SXSW Day 9: Drive-By Reviews
It's over, at least the film festival is. Post-fest depression is already setting in. New friends made, old friends well met, and everyone's exhausted after gorging on the cinematic smorgasbord. I managed to see 34 films (not including 1 short), and explode my Twitter list.
I was actually able to get five films in today, and the best one of the day has local connections. My Suicide has the kinetic, unconventional immediacy of Four Eyed Monsters, a previous hit at SXSW, with the ironic insight of a Juno or Chumscrubber. Shot with a variety of cameras and emphasizing subjective shots, it's a causticly funny dissection of and by the YouTube generation. As we increasingly editorialize our experiences as they happen, we become further dislocated from our lives, and 17-year-old Archie (Gabriel Sunday) can't take it anymore. When he declares his video project will be on his own suicide, he upsets the status quo, frequently quoting and recreating famous movie scenes. If I heard right, director David Lee Miller mentions that the sound editor and one of the graphics team are Austinites in the Q&A. As it doesn't have distribution yet, I'll be following up on it to get more details on that Austin connection.
The official closing-night film was the romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. The audience was quite appreciative of this quirky tale of a romantic who falls for an admitted commitment-phobe. Cast members joined director Marc Webb and writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber for one of the more spirited Q&As I've seen recently, including matchmaking efforts (Deschanel is engaged, sorry), and mimicking a certain exclaimed word from the film. Nice way to "officially" end the festival, even with two more rounds of screenings left in the night.
For those badgeholders still in town today, The Alamo Ritz has some encore screenings, with badgeholders getting in free. Tickets are also available to purchase, so you may want to get there early