Philadelphia Film Festival 2009 - Opening Night

(500) Days of Summer

With his first feature film (500) Days of Summer, Marc Webb quickly launches himself into the New Quirk cannon. Stirring indie rock soundtrack? Check. Brief flirtations with animation? Check. Intertitles as storytelling device? Check. Humor that is both wry and charming? Check. Idiosyncratic characters including a young person way too wise for her age? Check. Show stopping dance sequence from outta left field? Check. Its all here and it makes for yet another essential post-millennial quirky boy meets girl yarn.

We are introduced (via ironic baritone voice over) to our leads and their specific philosophies on love at the outset and thru the next hour and a half the film jumps back and forth through the titular 500 days of their relationship, or rather through Tom’s (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) lengthy obsession over The One called Summer (Zooey Daschanel). He’s shy and insecure, she is strange and guarded but they are both caring people who feel for each other… but not always to the same degree. They meet on her first day working at a greeting card company and finally consummate the relationship a couple weeks later... leading to the aforementioned dance sequence which is a riot. From there they have ups and downs but the story mostly stays true to a traditional 3 act story arc.

I do not use the term Quirk disparagingly but rather as a genre that includes specific tropes and identifiers like any other. Webb would seem destined for this style of film given his 12+ year background in music video direction for the likes of Miley Cyrus, Maroon 5, My Chemical Romance & Matisyahu… and that’s just the Ms! He sets so much of the action in this film to music and the film has a certain rhythm that pulls the viewer into its world. Its IKEA furnished, art musing, Joy Division t-shirt wearing world. Writers Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber give us in their script a film about a relationship that hits so many perfect notes even before Webb gets his hands on them though. From the opening dedication you get the sense that this is a very personal story for them (a girl is named… then disparaged) and it’s these personal connections that make for wonderful characters with all the minor hang-ups that make you fall for them instantly. And when the characters are brought to life from two perfectly cast actors like Joseph Gordon-Levitt (with boyish good looks and a tendency to brood) and Zooey Daschanel (aloof but with eyes to get lost in) it all makes for a sublime viewing experience if you’re into the Quirk. And why wouldn’t you be? Does life not hum along to its own soundtrack? Is Swedish furniture not the shiz? Don’t we all just want to live in Annie Hall?

[A-]

Festival Day 7

Sorry for the delay, since last I posted there has been a wedding, a bachelor party (different grooms) and a move. This was written over the course of the two+ week break but couldn;t finalize till today.

Prelude
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Saturday 4/12

Violent Saturday
USA 1955, 90 min

I couldn’t very well start this final weekend of the festival with anything else but Violent Saturday. The film played as part of the Noir Series but it really was more a heist film than a noir. Directed by Richard Fleischer (20000 Leagues Under the Sea, Fantastic Voyage, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Compulsion) this forgotten film centers on a gang (including Lee Marvin) who make their way to a small mining town in order to rob the town bank. We see them plot their deeds and also are treated to seemingly meaningless slice of life segments from different people in the town including the peeping tom bank manager, a librarian purse-snatcher, a young girl who works in the pharmacy, a wealthy mine owning couple with marital difficulties and a family with father/son issues. As the plot unfolds, mainly in the light of day, they all become key parts along with an Amish family who lives out of town on a farm which will serve as the robber’s hideout and scene of the final climactic shootout. The patriarch of this family? None other than Mr. Ernest Borgnine!

(Opening totally over the top credit sequence)

This is a recently remastered print in brilliant De Luxe Color, but the real shine on this gem comes from the film’s snappy dialogue. The audience was left chuckling quite a few times as sly insults are were hurled amongst the various flawed characters – whether they be real city criminals or the strange small-town peccadilloed folk. The film in not available in any format currently (a VHS was made sometime in the 80s) but the print source is listed as Criterion so I’m eagerly awaiting a shiny DVD release from the boys over there. If this one comes by your local festival or retrospective theater though, get a ticket right quick, you won’t be disappointed.

B+

Son of Rambo
USA 2007, 95 min

Another Sundance hit (2007 vintage though) finally makes its way to Philadelphia accompanies by 3 grey suited security guys with night vision. A semi-autobiographical story from Garth Jennings and his Hammer & Tongs team, Son tells the story of creative but gullible Will. Living in Hertfordshire, UK (‘bout an hour north of London), he has grown up in a fundamentalist family who forbid TV & film viewing. When he sees First Blood for the first time it kicks his mind into high gear and he teams up with Lee, another outcast though in a totally different way, to create their own film in which Will is the titular son and is on a quest to spring his “father” from prison. An exotic French exchange student who has the British kids wrapped around his finger gets wind of the film and wants to play a role catapulting the boys to instant popularity and straining their relationship.

