Daily SXSW
SXSW Film Review: Roadsworth: Crossing the Line
Alan Kohl's Roadsworth: Crossing the Line is the story of what happens when Peter Gibson, an unassuming waiter-by-day/street-artist-by-night, becomes a political lightning rod for age-old debates over what constitutes art and how “public” public space really is. Gibson, aka Goldsworth, has an affinity for using stencils and spray paint to cover the screetscapes of Montreal in clever visual punch lines (a stenciled owl resting on the shadow of an actual light pole, the yellow line down the middle of a road transformed into a zipper). When he gets caught and charged with 53 counts of “mischief,” fans come out of the woodwork, and suddenly Gibson is a European art-world darling. Ostensibly about the political maelstrom surrounding Gibson as his hearing approaches (will he fight the charges or “sell out”?), the heart and humor of this film lie in Gibson’s journey as a budding artist and unwitting star. Everyone expects something of Goldsworth; the question becomes, what does the understated waiter – accustomed to exploring his raw talent and wry sense of humor in solitude in the dark of night – expect of himself?

Monday, March 16, 10pm, Hideout Theatre

11:26AM Mon. Mar. 16, 2009, Nora Ankrum Read More | Comment »

SXSW Film Review: Animated Shorts
Here's an anthology of, yes, short animated films – some of them in familiar cartoon style, some stop-motion works, some a sequential flurry of complex paintings. The subjects match the compositional diversity, providing narratives like Felix Dufour-Laperrire's gentle and texturally dense "Rosa Rosa," about a pair of lovers making a home together in the midst of a war-torn city; Laurie Hill's "Photograph of Jesus," in which the strange requests made of an historical photography archive are vividly realized; local man Lance Myers' "Here's the Stapler If You Need It," a kooky and ultimately bloody tale involving the paper cutter at a copyshop; and the incredible claymation mindfuck called "Trepan Hole," a wildly inventive choreography of clay, color, and figures in a landscape as otherworldly and simultaneously familiar as the furrows deep within your own brain. The collection's well worth viewing – multiple times, if you skip the SXSWClick winner "Haunted House." Tuesday, March 17, 11am, Alamo South Lamar; Wednesday, March 18, 1:30pm, Alamo South Lamar

11:13AM Mon. Mar. 16, 2009, Wayne Alan Brenner Read More | Comment »

SXSW Interactive Panel: We Have Been Objectified
We have too much cool stuff. In fact, we have so much that, as the late George Carlin noted, "if we didn't have so much stuff we wouldn't need a house, 'cause that's all a house really is: a place to put our stuff." The blame for ravening, omnivorous consumerism and the ties that have bound it to the once-American and now-Global Dream can be laid before various entities: Madison Avenue, Capitalism, and the ever-popular Joneses, of Next Door, Anytown, USA. But what is it that drives us to purchase that tenth iteration of a potato peeler when our kitchen drawers are already crammed full of perfectly functional (if a tad blunt, or dinged) peelers, graters, and, god help us, sharkily serrated grapefruit spoons? Seriously: Enough stuff, already.

8:53AM Mon. Mar. 16, 2009, Marc Savlov Read More | Comment »

GayBiGayGay Line-Up!!!!!
OK, so that nine or so hours we just spent online on thousands of MySpace queer band pages trying to cull this list for THE PEOPLE could have been condensed down to the 30 seconds or so it took for that email that Koonce just sent out, but either way, the GayBiGayGay line-up is here! Without further ado: GAYBIGAYGAY Sunday, March 22 1-1:20 Agent Ribbons
1:30-1:50 Dangerous Ponies
2-2:20 Polka Dotdotdot
2:30-2:55 Gretchen Phillips
3:05-3:15 Christeene
3:25-3:50 Butch County
4-4:20 Dave End
4:30-4:50 Storm Shelter
5-5:25 Purple Rhinestone Eagle
5:35-6 Maple Rabbit (maybe later for projection reasons)
6:10-6:35 Excuses for Skipping
6:45-7:10 Romanteek
7:20-7:45 Big Freedia (Sissy Bounce) Watch this space over the next few days for even more details.

9:04PM Sun. Mar. 15, 2009, Kate X Messer Read More | Comment »

Trail of Bullets
A few years ago, a fellow journalist mused that the difference between a war reporter and a war photographer was that writers try to keep their heads down. Photographers want to see the incoming fire. Blood Trail director Richard Parry probably knows about that. In the Q&A after his documentary's US debut at the SXSW Film Festival on Friday, his fellow war photographer (and the film's subject) Robert King mentioned that Parry once lost a camera when it took a bullet. With the cameras that didn't get shot, he produced a cinematic kin to war photographer Anthony Loyd's groundbreaking autobiography My War Gone By, I Miss It So. It could also have served as an obituary for either himself or King. Taking pictures doesn't make you bulletproof, and the closing credits name eight reporters, all friends and colleagues, who died in the 15 years since the project began. King, who described himself as "the victim of Blood Trail, not the subject," explained, "When we met, it was eight minutes and it was for a short news piece." Over the years, as the two crossed paths in some of the world's bloodiest conflicts, Parry got more and more footage of King.

