So everyone I know only cares about SXSW Music and over the last few years everyone in the tech community is raving over SXSW Interactive but as someone who has done nine South by Southwests I will tell you that by far my favorite part is SXSW Film.  I work my ass off during music week so I use the film fest as a mini vacation. I still work and cover the red carpets and things but I also get to see a bunch of movies. This year I think I saw 8 films and as with every other year they were all at least interesting if not fantastic. I also set up a few mini shoots with actors/directors from movies in the festival so I got some shots of something other than people standing on a yellow back drop.  Here are some highlights…

My favorite film of the festival was Safety Not Guaranteed. It’s a “quirky” film about a three journalists trying to do a story on a guy who posted a classified ad looking for a partner to travel back in time with him. It stars Mark Duplass and my biggest celebrity crush Aubrey Plaza. The film is absolutely hilarious, has fantastic performances from all the main rolls and ends with a bang. I got five minutes with Plaza, Duplass and Jake Johnson to do mini photo shoots which would have been awesome except about 30 seconds before I met the cast I stuck my hand in my pocket and when I pulled out a pack of gum I ripped open a cut on my hand and just started bleeding everywhere. It was really awesome meeting one of my favorite actresses with “I would shake your hand but it’s covered with blood.”

The most fucked up film of the festival was far and away was William Fridkin’s Killer Joe based of the Tracy Letts play of the same name. Matthew McConaughey stars as lawman turned hitman who has been hired by Emile Hirsch to kill his drug addicted mother so he can collect on her life insurance policy and pay back some scary people that he owes money. The also features Juno Temple, Thomas Haden Church and Gina Gershon in secondary rolls that they knock out of the park. Haden Church gives a really dark film moments of much needed hilarity with his dead pan delivery. Another one of my all time celebrity crushes, Gershon is involved in one of the most fucked up scenes ever put on film which I cannot even mention without ruining it but it involves fried chicken.

The most suprizing film was 21 Jump Street.  Every year at SXSW Film there seem to be one or two big blockbusters that premiere there and you aren’t exactly sure why. Festival curator Janet Pierson defended the Hollywood film before it’s introduction as saying they just like good movies and 21 Jump Street is hilarious.  She was right. I loved 21 Jump Street as a kid so I wanted to see it but I had very low expectations but the film ended up being one of the funniest movies I have seen this year. (I know it’s only March but I watch a lot of movies…) Jonah Hill was his normal funny self but he also produced the film and brought Channing Tatum on board. Tatum was unbelievably good in it and you have to give a lot of credit to Hill for believing that Tatum could actually be funny. If you aren’t aware, the 80′s TV show 21 Jump Street was not a comedy and instead of doing a remake the movie just takes the basic premise of the show (young looking cops going undercover in high schools) and making a really funny movie at it. Unlike other TV show film remakes they only took a few shots at the original show and instead focused on making a solid comedy that didn’t feel like a remake.

Lastly I wanted to talk about the premiere of HBO’s TV show Girls. I am gonna probably get into this show a lot more soon since it is written, directed and starring my friend Lena Dunham (and I even have a line in episode 7) but I wanted to at least mention it. Lena came to SXSW two years ago with her film Tiny Furniture and I was standing a few feet away from her when it won Best Naritive Feature and I was super proud of her and knew she was going to do big things.  I had no idea that she would blow up as quickly as she did. She showed the first three episodes of her Judd Apatow produced HBO comedy and they were even better than I imagined. Two Showtime execs were sitting next to me in the crowd and even they had to begrudgingly admit that the show was going to be a hit. Just be in front of a TV April 14th and you will see what I am talking about.

So yeah, SXSW Film was fucking awesome. I saw a bunch more stuff too so I just wanted to give quick nods to Mike Birbiglia’s Sleep Walk With me and Fat Kid Rules the World. Both were fantastic films that are well worth seeking out when they are released. And I also should mention that I shot photos of the stars/directors of Sun Don’t Shine, Beauty Is Embarrassing, Compliance and Small Apartments. I did’t get a chance to see any of the films but they all looked great and I hope to get a chance to see them soon.

Now click here to see all the photos I took during the 2012 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX.

