All right, I'm gonna squeeze these in before I head off to Cyborg tonight, which I probably won't get written up until a few days from now. I'll try to post something when I get in tonight reardless. Truth in Terms of Beauty Elizabeth Avellan attached her name to a winner, and even before I go back over all I've seen this week, I know this is one of my favorite three movies I saw all week. Herman Leonard is a name you immediately recognize or you don't. Just about everyone will recognize the iconic jazz photos he's famous for, though. Now 84 years old, Leonard has been through 3 marriages, 4 kids, and Hurricane Katrina. This documentary is essentially him telling us his life story, supplemented by his remarkable photos and tons of home movies he shot over the years. He speculates the French government probably sent his first wife back to Morocco for drugs, and according to the director, Leonard has a...ahem..."saucy" email list he sends out provocative pictures on. Leonard met the director, Vince Dipersio, in a cafe completely by chance. DiPersio saw an ad for a photo show and from their first conversation, they became fast friends. I hope this one makes it out on DVD at least before someone co-opts his life story for a fiction film biopic, since Leonard tells the story so well himself. HBO, PBS could air this, I don't care! Someone help give this flick an audience. A telling observation: for all those film purists out there (still and motion), Leonard loves all the new technology out there for digital, including Photoshop, embracing it all ravenously. According to DiPersio, "you can't tear him away from a new toy." Afterward, I saw a kidnapping doc called Ya Basta! but I can't spend the effort it'd take to write up, since I couldn't stand it and the subtitles were really badly translated.

Hotel wireless has been spotty at best, and downtown and the convention center have transformed into SXSW Music central, so I've been cut off from the internet world for longer than I'd like. I'll cover stuff I missed hopefully tomorrow and Sunday. Only thing I've got planned today and tomorrow is Closing Night Film I'm A Cyborg, But That's OK.

Ben and Alison and Debbie and Pete....or Knocked Up

Monday night was the first insane-o line, crowd, and event going down with the highly-anticipated new Apatow movie. It's probably not been since the sneak peek at Hellboy in 2004 that I've seen the lines so long at the Paramount Theatre in Austin than they were for Knocked Up, Judd Apatow's followup to The 40 Year-Old Virgin. Paul Rudd introduced the movie and off we went on a snap-crackle-pop-crackle-snap and pop again laugh a minute ride, as the studio marketers love to put on the posters and newspaper ads. Rudd, I might add, may hold the non-Austinite record for being in the most movies in one SXSW as of this year (The Ten, Diggers, Knocked Up...was there another one?). The movie has the initial hook of being your garden variety 90-minute comedy, but it digs into more real-world stuff than you'd initially expect from a movie called Knocked Up. To me, the movie goes into similar territory to Clerks 2: the Manchild Generation gets a kick in the ass and has to grow up and move on or stay put and get kicked harder. To be clear, that's neither comparing nor degrading either film relative to the other. The story in brief: Ben Stone (Rogen) and Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl) hook up randomly. He's a do-nothing slob, she's an up-and-comer at E! Entertainment Television. She winds up pregnant. She lives with her well-off sister Debbie (Leslie Mann) and her husband Pete (Paul Rudd). Debbie and Pete have two daughters and are headfirst into the phase of their marriage where they don't know how to communicate with each other anymore and one or the other of them feels trapped. The movie asks not just whether people in Ben & Alison's place can find their way, but also provided things work out, whether eight to ten years down the line they'll be able to survive together as the Debbie and Pete's of the world. It's a really serious set of issues when you think about it, but Apatow and crew keep it fun and entertaining. You see a lot of moments where Ben says something atrociously juvenile at the worst possible moment that the women in the audience will say "I hate it when they do shit like that" as quickly as guys get some indigestion for thinking "shit, I've done that". The movie is mostly comedy, but as far as I can remember it never veers into the kind of wacky zaniness you find in the Frat Pack comedies it follows. You really get the best of both worlds. I want to make note of some standout stuff before it drifts out of my head or too far back in my notebook....you'll remember Leslie Mann as the alcoholic road rage chick in Virgin, and I don't see her on the big screen as often as I'd like...she can do funny yes, but she can do a lot more than just funny, which you get glimpses of here. Alan Tudyk and Kristen Wiig deserve trophies, medals, trophy-shaped medals, I dunno....for playing a couple of suits at E! so dialed back and ridiculous at once that it defies explanation. I find the sentence you just read makes no logical sense until you've seen the movie. There's an issue I can see with the movie, which I don't think the over-the-mooners who've been posting since Monday's screening are keeping in mind: the movie's hilarious, well-acted, and has a known quantity going for it...but return business might give it trouble theatrically for a couple reasons. Sure, The 40 Year-Old Virgin had it Serious Life Stuff going on and got tons of return business, but Knocked Up is about the cathartic, trying experience of getting out of your comfort zone, which you like just fine, thank you very much. Additionally, it runs 2 hrs. 10 min., and may wear thin on folks who want the 90-minute runtime they're used to getting. However... Knocked Up is really well done, and maybe...just maybe will connect with a generation of guys who really aren't compelled to stop spending their paychecks on japanese swords to hang over their beds and a new bong. The message is strong, and Seth Rogen proves that hell yes can a stocky guy with curly hair carry a movie. Encourage your friends to see this with you in a group, and don't wait for video. You might miss a few lines from the roars of laughter, as I did Monday night at the Paramount, but hey, that's what the DVD's for, right? Before I move on to the movie I'm calling the Best Film of SXSW 2007, I would be remiss if I didn't mention something that comes up in Knocked Up that is near and dear to Hollywood Elsewhere and our overlord-slash-bossman Jeffrey Wells. It has to do with Munich, and if you want to be completely unspoiled on the movie, don't read the paragraph below, skip it and move on. This is not a major plot point, but for those who want things completely unspoiled, skip and move on. It isn't that big a deal anyway. So at one point, Ben (Rogen) and the guys are talking and they bring up Munich and essentially call it the quintessential Jewish guy action movie, where the guys who wear yarmulkes are the no-prisoners gunmen. The way they talk about Eric Bana kicking ass and killing people, I half-expected to hear something like "it's like Jew Hard and Eric Bana is Bruce Willis". As funny as everything in the movie was, this bit about how "in that movie, the dudes with curly hair were the badasses, man" caught everyone off-guard and no one heard a damn thing said for around a minute after the joke hit the high point. So, for all you guys who insist that Jeff took down Munich, sorry guys, he failed. Maybe next time. I'm probably gonna get a call or an email for that last crack. Oh well, it's in good fun.

