SXSW Countdown: Two Days

It's a gloomy, icey day in New York, and I'm dreaming of Austin. So, here's some SXSW miscellany that I've collected this afternoon. I leave on Friday. If you'll be there, add me as a friend on Twitter so we can keep track of one another. I also plan to Festmob.

• Jette (who will be joining me for a StudioSX chat on Tuesday) has put together an awesome guide to SXSW film venues. I've now made a note to skip breakfast on Monday so I can drink a milkshake whilst watching Fish Kill Flea.
• Speaking of that StudioSX thing, it's been an, uh, less than productive year, so they're billing me as "Karina Longworth from Vidiocy.com." Thus the uptick in recent blog posts. Hopefully it won't matter that traffic on this site hit an all-time low just last week.
• I've been sent so many documents claiming to be the "SXSW Master Party List," that I'm just on the verge of being so overwhelmed that I'll probably do a lot of what I did last year: hang out at the hotel eating room service slliders and watching Superman 2. But if you're feeling more adventurous, here's a guide to Interactive parties. Even I might not be able to resist something called "The Great British Booze-Up."
• Matt Dentler has too much cool, inside-SXSW film stuff on his blog to single any one item out.
• Morgan Spurlock, who produced the SXSW documentary What Would Jesus Buy?, encourages the rabble to try to talk their way onto the premiere party guest list.
• Finally, Kyle Bunch and Nick Douglas have wisely re-launched Blogebrity, just in time for Sunday's SXSW panel which Kyle is moderating, which also includes Nick, Amanda Congdon, Casey McKinnon, and me. In related news, who wants to meet up at around 4pm on Sunday for some power drinking?

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Blogging "Before the Code" - Update 1

David D'Arcy weighs in on a few selections from the series at GreenCine Daily. On The Bowery:

The Bowery opens in a bar called "Nigger Joe's," and from there to the end, not a single stereotype is spared - Jewish tailors swarm around an unsuspecting buyer of a suit, an Irish hoodlum played by Jackie Cooper sets "the Chinks" on fire, and the Irish break into drunken brawls every few minutes. There's a turf battle between two gangsters - Chuck Conners (Wallace Beery), a bloated boss who turns out to have a soft heart, and Steve Brodie (George Raft), a sharpy who moves like an acrobat. Each of them runs a private fire brigade that makes money when someone's house burns down. (If you ever believed in Bush's vision of privatizing essential services, you won't after this.)

Earlier:

"In large part, Hoopla works because [Clara Bow] is not really required to transform at all -- it's the men who have to come around and see her for who she really is, and to accept the fact that she can sell her sexuality for a living without losing her soul -- or even weakening her marriage." -- Me

"Using dissolves, sound bridges, long takes, and character punctuating close-ups, Brown blessed Quick Millions with both gutter swagger realism and pulp expediency. It is the most undervalued directorial debut in the history of American film." -- Bruce Bennett (reposted from the NY Sun)

"Born to be Bad, (starring Loretta Young as a mother out of wedlock and Cary Grant as the married man who falls for her) and Coming Out Party (the arrival of a debutante carrying her immigrant boyfriend’s child) are just a few in the program demonstrating the racial and sexual quandaries present during the Great Depression -- not to mention the anxiety felt by many Americans over the changing depiction of urban life in America." -- Jessica Freeman-Slade @ The Reeler

Semi-related: Peoria Pundit reminds us what 30-something Norma Shearer looked like as Marie Antoinette.

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The Scourge of C-List Celeb - and Friend of Stamos:

Jonathan Bernstein's profile of Perez Hilton in The Guardian reveals the one shocking secret left about blogebrities -- they're fucking hard workers:

You might imagine that someone so skilled at promoting hate and fear among the C-list would live a shadowy existence. But at around 6.15 every morning, Mario Lavandeira, the beefy, 28-year-old gay Cuban-American who hides behind the pseudonym Perez Hilton, sets up his laptop on a table outside the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue. Until 9.30 at night, when the club-hopping and whisper-gathering begins, he downs endless coffees and fires off endless malice-tinged posts.

Of course, it would be unwise to suggest that most professional bloggers -- hard-working though they might be -- are paragons of virtue, or even people you'd actually like to have a drink with:

He's even more incredulous when asked if he ever feels regret for anyone he might have wounded. "Not a single time. Not even when I put up the pictures of Princess Diana as she was dying. I didn't put it on my main page. I said, 'Click here to see the pictures', and even then people were outraged. But they made a choice to see those pictures and then they had the balls to fucking criticise me for it."

...unless, apparently, you're John Stamos:

"The people that last, the Tom Hankses, the Julia Robertses, my friend John Stamos, are the ones that are nice." I can't let that pass. What about Madonna - who's more horrible and unappreciative of her fans than her? Perez looks as if his head is about to explode. "Madonna's insanely talented!" But you said the people who last are the nice ones...It's almost endearing that this scourge of the C-list celeb who has Hollywood trembling is still so starstruck that he can come out with such a clueless statement.

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