(Trailer)

This is cute, smart and has a ton of heart and should do well with audiences… IF it weren’t being released at the beginning of May. Seeing as how it garnered the highest price ever paid for a Sundance film I’m really questioning Paramount’s release strategy on this one. It screams for an August buzz garnering platform release ala Little Miss Sunshine. I do hope people will seek this one out.

A-

Soo
aka: Su
South Korea 2007, 122 min

Wow, its been a while since I’ve written anything on this and the mediocre films have rapidly left my memory. From the festival website I am reminded that this is a revenge tale about twin brothers (orphans?). We start in their childhood when one decides to rob a mobster. In chasing him down they end up catching the twin – thus the previously good twin becomes part of the criminal element while the previously bad twin becomes a cop. When they finally meet years later the criminal is now the titular legendary assassin with a price on his head but his brother is gunned down a few feet away. The twin of course assumes his identity in order to track down his killers and struggles to make people believe that he is not Soo but his brother. Once again the fault of the film is the fact that people get shot, stabbed, beaten, and even have their throats slit and yet somehow still stay alive. This comedic superhumanism really takes you out of the film. In fact up until the final (painfully elongated) showdown it’s a decent if not overly compelling yarn with good performances but the amount of blood and hobbling in the final minutes had the audience laughing at the screen.

(Trailer)

C

Nothing to Lose
aka: TBS
Netherlands 2008, 88 min

Of course films like this tend to stay with you. Nothing to Lose is a dark tale of a mentally unstable man, Johan who escapes a criminal mental institution in Holland along with a friend by kidnapping a doctor. They go on the lam and when things turn south they split up. Johan kidnaps another young girl and set out to find his mother who he hopes will prove that he did not murder his father and sister. Along the way the director’s deft hand reveals details that change your perceptions of the characters and what they may or may not have done all coming to a final chilling climax that will have you on the verge of tears.

(Trailer)

The film won the Best Picture jury prize for the film festival though it also finished pretty far down in the audience balloting and it’s not surprising why. What is surprising is that this is based on a series of real crimes that happened in the Netherlands due to a very lenient penal system. The director Pieter Kuijpers was on hand to reveal this in his Q & A after the screening. He also revealed that the film’s star Theo Maassen is actually one of the top stand-up comics in the country but that he cast him in order to throw off expectations. For his part Maassen is brilliant as the troubled and desperate Johan, the strongest single performance of the fortnight. This is not a film I’d watch over and over but is it a strong statement and a searing indictment of the Dutch prison system. Sadly one woman at the Q & A didn’t hear what he was saying stating that they were lucky to have the system that they do in comparison to that of this country.

A

Well after this I was scheduled to see an animated film called Film Noir that updates the genre in a really interesting looking style. However since an old college roommate was in town for the night I ditched that and drank the night away!!! (This lead to the missing of even more films on Sunday but more of that in the next chapter) .

Festival Day 6

Prelude
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4

Day 5

Friday 4/11

Help Me Eros
aka: Bangbang wo aishen
Taiwan 2007, 103 min

Two of the most challenging films of the festival came on Friday night. The first, Help Me Eros is a Taiwanese take on the Contemplative Cinema of Béla Tarr, Theo Angelopoulos, current period Van Sant, ect. The films are meant to give you time to process and read what you may into them while the film is running as well as long after. But the problem with contemplative cinema is that it is very culture specific and the meditations and queues that are there to pick up are often lost on people who don’t know that culture and thus the contemplative aspects are seen more as space in which to fall asleep. This neon poem to Taipei is filled with loneliness and sadness and life that is soulless but plot queues, while interesting are alien to me.
The plot that the film floats about involves and man who has lost millions and is now holding onto the last vestiges of his previous life – an ultra modern home atop a sweet shop and a mighty impressive pot plant. Having also lost all his friends he pawns off pieces of his life to buy water and sweets at one of the most bizarre establishments I’ve ever seen – a drive though neon candy shop with a stripper poll and girls in skimpy outfits. He falls for one of 3 girls working there but ends up getting high and fornicating with all of them… in very visually memorable ways. His love interest, obviously pissed, destroys the plant and his depression spirals further out of control to the point that he buys 50 thousand dollars worth of lottery tickets. In the final scene he disappears but bills rain down from his window.

