South By Southwest Hangover

South By Southwest attracted thousands of artists and fans to Austin this week for a celebration of song and cinema unrivaled anywhere across Texas, and amidst the Bacchanalia of promo parties, prizes and prestige, they even got around to playing a few movies.

With a record 3,100 submissions this year, plus an increasing number of special acquisitions, the massive soiree treated festival-goers to early looks at many films that are months away from receiving theatrical releases, if ever.

“No rich execs pulling up in limos, just everyone walking everywhere!” Observed filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, whose SXSW hit Supersize Me helped launch his muckraking career as everyman underground hero. Spurlock was in attendance promoting What Would Jesus Buy¸ a documentary on the “Church of Stop Shopping” which he produced, and which was met with ecstatic ovations by Austin’s appreciative hipsters. The Stop Shopping Gospel Choir was among the many bands to play the festival’s premiere parties, which included other such diverse acts as musician/filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Shortbus) and the merrily profane vocal stylings of Dirty Country-star Larry Pierce.

Audiences were able to check out several spotlight films making their big screen debuts this week, including Scott Frank’s heist picture The Lookout, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Judd Apatow’s highly-anticipated sophomore effort Knocked Up. Much like its predecessor, The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up mines the comedic territory of its titular condition with an alternately uproarious and disarmingly sweet touch, and had folks cheering for its original and irreverent wit.

Filmmaker David Wain (The State) who, along with his Stella regulars, constitute a kind of modern Monty Python troupe, also premiered his new comedy, entitled The Ten. A surrealist parody of the 10 Commandments which spawned lines around the block from legions of rabid fans, it boasts an unlikely constellation of starlets, including Jessica Alba, Famke Janssen, Gretchen Moll, and Winona Ryder. They gleefully send up themselves, the bible, and cinematic clichés, with absurd results that occasionally hit the Life Of Brian-esque heights they aspire to.

Also seriously congesting traffic downtown was Reign Over Me, an understated portrait of men coping with grief, loss and family in the aftermath of 9/11. The film features a powerful performance by the ever-versatile Don Cheadle, as well as a restrained Adam Sandler in another solid portrayal of a boy violently struggling to deal with the problems of a grown man. The two actors and director Mike Binder held a breezy Q&A which nicely balanced the picture’s weighty subject matter.

Documentaries abounded this year on everything from Schwarzenegger’s gubernatorial campaign (Running With Arnold), to font types (Helvetica), to other music festivals (D.A. Pennebaker’s 1968 Monterey Pop), to other documentarians (Manfacturing Dissent, which turns the cameras on filmmaker Michael Moore), to “balloonamentaries” (Twisted). Local legend Bob Ray delivered an entertaining look at the Texas Rollergirls with his derby doc, Hell On Wheels. And the always-popular rock doc made an appearance in the form of About A Son, A.J. Schnack’s marriage of vintage Kurt Cobain interviews with poetic imagery from in and around Seattle.

Art house provocateur Gregg Araki surprised the crowd when he presented Smiley Face, a refreshing female stoner comedy with a soft moral center. Working from a stellar script by Dylan Haggerty, Araki proves his thematic dexterity with a poignant and funny work that is tentatively scheduled to hits theaters nationwide on 4/20.

Speaking of welcome departures, Korean auteur Chan-Wook Park (Lady Vengeance, Old Boy) won over Austinites with the North-American premiere of his latest effort, I’m A Cyborg But That’s Okay, in which his stylized mayhem is skillfully tempered by a genuinely endearing love story between two sanitarium inmates. Sadly, no American distribution has yet been secured.

In the short subject arena, the lovingly-rendered story of unrequited love between two rodents in One Rat Short, and the gorgeous sketch animation of Tragic Story with a Happy Ending took the special jury award and first place, respectively.

Jamie Babbit’s touching and humorous coming-of-age pic about lesbian activists, Itty Bitty Titty Committee, was a sleep hit and scored best narrative feature. And there was no poverty of celebrity this year, with indie turns by Christian Slater (He Was A Quiet Man), Ione Sky (The Lather Effect), and the very busy Paul Rudd, in both The Ten and Knocked Up.

Texan director Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, From Dusk Till Dawn) treated fans to both a “Grindhouse 101” panel on the history of seedy cinema, and a classic horror double-feature outdoor screening of the Sergio Martino splatter sleazefest Torso and the Citizen Kane of zombie flicks, Lucio Fulci’s Zombie.

With so many different offerings in every genre, the South By Southwest organizers will have trouble outdoing themselves in ’08.