Over at indieWIRE check out their guide of the best spots to eat, drink and shop while in Austin. Updating the list from last year, they also have contributions from people who know the lay of the land: Matt Dentler, Janet Pierson, and Austin native, director Bryan Poyser. (And head over to our SXSW page to read a guide to follow SXSW through social media.) Here’s a few of my favorite picks from the iW guide. BEST TEX MEX: Overall the top place for Mexican food was the highly recommmended Manuel’s (310 Congress Ave). A local noted that it’s, “Not […]
The Workbook Project and the New School will present the first ever DIY Days in New York on April 3. This roving conference of talks, presentations and workshops on all things DIY (co-founded by our Culture Hacker columnist Lance Weiler) has been free to the public since its inception over three years ago, but because of the sudden loss of a sponsor it’s looking for the support of the indie community to help raise $3,000. Learn more about DIY Days and the campaign they’re doing here (which includes some nice gifts for those who donate). And to get you started, […]
Announced earlier today, the 9th annual Tribeca Film Festival announced their Competition roster and films in their Showcase category for this year’s fest, which takes place April 21 – May 2 in New York City. Some of the highlights include Alex Gibney‘s work-in-progress screening of his doc on Eliot Spitzer and (get this) Vincent Gallo lending his voice in the animated film, Metropia. Full list of films are below. World Narrative Feature Competition “Buried Land,” directed by Geoffrey Alan Rhodes and Steven Eastwood, written by Geoffrey Alan Rhodes, Steven Eastwood, and Dzenan Medanovic. (USA, UK, Bosnia and Herzegovina) – World […]
Just in time for SXSW is this blog post from Mark Suster, an “entrepreneur turned VC” who blogs at “Both Sides of the Table.” Titled “Making the Most of Sitting on Panels,” it begins like this: “Many of us in the technology, media and VC world sit on panels at lot. Many of them are painfully boring.” I have to agree. I’m not a big fan of panels for some of the same reasons that Suster cites. Most panels are too big. By the time everyone gets a chance to talk and each answer a few questions, time is up. […]
When I put together the clips for the “Young Person’s Guide to Kathryn Bigelow,” post below, there is one thing I left out. While scanning through her clips I did come across this music video for New Order’s “Touched by the Hand of God.” I don’t think I had ever seen it before, and I’ll confess that I initially stared at it trying to figure out if it was conceptual parody or whether New Order had had a mid-’80s hair-metal band image makeover I had somehow missed. (Correct answer: the former). Gray Miller posted this link below in the comments […]
As the current Massa Meltdown demonstrates, a lot of crazy talk can come out of legislators’ mouths. (For some of that crazy talk, I will definitely be tuning into Glenn Beck tonight when Massa is on for the full hour.) So when I was forwarded this link from Think Progress about a Florida state representative, Stephen Precourt, proposing a change to Florida’s film tax incentive that would deny the credit to films espousing “non-traditional” family values, I assumed it was just one guy shooting his mouth off and that it wasn’t really worth mentioning. But, as the post as well […]
Receiving its U.S. premiere at SXSW is Jukka Karkkainen’s The Living Room of a Nation, a documentary about six Finnish living rooms. From the production company’s website: The documentary film The Living Room of the Nation opens a portrait-like view into six Finnish living rooms. A collage of everyday events, the film is a story of changes, loneliness, responsibilities and the unavoidable passing of time. The trailer is below. The film plays Saturday, March 20, at 6:15 PM at the Alamo Lamar 3.
Filmmaker Marie Losier is well known in her New York for her beguiling experimental films, which include portraits of a number of today’s most unconventional and important artists. For the last four years she has been filming Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, artist and founding member of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, among other ventures. Beginning in 1993, P-Orridge began a radical art project with his wife and artist partner, Lady Jaye, in which they both underwent plastic surgery to resemble each other, creating, they said, “an indivisible third,” a “pandrogyne.” Lady Jaye passed away in 2007, and Losier’s film will tell […]
One of the most puzzling moments from last night’s Oscars came during the Best Documentary acceptance speech. When it came time for The Cove director Louie Psihoyos to speak he found himself in front of a dead mic. Here’s Psihoyos’s acceptance speech, which AJ Schnack at All These Wonderful Things (always on top of the doc news) posted. We made this film to give the oceans a voice. We told the story of The Cove because we witnessed a crime. Not just a crime against nature, but a crime against humanity. We made this movie because through plundering, pollution and […]
A big congratulations to Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, and the team behind The Hurt Locker for their well-deserved Academy Awards tonight. (I’m pretty sure it’s the first Filmmaker mag cover film to ever win Best Picture and Bigelow the first cover director to win Best Director.) For any newcomers to Bigelow out there, here’s a quick history courtesy of YouTube. (Missing, unfortunately, is her 20-minute Columbia University student film The Set-Up. According to the New York Times‘ Manohla Dargis, it portrays “two men […] fighting each other as the semioticians Sylvère Lotringer and Marshall Blonsky deconstruct the images in voice-over.”) […]