Today we are going to take a break from photos and just regale you with stories.  I was thinking about what I was going to update with today and I realized I didn’t really have anything which led me to realize that I haven’t shot many parties or anything really. But I feel like the last week or so has been pretty productive and interesting so I guess I will just tell you a few stories and you will just have to imagine the pictures in your head… at least until I get my film developed.

I think my week of reasonable productivity began last Sunday when I photographed Veruca James naked in public.  Those are the last pictures I took that you have actually seen.  On that shoot I found out that my friend Colin had died two weeks prior and no one had told me. I missed the Facebook invite to his funeral. I was on very little sleep and while I had been expecting his death for some time it really had an effect on me. I had been planning a trip to Virginia to go to his memorial service for a few months ever since he checked into hospice and finding out that he died and I didn’t know about it really fucked up my head.  I wanted to see a movie to get my mind of things so I tried to get my friend Promise to go see Pirates 4 with me because it would allow me to zone out for a while but she wanted to see something with a little more substance so we went and checked out a movie called Blank City about the No Wave and Cinema of Transgression underground NYC film movements of the late 70′s and early 80′s.  The movie was so inspiring and so depressing to me. Here were these people making so much art and collaborating and just living in NYC when it was this burned out shell of a place where you could live for $50 a month. And here I am 30 years later taking photos of drunk people instead of making something relevant or important.

So this post ended up being obscenely long so I need to create a jump. If you want to keep reading click below unless of course you came to this post directly making these instructions just confusing and unnecessary.

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South By Southwest is more than just a music festival. The Interactive part of SXSW is getting bigger and bigger every year but it seems like SXSW Film gets a bit over looked. This is a mistake. The SXSW Film Fest is amazing. I have probably seen 25 movies at the festival over the last few years and I can’t think of one movie I didn’t like and I have seen a bunch that I loved.  This year I didn’t get to see as many as I would have liked to but I saw some great movies. I am not going to write anything up because I went in a lot of this stuff before.  You can read my write up of a few of the 2011 SXSW Films here. But I did want to get up all my red carpet shots for you guys. I know the ladies will be psyched to see the Jake Gyllenhall pics from the Source Code premiere. So yeah, get excited.

Click here to see all the 2011 SXSW Film red carpet shots at the Paramount in downtown Austin, TX.

I just wanted to update you guys with SOMETHING since I know you guys miss me so much while I am on vacation.  I am sure I am losing tons of Twitter followers too because I am just talking about SXSW all day. It’s all a shame.  I need to throw you guys a bone or something content wise.  So I decided I would do mini reviews of the films I have seen and then drop a few red carpet shots to sweeten the deal.  Okay, maybe you still don’t care… well you know what? I am sorry I can’t just post drunk and/or naked people all the time. Damn.

The first film I got a chance to see was also my favorite.  It was James Gunn’s Super starring Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page.  It was about a guy who’s wife left him for a drug dealer played by Kevin Bacon so he flips out and decides to become a superhero by dressing up like one and hitting people in the face with a fucking wrench. It is ultra violent, very funny and actually heartfelt. Rainn and Ellen are both pretty amazing it in and Kevin Bacon is an amazing bad guy.  James Gunn used to work for Troma back in the day and if you know what that is than you will appreciate that this film is pretty much a Lloyd Kaufman movie if Lloyd had a budget, great actors and a little bit of restraint. It also happens to be a lot more thought provoking than you would expect from an ultra violent comedy super hero movie. It’s just simply very very good.

The next film I saw was Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins.  Miike is one of my top 5 favorite directors and I have seen at least 35 of his films and 13 Assassins is well up there with the best. It is a pretty typical samurai flick but with the twisted Miike touches you expect from the guy who brought you Audition and Ichi The Killer. You sometimes forget you are watching a Miike film until he throws a limbless naked girl bleeding from her severed tongue at you… maybe I have said too much.  The film has great sword play, fantastic characters and some Ernest Goes to Camp like elements that make it really fun to watch. If you get a chance to see it you really need to do so. Sadly Miike couldn’t get out of Japan for obvious reasons so he missed the screening. I was pretty disappointed since I am such a huge fan but he sent a letter to be read to the audience that was extremely touching and he wanted us to all watch his movie and think about Japan in it’s time of crisis.

