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SXSW: Will this year see a hit break out of Austin?

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It doesn’t have the lifestyle suites of Sundance or the $1,000-a-night hotel rooms of Cannes, but when it comes to eclectic programming, the South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival, running Friday to March 20, has few peers.
Part fanboy gathering and indie-film hot spot, the festival hasn’t yet generated the buyer frenzy of other festivals but it is now considered one of the best launching pads for crowd-pleasing studio romps. In addition to hosting the world premiere of April 16’s ‘Kick-Ass’ from Lionsgate, this year’s Austin, Texas, festival will be showing July 9’s ‘Predators’ from 20th Century Fox and May 21’s ‘MacGruber’ from Universal.

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The film festival, which will be covered for The Times by Indie Focus columnist Mark Olsen, also has set screenings for a number of Sundance titles, including its grand jury prize-winning ‘Winter’s Bone,’ along with ‘The Runaways,’ ‘Tucker and Dale vs. Evil,’ ‘The Taqwacores,’ ‘Skateland’ and ‘Lovers of Hate.’

Here’s a fuller report from this week’s Word of Mouth column:

South by Southwest’s film festival is hospitableBy Mark Olsen and John HornThey don’t have much in common -- the Oscar-winning ‘The Hurt Locker,’ the independent film on aging ‘That Evening Sun,’ and the upcoming comic book adaptation “Kick-Ass’ -- except for the same U.S. premiere location: the South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival.Coming halfway between Sundance and Cannes, the Austin, Texas, gathering grows in importance every year. Starting Friday, the 17-year-old festival, anchored by its older, overlapping music festival, has turned into an increasingly eclectic blend of oddball studio fare, genre films and micro-budget indies, with its largely local audience welcoming pretty much whatever programmers throw at them.Read the rest here:--John Horn

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