Happy spring! And happy Easter! And hey, what about Passover? Happy that too! I hope you weren’t planning to celebrate any of these things by going to the movies!

“Drillbit Taylor” is lousy, and “Shutter” (review is at Film.com) is even worse. The third wide release, Tyler Perry’s “Meet the Browns,” wasn’t screened for critics, and you know what that means. (You probably also know what Tyler Perry’s name in front of it means.)

In other news, I promise to have the final installment of my SXSW diary posted today, a mere seven days after the day it covers. If you knew how busy I’ve been this week, you’d stop hassling me (RANDY TAYLER!!) to get it done. I wish I had more time during the festivals to work on these reports, because I really enjoy writing them. Each one is like a mini-”Snide Remarks,” with the hard part done by having the topic assigned to me.

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Day 7: Thursday, March 13

I made up for seeing only one full movie (and parts of two others) yesterday by seeing six of ‘em today. Yes, SIX! And three of them had to do with Iraq! Wheeeee!

I began my day with a heaping helping of nerdery, thanks to “Second Skin,” the aforementioned documentary about World of Warcraft players. It is very interesting to me that there are 50 million WOW players, and I don’t know a single one of them. Or at least if I do, they have kept their WOW involvement secret from me. The film does a nice job of showing us the lives of several players without making fun of them or treating them like jokes. Of course, I still think they’re all losers worthy of ridicule, but I think that about a lot of people. You can’t blame the movie for that.

After “Second Skin” is when my Iraq marathon began. Initially my plan was to see one film and be done with it, in and out, easy-peasy. But I realized after the first one that I should probably stick around for the second one, and then that led to the third one, and even though my resources were drained and I really wanted to do something else, I was stuck and had no choice but wait until it was all over, no matter how lengthy or costly it became. When it was all over, I questioned whether I should have ever started in the first place. I’m sure you know the feeling.

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Day 6: Wednesday, March 12

Today was unusual, and I have very little to report. Finding myself grotesquely behind in my writing assignments, I had no choice but to forsake most of the films I’d planned to see today and devote myself fully to writing. It may sound odd to hear a writer complain that he has been forced to write, but the truth is that most writers spend about 90 percent of their time looking for excuses not to. That is probably why so many of them are driven to drink.

As it happens, today was going to be a light day anyway, as most of the films on the schedule either didn’t interest me or were movies I’d already seen. I did catch “At the Death House Door,” an impressively well made documentary about a man who was the chaplain at a Texas penitentiary for many years and as such ministered to 95 inmates on their final days before being executed. It invokes important questions not about the rightness or wrongness of capital punishment, but about the haphazard way it is administered in the United States.

This screening was at the Convention Center, and as I walked across the main pavilion afterward I saw people gathered around the Dell Lounge, a glass-encased room built by the people at Dell Computers. I do not know what the general purpose of the Dell Lounge is; one assumes it was built cheaply and flimsily, and that we won’t be able to get tech support when it collapses. But at this particular moment, everyone was gawking at the event occurring within the Lounge, which turned out to be Billy Bob Thornton being interviewed. So you can add that to your list of celebrity sightings.

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[Sorry about the tardiness. It was a busy week!]

Day 5: Tuesday, March 11

Jeff and I had to check out of his hotel this morning, and I’d already made arrangements to head back to Casa de Greg for the duration of my stay. There would prove to be complications in this, but as they are not the kind of complications that would amuse you, I omit them.

I left my bag with the front desk and walked across the street to the Convention Center, where I wrote for a while and then caught a screening of a documentary called “Frontrunners.” It’s a very amusing story about the student body election at Stuyvesant, the most competitive public high school in New York (it’s for gifted students), where some of the kids take their politics VERY seriously. Sometimes these docs have universal themes that can be extrapolated; this one is pretty much only about these kids at this school, but that’s fine. We got a kick out of it anyway.

“We” consisted of me, Eugene, and Melanie, and while Eugene then wandered off to meet some alleged other friends who were allegedly in town for the alleged SXSW Music Festival, Melanie and I went to the Alamo Ritz to meet Kim for another movie. (We eschew the kids and their rock ‘n’ roll.) This movie was called “Yeast,” and I was very eager to see it for the simple fact that it was written and directed by the wife of the guy who made one of my least favorite movies from last year, “Frownland.” I was genuinely eager to see what her style would be.

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They’ve made a cartoon based on “Horton Hears a Who,” and it was duly screened for critics, but I did not see it. The screening was last Saturday morning, and I was in Austin. I actually considered going to the one here, but meh. I’d have had to get up early on a Saturday.

But I do have a review of “Never Back Down”! And it’s a delight. The review, I mean. The movie is stupid.

Also note, in limited release, “Funny Games” and “Chicago 10.”

And finally, “Doomsday” is one of Hollywood’s Shameful Secrets and was not screened at all. Review to come.

I’m almost done catching up on my SXSW diaries. Keep an eye on this blog over the next couple days.

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Day 4: Monday, March 10

Today was chilly and rainy — wholly unacceptable weather for Austin. Something called Zappos.com was promoting itself by handing out free plastic rain ponchos, so we saw a lot of people walking around in them all day, their hoods up and their bodies covered with a white plastic sheet. These ponchos have the unfortunate (and presumably unintentional) effect of making the wearer look like a Klansman. Evidently Zappos.com did not think its cunning plan all the way through.

My first movie of the day, at 11 a.m., was at the Paramount Theatre, a large venue anyway and one that’s particularly difficult to fill when you’re showing a documentary at 11 a.m. on a rainy Monday. A publicist for the film I was seeing was out on the sidewalk handing out fliers, inviting one and all to attend. It was downright evangelical!

