Further SXSW updates from Mr. League

I still have seen very few films at SXSW, instead I've been focusing my energies on some of the fringe areas of parties, meetings and more parties. I've become intimately familiar with the catering services over at Pangaea, which has been commandeered by Facebook for the week as their mission control. In the past 3 days, I've been to 3 events there, the Facebook Film Garage, the Facebook Developers Garage and the Motion party. As some of you may have noticed, I've gone backflippy over Facebook in the past couple of months and through the development conferences, we've picked up some new tricks that we should be unleashing soon. Speaking of Facebook, if you are not already, you should join our various Facebook groups. In particular, we have been offering a lot of special deals to the Fantastic Fest community and the Alamo Drafthouse Fanatics group. We have another Free screening offer to the Fanatics that just went live today!

I also managed to swing by the BSide/Film Threat party at their offices. In addition to shredding Rock-Band-style with Film Threat editor Mark Bell, I caught wind of a cool tool you can utilize during SXSW. BSide runs the back-end of the Fantastic Fest website and we've been very happy with their services thusfar. For SXSW they have launched the new version of their interface with an updated look and feel and some new toys. The great thing about BSide is their user reviews and ratings and their calendar interface. You can browse the entire SXSW catalogue on the BSide site and write and read peer reviews for all of the films. There's a section on BSide where you can check out the Buzz films. Sign up for a free BSide account and take it for a spin. You'll be seeing this same engine resurface when we begin posting our Fantastic Fest 2008 line-up.

Another tip for buzz is to check in with Team Cinematical. They are doing a lot of posting/reviews from the fest. I ran into Scott Weinberg at the Sarah Marshall preparty and he couldn't stop raving about The Promotion. He also really enjoyed Dance of the Dead, a teen zombie comedy with really strong stuntwork and a zippy pace. It also got a strong review over at Firstshowing.net Dance of the Dead plays again at the Alamo Ritz tonight and Friday at midnight.

More updates to come!