Its brilliant looks may entice some while the poetic meditations on life will suit others and some may put up with it to see the more titillating aspects of the film but on the whole this is a very art-house film. If you appreciate any of the directors mentioned above though seek this one out.

A-

Defecit
aka: Déficit
Mexico 2007, 75 min

This is Gael García Bernal’s directorial debut and its not that interesting to tell the truth. Bernal plays the lead Christobal, the teenage scion of an upper-class Mexican family. He is down at the family’s vacation house with his friends for a weekend and there are a bunch of class issues and drugs and jealousy and swimming and daddy hating and barbecue. It’s fairly melodramatic and very well trodden territory (you can actually see people coming of age!) but at least it’s also short and well acted.

C+

Far North
Great Britain, France 2007, 89 min

The final film of the night was to be Irina Palm but the print was apparently lost in transit (I’m assuming USAir was to blame). Instead it was replaced with this film directed by Asif Kapadia (The Warrior, The Return) and staring Michelle Yeoh and Sean Bean. The title refers to the lands above the Russian Arctic Circle for which special benefits are given to those who chose to work there. Yeoh plays a native woman whose village was attacked by some of these men. She flees for parts even farther north with the only other surviving member, an infant child. Together they live as survivalists in the harsh climate avoiding all human contact. When Yeoh discovers a man come down from a glacier (Bean) her nurturing instincts get the better of him and she brings him into their camp and nurses him back to health. The now grown infant and adopted daughter falls for him and they make plans to leave all leading to an unexpected showdown that will leave you speechless.

Part horror film, part psycho-drama and part travelogue with hints of an environmental message the scenery is the real star of this film reflecting the seeming openness but hidden dangers in the characters and well as their relative stoic silence. Yeoh gives one of her most powerful performances to date as the damaged, protective survivalist who becomes jealous of her ward and the new interloper. Much like Mother Nature when something new emerges to throws off the balance she moves to bring things back to a natural equilibrium.

B

Festival Day 4

Prelude
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

Wednesday 4/9

The Other Boy
aka: Der andere Junge
Germany 2007, 91 min

The kid’s aren’t all right in this German look at the troubles of suburban teens. Paul and Robert have grown up together as their parents are close friends but as the boys aged they became very different people. Paul is tall, smart, confident and good looking and Robert… um… isn’t. Unbeknown st to the parents Robert is the target of Paul’s bullying. One day Paul goes too far with tragic results and his parents are forced to betray their own friendships in order to protect their son. Things get tense all around as the police close in and tragedy gives way to tragedy.

This is a slow and tense film that the write-up in the festival program likens to a combination of Clark’s Bully and Haneke’s Caché. Like the later film its approach too setting up tension comes from lingering shots and a sparse soundtrack though not quite as effective as Haneke’s mesmerizing film as the plot is a little predictable. Boy plays out like an episode of Law & Order: SVU with a European art house aesthetic… turns out this is not a bad thing though.

B+

Eye In the Sky
aka: Gun chung
Hong Kong (China) 2007, 90 min

I included this in my fest schedule because it was produced by Johnnie To, director of Exiled – best film of the 2007 festival and staring Tony Leung. Unfortunately not THAT Tony Leung, who knew? The Hong Kong Actors Guild needs to arbitrate this one stat.

This is a mentor/mentee story in the surveillance group within the Hong Kong police department, the… er… eyes in the sky if you will. The first scene of the film features “Piggy” (the new blood – everyone has an animal code name) boarding a trolley and observing as several suspicious looking men board and leave the train. One is her boss, Dog Head, and as we later find out this was her entrance exam. The other is the shadowy figure behind a team of jewelry store thieves who are actually pulling off a heist at the same time. This becomes her first case as the inevitable baptism by fire starts. This film is chock full of Yin-Yang: details of both the cop’s and the criminals surveillance methods, a scene during the exam is repeated for real later in the film and Piggy’s Sophie’s choice of sorts between work and life on 2 occasions are among them. The camera work is also evocative of the surveillance theme with a lot of dutch angles and shots from up above or far away. This is a solid procedural yarn and well worth the time.

