This year Cinema Blend operates with one goal in mind: Do whatever it is we haven’t been doing before. For instance, you’ll be seeing the first of what will hopefully be a lot of big time interviews up on the site in a few days. Watch for Rafe’s exclusive interview with writer/director Adam Rifkin. And me? Well I’m not comfortably at home. I’m sitting in my underwear, locked in a room at a hotel deep within the bowels of Austin covering the world’s third coolest film festival, SXSW. Hey, you have to give Cannes and Sundance their due. But once you get them out of the way, there’s no better place to immerse yourself in movies than Austin’s annual, massive celebration of music and movies, South By South West.
We’ve brushed up against film festivals before, but this is my first attempt at really throwing myself wholeheartedly into attending one. My previous experience was dabbling with the old, decrepit Deep Ellum Film Festival in Dallas. It's no comparison. Dallas is a cultural desert, and the few good movie venues it has are so scattered across the city that you can't really hold it in a central location. It helps that this one is in Austin, one of my favorite places on Earth. Dozens of awesome movie theaters, all walking distance from each other, in one of the best downtowns you'll find in any city in America. Austin is alive. So alive that I’m not so much attending SXSW it as being done by it. The first movie hasn't even shown, but there's already an energy here. I seem to be blowing wherever this thing takes me. I’ll be doing a lot of wandering over the next few days, as SXSW does me, and does me right.
Three and a half years living here... well longer ago than I'd now care to admit, was just long enough for me to start thinking of myself as an Austinite. I still do, even though I’m long gone. There’s just nowhere like Austin. It felt so good to be back, that I didn’t even mind an hour wait in the Austin Convention Hall for my press badge. The place was alive with the buzz and chatter of movie nerds in heavy anticipation mode. It’s a sweet Austin vibe.
Right now it’s Friday night, and I’m on my way out to my first movies. In a few minutes (assuming I can walk seven blocks in under 15 minutes) I’ll catch my first movie of the festival. It’s an oddball little indie called Suffering Man’s Charity directed by the great Alan Cumming. After that, I’ll walk out of the awesome Paramount Theater and get right in line for the next movie, The Lookout. The Lookout is definitely one of the films I’m most looking forward to seeing. Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a movie directed by Scott Frank. I can’t wait.
In a time crunch, so this will have to be posted when I get return late.
Keep checking back with Cinema Blend over the next few days as I file as many reports as I can muster from SXSW. In the next few days I’ll be wandering all over the city and seeing, well, a lot of movies. Some of the recognizable ones I’m trying to catch include The Ten, Sisters, Black Sheep, The Signal, Smiley Face, and Knocked Up. Add to those about ten others, and I’ll be damned busy. Bookmark this page to keep track of all my SXSW coverage as it happens, direct dispatched from Austin, Texas.
