SXSW Day 8 Drive-By Reviews

Only one more day to go, and I'm ready for SXSW to be over. It's not the quality of the films, but the lack of quality sleep that makes me appreciate the fact that film festivals do end.

Yesterday, due to a miscommunication, I headed downtown pointlessly on a #3 bus to meet a friend, and it was insanely packed with people and cars. I quickly came back to my home theater, the South Lamar Alamo.

I only caught a few films on Friday, and the stand out was Berlin Calling, a very long but good electronica music video good enough to convert the uninitiated to DJ Paul Kalkbrenner. Karlbrenner stars in the movie about a Berlin DJ whose overuse of recreational drugs induces a psychotic break. As director Hannes Stohr says, it's a story told a thousand times. With the music mirroring and forecasting the emotional ups and downs, it's worth a watch as much as a listen. It made me want to buy the soundtrack, and now I understand why some friends follow DJs.

Today, there are a lot of good films still playing at the Paramount, Alamo Ritz, South Lamar, and Austin Convention Center, including films with very strong buzz like Luckey, My Suicide, Know Your Mushrooms, Mine, Grace, The Overbrook Brothers, and Make-Out with Violence, as well as a special screening of Jonathan Demme's Neil Young Trunk Show, and 500 Days of Summer. While the theaters are seeing good-sized crowds, you should still be able to get into all of them.

Go to the B-Side SXSW site for schedule details and a complete list of films playing today, as well as all official SXSW events.