Next up I saw Paul the newest movie from the Sean of the Dead guys Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. It is about two comic book nerds from London who come to the states to go to Comic Con and then travel to a bunch of famous UFO sightings. On their journey they meet up with an actual alien named Paul who is voiced by Seth Rogan and is running from the government.  The movie was funny and entertaining but I thought it was a little uninspired. One of the reasons I loved Sean of the Dead so much is that it was an interesting take on an over done genre. Paul was filled with pop culture references and cameos but it felt very much like Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back but without the great Kevin Smith dialogue. But then again maybe I am just not nerdy enough to appreciate all the Sci-Fi jokes.

Lastly I saw Paul Fieg’s Bridesmaids. I have seen trailers for this and it didn’t look that great but I was really hoping it would be good. I pretty much like everything Judd Apatow as produced but this was his first film targeted towards women. The TV show he is producing for HBO is also targeted towards women (It’s just called “Girls”) and Girls just happens to be written, directed and starring my friend Lena Dunham.  I just know that Girls will be compared to Bridesmaids and so I was hoping it would be funny for Lena’s sake even though the two projects don’t have much of anything to do with each other.  Fortunately Bridesmaids was hilarious. Kristen Wiig stars in this as the Maid of Honor in her friends wedding and it all becomes disastrous and then everything ends up okay in the end like pretty much every movie about a wedding but there are the laughs and strong character development you expect from Apatow’s film tree. This movie is going to make a star out of Melissa McCarthy who plays the brides tough and overweight sister-in-law. She kills in every scene and according to her IMDB is Jenny McCarthy’s cousin. Weird.

Kristen Wiig not only starred in Bridesmaids but was also Simon Pegg’s love interest in Paul.  She also clearly hates me as you can see below…

Tonight around 4AM I will be headed to John F. Kennedy airport and then off to Austin, Texas for the South By Southwest Music, Film and Interactive festival.  I will be covering Interactive and Film for the Village Voice and then shooting a number of parties during SXSW Music.  I will undoubtably take thousands of photos and there will just be tons of amazing content and that sort of thing.  Unfortunately I will be super busy during this time which means a lot less updating. I always think I am going to have time to update but I never do.  During the film and interactive part of SXSW I should have sometime time. I also have a new art project/web site launching next week so you will have that to look at.  But duing SXSW Music, from the 15th – 20th I would, not expect a whole lot from me over here.

All that being said… I will be updating my Tumblr every day with highlights from the fest. If you don’t have Tumblr you should be following me on Twitter because I post all the good Tumblr stuff to my Twitter. Then again during SXSW most of my Tweets are just name dropping, eating BBQ and bragging about cool shit I am doing in Texas. So I will probably lose more followers than I gain next week.  But such is life.

Today in the interest of actually updating my site with content instead of just me giving you a bullshit post explaining why I am not going to be posting I am going to give you links to some highlights of past SXSW trips.  This will be my 8th SXSW trip in a row, although several of those trips were when I was managing The Gaskets and I wasn’t shooting photos so these high lights all come from the last few years.  If you mouse over the photos it will tell you about them and clicking them will bring you to more photos from that day or event.

And for all of you who will be at SXSW this year… I will see you mother fuckers in Austin.

In the coming months Driven By Boredom is going to get a make over. The facelift is tentatively scheduled for April 1st but knowing how these things work, and on my limited budget, it could be 2015 before it really happens.  Part of that redesign is going to give the party photos their own part of the website so that I can do more blogging about other things without bumping the photography down to the bottom of the page.  This is going to let me do a lot of shorter blogs and do posts on videos, music, events and other things that I usually just post on my Tumblr account. I really want to do a lot of shorter posts like I was doing when DBB 3.0 first launched and soon I will be able to do that.  I mention this for two reasons, one is to keep you updated on things on DBB, and the other is because I am about to do one of those type of posts right now… (This actually ended up being a lot more substantial than I thought it was going to be…)

Hulu Plus announced recently that it has worked out a deal with the Criterion Collection to stream their films uninterrupted.  Criterion owns the digital rights to over 800 films and over 150 films are available now.  The films will be shown with commercial before the movie so that you don’t have to have unnatural breaks while watching.  Some Criterion films will be available on a rotating basis with commercial breaks as part of Hulu’s basic service.