B+

Mystery Film!
aka: The Wackness
USA 2008, 110 min

Well, I had initially planned on seeing Roman de gare which looked really good but upon logging into my email earlier in the day I saw a message that blew the lid off of what the mystery film was going to be (thanks PFS). So I changed plans and took up with this Sundance smash. I’m SOOOOOOOOO glad I did.

The Wackness is a coming of age – check that – to paraphrase Roger Ebert, this isn’t a coming of age film, this is a coming of age film’s wet dream of itself. Set in Manhattan circa ’94 the film uses some combination of soft focus, over exposure and digital filters to achieve an enticing nostalgic, dreamy look. This is the final summer before college for Luke Shapiro who is the ultimate outsider. He is from a family with financial troubles but goes to school with upper-class kids. He is the school pot dealer so everyone knows him but he’s friends with no one. With most of his customers jetting off to summer in wherever he’s left with his fantasy girl, Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby) who’s parents are in anything but marital bliss. It just so happens that her father Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley) is one of Luke’s best customers but as a psychologist he pays in sessions. As Kingsley’s marriage crumbles he latches onto Luke and they become friends and confidants as he tries to hide a growing relationship with Stephanie. The film is filled with colorful characters including Method Man as a Rastafarian drug king and Mary-Kate Olsen as a hippie who makes out with Kingsley in a phone booth (weird) who all add to the atmosphere

This is writer/director Jonathan Levine’s second feature but seems to be set to debut before his first (All the Boy’s Love Mandy Lane) which has been sitting in the can for 2 years now. He turns in a pitch perfect pop culture dumpster dive through 1994 and characters that have rightness and truth about their motivations and reactions, and lead actor Josh Peck offers up a substantial leap from his character on Nickelodeon.

My only issues with the film are the over use of Giuliani’s NYC clean up as a reference point and the cringworthy delivery of the titular line by Thirlby “Me, I see the dopeness. But you, you just see the wackness.” Other than that this was the best film of the festival and the best of the year so far.
A+

Festival Day 3

Prelude
Day 1
Day 2

Tuesday 4/8

California Dreamin'
aka: Nesfarsit
Romania 2007, 155 min

This is one of those things you rarely see, an epic Romanian culture clash comedy staring… Armand Assante? Set in 1999 during the war in the Balkans, a train with supply equipment and a US Marine detachment bound for Kosovo is held up in a rural Romanian village due to a local strongman who runs the rail station. Over 5 days that it takes for their papers to arrive, all the forces at work in the village erupt and things will never be the same. The mayor sees this as an opportunity to attract commerce and investment and decides to re celebrated the village anniversary that was held the previous month. The station manager’s daughter sees this as a way to escape her uninteresting surroundings so she gets a high school outcast to teach her English. The marines see a lot of village girls. The station manager sees a chance to get back at the Americans for not coming to his childhood rescue in WWII and the captain (Assante) sees red.

The film is a critique of US policy in Eastern Europe from WWII thru the end of the century from the lack of support for Soviet Block countries to NATO bombings in the former Yugoslavia. The final climax of the film serves as an echo of the Prague Spring of ’68. But there is also the mystical realism that is common is many films from the region that serve to ground the film in the fantastic characters and the strange events that are sometimes a part of life. The film’s director Cristian Nemescu was killed in a car crash during post production and this is the final edit he did before his passing. While a powerful tribute, there is some fat that could be cut from the 2.5 hr print and a lot of ADR work that needs to be done to make this a finished product.

B+

The Sperm
aka: Asujaak
Thailand 2007, 93 min

This is everything The Host should have been: a fun, campy, creature flick that actually holds your attention for the entire film. Our hero is a Thai 20 something in a band who has a huge crush on a pin up girl and dreams about her daily. When he finally meets her he blurts out something a little to forward… not realizing this is reality & he’s live of national TV. As he runs off red faced in a downpour he spies a poster of her in an alley and relieves his frustration. His little swimmers join the rain water and pass by some experimental lasers going haywire. The next thing you know they are airborne and impregnating the Bangkok’s women. The spawn are all horny kids with the same face who’s ultimate goal is to get off and send millions more flighted spermies off on a new adventure. There is a mad scientist with a hot daughter and her clan of inflatable ninjas who help our hero, his band and the pin-up girl defeat the JO juniors as well an a 50 foot version of himself that was born by a very old woman… and thus mutated.

The film never takes itself seriously and while the special FX leave much to be desired they fit the tone of this low budget piece perfectly. The contractions that are used are modified garbage (painted water bottle ray gun anyone?) but the characters are funny and you enjoy spending time with them. That’s really all you can ask for in the genre… love to see an MST3K take on this though.

