The Great SXSW 2010 Preview Dump: Spotlight Premieres, Part 2

The film fiend stalking the streets of Austin has many questions. How does an episode of Saturday Night Live come together? How can I blast off into space? Was Thomas Wolfe right when he said you can’t go home again? What does Lemmy’s carpet smell like? Unlike anybody outside Austin City Limits from March 12 to March 20, the fiend has the answers within reach. They’re among the topics tackled head-on a series of features and documentaries getting their premiere at the SXSW Film Festival this year.

Read our SXSW Film Festival: Headliners preview here.
Read our SXSW Film Festival: Spotlight Premieres, Part 1 preview here.

Leaves of Grass

At long last, this adaptation of Walt Whitman’s … [please read the IMDB synopses you’re meant to be ripping off first – Ed.] Oh. Ed Norton follows in the footsteps of Jeremy Irons, Christian Bale and Nicholas Cage, playing identical twins in a thriller written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson (O). Keri Russell and Melanie Lynskey are the lovelies who we hope get into the bed with the right Ed.

Lebanon, Pa.

The Pennsylvania town inspired the Sherlock Holmes mystery “The Red-headed League” and is the home of some legendary bologna. But it takes a funeral to lure big city ad executive Josh Hopkins (Cougar Town) back to his hometown. There he bonds with his teenage cousin and has the plastic scales lifted from his bourgeois eyes in writer-director Ben Hickernell’s film. With Mary Beth Hurt.

Trailerama: No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson

In 1993, Allen Iverson was the country’s most promising high school athlete, lighting up the gridiron and basketball court. Then he was arrested following a brawl at a Hampton, Va., bowling alley. Steve James, the director of Hoop Dreams, investigates how the incident exposed his hometown’s racial divide and how Iverson began the long crawl to redemption.