Even Sandler Gets the Blues...or, Reign Over Me

Wednesday was capped off quite nicely indeed. I have to preface this with some information you should be aware of: A) I haven't yet seen some films I intend to in the last two days of SXSW 2007, but am perfectly happy calling Reign Over Me the best movie I've seen over the last week, if not one of the best I've ever seen at this festival. I'm sure I'm A Cyborg, But That's OK is great and all, but this movie is...well, I'll get into that in a minute. B) No, Jeff Wells did not pay me to say I liked it, neither did Mike Binder, and Sony has no idea who the hell I am, nor do they care. C) Jeff Wells doesn't pay me to do anything, and Sony doesn't pay him to run the tower ads you see on the site currently. He's running them of his own volition because he believes in this movie. Additionally, if you've reacted to the trailer, ads or word of mouth about Reign Over Me by saying a variation on any of the following: "Oh Christ, I don't wanna see another one of those Adam Sandler movies" "9/11 man...too soon" Then take a moment to reconsider this movie, for your own sake. The movie is not Billy Madison 2:Billy's Back, nor is it a United 93-style reenactment of that day. Charlie Fineman (Sandler) and Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle) went to dental school together, and have been out of touch for years. The movie deals with Charlie's grief process following the loss of his wife and three daughters on September 11th, and how reuniting with Alan changes everything for both of them. Charlie drifts from place to place every day, meanwhile Alan's wife (Jada Pinkett Smith) manages and monitors his life so closely for him that he never has time to himself alone or to start a hobby. When he meets back up with Charlie, that all changes. Oddly enough, I found Alan's marriage suffers from a similar disconnect as the one portrayed in Knocked Up, but with a much less comedic overtone. The fact that the same root problem pop up in both films may just seem like a coincidence, but I think it's indicative of something that's becoming more and more obvious and prevalent: married couples are collecting all the components of a happy life and aren't able to assemble them to their satisfaction. Nothing fits as perfectly as they'd imagined or hoped. Terrific supporting performances from Liv Tyler as a therapist/colleague of Alan's, Saffron Burrows as an emotionally imbalanced patient, and the aforementioned Jada solidify the bond that the movie is built around, these two guys trying to get back to who they are deep down piece by piece, like they're putting together an old hot rod they used to tool around in years before to give it one more go, see a glimpse of who they were. Binder himself pops in as he has in all his previous films, doing solid work as always, not sticking out unless, like me, you know who he is and think "hey, it's Mike Binder" when he comes in. Momentary appearances from Donald Sutherland, Ted Raimi and John de Lancie are all memorable but unobtrusive, never really detracting from the narrative just because they have familiar faces. The never-seen-them discovery for me was Paula Newsome, playing Melanie, Alan's opinionated, self-assured receptionist. She can make you laugh without saying a damn word, and she does just that whenever she's on-screen and not firing off one of her lines with pitch-perfect delivery. So what's so great about the movie, huh? Well for starters, Binder doesn't knock us over the head with the origin of the trauma that Charlie (Sandler) has gone through. We have information withheld from us due to looking from the outside in at Charlie, and not because the director wants to act like we're stupid. A particular breakdown scene comes to mind, which I'm really glad they didn't cut. It came unexpectedly enough that I felt as surprised as Don Cheadle looked on-screen listening to him. The question Alan is faced with is: do we need to fix people, or should we just help them do the fixing themselves? As much as we may want to do the work for them because we love and treasure our loved ones, Binder's film makes a strong case for the latter. At a post-screening Q&A, a woman stood up and broadsided Mike and his two stars with the fact that she had recently lost her husband, and that the grief process in the film came of as completely authentic. "Everyone wants to just fix you, and make you go to therapy, or take pills, or..." she trailed off at one point. Awkward though it may have been, it hit precisely on what we saw on the screen. All of that and presumably more has been shoved on Sandler's Charlie Fineman, and none of it took for the longest time. What is it about Alan that means Charlie can open up? This has rambled and rolled, but I have to make some final major points or I'll hate this when I look at it in the morning. I've tried not to spoil anything, but still give an impression of what kind of movie you're looking at here. It's Binder's best film, from all the ones I've seen, and these are two of the best performances I've seen from either of these men, and that is saying something for both of them. What's that? Adam Sandler isn't an actor, he's a comedian? Don Cheadle's playing the straight man, right? That's no big task, right? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Adam Sandler has everything he needs in his toolkit that every great American actor has had: humor, charisma, emotional sensitivity, and depth among them. He usually doesn't get to show them off. He says he purposely doesn't read what the press writes because of what it does to you to have to endure that kind of defamation and ridicule. It's like asking to get picked on at school. I don't think you're qualified to be a film critic if you can't objectively give the man his due for this movie. I don't know how Hollywood politics work, but this performance.....you know, I'm not gonna go there, this is enough of a rave already. I'll put it this way--if you think you saw all the nuance he had to offer in Punch Drunk Love, you're sadly misled. As for Don Cheadle, another comment brought up in the Q&A was how difficult it is to play the straight man opposite the affected, pulling Tom Cruise playing opposite Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man as a prime example. As an actor, you have the script, and know everything that's really going on, but having to spontaneously, moment-to-moment go back to the place where you can't see in the other guy's head and feel that helplessness...that's a bigger challenge than you'd think. Cheadle knocks it out of the park, across a state line, and out of another park altogether. You seriously have to see this movie. It's more relevant than every movie I can think of currently in active, first-run release, and as summer approaches, you never know when you'll get to see a movie that really has something to say anytime soon. My damn camera went to shit. I have no means of pulling the photos I've taken off the SD card until (probably) we get back to Florida. Brilliant. Tonight I caught an advance screening of TMNT, a fantastic return to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise that was followed by a Q&A with director/writer Kevin Munroe. Copious thanks to AICN Head Geek Harry Knowles for putting the screening together last-minute and Alamo Drafthouse Founder Tim League for the free pizza party associated with it. Munroe knows how to treat a franchise properly and tell a CGI story that doesn't need squirrels, bears, or penguins or fart jokes for filler. Expect something brief tomorrow during the day.

