SxSW Day 4

Panels

Your Data in the Cloud: Privacy, Ownership, Convenience

The panel discussed cloud storage, and locker technologies like Dropbox. The speaker was also hawking his own service, Pogoplug. I signed up for an account but have been unable to try it, yet.

Thunder in the Clouds

I attended a second cloud panel on this morning. Austin resident, and Drunk and Retired Podcaster, Michael Cote was one of the panel members. I sat through most of the talk, but didn't glean too much new information, from either of the Cloud panels I attended.

Keynote: Felicia Day

Not sure what to say about this Keynote. Felicia is from Austin, went to UT, and was even a SxSW volunteer. In fact, I know several people who worked with her when she volunteered.

I would say that while I admire her for what she has accomplished, this interview was not very engaging or interesting. (Apparently, I wasn't the only person that voiced this opinion).

Ain't it Cools News' 15th Anniversary Panel

This panel was a historical recap of Harry Knowles' AICN, a website that I occasionally read. I think it was perhaps a little too Inside Baseball. I found my interest waning, and cut out early.

Films

Beginners

This was the second screening of this film, so I don't know if the director or any of the cast were present for the first showing. Although an Indie release, it had two big stars, Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer.

This was a very good film about a young man who learns some important life lessons about love, from his father, who had recently died of terminal illness. The acting was exceptional, and I liked the screenplay and cinematography.

I won't post a spoiler, other than to say that I would recommend the film to others. This is exactly the type of film that you will never see come out of one of the Major Studios.

Ain't It Cool News 15th Anniversary Screening - The Dragonslayer

The hot ticket for the last night of the Film Conference, was the surprise AICN screening. There was a fairly long queued up outside the Paramount, when I arrived. Of course, speculation was running rampant about what film Harry had selected.

Harry eventually came out on stage in his wheelchair, and announced that he had a special guest to come out and help him announce the film. As he said this, out walked director, Guillermo del Toro, and they revealed that the movie would be the 1981 release, Dragonslayer.

Guillermo and Harry then went on to say, that this was actually a Disney movie and was rated PG. They talked about how this predated PG-13, and that this PG movie actually had some violence and nudity. Del Toro then went on to say that this would have never made it out the door in today's world, and lamented the changes in standards over the last 30 years. He had the line of the night, when he went on to say, This movie has balls. Big, hairly, wrinkly balls!, while cupping his hands to drive the point home.

They talked a bit about the obvious borrowing from Tolkien's Hobbit storyline, and the fact that the ILM effects still held up after 30 years. I had seen this film during its original theatrical release, but I had forgotten that Peter McNichols (recently Larry on the Numb3rs TV series), was the lead.

This ended up being a really fun and engaging screening, because of del Toro.