2008 SXSW Film Festival Full Lineup

There’s a lot of great sounding docs in that list – “Front Runners”, “Some Assembly Required”, “A Necessary Death”, “Obscene”, “Second Skin”, “Shot In Bombay” and a whole bunch of the music ones…I hope a big crop of them make their way up to Hot Docs. Some other comments:

“The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela” – A prostitute makes her way to Iceland with unexpected outcomes. You know you want to see this James!

“American Teen” – I thought I heard this was quite good. A doc on high school cliques could be fascinating and possibly painful (depending on one’s remembrances of high school).

“Assassination Of A High School Principal” – High school noir? It’s doubtful it could top “Brick” or even an episode of “Veronica Mars”, but I like the concept.

“At The Death House Door” – Any doc with Steve James’ name attached is good enough reason to see it.

“Choke” – Good reports out of Sundance.

“Love Songs” – Ludivine Sagnier.

“The Order Of Myths” – I read a couple of fabulous reviews of this coming out of Sundance.

“Wild Blue Yonder” – If I remember correctly, Celia Maysles didn’t exactly have the full participation of her uncle. This could make the film even more interesting.

“Throw Down Your Heart” – I love Bela Fleck’s music, so his journey to Africa to discover the roots of the banjo is an automatic sell for me.

“Do You Sleep In The Nude?” – Hmmm, that may be a bit too much Rex Reed for one sitting…

“Here Is What Is” – I think this was at TIFF as well. Any doc that takes you into a recording studio already has my attention.

“Mongol” – Heard some good talk about this at TIFF and it’s up for an Oscar as Best Foreign Language Film (Yeah, I know that means squat…).

“The Night James Brown Saved Boston” – I’m not sure this could possibly be as good as I make it out to be in my own mind, but it’s gotta be worth a viewing.

“The Visitor” – The first film from Thomas McCarthy since “The Station Agent”. Don’t know much more about it though…

And my favourite movie description (for “Don’t Get Me Wrong”) : “Within a stark Romanian psychiatric hospital, patients move stones, help each other perform daily tasks and discuss the existence of God and how to stop the rain.”

I think that film really needs a new marketing team to come up with a snappier blurb…B-)