The SXSW Film Festival starts tomorrow in sunny Austin, Texas. And while I’ll be in Austin for SXSW Music next week, I will sadly not be making the film fest this year. I’ve been keeping up with the festival news, though. If I were going, here are some of the films I’d want to see. If you’re headed to the festival, try checking some of them out.
Barry Munday
This is the story of a womanizer who, umm, loses his ability to womanize, I guess is the polite way to say it. It sounds like a unique comedy, but I’ll be honest with you — what really interests me is that Billy Dee Williams is in the movie at some point.
Erasing David
A documentary in which filmmaker David Bond decides to drop off the grid and see how difficult it is to hide in the modern world, with all the personal information available to governments, private investigators, etc. Sounds like he encounters some real Big Brother-type stuff in the process.
Leaves of Grass
This is one of the films from the festival I’m most interested in seeing when it’s in wider release. Edward Norton plays twin brothers — one a classics professor at an Ivy League school, the other a small-time drug dealer in Oklahoma. Apparently, Richard Dreyfuss plays some sort of drug kingpin, which should be interesting.
*Big-Time News*: Ed Norton will be stopping by Blockbuster World Headquarters for a meet & greet nest week on his way to Austin, and we’ll be interviewing him for a post on the blog!
MacGruber
I really just want to see how they are turning this SNL sketch into a feature-length film.
Predators
I wrote about this in my 2010 Movies Preview, and now Robert Rodriguez is bringing some footage from the unfinished movie to SXSW. So I guess this is kind of a preview of a preview.
Red, White and Blue
I don’t know much about it, except that it sounds like it might not exactly be a feel-good film, and that it was shot and set in Austin.
Saturday Night
James Franco offers a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into making an episode of Saturday Night Live. I’ve been a big SNL fan forever, so this is pretty interesting to me.
Suck
I, too, am suffering from vampire burnout, but this is a comedy about a group of vampire musicians. Or something like that. Anyway, it features Alice Cooper, who you may remember from such other excellent movies as Wayne’s World.
World’s Largest
A documentary about a 14-state road trip to find out the stories behind some of America’s roadside attractions. I love goofy stuff like the World’s Largest Ball of Twine, so this is right up my alley.
If you’re headed down to SXSW this weekend, have fun and be safe.
