harry knowles

Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News and me on the night before Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9

So here it is: my review of Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9, the annual 24-hour long film festival hosted by Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News, which was held at the Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz in Austin, Texas this past weekend on December 8th through 9th. It might be worth noting that according to the yearbook that we all received, I was the attendee who was from the most obscure town anywhere: a miniscule spot-on-the-mind somewhere in North Carolina, as opposed to being from Austin or Los Angeles or Atlanta.

This was also my first Butt-Numb-A-Thon.

First film festival ever for that matter.

Heck, this was my first time in Texas, period.

I left my friend Deborah’s house around 10 a.m. and was in Austin about 30 minutes later. I parked at the Hilton ...

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And my butt is, literally, numb after watching movies for 24 hours straight 🙂

I’m going to file a more complete report later on, maybe even after I get back tomorrow, about what went down. But for those who are curious: we didn’t see Cloverfield or I Am Legend or the new Rambo movie (although Sylvester Stallone did send two new clips from it that we got to watch and one of them is pretty violent even for a Rambo flick). However we did get to see Sweeney Todd… and I’m going to have tons of stuff to rave about that after it’s had a chance to settle in. We also got to see a couple of movies that won’t be coming out ’til late next year.

Around 8 or so this morning came one of the most diabolically evil things that I have ever witnessed in my entire ...

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Still can’t get the pics to load at the moment (our digital camera is more used to hooking up to a Windows XP machine and it’s nothin’ but Macs here) but I’ll be showing the cream of the crop from the bunch when I get back. In the meantime, I can report that it was another action-packed day here in Texas…

My friend Deborah and I got in my rented Jeep about 10 this morning and headed to Austin. She got us on Congressional Avenue and I got some awesome photos of the Texas State Capitol. Then we headed over to the University of Texas at Austin campus, and Deborah got a pic of me standing in front of “The Tower”. And yes, this is the building from which Charles Whitman shot and killed all those people. Which isn’t really why I wanted to see it: it’s always struck ...

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Tonight Harry Knowles unveiled the official poster for Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9 and it looks frickin’ awesome!! Check it out…

Still can’t believe that I’m finally getting to go to Butt-Numb-A-Thon this year. After everything that has happened going as far back as the summer of 2006, and especially the past several months… I can’t help but feel like maybe this is a sign that things are looking up. You just gotta have faith, folks. As a highly respected philosopher once put it: “faith manages” (and props to whoever can spot where that came from :-P).

I had a crazy thought the other night: might one of the big movies that we’ll see premiered at Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9 possibly be… Cloverfield?!? Dunno. I’m still hoping that we’ll get to see Mother, Jugs & Speed ‘cuz that’s the absolutely perfect movie for a Butt-Numb-A-Thon crowd. Even more than those two though, I’m praying ...

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I’ve been able to share the good news with enough people on this end, so I might as well post it here too (especially since I promised that I would on the post about yesterday’s wedding/car crash)…

Yesterday morning, around 4:30 a.m., I discovered that I made the list to attend this year’s Butt-Numb-A-Thon in Austin, Texas!

What is Butt-Numb-A-Thon? It’s an annual film festival in Austin, sponsored by the website Ain’t It Cool News and hosted by site creator Harry Knowles (and here is it’s entry on Wikipedia). It’s a 24-hour long (sometimes a bit more) movie event, and this will be the ninth one ever since Harry started it in 1999. The whole thing is a neat fund-raiser that supports stuff for children. Butt-Numb-A-Thon used to be held at the now-legendary original Alamo Drafthouse. This will be the first one held at the new Alamo Drafthouse ...

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