B/B-

Festival Day 2

Prelude
Day 1

Monday 4/7

Blast of Silence
USA 1961, 77 min

Another subdivision of the film festival is screenings in conjunction with Noircon 2008. Three classical period films will be shown in addition to a recent animated update on the themes. The first of these I took in Monday was Blast of Silence. Note to the Fetsival: Please provide details in the program when a film will be shown on DVD instead of a print. The quality of projecting a DVD to the silver screen, even one from the Criterion Collection, is not near that of a film print.

The film itself, while coming after the classical period (released in ’61), shows many of the hallmarks of the genre without the self-awareness of neo-noir. Our lead, one of God’s lonely men, is a Cleveland hitman come to NYC for the holidays on a job. The big city in this film though is unlike that of previous efforts with the influence of the Beats. Cassavetes’ Shadow’s (released 2 years prior) has as much influence here as Chandler. The sneering, oppressive narration by a raspy, sight unseen, voice grounds the film in grit and beat poetry while the club and party scenes feature greasy men in black with bongos chanting and yearning over harsh times in the city. We watch as the hitman, “Baby Boy” Frankie Bono, played by writer/director Allen Baron stalks his kill and the repetition of certain key phrases by the narrator betray the workings of his nerves while the character remains cool on the outside. When he runs into an old flame and things go amiss with a particularly repugnant weapons supplier though Frankie’s work breaks down and he wants out of course this being noir his shot at redemption isn’t likely to end in a house with a white picket fence.

B+

Mister Foe
aka: Hallam Foe
Great Britain 2007, 95 min

The story of a young man’s struggles with the loss of a parent has won quite a few awards since its debut at the Berlin Film Festival in 2007. All deservedly so. Jamie “the only thing that saved Jumper” Bell is the leading British actor of his generation and here crafts a sublime performance as Hallam Foe, a young man who it trying to find someone to blame for his Mother’s death and a way to reconnect with her. His well-to-do family lives on an estate in Scotland yet he hides in a tree house that his architect father designed for him as a child. When his sister moves out, his step-mother (played by the always awful Claire Forlani) makes her move to get him off the property as well, further damaging his fragile psyche. He moves to Glasgow and resumes his favorite pastime… peeping. As he peeks and follows the denizens he runs into a woman with a striking resemblance to the deceased. He charms her into giving him a job at the hotel she works for and after work he bounds across the roof tops of the city to her skylight and peers at her from afar inside the hotel’s iconic clock tower. After a few drinks with coworkers on his 18th she takes him back to her place and they begin a disturbing love affair that grows to understanding of his condition and Foe looks like he’s overcoming his past. But when his parents seek him out again a few well placed daggers from the step-mother send him over the edge leading to a climax at the loch on the estate with badger skins and a lot of make-up.
Hallam Foe - Full Length Official Trailer

Complimenting Bell’s performance is Sophia Myles (Tristan + Isolde) who shines as the unsure of her self late 20 something who has her own issues with love and life. Ewen Bremner is unfortunately wasted in the story which is a shame as even his cameos are usually top notch. Director David Mackenzie (Young Adam) turns in a strong psycho-drama with charm and more than a little humor that should win continue to win over audiences throughout the world.

A

Young People F*cking
Canada 2007, 90 min

With a title like that how could I not add this to my fest schedule? And that is really all you get in this steamy, awkward, painful, funny Canadian comedy. The film features 5 sets of young people (Roommates, Couple, Exes, First Date, Friends) and takes them through 6 “stages” (prelude, foreplay, intercourse, interlude, climax, afterglow). These aren’t intertwining stories but intercut vignettes, each with a bit of set-up before the title card. The film also screams CBC in terms of comedic set up as well as aesthetics.

B-

Festival Day 1

Prelude

Unfortunately I was away during most of the first weekend of the 2008 Philadelphia Film Festival and missed out on quite a bit of viewing (fortunately I was at a bachelor party in New Orleans). So Sunday night I intended to catch 2 films after a take off to landing nap on the flight but given other logistical snags missed out on the first film. And now, with out further useless keystrokes… . (sorry) the start of 10 days of 2008 Philadelphia Film Festival reviews:

Sunday 4/6

Confession of Pain
aka: Seung Sing Hong Kong (China)/Japan 2007, 110 min

The fest is always heavy on the Asian crime genre. I like the Asian crime genre.

