January 2008

I wrote an article for Cinematical on the latest news from the SXSW Film Festival: six more films announced, the best-known probably being Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. (The movie has forced me to learn how to spell "Guantanamo" properly.) I don't want to repeat myself, but I've got other things to say about the announcement that didn't quite work in the Cinematical article:

• The other five films, in case you really are too lazy to click the link: Mister Lonely, Crawford, Battle in Seattle, The Promotion, and The Toe Tactic. Matt Dentler has posted summaries of all these films -- they're also all in IMDb except for Crawford, which I could not find a website for at the time. 
• Speaking of Crawford, the documentary is locally made -- producer/director David Modigliani is an Austin filmmaker and playwright. A rough cut of Crawford ­had screened last September at Austin Film Society as part of their "Works-in-Progress" program -- in fact, finding that page was how I found the link to the Crawford website.
• SXSW also announced three speakers who will participate in "Conversations" panels. Most news articles focused on two of the speakers: Helen Hunt and Michael Eisner. You know I was most interested in the third speaker: Harlan Ellison. Ellison seems to have a reputation these days for being a somewhat unpredictable public speaker, so I am trying not to get too excited (ask me sometime about the time I saw Russ Meyer in person, which was a sad lesson a la Dorothy Parker's "Glory in the Daytime"). But Ellison's "Watching" essays are what got me interested in writing about film in the first place, so part of me is hoping not to be disappointed.
• The rest of the SXSW 2008 films will be announced on Feb. 5. My guess is that the Duplass brothers' film Baghead and the Zellner brothers' film Goliath (both shot in Austin) will be in the mix. Both features are playing Sundance next week. As Karina points out at Spout, there's a perfect opportunity here for a reprise of the "Zellner vs. Duplass" showdown screening from SXSW 2007.

By the way, SXSW is about to hold its big volunteer signup, if you want to see some of these movies or panels and can't afford a pass or badge. Crew signup takes place on Sunday, January 20 at the downtown Hilton.

If you attended SXSW Film Festival in 2002 -- or if the culty word-of-mouth reached you later -- you may have heard about the Burger Hut film-fest house ads that year. You know how film-fest house ads can often be incredibly lame and annoying, especially if you have to watch them before 15 or more movies in a week? Apparently that didn't happen with the goofy Burger Hut ads. I wasn't th­ere in 2002 and I haven't tried to watch the ads 15 times in a week, so I can't vouch for t­his personally, but word gets around. People are very nostalgic about the Burger Hut.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can actually watch the old Burger Hut ads on YouTube. They were created by Dan Brown, Kent Osborne, and Mike Mitchell.

But if you do remember the Burger Hut ads fondly and wish that the SXSW house ads would return to those salad days, I have good news. Check out this blog entry from Matt Dentler, SXSW Film Festival producer, and guess what the house ads might be for SXSW in Austin this March. (Hint: That's Osborne in the second photo wearing the Burger Hut hat.)

I liked Joe Swanberg's house ads for SXSW 2007 just fine (Osborne was in those as well), and only one grew a bit annoying after awhile (the one with Greta and the mic, which I seemed to keep getting over and over again). So I'm glad to see that this year's house ads are likely to maintain (at least) the same level of interest.