Saturday, March 8, 2008

SXSW Day 1 & 2

Day 1:
After registering and picking up our big bags (sxsw swag, directories, party invites), and after having a BBQ dinner at Iron Works, we went to the Paramount Theatre to see the film "21". It was reasonably good. Lead actor Jim Sturgess was in attendance as was the actual person who he played in the movie.

Day 2:
We started at the Ritz Alamo Drafthouse and saw "Of All The Things", a documentary about Dennis Lambert doing a tour of the Philippines (U.S. songwriter who didn't hit it big here but somehow became hugely popular there). Wrote many 70's/80's hits for others, e.g. Rhinestone Cowboy, Baby Come Back, We Built This City on Rock and Roll (ugh). Movie was fun/enjoyable. We met and talked with a friendly young sound engineer named Corey.

We went on to the convention center for the opening remarks keynote on technology and pop culture, with MIT Prof and author Henry Jenkins.

Next up was the movie "Crawford", at the Paramount, a documentary about the impact of GW Bush's choosing that town to claim as his residence. Liked this one too. Then went over to The Hideout for a cappucino; I needed caffeine.

After this we stayed at the Paramount to catch "Then She Found Me" which Helen Hunt presented, though strangely, she didn't stay for a Q&A. Movie was pretty good, especially interesting to see Salman Rushdie cast as an actor, playing a medical doctor. After this ended, we just crossed the street for a slice of Cazzoli's pizza for a quick dinner.

Last was the world premere of "Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay", with both the Harold and Kumar actors and Neil Patrick Harris in attendance (By the way, I'm still not sure why people used to say I looked like that guy; I don't really see it). We expected some crude sophomoric humour, but.....well, it just seemed to go overboard too many times. We walked out 50 minutes into it. So why did I take a bag of promotional swag on the way out anyway? What am I going to do with a Harold & Kumar Tshirt that I don't want? Oh well. We could have stuck it out, but after a long day and losing an hour tonight, it seemed not worth it.

1 comment:

dnc_austin said...

Forgot to mention our foray to ScreenBurn in the Convention Center, essentially just walking the convention floor and seeing some demos of new video games, people playing Guitar Hero and doing some large video-game tournaments, etc.
We didn't try out any games.
The Simpsons Comic-Book guy would have fit in here.