I'm exhausted. I got plenty of sleep last night, but you never quite catch up, do you? I'm going to be brief with the scattering of movies I saw over the last couple days excepting Knocked Up, as I started to include it here, but it's a hugely overlong piece I've gotta finish and post on its own later. Monday: Smiley Face Anna Faris isn't into pot and eats some. Hilarity ensues, and distribution may be tricky for the movie (even though it's really funny) because it's about pot. I hope it doesn't just get shoved off on a pay-cable channel. People deserve the chance to laugh at this one in a group. It's pot humor that even non-whacky tobacky types like me can dig. Tuesday: Helvetica, Blackbird, and Confessions of a Superhero Helvetica, a documentary about the iconic font, as I have mentioned previously, is font nerd porn. It reminds me of Wordplay, in that it's so much about the magnificent art that is the expression of language. You can have a great infrastructure and tools to work with, but it's all about how they're implemented. If you aren't working with something visually arresting, no one is going to pay attention in this day ad age of instant gratification and recognition. This is one I'll buy on DVD and watch regularly when doing a design project, and will be an absolute must-see for all my graphic design wizard friends. Blackbird was a gigantic letdown and I had barely any expectations going into it. Adam Rapp is a brilliant playwright, but this play just doesn't work on screen for me. That said the performances by the leads are exceptionally good, full of lived-in quality. As we drag on, the movie starts to feel like a slow painful death, which may have been intended, but even for a guy like me who relishes depressing stuff, I couldn't get into it. I swear to God the only reason I didn't ditch was that Scott Weinberg didn't, and if there's anyone I want to be when I grow up...it isn't him---but, I do want to suffer through some of the same garbage so I can try to hate on it more than him. Of course, I'd never win. Confessions of a Superhero is about the people who dress up as Superman, Batman, The Hulk, Wonder Woman, and so on and walk Hollywood Boulevard taking pictures with tourists for tips that make up most or all of their income. This is the doc I always wish would be up for Best Feature Doc at the Oscars so tons of people would see it. All of them seem fixated on celebrity, from a Superman who claims to be Sandy Dennis' long-hidden son to The Hulk who is the American Dream made flesh (working up to an apartment from a cardboard scrap in an alley), to an unsuccessful model/actress Wonder Woman, and finally a Batman who looks strikingly like George Clooney, is delusional, and claims to have killed many people. This will get picked up, it's sharply-edited, well-shot, and never induces checking-of-the-watch. Gotta run to lunch, then a doc, then another, then Reign Over Me. Tomorrow will probably be a Day of Rest.

Caught Knocked Up (excellent), Smiley Face (likable stoner humor), Helvetica (font nerd heroin), Blackbird (let me die before the people in this movie), and Confessions of a Superhero (surprised me and great). Way way behind, but you should see something tomorrow midday or thereabouts.

Gotta make this fast or I won't get a meal before this evening's Knocked Up screening. Elizabeth Avellan's the definition of class. The winner of this year's first annual Ann Richards award at the Texas Film Hall of Fame described making a movie as "going to summer camp and war at the same time" and suggested that as a filmmaker, "if you can move me [a mother, a woman, a venezolana], you can move a lot of people". I asked what recent films have really moved or influenced her, and after considering for a moment, responded The Queen: "the media portrayals of this woman and what she went through are two different stories that are extraordinary on their own, and the strength of this woman, that's not what you see a lot of the time in Hollywood movies." She's attached as a producer on a documentary about legendary photographer Herman Leonard called Truth in Terms of Beauty, which screens tomorrow or Wednesday afternoon.

The backed-up feeling is settling in, and I know that taking time to post this now is going to set back writing up panels from today (Monday) which in turn means delay and erratic posting will come into play come tomorrow. Hang in with me though, it'll all get covered. Eagle vs Shark "The un-Napoleon Dynamite" People will call this comedy-romance from New Zealand "quirky" and it will unfairly be compared to Napoleon Dynamite. This movie is better than Napoleon Dynamite by a large margin. Lauren Horsely and director Taika Waititi (present at the screening) collaborated on a story that, according to Lauren, is inspired by her own life, but exaggerated and embellished. Co-lead Jemaine is well-known to fans of recording group Flight of the Conchords, of which he composes half the group. They're apparently in the process of doing a pilot/first season for HBO of a Flight series. If I had HBO, I'd watch the hell out of it, assuming it's as entertaining as their music. Lauren and Jemaine's characters are similar off-the-beaten path, socially awkward people looking for happiness, love, and in Jemaine's case, for "a Samoan whose ass [he] needs to kick". Dictating the plot would ruin it all, but for a...(jesus christ) "quirky" movie like this that you expect certain things from, it's unexpectedly touching and affecting in places. Interspersed vignettes featuring stop-motion animation seal the deal for me on this one. I hope it's a giant success that puts the aforementioned movie to shame in box office, because this thing is really special. What Would Jesus Buy? "Mickey Mouse is the Anti-Christ!!!" Morgan Spurlock produces this look at Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, who go around the country in this doc preaching the good word of un-commercializing Christmas. Below is a short video of a post-movie performance the full choir gave, it was electric: What an inspiration these folks are. More so than any church preacher I ever heard speak, more so than any professor who lectured their doctoral thesis in my face, these people and what they do grabbed me, sat me up straight, and put things into perspective as starkly as my favorite SXSW06 movie, Maxed Out. I'd venture to say this movie changed my life enough in the last however many hours that it's going to be at the top of my "you gotta catch this before you leave" list for all my friends and acquaintances in town with badges this week. Rev. Billy got the Choir started some years ago to combat the evils waged by the conspiratorial, overzealous, and soulless corporate-worshipping commercial goons of the American retail trade. Who needs a safe, high-quality product made by an American in America feeding an American family when you can get it made cheaper in bulk with lower standards of craftsmanship by a sweatshop in the South Pacific? The Stop Shopping Gospel Choir is funded by some very generous donors and literally drives all over the country doing what I'd call Perform In's to "preach the good word of Stop Shopping to prevent the Shopocalypse". We all know jobs and products are coming from overseas more and more and more, and it's rare you find a locally-owned, well-trafficked business outside havens like dear beloved Austin and Portland, Oregon (home to a lot of friends). It's a tragedy of the highest order that the Great American Assembly Line has been dismantled, crushed, and left for dead. I have a pair of friends we ran into at the mall in Tallahassee last year during the madness of Christmas shopping who "refuse to consume" and how other friends of ours would criticize their practice of not essentially making an offering to the Golden Calf of commercialism during that part of the year. My fiancee may not love the idea of not getting a bunch of "stuff" or whatever is most desirable on TV commercials this Christmas, but at the least, I want to put more emphasis on cherishing the time and company of those you're closest to, not only at that time of the year, but year-round. All right, screw it, I've missed most of the morning's stuff typing all this, but I'm going to make sure I intentionally miss (as planned) the Sex Scenes Stay Hard panel, even though I'd love to see John Cameron Mitchell talk. I've got a date with Elizabeth Avellan.

