I couldn’t land a SXXPress pass for tonight’s 10 pm screening of Greg Mottola‘s Paul (Universal, 3.18), and I haven’t tried to contact the film’s p.r. reps so the hell with it. I don’t want to see this thing anyway. Not with those dumb-ass gags that I’ve seen (i.e., guys fainting backwards together, Paul referring to Reese’s Pieces) in the trailer. So I’m going instead to the 9:30 pm screening of Spencer Susser‘s Hesher, which has been recut since its initial viewing at Sundance ’10. There’s also an after-party. Eff Paul.

Next is a 1:45 pm screening of Rodman Flender‘s Conan O’Brien: Can’t Stop, followed by a 6:15 pm screening of Nicholas Lopez‘s Fuck My Life. This film and Hesher are both showing at the original Alamo Drafthouse Lamar, which means I’ll be crossing the river and going slightly south for the first time since arriving in Austin.

The South by Southwest program notes for It’s About You, a documentary about John Mellencamp touring in ’09 and recording No Better Than This, explain that the film “is told through the eyes of the father/son filmmaking team of Kurt and Ian Markus, neither of whom had ever made a film before.” They also say that “the entire 90-minute film is shot on super8, to stunning effect.”

I saw It’s About You a couple of hours ago, and it needs to be said that the super8 effect is not “stunning” — the correct terms are “underwhelming,” “exasperating” and “aesthetically futile.” The idea in using this format, I’m guessing, is that Markus figured that super8’s raw realism correlates to the gritty, balls-out, unpretentious honesty of Mellencamp’s music. But the photography is so golfball grainy and murky and lacking in intrigue — everything captured by Markus and his son looks like shit, and the only thing that comes through is Markus’s belief that super8 is delivering some kind of primal truth that digital couldn’t hope to capture or simulate.

At one point Markus remarks that a special blimp encasement had to be built to suppress super8 camera noise during his shooting of Mellencamp recording his album. He also mentions that the camera, per super8 norm, had to be reloaded every few minutes. And you can’t help but ask yourself, “So these guys were so convinced that the coolness of super8 imagery would be worth it in the end that they put up with all this hassle? Why didn’t someone step in and say, ‘Guys, no one will care…in fact, some people will wonder why you bothered with super8 at all because it looks like crap and brings next-to-nothing to the table’?”

Secondly, Markus and his son’s filmmaking inexperience shows. Markus is a respected still photographer, but his instincts (and those of his son) are dull and listless, and their shooting technique (which includes an occasional inability to focus the lens, or a lack of interest in same) is strictly amateur hour.

Thirdly, Markus conveys very little in his narration except for the fact that John is his friend and that America and iife in general sure have changed since he was young, but basically that his friend is such a fascinating subject that all he and his son have to do is point and shoot. That’s a rather naive view.

Markus is also annoyingly stingy with facts. There’s a scene in which Mellencamp and his now ex-wife Elaine Irwin Mellencamp don white robes and receive holy baptism in a small pool inside a church. Markus isn’t making a film about celebrity, but it feels dishonest that he doesn’t identify Irwin or (I realize this is a stretch) perhaps mention the fact that Mellencamp announced on 12.30.10 that he and Irwin had separated, and that since then Mellencamp has copped to a relationship with Meg Ryan.

After 15 minutes or so I began to be convinced that the South by Southwest team accepted this film solely because of Mellencamp’s name and the fake-cool pedigree of super 8mm. They couldn’t have watched this thing and gone, “Aaahh, yes!…something fresh and real and heartland-y!” They had to know it was cornbeef hash out of a can, and decided to try and sell it as SXSW-approved farm fresh. I know that sounds cynical but what other explanation could there be?

I had three reactions to Asif Kapadia‘s Senna, an absorbing, somewhat affecting doc about the late Ayrton Senna, the legendary Brazilian race-car driver and Formula One champion who was killed during a race in 1994 at the age of 34. They were (a) “well-made film, stirring story,” (b) “Senna’s death was very sad” and (c) “shit will sometimes happen when you drive at exceptionally high speeds in the pursuit of beating others to the finish line.”

I realize Senna is regarded as perhaps the finest driver who ever lived, and that he was religiously adored in Brazil and by racing fans the world over, and that his death (due to a mechanical malfunction in the race-car he was driving) was tragic. But a race-car driver who dies in a pile-up is like a mountain climber who falls into a crevasse or a combat soldier who catches an enemy bullet or a wild-animal tamer who gets clawed to death by a lion.

Honestly? The film, which showed at 11 am today at South by Southwest, left me with sincere admiration for Senna’s passion and determination, but not much in the way of awe or affection. He was a hard-core athlete and very competitive and technically savvy, but he was also a bit of a hot dog and a guy who banged into other race-cars a lot. He often spoke about God helping him with his driving and steering him to victory — a common enough feeling that’s analogous to musicians talking about being “in the groove,” but a bit weird all the same. Plus he came from a fairly rich family and was apparently a major babe hound who never got married or even spoke about having kids. A very interesting fellow, no doubt, but that’s about it…sorry.

You want a really tragic sports figure? Consider the tale of Columbian soccer player Andres Escobar, whose story is quite movingly told in Jeff and Michael Zimbalist‘s The Two Escobars. Now, that‘s a sad story plus one that looks beyond the perimeters of the sport realm.

