In Cannes?!

Okay, I promise I will stop doing this, but this one just seemed too stupid to not marvel over. As Karina Longworth pointed out to me yesterday, "Cannes this year might be a series of 'Really?''s." Though, a lot of the selection announced so far looks fantastic, this just feels kind of ridiculous.

Facebook Chat? Good God, how many windows are we going to keep open nowadays?

So, maybe it's just me and I missed something, but it seems like everyone is blogging about the Cannes poster and no one is talking about this amazing tidbit: Barry Levinson's What Just Happened? is the closing night film in Cannes 2008. No comment on the quality of the filmmaking, but I'm sure there's a couple other people out there that are just as shocked as I.

One of my favorite moments of this week has been screening The Duplass Brothers' new comedy "Baghead" in Philadelphia The packed house was completely receptive with both laughter and screams (appropriately) and it made me excited to be presenting movies to an audience again. If you haven't seen it, you should try to catch it during the late summer theatrical release.

Mysteriously enough, I woke up this morning and the Sony Classics website had removed the title of "Baghead" from their page for the film.

Seems like Tribeca has caught on too.

Could it be that within the coming hours news will break about a legal scandal involving the title of the film? Stay tuned and respond if you have any info.

For those of you who have seen me do karaoke, you will understand why this holds a special place in my heart. But, boy, is it disturbing.

Keep an eye on the woman on the left. She has a particular misunderstanding of chromakey.

Thanks to Jason Michelitch for the link and that last beautiful tidbit.

Today is truly a sad day in chip music because tonight the glorious Sabrepulse is playing his final show in Newcastle. I think I can speak for both the Natural Causes and Blip Festival families when I say that we are all at least a little saddened by this loss. We at Natural Causes discovered him during our editing phase, listened to his music a lot and never got a chance to see him perform. Below I've included the video that the Blip Festival guys over at 2 Player Productions shot of him in the fall. If you are anywhere near that UK show tonight, beg, borrow and steal to get in. You won't be dissapointed. Peace out, Ash.

SabrePulse // Blip Festival 2007: The Videos from 2 Player Productions on Vimeo.

Knee deep in programming, I haven't had time to blog much about the more interesting films at SXSW. I will say this though, I loved almost everything I watched before the festival and have been greatly disappointed by what I've caught on sight - with the exception of yesterday when I finally saw Second Skin and Beautiful Losers. I think both are exceptionally strong documentaries with vibrant characters and entertainingly slick filmmaking. Make sure you catch either if you get the chance.

It should also be noted that in my pre-screening for SXSW, I realized that this might be the strongest year ever for narratives here. For the first time that I can remember in the years I've been doing this, I am able to say that a US festival has better narratives than docs. Way to go Matt and Jarod. I promise I will get to blogging more in detail about them as soon as I get back.

I also took some time out last night to go see the Alaskan rock band Portugal the Man. Mind blowing. Portugal is playing two free sets today and I would highly recommend discovering them for yourself.

Anyway, I can't wait to wrap up my last two days of SXSW 2008. It looks like we're going to go out with a bang . . . More on that soon.

Natural Causes screens one final time tomorrow morning at 11:00 AM at the Alamo Lamar South. I know it's hangover hour, but if you haven't had a chance to see it and you are still in Austin, we would love your presence in whatever state you see fit. Otherwise, we are hitting Sarasota and Boston soon, so get ready!

P.S.: Since I've been trying to juggle like eight things at once and haven't had a chance to see nearly as much as I would like here, if any SXSW filmmakers would like me to consider their movie for Woodstock and want to send me a screener, they can email me at lerman.michael at gmail. I'd love to catch up.