My fiancee: "This is the best movie we've seen this year." We knew we were going to see Eagle vs. Shark at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar later today, and once it started looking rainy, we decided it'd be good to find something else playing there and just plant ourselves for the afternoon. I'm glad it rained and I'm glad we saw this movie. If there's justice in the world, it'll get seen. It doesn't matter if it gets picked up for theatrical or DVD, but people will get to see this movie and cherish it. One of the first questions during Q&A was where they could buy a copy to show their class from a schoolteacher. The movie is about the unexpected and empowering friendship of two conservatively, traditionally-raised women: one an Orthodox Jew named Rochel, the other a Muslim named Nasira. Their faiths and names set them apart from their surroundings at a public school where they find themselves assigned as teaching partners. Moreso than either woman, those around them in their professional and personal lives make a great big deal about how shocking and appalling it should be to be seen or be friendly with each other. There are no explosions in this movie. There are no knife-fights, and there's no CGI. What you do find is a narrative that is less concerned with beating it into your head that there's a message than realistically looking at the coincidental (though in New York City, one would think, inevitable) meeting of these two worlds. We've seen so many movies criticizing these two belief systems for being arcane and more trouble than they're worth that it's truly, truly refreshing to see people exemplifying the beauty of those faiths working out what they think of each other without being dragged down by an oppressive, self-important wannabe auteur ruining things. There are moments that touch you and others that make you laugh. You also see some actors with more substantive parts than when you recognize them from this or that movie as "That Guy" like John Rothman, who plays Rochel's father. One of my favorite things about indies is that you get to see these towering stage actors tear up some honest material for God/Allah/Yahweh's sake. Zoe Lister-Jones (recently of Broadway's The Little Dog Laughed) and Francis Benhamou play Rochel and Nasira, respectively, and it isn't often you get dual leads that obviously work so well collaboratively. Even more rare is it that you have two female characters this well-developed and naturally portrayed. An indie treasure I hope isn't buried. Eagle vs. Shark & What Would Jesus Buy will get posted in the morning. Too tired, learned my lesson today.

Figure I'm getting sick from how I woke up. I'm gonna forego the panels (Grindhouse, Spurlock) I wanted to hit and rest up so I don't lose the whole damn week to illness.

