This year’s South by Southwest was an interesting and comfortable tour of Austin for me and the FromHereToAwesome Crew that I was out there with.

There were a lot of documentaries that I enjoyed like Nerdcore Rising, Beautiful Losers and Bananaz – a film about the animated band Gorillaz. It seemed hard to find a narrative feature with a script, which became a little redundant after a while, but I was extremely moved by Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig’s new film Nights and Weekends. I feel like the piece is a departure from the ‘mumble’ of mumblecore and has grown into a more spacious and beautiful realm. It’s honesty and passion left me woozy. Lynn Shelton also turned out an extremely impressive film that is another testament to how scriptless films can work with the right planning and cast chemistry. Starring Sean Nelson of Harvey Danger fame, It’s called My Effortless Brilliance, and it appears to be thus.

There were also some unexpected surprises this year that made Austin show a little more of its character than usual. The after party for fest doc Bi The Way brought us to the Enchanted Forest. Like a tripped-out summer camp on acid, this forest blossomed many curious sights including a giant singing one-bunny-show who calls himself Strange Powers.

All said, the trip to Austin was great and the very end surprised me with a stellar performance by Siman Mobile Disco at the bar we picked to chill at. I love these guys. Video will soon follow.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 at 11:06 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.