The movie was “Crawford,” about the tiny Texas town that became famous when George W. Bush chose it at his adopted hometown right before he ran for president in 2000 — just in time to show voters how folksy and rugged and ranchy the Connecticut-bred, Yale-educated man-of-the-people is. It’s an interesting look at how intense scrutiny — every time Bush is in Crawford, it’s on TV — can affect a small, rural town.

Eugene and I were at that film, and we joined Goss and Melanie at the Alamo Ritz next for “‘Bama Girl,” a documentary about a black girl running for homecoming queen at the University of Alabama. She wouldn’t be the first black queen in the school’s history (she’d be the fifth), but she would be the first one to be elected without being endorsed by “the Machine,” a secret cabal of fraternity and sorority higher-ups who control all the school’s elections.

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Day 3: Sunday, March 9

It is cruel irony that Daylight Saving Time should begin — and that we should thus lose an hour of sleep one night — during a film festival that prides itself on keeping people out late. I got back to the hotel room a little after 2 a.m., which was now 3 a.m., and found it quite difficult to arise at 9 this morning. I got up at 10, made an executive decision to blow off the 11 a.m. movie, and took my time getting ready, stumbling around, bumping into things, and doing some writing (some of my best, no doubt).

It is funny to walk around Austin at almost noon on a Sunday and see people shuffling and yawning like it’s 6 a.m. on a Monday.

My first screening, at 1:30 p.m., was “Up With Me,” a verite-style drama about a kid from Spanish Harlem who gets a scholarship to a fancy prep school and is torn between his old world and his new one. Sounds awfully generic, but the naturalistic acting and photography give it an engaging sense of realism. It also practically reeks with the aroma of Spanish Harlem, and you can well imagine how great that is.

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Day 2: Saturday, March 8

Though the accommodations at Casa de Greg were hospitable, there was no denying one fact: My Fat Brother Jeff was staying in a nice hotel in the heart of the SXSW district. So last night I had Kim drive me to Greg’s so I could get my stuff, then drop me off at the Marriott Residence Inn, where I slept on the pull-out bed in Jeff’s room. I’m pretty sure this was the first time Jeff and I had shared a bedroom in at least 20 years. Passersby would have heard a symphony of snoring.

Today’s activities commenced with me taking a cab down to the Alamo Lamar for a documentary called “Secrecy,” about the CIA’s obsession with keeping things on the D.L. There are two points of view on this issue. On the one hand, some things need to be kept secret as a matter of national security. On the other hand, the public must be informed in order for democracy to work, and sometimes “national security” is just code for “we don’t want you to know about this because it’s illegal and/or we really screwed it up.”

I like that the film doesn’t take a strident tone one way or the other, and people on both sides — former CIA executives, Washington Post journalists, etc. — make good points. I think we can all agree that on certain matters, secrecy is a must. For example, if Congress were planning a surprise party for the president.

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Day 1: Friday, March 7

Yee-haw, dude! I am once again in Austin, capital city of Texas and hipster capital of the South, for the South By Southwest Film Festival. This is only my third time at SXSW, but it’s already one of my favorite annual events: fun movies, fun friends, and fun parties. And I don’t care what you’ve heard on the street, I like fun things.

I arrived last night without incident, but some of my friends weren’t so lucky. Scott Weinberg, Eugene Novikov, and Jason Whyte (all acquaintances from eFilmCritic.com and elsewhere) had connecting flights in Dallas that were canceled due to weather. Who knew they had weather in Dallas? Weinberg and Eugene rented a car to drive from there to Austin, while Jason hitched a ride with someone, and all of their luggage remained behind (as did Eugene’s driver’s license, which he left on the counter at the rental agency).

The only incident of note in my travels was when I landed in Austin and saw the usual line of hired drivers holding cards bearing the names of the passengers they were collecting, and one of the cards said “Brown Mary.” Not Mary Brown; not even Brown comma Mary; just Brown Mary. Naturally, my first thought was, “Big wheel keep on turnin’; Brown Mary keep on burnin’.”  Whoever or whatever you are, Brown Mary, I salute you.

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Everything I’ve heard about “10,000 B.C.” makes me really wish I’d been able to see it. There are reports of audiences hooting derisively at it and critics openly mocking it during the screenings. But the Portland screening was last night (i.e., at the very last possible minute while still avoiding the stigma of not screening it at all), and I was on my way to Austin. So, alas, I have no review of it for you, and I doubt I’ll be able to get to it until after South By Southwest.

But I do have reviews of two good movies, one with a terrible title and one with a great title. The terrible title is “The Bank Job,” surely the most generic name I’ve ever heard but a pretty solid heist flick. The great title is “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day,” which sounds even better if you say it with a snooty British accent.

And then there’s “College Road Trip,” a film so bad it made me wish I could watch a Larry The Cable Guy movie instead. Even laying aside my increasingly virulent hatred of Martin Lawrence, it’s still pretty awful. Someone asked if I do A+ ratings, and the answer is no, the scale stops at A. I don’t give F- grades either — but if I did, “College Road Trip” would get one. That and “The Bank Job” are my Film.com reviews this week.

As I mentioned, I’m in Austin now for the South By Southwest Film Festival. I plan to do the daily diary thing as usual, though I’ve noticed I seem to have even less downtime here than I do at Sundance, so don’t be alarmed if I fall behind in my reports. It just means I’m out having adventures for you to read about later.

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