The drive out here almost killed me, and today has practically drained every ounce of stamina I thought I had, but we made it through. The rest of the week is gonna be rough, because then I get to drive back to Florida, and the closer we get, the less I want to make that drive. The Ten "Not everyone's cup of tea, but it was pretty good." I have a lot of friends who are obsessed with The State and all the folks who made this, Wet Hot American Summer, and the tv show Stella. All of them are going to hate what I tell them and others about this movie. There are bits that made me die laughing, the Y tu mamá también-influenced Jesús/Lord's Name in Vain vignette comes immediately to mind, but there were parts that made me wish the pieces were incorporated into a revival of The State called The Prodigal State or something. Everyone's funny, everyone's well-cast, and it was certainly better than the majority of what you find in the "Comedy" section of the video store Netflix made obsolete. It didn't set me on fire, but when it comes down to it, this one was definitely a thumbs up, especially when David Wain told us after the screening that he had to Google the commandments, not really knowing any of them off the top of his head when he began writing. This one doesn't hit until August, and in the name of non-tentpole, deserving comedies out there, I hope people go see it. Manufacturing Dissent Jon Pierson: "Show of hands: So how many of you like Michael Moore? How many don't like Michael Moore?" My first doc of the festival is going to end up being one of my very favorites, I can tell. Pierson moderated a chat with R. Linklater earlier in the day and served as host for one of the more speculation-worthy flicks on my advance list of "I have to see" movies. Going in to the movie, I like many others, had my doubts about the absolute veracity and/or reliability of Michael Moore's movies and his research, even though I find myself agreeing with him a lot. The doc follows a crew of Canadians who are avowed fans of Michael Moore's who just want a chance to speak with him and do a bio-documentary on him. As they start to sift through the research material available, they find a side of Michael Moore and his "manufactured" persona and history that will make even the most staunch Moore maniac pause. With SiCKO coming out soon, I'm especially startled at the idea that he compares the US healthcare system to that of Cuba, where direct relatives of mine who are doctors work as bellhops to keep eating. Yes the drugs are cheaper and the care is cost-free, but Cuba is far from the model of much of anything in terms of policy or infrastructure. After seeing this movie, my misgivings about referring to him as something of a liberal Karl Rove-type demagogue have disappeared. I admire the things he stands up for quite often, but I can't dig on his "man of the people" put-on anymore. I talked to a friend I used to work for afterward who ran the other way, not exactly digging on the "anti-Mike" message, finding the film potentially misleading and "not his kind of thing". I helped the the same friend plant the seeds and organize the Michael Moore anti-Bush rally in Tallahassee the day before Election Day 2004. I stood there the night of, taking in Mike's over-wrought "gravelly motivation voice" and cheering the anti-Bush sentiment, but generally feeling kind of bored. It's one machine against another, and in the end, as the filmmakers find, Mike's present-day message is an alternate universe version of the Republicans and right-wingers I dislike so much, just with an opposite political bent. My friend seemed pretty uncomfortable, wishing he had some means of defending a hero. It was like seeing an eight year old who moments before himself saw Captain America shoot up heroin and salute Hitler. Clearly confused and hurt, but not sure how to manage betrayed trust. I expect Moore's influence and friends are going to make sure they do everything possible to make this one "untouchable" for general release by a major distributor, but I'd be fascinated to see what develops this summer. Black Sheep "Mutant sheep, I'm there." Midnight rolled around and we squeezed in to the high-demand screening of Black Sheep, from New Zealand. I'm running out of steam as I started in typing this after getting in from this flick. Skipped Q&A and came straight to the hotel, as we're both beat. The big misconception is that this is a zombie movie, an error I equate to people calling Brokeback Mountain a gay cowboy movie when it is so obviously a gay shepherd movie. Yes, the mindless antagonists are hungry for flesh...but they are genetically mutated....not zombified. A corrupt businessman is selling the family business to the dark side by performing all manner of experiments on poor, defenseless sheep. The sheep exact their revenge on the unsuspecting, and it gets baaad. It's too late to keep going, you get the picture. three for three worth admission, depending on particular taste. Each has their big plusses and a few minuses, but nothing so egregious to bestow on any of them a Complete Waste of Time declaration. Tomorrow: more panels, flipping a coin in early afternoon, another New Zealand movie, and a Spurlock-produced anti-shopaholicism doc

We kicked off the morning with a pair of panels no worse for wear from the light evening before... A Conversation with Bill Paxton One of this year's Texas Film Hall of Fame inductees, Mr. Paxton seemed to genuinely feel at home with the crowd and being back in the Lone Star State. A native of Fort Worth (yeehaw cattle town), the anecdotes came fast and loose, from his dad telling him, "son, I love you, but you picked a real fucked business" and how he knew Shia LeBeouf had "it" from back during shooting of The Greatest Game Ever Played, which to be fair, got unrightfully dismissed as "another one of those Disney Insert Inspirational Sports Plot Here movies" when it was really very good. Paxton spoke of film as a true renaissance craft, where you can start anywhere and go anywhere, completely dependent on what skills you pick up along the way. He said that as an actor, "the camera is interested in who you are...it's your plot that has to be developed and what pieces of that story we get to see" and how few actors seem to get that these days. A really classy gent, who, as my fiancée noticed, isn't afraid to wear boots and Wranglers at some fancypants film festival. A Conversation with Richard Linklater Jon "Godfather of the Indie Movement" Pierson served as moderator for this one and dove right in, touching on the fact Linklater doesn't really take much time off and is always kind of doing something, whether a pilot for HBO that sounded really good while shooting one movie and cutting/post-ing another, or the mammoth task of shooting and assembling a documentary on the UT Baseball team while trying to find something else to dig in to. He shot Tape in 6 days. I'll be damned. Makes you want to go find your favorite Stephen Belber play and tell yourself you can shoot it on the cheap (of course, with not nearly the craft or cast he did). We got to questions, and one of my favorite ever "hey I got a script/movie/album/dvd/porn can I give it to you" idiot shootdowns happened. Roughly (badly) paraphrased: Mo Ron: Hey man, I'm like, a writer, and I was all wondering-- Jon Pierson: What? Mo Ron: I mean, could we like hang out or somethi-- Pierson: Are you fucking kidding me? Mo Ron: Uh, what? Pierson: You want to learn something, join the Austin Film Society. Go to some screenings. Linklater: I go to those. Pierson: Yeah, and learn what a question is. Honestly, some people....what do they think this is? I threw in a question about DVD, knowing Linklater's relationship with Criterion was good, and what if any future collaborations with them or special deluxe packages could be expected. Pierson chimed in that it's harder to get a studio to license a movie to Criterion, and that Warner Bros. was almost out-Criterion-ing them. Linklater said he'd like to get some of his non-Special Edition work re-issued, like Before Sunrise/Sunset, and that we could expect to see SubUrbia soon. Regarding filmmaking, he left us with this: "just because digital is inexpensive, don't leave the camera rolling all the time" and with that, was off running to a UT baseball game. Ok, afternoon screenings and then back late tonight, I think.

