From my very cold and very snowy perspective here in Grand Rapids, Austin is starting to sound really good. But it always does, right? It’s a great film town, SXSW is a great festival, and March is a great time to head South.

The festival lineup of films was unveiled earlier this week, so it’s officially time to start anticipating. Here’s the info from the official festival site. indieWIRE has a nice overview of what’s scheduled, too, and here are some notes from GreenCine Daily.

One of the movies in the lineup is Kurt Cobain About a Son, which some of us saw at Denver. It’s a great film, and director A.J. Schnack is a great guy. We were lucky to catch him and Michael Azerrad for a chat about his film and also did a roundtable from Ted’s Montana Grill in Denver where we talk about the film. If you’re heading to SXSW, make sure to catch it.

We’ll dive into the lineup and say more about it here as we get closer to the festival. In the meantime, we’re busy preparing to do the festival’s Spout-sponsored email/webcenter, and dozens of podcast interviews. Rick will also be on a panel “New Dogs, New Tricks: New Media Goes to the Movies,” which is just a great example of what a good fit this festival is for us–the perfect mix of movies and interactive media. Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks.

The Trials of Darryl Hunt is on the short list for the Best Documentary Oscar. It’s far more than a courtroom drama, it’s the real story of an amazing man and the community around him refusing to play the roles society placed on them: Criminal, rapist, murderer. The accounts of Darryl Hunt’s various trials over twenty years are jaw dropping.

Starz Denver Film Festival, spout.com podcast

So if you haven’t yet read the latest issue of Fast Company, you should. Alan Deutschman and Scott Kirsner cover the changing, bomb-shelled landscape of movie distribution. ("Hollywood’s New Wave" and "Maverick Mogul" only available in print right now)

Of course, for some of you the issue will be mostly review. They cover the usual names-Mark Cuban and Steven Soderbergh (2929 Entertainment and Landmark Theaters), Harvey Weinstein, Lloyd Braun (Yahoo!)-but they also give some back-story to what the studios are doing to keep up. Still, the coverage around film distribution and the digital age is heavily slanted toward the question, "How will Hollywood survive digital download?"

Who cares? Why is it that corporate brass monopolizes the discussion around the coming new age of film distribution? I really don’t care what happens to them, I care what happens to me. It’s no surprise to me that Chicken Little was released this year because the mood with these media execs seems to be "The sky is falling! And it’s raining every film ever made and they’re available for free! And Mark Cuban is the mad scientist controlling the weather!"

So silly. But as Steven Soderbergh and Mark Cuban are quick to point out, the Hollywood system is terrible at innovating and very skilled at reacting. So they’re reacting to what happened to the music industry and jumping on the the iTunes train to salvation. But what about me? Why doesn’t Anne Sweeney at Disney-ABC TV, Brian Roberts at Comcast, Kevin Tsujihara at Warner Bros and Blair Westlake at Microsoft sit back, take a deep breath and imagine what it is like to be a little fella like Paul-a father and film lover living in the gloriously snow covered Midwest?

Please, imagine me suddenly being able to get 100,000 films for $2.99 each downloaded onto my iBook over a wicked fast internet connection. Imagine me sitting in a cafe, sipping the House Blend, reading a one paragraph synopsis on a movie-a movie I will commit two hours of my life to. Now imagine me picking up my cell phone and calling one of my film club buddies and asking them if they’ve heard about any good films lately.

Bingo. The real winner in the coming age of Video Download is Verizon Wireless. That is, of course, unless there is a place called Spout to find out about what the people in the know are saying about the diamonds in the rough. Nonetheless, it’s exciting to see Fast Company covering some problems we’ve been working on for over a year now. Maybe it takes the whining of Hollywood brass to get the attention of a magazine like Fast Company, but it’s the rest of us who will determine the real future of film.