On Day 3 of SXSW, Sunday, director Barry Jenkins recited to an audience in his capacity as keynote speaker the speech he would have read at the Academy Awards, where his film Moonlight won Best Picture in 2017, had that senseless snafu with the envelope, and several esteemed actors being not the quickest on their…
“People were commenting, is that the real Migos that’s gonna be there or is that the Arkansas version of Migos?” laughs Terry Stewart, former Rock and Roll Hall of Fame CEO, who is now one of the people getting Migos to play a show in El Dorado, Arkansas.
Downtown Boys are perhaps as radical as a band can get in 21st century America and survive, both in philosophical approach and in identity: they are Latinx, queer, and bilingual, and if punk has at its best aspirations been a haven for the marginalized, the Providence quartet both embodies that, and makes space for…
As the United States mutates into a toxic hell-dimension of the Joss Whedon variety, there’s very little that brings me comfort and joy. But during the four minutes and 39 seconds of Lana Del Rey’s new, celestial single, “Love,” I do manage to forget our newly maggot-infested executive branch and dwell in a bit of…
As South by Southwest’s music portion gets underway in Austin, Texas, several international artists who were slated to perform at the event have been barred from entry to the United States, as a result of visa issues and general confusion caused in part by the travel ban.
Yesterday, musicians playing SXSW this year received their contracts and noticed some disturbing verbiage that included “notify[ing] the appropriate U.S. immigration authorities” and threats to report to ICE anyone who happened to “adversely affect the viability of their official SXSW showcase”:
During a panel at SXSW on Saturday, Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) introduced a proposal for a bill that would devote $20 million to prosecuting cybercrime.
And here you were thinking SXSW was dead just because you heard Taco Bell was selling Soylent-flavored Chalupas shaped like QR codes for 69 cents outside the Spotify x Kangol Anal Bleaching Hut this year!
Last week, South by Southwest abruptly cancelled two panels planned for March: one discussing how to counter online harassment, and another about “ethics in journalism” stocked with Gamergate supporters. Today, one of the organizers of the online harassment panel says SXSW ignored her security suggestions, right up…
A South by Southwest Interactive panel scheduled for March 2016 called “Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games” has been canceled, with the panelists saying they were told by SXSW organizers it was due to “numerous threats of violence.” A panel featuring pro-Gamergate speakers has also disappeared from the schedule.…
Trotting through a pack of struggle teens on my way to interview Killer Mike and El-P at Stubb's in Austin, I checked my purse to make sure I had the weed. Festival press is so un-chill—everyone's hungover or fucked-up and it's more inconvenience and repetition in a day already stuffed with both—and it was raining…
Here's a short list of some SXSW styles. I asked each person to describe their style in three words. Desiree Romero (above) answered, "Japan meets Egyptian."
Wishing people a Happy Birthday on social media is sort of a cop out: a way to spread tidings of good cheer without having to pull aside a waitress to request a secret birthday tiramisu to arrive at the table after dinner, or even go to a group dinner and figure out how to split the bill 8 ways to begin with.
Jimmy Kimmel Live, like the rest of the world, has temporarily migrated to Austin for SXSW. His guest last night, Bill Murray, decided to work with this theme.
At a SXSW panel yesterday called How Innovation Happens, Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson, US Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith, and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt discussed how an increased level of diversity and gender inclusivity is necessary to bring about breakthroughs in the tech sphere.
The hopes of hundreds (maybe billions) of Tinder users at Austin's South by Southwest Festival were shattered when they were duped into thinking a "woman" on the app was "real." In reality, "Ava" is a marketing scheme cooked up by the creators of the sci-fi movie Ex Machina. The fake profile included a photo of a…
Like many major corporations these days, McDonald's wants badly to get in on the SXSW action, reaping the benefits of the long-running music festival but becoming part of the reason it's not as fun as it used to be to attend. But because SXSW's core focus is (ostensibly) "emerging" musicians, as McDonald's put it, the…
In an interview Tuesday with Howard Stern, Lady Gaga disclosed that she was raped at 19 by a man nearly 20 years her senior.
Not only are hipsters bragging about knowing about bands before they're cool, they're bragging about knowing brands before they even exist.
Two people are dead and at least 23 people are injured, after a car reportedly "gunned" it through a crowd of pedestrians at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas.