I'm going to do capsule writeups of whatever I can and plow through my backlog tonight at the hotel. This is absurdly late by my standards, but here goes. Screenwriter Scott Frank's directorial debut opened the 2007 South by Southwest Film Festival with a bang, literally and figuratively. Featuring moments that made me jump out of my seat and others that made me rest my hands on my palms and steady my gaze, this is a movie that really keeps you with it the whole way through. Joseph Gordon-Levitt isn't just a face on the poster, he really headlines this movie and shows impressive levels of nuance that tons of actors of any age (not just others in their mid-twenties) should be jealous of, and that's no understatement. The Lookout follows Chris Pratt (Levitt), a young man who used to be the "big man on campus", but following a car accident, is left a shadow of his former self, socially awkward and unable to properly sequence his daily life. He lives with Jeff Daniels, a wisecracking blind man who is much more than that simple description can communicate. Chris works as a janitor at a bank and falls in with some shady people led by Matthew Goode, last seen by many as the uppercrust brother of Emily Mortimer in Match Point. Goode plays a dark, hard-edged guy in this film, and gets past thug stereotypes to present a bad guy who has given himself over to the wrong side of the tracks. Isla Fisher shows up as a young woman who admired Chris during his glory days as a varsity hockey player and runs in the wrong circles, though she may or may not be aware of that fact. The Lookout is a heist movie, but unlike a number of the ones we've seen in the last decade, moves along at a steady clip and drops in its big bangs right where you aren't set to expect them. Levitt's performance is one of my favorites of the festival, showing no shred of pretentious mugging or desire to crowd out the actors or scene that surrounds him. Levitt turns in a distinctly "un-Hollywood" performance that truly shows us a young man who thought he was mighty, but has fallen a long way...so far that he may never recover unless he can summon the necessary resolve from within to make his life better. He gives us this broken person (who he must see in various incarnations in the industry around him) with such authenticity that it would be a shame to miss this very well-made film if only for his performance. Beyond the ever-sharpening (makes him sound more deadly) Levitt, lots of people are going to be talking about Jeff Daniels' companion/live-in roommate character stealing the show, and he does in a lot of places. You're probably going to see some morons out there going on about "Funnyman Jeff Daniels sends me rolling again", and though he cracks the jokes and makes you want to shoot the shit with a "cool guy" like him, he does some really delicate, tender work here that acts as a great reminder of just how fucking good he is at what he does. Regardless of what you know Jeff Daniels from, whether it's that Farrelly Brothers movie everybody saw, or Fifth of July, or some other humbling, powerful piece he did in the theatre, you've gotta respect what he does here and the fact he chose to do this flick, and he chose it for a reason. The script is solid, the people are good at what they do, and barely anyone even tries to do what Sydney Pollack has said you have to do: "make good movies". I like very much when screenwriters "go hyphenate" and direct (as in this case), because you get meaty, fleshed-out characters and in Frank's case here, a great example of how to really make a movie that surprises people. It would be a shame for you to miss one of the smartest films of 2007 thus far by any stretch, especially because of the forgettable, disposable, not-worth-recycling pieces of shit coming out the same day as The Lookout.

I'll post a more complete writeup in the morning, but this will have to suffice for now: The Lookout is excellent, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt has his first mall cinema-distributed, typecast-defying role. Good night indeed.

Finally arrived in Texas (way later than anticipated). Gonna catch The Lookout at 9 and probably call it a night after that. Elsewhere Ally Joe Leydon's on a panel, I find...more developments as I find them in The Book.

Ashley and I leave for Texas soon, and before we even arrive, comes word of an advance screening of the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie with the director in attendance, limited to a select number of passes. My younger brother Eddie and I spent many, many hours of our childhood glued to the cartoon and movies, so as unsophisticated as it may sound, I'm incredibly excited to see this, if only for the nostalgia. Say what you want, your childhood years are sacred, no matter what you had marketed at you

If Sondheim signed off, then that's the only blessing I need to trust the potential of his performance. I never know what's going to come from a Burtonization. Generally, I love his films, but I have so much affection for the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, I'm cautiously optimistic and will probably be there opening day.

Ashley and I will be attending SXSW 2007 this year, representing Hollywood Elsewhere in all its Eddie Murphy-dogging, Munich-taking-down glory (that was sarcasm). We'll be there most of the week this year, technically through closing night, but we'll see how weary we are by then. Opening night is The Lookout, directed by Scott Frank, the screenwriter of Out of Sight, Get Shorty, and Minority Report (go to hell, I liked it). The Ain't It Cool dudes have Disturbia going a couple hours earlier a few blocks away at the Alamo Drafthouse, and it'll be tough making both. It's a rough choice, but I'm probably gonna go with The Lookout in the end. If you're going, drop me an email. I'll say this: if I don't get to hear Scott Weinberg trash something in current release that's utterly horrible, I won't have had fun. Below are the films screening that I'm interested in at this point. I'm sure I'm missing some, and I haven't looked at everything, but these all look like I could theoretically see them all: The Lookout* Disturbia* Running With Arnold Steal a Pencil for Me Flakes The Ten* Manufacturing Dissent (which I may see familiar people in...I'll detail this when I write it up) The Prisoner, Or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair What Would Jesus Buy? Blackbird Knocked Up* Scott Walker: 30 Century Man Confessions of a Superhero Undead or Alive: A Zombedy 638 Ways to Kill Castro A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar... Reign Over Me* Bella Elvis & Annabelle I'm a Cyborg, but That's OK* (probably won't happen) * = denotes movies there's only one shot to see Also...we're driving it.

Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella to remake The Lives of Others in English with the producing might of the Weinsteins. Is it me, or does anyone else wonder what the point of doing a Nazi German....wait wait. They're going to set it during in Cold War Russia or something, aren't they? Apparently the deal isn't done yet, but...how odd.

One of the featured players in last year's most frightening horror film, Jesus Camp, Former Reverend Ted Haggard, also former President of the National Association of Evangelicals has finally emerged a "completely heterosexual" man after a rehab stint in Arizona.