The first of 5 on my tentative schedule this year is Confession of Pain. Directed by the team behind Infernal Affairs, Andrew Lau (also helmed the unfortunately named Legend of the Fist Master) & Alan Mak this is a cop-gone-bad story that unlike their previous landmark film chooses style over substance.

Beginning on Christmas Eve 2003 the film opens on dramatic helicopter views of Hong Kong in all its seasonal neon glory and closes in on a small (but equally colorful) holiday party with lead actors Tony Leung (aka The Man) as Chief Hei and Takeshi Kaneshiro (Jin from House of Flying Daggers) as Detective Bong, musing over booze and marriage – the two sides of the plot. A few minutes later we find that this is not festive celebration but a sting operation to capture a brutal murderer and the helicopter shots return as the whole party of cops follow the killer’s cab through the city. After the take down Bong returns home to find his wife dead from her own hand. Flash forward to 2006 and Bong is now a PI, a drunk (are there any other kinds?) and in love with a prostitute while Hei has a new wife with a rich daddy. The daddy ends up dead and the wife wants Bong to help out on the investigation. The directors choose to show us the murder up front but the investigation details the cause with all the aplomb of Mr. Magoo. The lead inspector on the case (as Hei is a suspect) is a bumbling fool, there is a too obvious red-herring stalker and we have to sit and watch 90 minutes of a drunk piece together what we already know with plotting that is anything but tight.

The acting from the leads is solid and the film is stunningly shot – especially the reenactment of the crime – but this film commits too many sins to be recommended. The connective tissue between scenes seems to be ripped out at times and there is no suspense whatsoever which would be ok if we had a deep character study but that is non-existent as well. Combine that with a score that beats you over the head with DRAMA and this is one to pass on.

C

2008 Philadelphia Film Festival

I like anything with the word Festival attached. Here's what I'm planing for this year:

Your Festival Calendar
Day/Time Title Venue Neighborhood

Sun April 6 7:00 PM The Voyeurs Ritz Five Old City
Sun April 6 9:30 PM Confession of Pain Prince Music Theater Center City

Mon April 7 5:00 PM Blast of Silence The Bridge: Cinema DeLux University City
Mon April 7 7:30 PM Mister Foe Prince Music Theater Center City
Mon April 7 9:30 PM Young People Fucking International House University City

Tue April 8 6:00 PM California Dreamin' Prince Music Theater Center City
Tue April 8 9:30 PM The Sperm The Bridge: Cinema DeLux University City

Wed April 9 5:00 PM The Other Boy Ritz Five Old City
Wed April 9 7:15 PM Eye in the Sky Ritz Five Old City
Wed April 9 9:30 PM Roman de gare Ritz Five Old City

Thu April 10 5:00 PM The End International House University City
Thu April 10 7:15 PM Milk in The Land, Ballad of An American Drink Ritz East Theater 2 Old City
Thu April 10 9:30 PM Pistoleros Ritz East Theater 2 Old City

Fri April 11 4:45 PM The Year of the Nail Ritz Five Old City
Fri April 11 7:45 PM Deficit Ritz East Theater 1 Old City
Fri April 11 9:30 PM Far North Ritz Five Old City

Sat April 12 12:15 PM Violent Saturday The Bridge: Cinema DeLux University City
Sat April 12 2:30 PM Son of Rambow The Bridge: Cinema DeLux University City
Sat April 12 5:15 PM Soo The Bridge: Cinema DeLux University City
Sat April 12 7:30 PM Nothing to Lose Ritz East Theater 1 Old City
Sat April 12 10:00 PM Film Noir Ritz East Theater 1 Old City

Sun April 13 12:15 PM The Mugger The Bridge: Cinema DeLux University City
Sun April 13 2:30 PM Summer Scars Prince Music Theater Center City
Sun April 13 5:00 PM You, the Living Ritz Five Old City
Sun April 13 7:15 PM Triangle Ritz East Theater 1 Old City
Sun April 13 9:30 PM Storm Ritz East Theater 1 Old City

Mon April 14 4:45 PM Blood Brothers Ritz East Theater 1 Old City
-TBA Festival Favorite-
Mon April 14 9:30 PM A Song of Good Ritz East Theater 2 Old City

Tue April 15:
3x Festival Favorite Or Patti Smith Documentary.

OK, its an overly ambitious dream slate. I know I'll never get to all of these but if I see 25 of the 32 I can get to I'll be happy.