I actually just quit my Hulu Plus subcription. Many of the TV shows I wanted to watch weren’t available to stream on mobile devices. It seemed totally pointless. I have no real interest in watching every episode of Cougar Town or The Dick Van Dyke show. I am pretty sure the addition of Criterion Collection is going to get me to sign back up. If you aren’t familiar with the Criterion Collection you probably have no business watching any of their movies anyway (although they do have a couple of Michael Bay films in there…) but they have one of the largest libraries of film classics around.  All their films are amazingly restored and are usually the best (and in many cases only) versions around.  Criterion DVDs run between $30 and $40 for a single film so being able to watch them all for $7.99 a month seems like a steal.

I am a huge film nerd and one of the main reasons I moved to NYC was so I could watch movies. I was driving 6 hours to NYC from Richmond, VA every month just to watch films that I couldn’t get in Virginia. When I was living in Richmond I was watching more than 30 movies a month and amassed a DVD collection of well over 1000 films (Including 36 from the Criterion Collection). Unfortunately when I moved to NYC I had much less time and much less money to devote to my film habit. I watch maybe 5 movies a month now and usually they are Hollywood films because I don’t devote the time to figuring out what is playing at Film Forum or the Angelka.

I just wish that Netflix streaming and this Hulu Plus Criterion thing existed when I was living in Richmond. I probably would have watched 50 movies a month and had an even deeper understanding of film history.

Anyway, here are the trailers to 3 of favorite films in the Criterion Collection.  More than 20 of their films are in my top 100 list so it was impossible for me to pick my three favorites so I picked 3 films that you may not have seen before that are also easily accessible.  I understand that not everyone has the patience to sit through hours of silent Stan Brakhage films.

My first pick is Man Bites Dog which is in my top 10 films of all time for sure. It is a French mocumentary about a serial killer that is unflichingly realistic and one of the most brutal, and often funny, films I have ever seen.  My second selection is The Harder They Come. Another one of my all time favorites, it is about a Jamacian guy who can’t make it as a musician so he turns to crime.  But after he becomes famous for his crimes his record becomes a huge hit and he becomes a folk hero.  The movie was made entirely in Jamacia and features Jimmy Cliff in the starring role. The soundtrack is one of the best Reggae records of all time.  The last film I chose was F For Fake. It is a documentary about art forgery directed and hosted by Orson Welles. The movie is a documentary unlike any other I have ever seen and has an amazing twist ending.  If you haven’t seen it you need to.  Enjoy the trailers.

Last Sunday I got asked to come down to shoot a screening of Tell Them Anything You Want a 40 minute documentary about Maurice Sendak.  Sendak as you probably know is the creator of Where The Wild Things Are and about 100 other children’s books.  The film was directed by Lance Bangs and Spike Jonze who were on hand to do a Q&A after the screening.  The screening was the third film in a weekly series presented by Oscilloscope Laboratories’ The Circle of Trust Screening Series at Liberty Hall at the Ace Hotel.

The film was fantastic, I got free food and after I ate I got to watch the Jets lose on the movie screen.  What a great night.  Honestly if you get a chance to see this film you should.  It’s available for sale from Oscilloscope and worth going out of your way for. Sendak is an interesting and hilarious man in the last years of his life who has accomplished so much but is much more concerned with what he hasn’t done.  I have a feeling if I make it to my 80′s I will be just as pissed off about it, although probably with a much less impressive resume to look back on. Spike Jonze befriended him in the 1990′s and made the documentary over the five years that it took to make the Where The Wild Things Are movie. Sendak really trusts and loves Jonze and it comes out in the film and makes for a really intimate portrait of a brilliant man.

This write up is probably really poorly written because I am trying to write it and watch Obama’s State of the Union address at the same time.  So I am just gonna go ahead and get these photos up. But two things I should note.  The first is that I didn’t really shoot this like I would a party. These pics were for press and in house reasons for the Liberty Hall screening series so I mostly just took environmental shots to show the big crowds and then some photos of the introduction and the Q&A.  The second thing I should mention that a long with the directors of the film Catherine Keener showed up for the Q&A.  She is in the film and happened to be in town so Spike and Lance brought her a long.  I am a pretty big fan of all three of them so it was really great to shoot them and talk to them for a second after the film.

Okay, let’s do this. Click here to see all the pictures from the Tell Them Anything You Want Screening at the Ace Hotel’s Liberty Hall.