What would you say if I told you that no one has ever made a film dedicated to the composer of musicals Guys & Dolls and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, or the man who wrote "Heart and Soul" or "Baby It's Cold Outside"? First off, I bet you didn't know the same man wrote all of the above along with many more songs that remain old standbys, including "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition". After seven years of exhaustive work and research, Producer/Director Walter Gottlieb has delivered Heart & Soul: The Life and Music of Frank Loesser, a comprehensive documentary about the composer and lyricist currently airing on (some) PBS stations nationwide (more on that later). Other notices I read about the doc before seeing it criticize an assertion I don't think is in there: that the filmmakers portray Frank as some sort of undiscovered talent. I think what they're going for is that Frank Loesser touched musical pop culture in many more ways than many people, even his fans, have imagined. The doc itself is primarily composed of interviews with everyone who he touched or touched him: original and revival cast members of his Broadway shows (Matthew Broderick and Charles Nelson Reilly among others), both of his wives, and his children, along with many, many more. The anecdotes are plentiful, so much so that their original cut came in just shy of three hours. Loesser was never the easiest man to work with, and wasn't always pleasant, but his work lives on indelibly not only in the frequent productions of his shows by regional, community and school theatres, but in the countless up-and-coming artistes his work has inspired. One of the most prominent (and probably surprising to some) among them, is Wicked composer Stephen Schwartz. To hear the librettists of Singin in the Rain (Comden & Green) and The Pajama Game (Richard Adler) talk about his mentoring them in the same 90 minutes as the guy who composed uber-budgeted new-school Wicked going on about how crucially influential Loesser was is fascinating in itself. A few favorites include one story about Frank slapping the taste out of a principal actress's mouth still make me chuckle, thinking about how that among other encounters with talent would have spurned copious lawsuits had they happened a few decades later. Charles Nelson Reilly's story about his experience as a member of the original cast of How to Succeed is enjoyable, which he goes into further detail on in the DVD supplements. Based on what I saw in The Life of Reilly at last year's South by Southwest, I'm sure Charles gave them about 6 hours of material to cut from (all of which would have been useable, more than likely). The frank (no pun intended) discussion of Loesser's personal life is a little sugarcoated, as one would expect, coming from the mouths of his wife and children, but none of his significant skeletons are completely ignored, from his tendency toward (at the most tame) verbal mistreatment of loved ones to serious anger control issues. Speaking of anger...for as long as I can remember, I've personally wondered what kind of relationship Loesser had with Brando, both of them known for being demanding and difficult, and especially mercurial. Surprisingly, they evidently got along great, Loesser coaching Brando as a singer the whole way through. This brings me to the elephant on Loesser's resume: Guys & Dolls. Working as a theatre actor, I lose count of how many times I've heard "oh, not another production of Guys & Dolls" or something to that effect. I admit a preference of Sondheim and Jason Robert Brown to Disney's Broadway, but I also admit an equal love for Guys & Dolls that makes me shake my head when someone groans the above. The thing is, it's still a good (great, to me) show. It's full of memorable characters and beautiful songs that make it worth pulling out the movie every once in a while (and I stand by the movie, regardless of what people say of Brando) or going and seeing a solid live production. Though pulled from the Age of Anti-Feminism...ahem, The Golden Age...it features assertive female leads that don't fall prey to what we see in musicals like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, where the Weak-Willed Woman stereotype is alive and submissive. The brainless waifs and "dancing girls" along with other un-feminized types you find in other shows from the same era are indeed found here and elsewhere in Loesser's work, but the way he writes lyrics for them is something I'm not sure Broadway "got" until his shows were revived. The women don't just have a couple of lovelorn ballads and duets to look pretty singing, they have some upbeat stuff with which to assert themselves. Well, except for the original act II opener for How to Succeed, "Cinderella Darling"...don't Cinderella Darling, don't turn down the Prince... got replaced with a female version of the titlular song in the revival... ...but I digress. Watching this documentary brought back all sorts of memories for me, as I'm sure it would for many fans of musical theatre. I've performed in a production of H2$, and the first musical I ever saw live was a local production of Guys & Dolls back in Texas. I sang "Heart & Soul" for a choral competition in middle school, and Ashley and I both have a deep affection for "Baby It's Cold Outside". I have to admit bias going in because I liked what I knew about him. The documentary itself, however, opens up a breadth of knowledge I would never have come across, short of doing an extremely thorough job researching him myself. Clips from the first full production of Senor Discretion Himself and the 50th Anniversary of Guys & Dolls accompany the interviews and few instances of "re-enactment" and completes a very intricate picture of the legacy of a great artist. Anyone teaching Music Theatre History or a comparable subject would do well to show this to their class, as they would certainly learn more seeing this before or after Guys & Dolls than they would seeing the movie by itself and listening (sleeping or skipping) through a lecture. The biggest problem I have with the film is one that is not the fault of the filmmakers. They've crafted a documentary for public TV that manages to cover a lot of ground in under two hours on one of the most influential composers in American history, but no one's getting to see it on TV. I don't know why our local station hasn't (yet?) aired this, but the greater Tallahassee area is missing out as a result. I suppose station management assumed not many people would care about a well-made documentary in a city full of patrons of the arts, but speaking as a board member of Tallahassee Little Theatre, Loesser isn't "uninteresting" enough to stop us from adding Guys & Dolls to our 2008 season, because we did. Oddly enough, in TLT's nearly 60 year history, we've never produced a single production of this show since 1949. Without the limited clout of an online film writer, I wouldn't have gotten a chance to see this movie as an ordinary resident of Tallahassee (who also happens to donate to his local PBS station). WFSU is one of many stations across the country that is choosing not to carry the program, even though if you look at the website, it's popping up in big cities like NYC, Dallas, Denver and Phoenix, but also in smaller cities like Topeka, Bowling Green (Ohio and Kentucky), Chattanooga, and...Gainesville, FL! Editor's Note: According to the producer, most (90% of) PBS markets will get to see the film, but it'll be the 60-minute cut-down version. I stand by no one getting to see it, relatively speaking, due to the limited airings. Your most likely shot at seeing this if you haven't seen it yet, to me, is buying a DVD. It'd be nice to see it air in a few more cities or repeat-air...but that's just me. You can snag a copy of the DVD on their website. The disc features some excellent interview material that was understandably cut for time. All of the additional footage is worth a look, and the commentary is informative on how much work it really takes to complete a documentary made for public TV (did I mention it took 7 years?). Like I said, anybody teaching related material owes it to their students (whatever the age) to show this. It was especially touching to see some of the last interviews given by participants like Cy Feurer and Betty Comden, which I'd almost forgotten noticing until Walter Gottlieb (the director) brought it up on the comment track. Gottlieb also laments the struggle to find decent elements on some of the older films that they used clips from (they eventually did), and reveals that a Where's Charley? DVD is finally on the way sometime soon, which is good news indeed. Film preservation is a good thing, folks. Buy catalog titles like this instead of the latest straight-to-DVD aberration. Give it a look if it's on your local station, and if you're in the mood to make some station programmers' heads explode, bug them to put it on the air. If Topeka gets to see it, so should you. No offense to Topeka, my mother's from Kansas, and it's a lovely state.