8:26PM Sun. Mar. 15, 2009, Richard Whittaker Read More | Comment »

Good ‘Goat’!
Although narrative competition film Artois the Goat – a nutty, spry, altogether charming picture about love and artisanal cheese-making – very much stands on its own merits, the fact that it was made by fresh-faced UT grads for a pittance of money certainly sweetens the story. Brothers Cliff and Kyle Bogart took the stage at the Alamo Ritz this afternoon for a post-premiere Q&A, surrounded by cast and crew and practically pelted with love from an enthusiastic audience. Brian Satterwhite’s terrific, Frenchie-inflected original score received special applause, as did the cast, which was plucked from UT’s MFA acting program. Questions were fielded about the film’s many allusions (which ran the gamut from All That Heaven Allows to The Never-Ending Story) and the source name for the titular goat – Kyle was inspired by the beer he used to sling at the Alamo Drafthouse as a server. We suggest Stella Artois give the Bogarts a call – and maybe a fat check for their next production.

Artois the Goat screens again Monday, March 16, 5pm, at the Alamo South Lamar, and Friday, March 20, 7pm, at the Alamo Ritz.

6:04PM Sun. Mar. 15, 2009, Kimberley Jones Read More | Comment »

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Kubrick is Coming to Your Bookshelf
Look for Stanley Kubrick's original vision of A.I. and his unrealized Napoleon project to come out in book form this year, the late director's longtime executive producer and brother-in-law Jan Harlan said during a SXSW Film panel Sunday. The A.I. book will include 25 original drawings from Kubrick's earlier vision for the film, prior to him passing the project on to Steven Spielberg. "In Stanley's hands it would have been so dark," Harlan said, adding that Kubrick saw the story really as a "fairy tale" more suited to Spielberg's talents.

4:11PM Sun. Mar. 15, 2009, Joe O'Connell Read More | Comment »

Live From Studio SX: Jim Dziura
The truth is writers prefer to hide behind the keyboard. So when asked to be under the glare at South By Southwest's Studio SX, I timidly said yes. My subject was Jim Dziura, whose doc Number One With a Bullet looks at hiphop artists who have one thing in common: they've been shot. Dziura (pronounced Jura) interviewed heavyweights like Ice Cube and KRS-One, but found the bigger revelations with smaller names just trying to get by, like The Last Mister Bigg, a fortyish rapper from Alabama who was shot in the head and lost his eye. He promptly replaced it with a fake eye featuring a diamond and changed his name to Diamond Eye. Just as interesting, Diamond Eye is the son of a police officer. "There's a struggle between who he is and the persona he's created," Dziura says. "He's got to sell records. When you're poor, you've got to make money." Dzuira is himself just as interesting. An actual gypsy (of Romani heritage), he is a wanderer whose first feature-length doc Whiskey on a Sunday had him spending two years following the punk band Flogging Molly. These days his pet project involves hopping freight trains for the doc Steel Don't Bend." "I'm not a film buff; I'm an adventure buff," he says of this film subjects to date. Number One With a Bullet screens 10 p.m. Wednesday and 6 p.m. Friday at the Paramount.

2:21PM Sun. Mar. 15, 2009, Joe O'Connell Read More | Comment »

Which Came First: The Twitter or the Twegg???
DANG IT. I have been jumping around like an interactive idiot and did not get this up in a timely fashion. My apologies. Mobile Loaves and Fishes, the amazing Austin-based homeless service ministry just held a really cool contest for SXSW Interactive that will culminate at Monday's Plutopia Party. While it's too late to enter part one of the contest, it's not too late to follow, and in doing so, learn all about what this fabulous group does. (Oh, and P.S.: early next week, we will blog about their upcoming Street Retreat, wherein MLF members will live like and alongside their homeless brothers and sisters for a few nights at a time.) OK, so bottom line, this is about the incredible, edible egg and how it brings life, nourishment, and fellowship, as delivered by our pals at MLF, to our fellow bros and sises surviving out on the street. Do click below to learn more! (Thanks to Brenda for the head's up. Rarely – as in never – do we quote Press Releases so directly, but in this case we make an eggception, because Brenda's such a good egg...)

1:28AM Sun. Mar. 15, 2009, Kate X Messer Read More | Comment »

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