Ps. Oscilloscope Laboratories is way worth checking out as well. They have released several documentaries that I have loved and pretty much every film in their library looks well worth watching. They have a subscription service that you can order for $150 that sends you their next 10 films (on DVD or Blue Ray) before they have been released to the public and you don’t even have to pay shipping. Hell of a deal..

My attempt at doing a weekly, or at least semi-weekly Mp3 post continues today with a few selections from the Every Which Way But Loose soundtrack.  I have been talking about getting the poster art for Every Which Way But Loose on me forever. It features Clint Eastwood looking like a total bad ass while being hugged by an orangutan. We don’t even have to talk about how awesome that is. I mean, it is life changing and you know how much I love dumb tattoos of old conservative white guys who have starred in movies with apes. But even though I have wanted the tattoo for several years I didn’t actually watch the movie until a few months ago.

I loved it even more than I thought I would. Clint Eastwood plays a street fighter who goes from town to town fighting for money and trying to rescue a girl who doesn’t want to be rescued. Totally unrelated to the plot is his pet orangutan Clyde who spends the movie getting drunk and looking cute. The movie would be barely changed at all if you removed the ape, but the movie poster would probably only have been 1/10th as awesome.

One thing about watching Every Which Way But Loose is that you will finish it with Eddie Rabbit’s title track stuck in your head.  For me it was probably a week before I stopped singing it aloud to strangers on the subway. I knew I needed the album so I went on eBay and picked it up on vinyl and after some desperate searching found a download of it online.  The soundtrack is pretty amazing. I am not even really a country music guy, but there are a bunch of really amazing songs on it.  There are also a bunch of random instrumental songs that I don’t really care for, but luckily we live in a world where you can just delete those from your iTunes library.

For your listening pleasure today I am going to pull three of my favorite tracks. The first is the previously mentioned title track, Eddie Rabbit’s “Every Which Way But Loose”. It is super slow and twanggy but somehow it is the most catchy damn song on earth. It will probably be in my head from now till Christmas.

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My second choice is “A “Six Pack To Go” by Hank Thompson.  I have loved this song ever since my friends punk band in covered it nearly a decade ago. It’s a rocking country tune about getting wasted instead of paying rent. How can you not love that?

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My third choice was a bit harder to make. I wanted to go with a Charlie Rich song because he is actually in the movie playing live at one of the country-western bars in the film. I also considered Mel Tillis song “Coca Cola Cowboy” because it is fucking awesome but I figured I should figure a lady since Sondra Locke is one of the stars of the film and has two songs on the soundtrack, but her character is sort of a bitch, so fuck her. I went with the Carol Chase song “I Can’t Say No To A Truck Driving Man”. It is a fantastic little ditty and super catchy.

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Anyway, this write up is not super coherent so I am going to go, but you should probably watch the movie as soon as you can and do what you can to track down the damn soundtrack. Have a good day.

So there is this movie Tiny Furniture. I have talked about it before and I will talk about it again but what you really need to know is that it comes out Friday at IFC Center and that it is very good.  It won best feature at SXSW and Lena has been tapped to direct an HBO series produced by Judd Apatow and she is going to adapt and direct movie version of the next book by the people who wrote Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist. It is being produced by Scott Rudin. If you don’t know who he is… Google him.  It is all fucking very impressive. And we are all very proud of Lena. On top of Lena’s awesomeness, the music for the film was done by my good friend Teddy Blanks who I have plugged on here a billion times.  Anyway, you must see this movie. (It opens in LA next Friday, btw.)

Last night they held the New York premiere at Moma and I didn’t go because I have already seen the movie twice and I had seriously important things to do like update this stupid website.  But I did go to the after party but of course I got there late and Lena and Teddy had already left and so had my brother so I hung out, took a few photos, chatted with friends of exes and exes of friends and then left and stuffed my face with a giant cookie, a cannoli and a McRib. It seemed like the thing to do.

Anyway, the important thing is that you must see Tiny Furniture and then you need to click here to see all the photos from the Tiny Furniture after party at Santos Party House.

By the way, you should watch the Tiny Furniture trailer here, but I promise the movie is way better than it looks. If you think it looks good you will like it, and if you think it looks insufferable, I promise you that it is not nearly as self indulgent as it looks. I give you my word.

Also, you should read Lena’s profile in this weeks New Yorker because it is really funny and my ex-girlfriend Isabel is interviewed for it and she is hilarious.  Okay bye.