SXSW, 3/12.

For this roundup, I've quickly plucked, almost at random, a few items from ever-lively sites mentioned here and tossed in a few other bulletins as well. I'll be adding a few thoughts of my own just as soon as I get a chance to think them.

"[T]o get the festival you need to understand that films aren't the only game in town." Filmmaker's Scott Macaulay explains.

"John Cooper, the Sundance Film Festival's director of programming, admitted that he came to SXSW to do reconnaissance," reports Chris Lee for the Los Angeles Times. "'Sundance is where industry meets film,' he said at a party on Austin's main club drag, 6th Street. 'Here, it's where Internet meets film.'"

"It seemed I would need detailed plans and a disciplined strategy to take on this festival," writes Steven Abrams in a first dispatch for the Independent (the film journal, not the British newspaper). "Instead, I chose to wing it."

PopMatters opens its SXSW coverage.

Andrew O'Hehir on Battle in Seattle (site): "[T]he multi-character drama [Stuart] Townsend tries to construct inside and around the Seattle protests is disappointingly conventional (see also: Ken Loach), and really tells us nothing about the protesters, cops, WTO dignitaries and city officials he's striving to portray. Or rather, what he tells us is: Fill-in-the-blanks are people too! Which is a little bit worse than saying nothing."

Eric Kohn reviews a handful of "Notable Narratives" for indieWIRE; and four more here.

Aaron Hillis sends a letter to Premiere; particular attention is paid to Frank V Ross's Present Company.

"Natural Causes, while not perfect, is composed of so many identifiably true moments that I fell in love with the movie," writes Peter Martin at Cinematical.

Just about everyone here in Austin is taking great, back-breaking pains to avoid mentioning the m-word. Not ScreenGrab's Leonard Pierce: "With The Lost Coast [site], writer/director Gabriel Fleming has presented us with a colossal leap forward in this boundlessly underperforming genre: the gay mumblecore movie!"

For David Lowery, Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely "is a masterpiece of iconographic narrative."

"For those of us in the nonfiction world, the idea of an emerging SXSW strikes as old news," writes AJ Schnack. "If you want to ascribe great meaning to SXSW's increased narrative profile, be our guest, but the documentary line-up has been strong for years."

"But for most documentaries, which aim to take us inside a particular, if unremarkable, world for a few hours so we can get a small taste of a life outside our own, the appearance of one truly great and original personality - serendipitously discovered and artfully drawn out - can be enough to make us care about just about anything, even things we never had interest in, had never thought about, or had even found or still find reprehensible or unseemly," writes the Austin Chronicle's Josh Rosenblatt. "Great personalities can make garbage-collecting interesting, entomology, sealant distribution, carpal tunnel syndrome, even Canadian politics."

"One Minute to Nine is one of three films that I've been wandering around Austin championing as a must-see, and every time I offer the in-a-nutshell synopsis to someone who hasn't heard of it, their jaw drops," writes Karina Longworth at the SpoutBlog.

"In its own wacky way, Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay [site] is one of the ballsiest comedies to come out of Hollywood in a long time," writes Joe Leydon. "No kidding."

Collin Armstrong interviews Shuttle director Edward Anderson for Twitch.

Jette Kernion's got recommendations at Slackerwood. More from Michael Tully.

For the IFC, Stephen Saito talks with Richard Jenkins about The Visitor. Site.

Online listening tip. The IFC's Matt Singer and Alison Willmore talk SXSW: "[W]hat we've been up to, what we've seen, and why we like this damn festival so much."

Online viewing tip. Timo Vuorensola is interviewed by M dot Strange.

Posted by dwhudson at March 12, 2008 9:48 PM