Today’s SXSW plan is to hit Asif Kapadia‘s Senna, a doc about Brazilian race-car driver Ayrton Senna, at 11 am, followed by K. Lorrel Manning‘s Happy New Year, a post-traumatic stress disorder drama, at 1:15 pm. At 6:30 pm Kurt Markus‘s It’s About You, a doc about John Mellencamp‘s 2009 summer tour and latest album, will screen at the Ritz. The final viewing will be James Gunn‘s Super, which everyone except for myself and six or seven others saw at last September’s Toronto Film Festival.

Sidenote: 4 For Texas is a totally forgotten 1963 Robert Aldrich “comedy” that starred Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Anita Ekberg and Ursula Andress — a joke-around Rat Pack ogle-the-girls flick. It actually featured cameo appearances by the Three Stooges.

Sarah Silverman is one of the wisest, funniest and most valuable people on the planet. I’m not posting this because she discusses a nude scene she did for Sarah Polley‘s Take this Waltz, in which Michelle Williams also participates. Randoms: “He won…Charlie Sheen won!…’whining!’….that cokey vibe [is] so off-putting to me…I like slow and chill…although he is a sound-bite genius.”

Recorded last night (Thursday, 3.10) around 11:30 pm. I felt guilty about weighing as much as I do, and making this poor guy struggle when we were facing slight inclines.

Duncan Jones‘ Source Code, which premiered at South by Southwest this evening (and ended about an hour ago), is an engagingly trippy, somewhat sentimental and yet spiritual-minded sci-fi thriller that deserves a thumbs-up for several reasons, but I was especially delighted that it hasn’t been dumbed down. It’s an exciting nail-biter, but is essentially cerebral in the manner of an above-average Twilight Zone episode from the early ’60s, and is not what anyone would call fanboy-catering or CG-driven, thank God.

(l. to r.) Source Code costars Vera Farmiga, Michelle Monahan and Jake Gyllenhaal, and screenwriter Ben Ripley (far right) on stage at Austin’s Paramount theatre following this evening’s screening.

The rumors were true: this is Groundhog Day with a bomb. Plus a little Sliding Doors, Rashomon (as screenwriter Ben Ripley acknowledged during the q & a) and a touch of Run Lola Run. Notions of reality are constantly being supposed, redefined, fiddled with and scrambled around. It keeps you on your toes but never frustrates or irritates. Jones (Moon) and Ripley work hard to involve viewers but also keep them working, and the pace and the balance are just right.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays a military chopper pilot who doesn’t know if he’s dreaming or dead or what the hell is happening…at first. All he initially knows is that his last memory involved serving in Afghanistan, but now he’s on a Chicago-bound commuter train in a sequence that loops and re-loops and re-loops in eight minute portions. And that a pretty girl (Michelle Monaghan) whom he apparently knows somewhat is sitting opposite him every time. And that some other guy is staring back at him when he glances at a bathroom mirror. And that the loop will always end with a bomb going off and scores of passengers being ripped to shreds.

Between each segment Gyllenhaal finds himself in a small padded isolation chamber of some kind and speaking to an Air Force officer (Vera Farmiga) about what he remembers and what he’s learned. The basic idea, he realizes early on, is to try and eventually figure out who the bomber is, and how to stop him. Because the train bomb is only a prelude, he’s told, and that the bomber, whoever he or she is, intends to explode a nuclear device somewhere in downtown Chicago, so he/she has to be busted in what might as well be called a repeating Source Code realm in order to be stopped in real life.

Source Code director Duncan Jones is on the far left.

What technology allows the train-bomb sequence to be played and replayed over and over? Is Gyllenhaal’s helicopter pilot dreaming, or perhaps a figment of some computer programmer’s imagination? Does Source Code-tripping provide a mere reflection of a fragment of what’s already happened and is locked in, or does it have some vague potential to reconfigure or change the future?

That’s as far as I’m going to go in explaining the basics, but it’s remarkable that so much information is packed into a mere 95 minutes or thereabouts, and yet the film doesn’t feel congested or maddeningly detailed or anything along those lines. Source Code is obviously intended to tickle and tease, but it’s not Rubik’s Cube — bright but non-genius types (like myself) won’t be driven mad.

The only mildly bothersome element is that the CG train explosions could be a little better looking (they don’t seem fully refined), and that two or three trains cars explode in flames despite the oft-demonstrated fact that there’s only one big bomb causing the destruction. And there’s a tone of alpha-emanating happiness at the end that isn’t…how to say this?…absolutely rock-solid necessary and perhaps is a little too happy-fizzy. But it’s part of a worked-out karma uplift element that ties in with death and fate and momentary eternities , and is therefore not much a problem.

A friend just texted me about a half-hour ago that he’s heard that a line has begun forming outside Austin’s Paramount theatre for the 7 pm showing of Source Code. This is what South by Southwest is (in)famous for — everyone, regardless of their station, having to wait in the same damn line, and for long periods of time that eat up your day. I tried to get a pass from a Summit publicist, but he’s all tapped out, he said. I didn’t immediately leap from my chair and sprint down to the Paramount because I don’t care enough to go through the humiliation of waiting over two hours in line. I’ll suffer for 90 minutes but not 120. If I don’t get in, fine. It’s just Source Code — it’s just a time-loop Groundhog Day thing.