Texas is Hot and Garrison Keillor Mumbles

We were tickled to read about the premiere of Robert Altman's latest, Prairie Home Companion, at Salon.com. The film premiered at SXSW, of course--Friday night, in fact. Salon's Andrew O'Hehir was on hand remarking on the heat and tank tops. Here's a snippet:

From the stage of the Paramount, a gingerbread-laden movie palace (originally built in 1915 and remodeled in the '30s) that has been lovingly preserved, festival director Matt Dentler told us that as soon as he heard that Altman and "Prairie Home Companion" radio host Garrison Keillor were working together, he'd thought that he couldn't imagine a more perfect SXSW opening-night film. Maybe that says it all. Nobody would claim that SXSW's film festival has the glamour, the buzz or the marketplace impact of Sundance or Cannes or Toronto. (And nobody can claim that its roster of films is quite as impressive.) But even as it has gotten bigger and more oriented to the indie-film industry, SXSW is still admired for its modesty, its integrity and -- this is the only word for it -- its niceness.