So you wanna rake in the indie cred in Austin at next year's South by Southwest Festival? You have a skootch more than a week left to submit proposals for panels and/or rate the ones that have already been submitted for SXSW. But lucky for you, the SXSW Panel Picker is at your fingertips any time of the day or night. This cool new tool allows for everyone to have a say in what panels get okay'd for the festival.

According to the official site, "SXSW thrives on the creative intersection that takes place when great minds get together, and we feel the Panel Picker truly celebrates that. We believe that the real experts at SXSW are the people who bring the event to life - you, the thousands of people who attend every year. You know what you want to see, so this is your chance to help make that happen."

Previous panels include "The Incredible Shrinking (Expanding?) Film Critic Profession," which featured Cinematical's very own Scott Weinberg, "From Script to Screen," a Stanley Kubrick discussion, and much more. Get on your horse and head over 'cause the Panel Picker closes its doors on July 10th.

You can also stay up to date on all the latest SXSW-related film news and reviews over at the official blog. They gave Erik Davis' earlier post on the real girl behind SXSW's indie hit 500 Days of Summer a nice shout out, too. Even if you don't get your very own panel, you should do yourself a favor and hit up the festival since it's filled to the gills with enough media to burn your retinas and pop your eardrums. Plus, you can eat some BBQ with the peeps you Tweet at. Hey, just sayin'.

(Spoilers herein.)

Okay, so you lot have had two weekends now with which to see Sam Raimi's sublimely ridiculous Drag Me to Hell, and I'm seeing the debate that a couple of us waged out in front of the Paramount at SXSW last March coming back around on a grander scale, so I want to open up the floor.

Some have claimed that the third-act twist -- in which Alison Lohman's character mistakenly gives away an envelope with a quarter instead of an envelope with a cursed button and is consequently dragged to, um, Hell -- is telegraphed so far in advance that it takes the suspense out of the last reel or so, while others (including yours truly) believe that Raimi is smarter than that, and knows that we're in for this ride anyway, so even if we know that her efforts to pass on the curse are futile, we'll take a certain pleasure in knowing that her fate is sealed regardless.

Sure, Raimi could have simply cut out an insert shot of everything falling on the floor and mixing up, thus letting himself slightly, temporarily off his own hook. Lohman's character could have simply reached into her boyfriend's bag and grabbed the wrong one (oddly enough, the button falls out of her purse -- which she's holding -- but the quarter was placed in her boyfriend's bag, which is nowhere to be seen...). But he does seem to go just enough out of his way to let us know what's afoot. If you've seen the film, what do you think - rookie mistake or intentional wink?

We wanted our SXSW '09 coverage to be pretty much wrapped up by this point, but then we figured ... what's the rush? At this point we'd be covering mostly the smaller films anyway, none of which have been seen outside the festival circuit, and it'd be stupid to pack our Cine spotlight into storage without shining it a few more times for the indie guys.

So yes, Drag Me to Hell was damn fun; Observe and Report was shockingly funny and unexpectedly ... dark; and everyone pretty much loved I Love You, Man. (Oh man, and don't even get me started on the Bruno footage!) Thanks to SXSW for programming some fun, flashy studio fare -- but now we're gonna tone the budgets down just a little. Not that it matters really. A movie is a movie is a movie, right? And I'd rather pick through any of the following flicks than deal with 80% of Hollywood's summertime output. (Ummm, fine. Let's say 70%.)

My first "little" favorite is a dry indie comedy called The Overbrook Brothers, which seems a lot like every "dry indie festival comedy" I've ever come across ... for the first few minutes. But once the tone is laid down and the two leads settle into an effectively fractious chemistry, it becomes a very funny road trip with a few moments of real insight and strange warmth. It's about two brothers (Nathan Harlan and Mark Reeb) who discover that they're adopted, and so they (along with one long-suffering girlfriend, excellently played by Laurel Whitsett) hit the road to an Austin adoption agency. Much banter, backbiting, and bickering ensues, but director John Bryant keeps a solid balance between absurd behavior and sincere heart.

Get out a whole box of Kleenex, one of the jumbo packs, before you see Mine. Movies about post-Katrina problems can be sad enough, but this documentary is about pets, too. You know you're not going to get through this movie dry-eyed unless you have no heart whatsoever. You may even find yourself headed for an animal shelter afterwards, if you're not careful. Director Geralyn Pezanoski skillfully tells an emotional story that rarely resorts to the obvious, or to "good guys vs. bad guys."

Mine focuses on Katrina evacuees who were separated from their pets (involuntarily in one case), and who are trying to find and reunite with the animals. The movie opens with Malvin, a man in his eighties, reminiscing about his dog Bandit while carrying the dog's leash, which he found in his yard after the floods. I immediately suspected this story wouldn't end happily at all. The movie then shows us post-Katrina animal rescue. Shelters and many hotels didn't accept pets, so many evacuees had to leave the animals behind. They assumed it would only be for a few days, but the impact of the disaster was such that people couldn't return to their homes for weeks.

In the meantime, animal rescue teams were able to find and round up many of the stranded pets. Some pets were taken to animal shelters in other states, some of which offered the pets not for fostering but for adoption. Heartbreaking situations resulted, and Mine focuses on a few of them. For example, Victor's dog Max was sent to Florida and adopted by Tiffany, who bonded with her new pet immediately. But Victor missed Max. How could this be resolved?

