait a little while and you'll be able to catch that movie you've been wanting to see without destroying your weekly entertainment budget.

Best Drive-In Movie Theater

West Wind Glendale 9

Drive-in theaters are reminiscent of a bygone time — and West Wind Glendale 9 is no exception. But there is nothing outdated about this West Valley theater, which features state-of-the-art digital projection, first-run movies, a game room, and a gourmet snack bar. General admission tickets are $6.75 per person, but only $4.75 on Tuesday, during Family Fun Night. Admission for children 5 to 11 is only $1. Even better (and cheaper)? You can pack your own snacks.

Best Director

Elise Salomon

It was really no surprise to hear that Elise Salomon's documentary Los Wild Ones won her the best documentary award at the 2013 Phoenix Film Festival. This locally raised girl's knack for capturing raw emotion while telling the story of the Latino rockabilly record label Wild Records certainly is impressive for a new filmmaker. However, her work as a producer with some of our favorite funny people in Hollywood, like Michael Cera in Paper Heart and Nick Offerman in Smashed, also had caught buzz from film festivals across the country. Salomon certainly is up and coming. She has an eye for talent and an ear for a good tale, and we can't wait to see her next project — especially if she's the director again.

Best D-List Actor Freak-Out

Jason London

You know you're a D-list actor when you have to tell the cops arresting you that you're a rich and famous actor, and then you have to add, "Fucking look me up, bitch!" That's what Jason London did in Scottsdale earlier this year, right before he took a steaming dump in the back of a Scottsdale police car. London, who's best known — excuse us, only known — for his role as Randall "Pink" Floyd in Dazed and Confused, sneezed in a guy's face at Martini Ranch in January and got tossed out after fighting with the guy and bar security, according to police. As the arresting officer drove London to jail, London continued to insult the cop — including, but not limited to, saying that his breath smelled like diarrhea — and at one point, London said the cop's car "smells like shit." The officer wrote in his report: "I looked back at him just in time for him to lean to the left and defecate in his pants. Then he said, 'I told you that I'm happy as shit!'"

Best Actor

Devon Nickel in Equus at Nearly Naked Theatre

Devon Nickel's been around Valley theater a while (not too long — he's a relatively young man), including in Nearly Naked and Phoenix Theatre's co-production of Spring Awakening in 2012 and NNT's acclaimed Blood Brothers in 2009. He sings beautifully enough that he could be routinely cast doing only that, but that isn't what happens, because he acts at least as well. Last winter, he took on the physically, emotionally, intellectually taxing role of utter crazy-pants Alan Strang in Nearly Naked's revival of the classic '70s British drama Equus. The entire production was stunning, but Nickel's Alan was the hub around which it all revolved, and appropriately so. We laughed, we cried, we could not look away — and yet there was so much truth, passion, and pain in Nickel's work that we scarcely remember the play's protracted nude scene. Which is not something that would escape us on an ordinary day.

Best Actress

Shawna Franks in Uncle Vanya at Space 55

Some performers are like the J.D. Salinger of acting — hard to catch. (Usually it's because they're working very hard doing other things that generally are none of your business.) But one of Shawna Franks' conflicts, as artistic director of Space 55 Ensemble, understandably eats into her available time to appear in plays. We're happy when we do get to see her act, and sad the rest of the time, because we aren't watching her act. See, she's got mad chops, partly from her training days in Chicago (at the former Goodman School at DePaul and on the mean streets).

In March, Franks played the beautiful, idle, self-loathing Elena in an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. (Everyone in Chekhov, as in life, is self-loathing — but anyway . . .) Her trajectory through the evening appeared entirely inevitable (for the character) and effortless (for the performer). This is pure toil that should look like the random machinations of nature, and that's what Franks accomplishes.

Best Prop

Charles Dickens' hairbrush in A Christmas Carol

One of the signs of great work in theater or film is that enough time and effort have been invested to make inanimate objects like clothing, furniture, dishes, and books feel as real as the characters do. Give those props and dressings a chance, and they'll enhance the art. (Give them too much leeway and they'll upstage the biggest star.)

We were stumped, before we saw Southwest Shakespeare's A Christmas Carol, trying to imagine the cuddly, grandfatherly David Vining as archetypal grouch Ebenezer Scrooge. Vining's a fine actor, and Don Bluth a masterful director, especially on the visual side, but really? Well, Vining entered playing Charles Dickens himself, promoting Carol to his reluctant publisher, and as he began to read from the manuscript, he picked up a hairbrush, swiped his well-groomed noggin into a neurotic shock, and became Scrooge. Done. May we have a link to get one just like it?

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