All shook up over Elvis

After glimpses of (in descending order) Morgan Spurlock, Viggo Mortensen, Anjelica Houston and Rosario Dawson, the next celeb on my personal CineVegas Sighting Excite-o-meter was Elvis Mitchell. And he's not even a real celeb, but the former film critic for the New York Times and idea-and-interview man behind The Black List: Volume One (which I didn't manage to catch). The dude's always exuded knowledgeable cool, especially for a writer of his distinction, with his cascading dreads, effortlessly laid-back suits and rebellious sneakers. The tipping point, however, was this afternoon's conversation with Half-Life Award winner Sam Rockwell, during which Mitchell held court without so much as a single note card. In fact, he upstaged even the disappointingly unchatty Rockwell, who at one point assured the audience that "The studio movies these days don't even pay that much" (not even enough to purchase socks, apparently). I never happened to see Don Cheadle, but Mitchell would have probably outranked him as well. And coming from a former Picket Fences devotee (and reluctant-to-admit-it Golden Palace watcher), that's saying a lot.