Welcome to the second episode of The Cinematical Roundtable, our latest podcast here at the site, where we'll speak with writers and readers alike about the latest in film offerings. Joining us this round is James Rocchi, formerly of Cinematical and currently of MSN Movies and countless other outlets, as we tackle several of the more independent titles that graced us with their presence at this year's SXSW Film Festival.

Again, please bear with the overwhelming ambiance of the International House of Pancakes (a South By staple, and not always by choice). In the weeks to come, the podcast will actually be produced in much more conducive conditions, but when in Austin, keeping it weird is the name of the game. With that in mind, your feedback is appreciated, and feel free to spread the word. Preferably the word 'podcast'. And 'Cinematical'. Yeah, that is two words, what of it?

That's what I thought...




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A recurring theme in my relationship with movies (which began when I was underage and has often been mutually abusive) is that it doesn't matter if a film has the same basic ideas as a hundred other movies, as long as the filmmakers find new ways to express them. A movie is only generic if it doesn't bring anything new to the table.

That's why I like My Suicide, a bit of nobody-understands-me teen angst directed and co-written by video-game producer David Lee Miller. Its point of view is that of a disaffected 17-year-old movie buff who plans to kill himself on camera, so the talk of teen suicide calls to mind any number of similarly themed films. But My Suicide breaks out of the mold with an exhilarating use of stock footage, animations, reenactments, and other audio-visual tricks, vividly reflecting the thought process of today's media-saturated young people who are under-supervised, over-privileged, and too plugged in. I can see this replacing Donnie Darko as the go-to film for alienated adolescents.

It stars Gabriel Sunday (who also gets a screenplay credit, along with Eric J. Adams) as Archie Williams, a lifelong movie freak and amateur filmmaker who has decided to make his own death the subject of his media class final project. His reasons for wanting to die are mundane: his parents don't pay attention to him -- Mom (Nora Dunn) was a lawyer who resented being forced to give up her career when she got pregnant; Dad (Robert Kurcz) is wrapped up in the chicken-based fast-food franchise he owns -- he's tragically still a virgin, everyone at school thinks he's weird for always having a camera in his hand, yada yada.

The Paramount Theatre hosted several notable screenings on the last day of the 2009 SXSW film festival, including the HD Premiere of Al Reinert's 1989 documentary For All Mankind. Audience members reported being thrilled that Gene Krantz, former NASA Flight Director, was on hand to answer questions after the screening of the film, which tells the story of the Apollo space missions.

Wavy Gravy was seen leading an anti-war march down Congress Avenue, reported Neil Miller of Film School Rejects, in advance of the final screening of Michelle Esrick's doc Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie. Director Jonathan Demme was in town for the World Premiere of his music doc, Neil Young Trunk Show. Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt were expected to be in attendance for the local debut of Sundance hit 500 Days of Summer.

Volunteers Kill It! We noted well-deserved praise for SXSW Producer Janet Pierson yesterday, and that applies to the entirety of the festival staff, who work long hours to little reward or recognition, except for a job done extremely well. Many thanks are also due to the more than 250 hard-working volunteers and theater managers, who had to deal with long lines of sometimes-grumpy, sometimes-pushy attendees, yet remained unfailingly polite, courteous, and attentive. Everyone working behind the scenes deserves some serious love as well.

Cinematical Coverage. Gary Hustwit made the fascinating, well-received doc Helvetica, and so expectations were high for his latest, Objectified -- perhaps too high. Kevin Kelly wrote in his review: "If you're into industrial design, you'll probably enjoy Objectified as it is, but I was left wanting more."

You can browse all of our 2009 SXSW coverage by checking out this handy link right here.

The die-hards and the locals kept trudging into screenings on Friday, the penultimate day of the SXSW film festival, no doubt dodging sidewalk-jamming musicians. Reports filtered in that there was a massive crowd at the Austin Convention Center to see the late afternoon screening of the critically-debated doc Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo, and I imagine plenty of people showed up in the evening for the hilarious and unexpectedly poignant Best Worst Movie.

Cinematical Coverage. Yours truly wrote about Gerald Peary's documentary For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism. I enjoyed the chronological overview, but the academic approach made me feel like I was watching a term paper. The inaugural broadcast of The Cinematical Roundtable featured writers Drew McWeeny, Scott Weinberg, and William Goss talking about four SXSW presentations that will be hitting theaters in the coming months: The Haunting in Connecticut, Observe and Report, Drag Me to Hell, and The Hurt Locker.

Two films that played at SXSW opened in theaters today; Eugene Novikov thought I Love You, Man was a "sweet, amusing, and perfectly acceptable comedy," but was especially noteworthy because Paul Rudd "begins to stake out his territory as a comedian and a leading man." Erik Davis extolled the virtues of Cary Joji Fukunaga's drama Sin Nombre, both in his republished Sundance review and in his reminder notice -- with trailer!

You can check out all of our SXSW 2009 coverage by clicking here.

Blog Talk. Now that the festival is almost over, new SXSW Producer Janet Pierson is being hailed for the outstanding job she did. Anne Thompson has a great roundup / photo gallery at Variety, Kim Voynar profiles Pierson at Movie City News, and Eric Kohn talks to Pierson about the film selection process at The Wrap.