I've seen a couple of direct-to-DVD movies, one worthwhile if you like animated superhero stuff, and yet another laughable Disney franchise sequel. Where to begin, really. The Invincible Iron Man or Cinderella III: A Twist in Time? I have to pick the biggest train wreck, and guess which one that is? To preface, one lazy afternoon a friend and I gave in and watched a Disney straight to video sequel. My younger brother is autistic, and he is an obsessive collector of various things. One of those things happens to be the Disney video library. The straight-to-video sequels of The Little Mermaid, Peter Pan, and so on are so bad in so many ways, it is truly remarkable. Morbid curiosity turned into a bad habit, and I've been hooked to bad Disney sequels as if to black tar heroin: they can cause nothing but pain and suffering, but you can't stop once you get started. Under some miraculous circumstance, I have seen the third entry in the Cinderella series, coming straight to DVD within the next couple of weeks. The short verdict is: it's cringe-inducing and horrible. If your morbid curiosity matches mine, the guy who sacrificed his time to it willingly, then read on. Apparently Cinderella II: Dreams Come True was a failed TV series-turned "DVD movie", featuring "episodes" cobbled together as a sorry excuse for an anthology story about Cinderella's first days after getting married to Prince Prince (I call him that since he is still without a name). One of the mice gets turned into a human, Cinderella has trouble adjusting, and her wicked stepsister gets to find a love of her own. [As a side note, this is similar to how Cruel Intentions 2 came into existence. It was to be the pilot for a series called Manchester Prep, itself a TV series stretching-out of the movie, which then had some gratuitous nudity and language added so it could be a "movie". I can only imagine how much better Cinderella 2: Cinderelly Gone Wild could have sold.] Aw. I wish all this nonsense had ended there, but it didn't. Not only did we need this third entry, it disregards the already shoddy continuity of the first craptastic "sequel". We open on the 1-year anniversary of Cinderella and Prince Princestein's wedding, and boy howdy is the wicked stepfamily up to their old tricks again. Mysteriously, whichever stepsister found true love the last time Disney wanted to make a buck is without her man. Golly, it's like it never happened. Cinderella and Prince vonPrince dance around in the forest, with Old Lady Bippitty Boppitty (Fairy Godmother) doing all sorts of magic as everyone sings and dances around the CGI. Somehow, Anastasia (the redheaded stepsister) finds them and sees that the reason Cinderella was able to get her hands on Mr. McPrince was thanks to that wand and Bippitty Boppitty Boo-ing. So she steals the wand and Wicked delaStepmother uses it to turn back time so that Anastasia can marry O'Princey. Here begins the greatest overuse of a catchphrase ever, the result being you never want to hear "Bippitty Boppitty Boo" again after seeing this. How is it that the Wicked Stepfamily are the only ones who retain their knowledge of the future, you ask? How does the frozen-in-stone Fairy Godmother no longer appear in The Past? Silly rabbit! Remember what movie we're talking about here! So, Mr. Prince is BippittyBoppittyBooed into thinking he danced with the annoying redhead at the ball instead of Blondie McPerfectgirl, who he no longer recognizes. Apparently, touching her hand makes him sort of kind of remember who she is. The Very Special Disney Lesson: nothing stops true love, not even evil devil magic, just hold hands and everything will be all right. Cinderella and the mice almost succeed stealing the wand from the Stepfolks, but alas Cinderella is captured by guards and banished (emphasis on the -ed, like in Shakespeare). She is sent to a ship that will take her Far Farther Away, but wait--the hench-mice sing a song explaining everything to El Prince Muy Macho! After calling for the guards, he rides off on his noble steed to save her, but the ship has just left port! Zounds! Not to be so easily beaten, MC Princealot spies a lighthouse on a cliff that conveniently hangs over where the ship is headed! Will he make it in time? Will he be thrown off his horse directly in the path of the ship, and then, grab hold of a swinging rope, which then in turn allows him to snag the main sail with his knife and then plop down right in front of Cinderella so that he can ask: Prince: [reeking with cheese] "Remember me?" ...and then embrace her lovingly? Ahem. Not to be outdone, the villains have teleported away from the guards that were sicced on them, and Evil Stepmommy has a plan! She makes Anastasia look exactly like Cinderella to trick Princerelli! You thought they couldn't use every cheap fairy tale princess cliche, but they did and more! In the end, we get a standard "Villain Thinks Better of Their Choice to Betray the Heroine" resolution and everyone who should be is happy. Do they undo all of the continuity-bending of the original film's timeline to restore the sanctity of the original classic? Oh, dear reader, I hope you know the answer already. The voice cast does an excellent job with bad dialogue on top of the scripting, and they certainly can't be blamed for a movie that they were probably contractually indentured to doing. In all seriousness, as much as I enjoy the idea of continuing the adventures of beloved characters and fantasy worlds, this crap has to stop. I love Reba McEntire, but snagging her was not reason enough to make The Fox and the Hound 2 (review forthcoming). I'd rather see Disney spend time and resources into properly restoring and releasing their classic catalogue to DVD than this, but money is money. The "25th Anniversary" edition of The Fox and the Hound is cropped square from the original widescreen master (and muddy/unrestored as I've seen a "restored classic"). The sound mix on Mary Poppins, Aladdin, and The Little Mermaid "Special Editions" is actually inferior to the original no-frills DVD releases of them all. Hopefully as this last (I hope) wave of the Eisner profiteering era at Disney makes its way out the door, the John Lasseter (Mr. Pixar, and the new head of animation) era can rectify some of the glaring omissions we've seen from this company. In the meantime, we can look forward to The Little Mermaid III, set chronologically before the first film, coming to DVD early in 2008. And yes, I'm serious, it's real. The ads are on the Mermaid DVD I shouldn't have bought. Iron Man is quite good, but this has taken a lot out of me, so I'll write it up over the weekend.