SxSW Day 3

Panels

People as Peripherals: The Future of Gesture Interface

Rather than describe this talk, you can take a listen for yourself here.

A Conversation with Paul Reubens

Well it appears that Pee Wee Herman is back, and Rubens will be making a third movie. He talked at length about his career, losing out to Gilbert Gottfried for a slot on SNL, and even addressed his legal problems.

Here is some video from the interview hot off of the presses, over at the SxSW YouTube Channel.

Films

Tired of panels, I had previous decided to see 4 straight films at the Paramount. In hindsight, I wish I had gone for 5 straight, since the first one would have been the Conan O'Brian movie.

The most grueling part of this exercise was the fact that I had to leave the theater after every screening, and get back in line. Fortunately, the time gap between screenings was sufficient to accomplish this.

For the first movie, I managed to secure a place in line right at the corner of Brazos and 8th Street.

With each successive film, I kept dropping further and further back in the line. For example, this was my position for 13 assassins, I am at the corner of 7th and Brazos.

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

The first movie up was the latest film from Morgan Spurlock. The basic premise was an examination of product placement in movies. To get the true skinny on the practice, Spurlock actually attempted to obtain sponsorships for the documentary itself. Surprisingly, he succeeded.

Spurlock introduced the film before the screening.

After the screening and a wardrobe change, Spurlock performed a Q&A.

13 Assassins

This was a fantastic film by Takashi Miike covering feudal Japan in the 1840's. It was in Japanese, with English subtitles.

Unfortunately, Takashi was scheduled to be present for Q&A, but he was unable to fly to Texas, because of the situation in Japan. The SxSW staff did say however, that Takashi was alright, and not directly affected by the disaster.

Paul

This was another of the high demand screenings of SxSWf, since it featured the cast from Shaun of the Dead, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. The female lead was played by Kristen Wigg. The film will be released very shortly, so there's no need to discuss the plot.

Bridesmaids (Work in Progress)

Last but least, was a second film starring Kristen Wigg, and Saturday Night Live cast member, Maya Rudolph. Although listed as a Work in Progress, the only thing that remained to be finished was some audio editing, according to the director, Paul Feig.

I found this movie to be surprisingly funny. It was much better than I expected. I won't post a spoiler, other than to say that the real star of this movie was Melissa McCarthy. She is the bride's future sister-in-law, and plays a female Chris Farley type of role.