On Friday, March 8, 2013 I attended the highly-anticipated gala World Premiere of Evil Dead at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas. The sold-out screening was held at the historic Paramount Theatre. The film was a selection in the Headliners section.

On Opening Night of the 2012 SXSW Film Festival I was sitting in the Paramount Theatre for the World Premiere of Cabin in the Woods, which would go on to become one of my (and many others’) favorites of 2012. Now, exactly one year later to the day, I was, once again, in that same cavernous venue for the Opening Night World Premiere of another “cabin in the woods” film, the Sam Raimi-produced “rebirth” of his 1981 classic Evil Dead. The “cabin” parallel was inescapable — as was the eerie remote house within which our five hapless protagonists find themselves in this crowd-pleasing modern-day telling of the tale.

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On Saturday, March 16, 2013 I attended the wonderful Texas High School Shorts program at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas. The event was held at the Vimeo Theater in the Austin Convention Center.

Almost all festivals include short films in their lineups and I try to see them whenever possible. At SXSW there are 11 Shorts Programs. One that is always particularly special and exciting is the screening of the Texas High School Shorts, for these are our future filmmakers.

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On Saturday, March 16, 2013, I attended a gala screening of Artifact at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas. The event took place in the 645-seat Vimeo Theater at the Austin Convention Center. The documentary was a selection in the 24 Beats Per Second section.

One doesn’t need in-depth knowledge of the music industry to be a film journalist and appreciate rock docs or movies about record labels, copyright laws, and piracy…but it helps. Prior to this stage in my life I spent over 20 years as a rock radio DJ in the country’s fourth largest market, band manager, concert promoter, and record producer. So my experience in that world is actually much greater than my relatively new, just under a decade-long career as a film festival and independent film reporter. This gives me a uniquely dual perspective and, I hope, qualifies me to accurately and incisively comment on movies such as the Napster documentary Downloaded, TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard, and Artifact, along with the Green Day docs Broadway Idiot and ¡Cuatro!, In Your Dreams – Stevie Nicks, Good Ol’ Freda, and Dave Grohl’s Sound City, all of which I saw at the just-concluded 2013 SXSW Film Festival.

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In the eight exciting years I’ve been covering film festivals my travels have taken me across the United States and into Canada. I’ve attended over 60 fests since the start of 2006 and most are quite familiar to my readers, especially those major international events which I’ve reported from on an annual basis: Sundance, SXSW, and Toronto, along with regional festivals including Tribeca, Woodstock, Los Angeles, the Hamptons, Philadelphia, Fantastic Fest, Williamstown, GenArt, Sedona, Santa Barbara, Fort Lauderdale, New Hampshire, and many more.

Having relocated from the New York/Philadelphia area to South Florida 18 months ago, the festivals of the northeast U.S. are no longer as accessible to me as they were in the past. However, hometown events like the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, which I covered this past October-November, are within easy reach and allowed me to see over 100 films in 22 days.

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It was back in March 2009 when I first announced here on this site that Logan Lerman would be taking over the lead role in the first film based on the popular five-part Percy Jackson & The Olympians book series from author Rick Riordan. Directed by Harry Potter’s Chris Columbus, that movie, Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief, opened February 12, 2010 and made over $226 million worldwide at the box office.

Fans were then eagerly awaiting a greenlight for the second film in the series, knowing that Percy Jackson was planned as a potential franchise for distributor Twentieth-Century Fox. They waited…and waited…until rumors began to spread that there would be no “sequel” after all. Within the industry, however, that kind of talk made little sense. The picture was a success by any measure. The fact is, many factors have to come together before such a massive project can be officially underway. In order for a movie to go into development a quality script must be delivered. Then financing can be obtained and the wheels set in motion to move the film into the next stage of production.

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We’ve been following the exploding career of young actor Michael Welch for several years on this blog. He wowed audiences around the world as the hapless human Mike Newton in four films of The Twilight Saga — Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn – Part 1, four of the most successful motion pictures of all time. Together, those blockbuster movies brought in over $2.5 billion worldwide at the box office.

The 25-year-old has certainly had quite a long and distinguished career — working on 30 feature films since the age of 10, along with four television movies and close to 100 television episodes, either as guest spots or as a series regular.

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