For most people living in the UK, a five day indie-orientated festival taking place 5000 miles away in Austin, Texas would not be a cause of major concern. For ‘internet types’ however, the annual South by Southwest music, film and interactive festival is about the most envy-inspiring date on their Google Calendars.
Nerds and movie bloggers (potayto potarto) alike fly in from across the globe for the festival’s prestigious movie showcase, which falls nicely between the arty bias of uber-indie Sundance and the masturbatory fanboy appeal of superhero-friendly Comic Con. The theme for this year’s line-up appears to be ‘Judd Apatow made me famous’, with Observe and Report, I Love You Man and Adventureland all receiving early screenings.
NOTE: Readers who aren’t up on the latest movie blogs might not understand that joke about Judd Apatow but I can promise you that it is in fact hilarious. Here is a video of two men who have just been shown the joke online by a friend, and as you can see, they too found it to be highly amusing.
Meanwhile, the festival’s music fans are enjoying all of your favourite bands from the NME’s Radar page, as well as a few American indie acts that we deemed old news a little while back. So if your heart leaps at the thought of a tastemaking session with The Beets and an acoustic set from The Decemberists, you’re once again missing out on the action.
The torture of not attending SXSW might be somewhat more tolerable if every spare cunt wasn’t digitally communicating how AM-ZONG the whole thing is from their ‘˜portable devices’. Twitter (which incidentally was unveiled for the first time back at SXSW 2007′s ‘˜interactive’ showcase) is responsible for much of this, and a quick search for tweets with the dreaded #sxsw tag reveals some truly horrific findings:
Even that might be bearable if the updates had anything more insightful to say than ‘˜Laura Marling is so beautiful bbz!’ or ‘˜Watching Solange Knowles’.
Luckily, every cloud has a silver lining and for all the industry insider boasting we have to endure at the hands of Twitter and ‘the blogs’, there is at least one aspect of SXSW that we can all derive some pleasure from: the news that Late of The Pier frontman Sam Eastgate was thrown down a set of steps by a bouncer during their set the other day. Music fans of the world, unite!
WORDS: CHARLIE LYNE