Reviews to come.

Telluride Film Festival 2007: Quick Shots

A+
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly [A visually stunning and emotionally moving piece of filmmaking]
I’m Not There [Poetic and experimental with a Stunning turn from Blanchette]

A
The Band’s Visit [Pitch perfect direction in this fish out of water comedy]
Into the Wild [An vibrant & romantic joy to watch with a stunning climax]
Spider (Short) [Its on the web - watch it now, thank us later]

A-
The Counterfeiters [The whole package]
Encounters at the End of the World [Fun and irreverent doc about the eccentric people, animals and landscapes that inhabit the great white south]
Salim Baba (Short) [Didn't mention this in the write up but it was a very remarkable short doc - Ralph did mention it though]
Wind Man [Magical realism, colorful characters, and contrasts galore - may not be your cuppa but i very much enjoyed it]

B+
Jar City [Even the most modern of crimes can be tackled by good old school detective work but the pacing may put some off]
Juno [Should be an indie crossover hit, a laugh riot with a very solid story]
The Pearce Sisters (Short) [Macabre but in a humorous way]
Persepolis [An astounding story hindered somewhat by the uninteresting animation]

B
Fission (Short) [Little story but great animation]
My Enemy’s Enemy [Straight forward doc about using bad people to fight those who may be worse]

B-
Brick Lane [Good but VERY familiar story, the 9/11 scenes elevate it above mediocrity]
Help! [Felt stale and dated, but hey We Can Work It Out]
L’Amerique Lunaire (short) [60's western landscapes over a solid score and a eco-story]

C-
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days [What was Cannes thinking?, tight for 45 minutes the it all falls apart]
Margot at the Wedding [Baumbach's latest is disappointing but Black is once again great]

D+
Cargo 200 [Torture to watch but competent filmmaking]
A Journey with Peter Sellars [A boring doc, even if you like lavish opera]

D
Secret Sunshine [Truly painfully terrible melodrama]

Telluride Film Festival 2007: Chapter 4

Sometimes Mick Jagger Is Wrong

Monday was easily the cleanest day for my program. A slew of circles and Xs paraded about the films on the list for Sat & Sun due to turn downs and timing problems. But Monday has but 1 X as I had previously seen my initial choice for the morning. The rest of the day’s schedule turned out perfectly. Everything I still wanted to see was playing had gotten carried over and none of them were playing opposite each other. So at the relatively reasonable time of 9:15 I was at my first film of the morning with R & V.

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Persepolis is based on an autobio-graphic novel written by Marjane Satrapi. It details her life growing up in an upper-class Iranian family and having her world shattered by the revolution in 1979. Being an outspoken girl she bristles under the laws of the Islamic regime and her parents send her to Europe to save her. Culture shock ensues and she grows up pretty quick. She returns to Iran but as the old saying goes, “you can never go home again.” The country has gotten even more conservative and she has grown more distant from her parents. She attends university but again bristles over the endemic masochism and close calls with the law. She once again leaves her country and family to return to Europe older and wiser. The story itself is very intriguing. The modern cosmopolitan family depicted in the pre revolutionary era was startlingly familiar, like a tale of the Kennedy clan. The animation is stark, simple and not really complimentary to the story which bursts with life, but this is definitely a must see for this life that has been lived.

Next up is food, good food. I stopped by the gondola to pick up a pass to my next film up at the Chuck Jones and headed to the town park for the Labor Day picnic. Part of the pass fee included this Monday lunch with Omaha Steaks, Haag & Daas sundae stations, and other assorted “sustenance.” Jana, Ian and I took over a piece of grass in the sun and ate and chatted for a bit before I had to run off early to take the gondola ride to see The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I met up with Ralph and Vanessa again in the theater and we settled into what was for me the best film of the festival.

The gripping story of M. Bauby, the former editor of ELLE France who suffered a stroke at a high point in his life paralyzing most of his body, the film is shot mostly in first person but after the first few minutes you never really notice it. Janusz Kaminski lenses this visually stunning film in the first non-Spielberg film I’ve seen from him since Jerry Maguire. The first person shots float beautifully and bring you into the world Bauby must be experiencing. While convalescing he learns to communicate by blinking his remaining good eye while the nurse cycles through the alphabet to the letter he wished to use. Bauby then write a memoir this way and that is what the script for this film is based on. He also does not glorify himself in anyway. Through flashbacks we learn that he was not the nicest person before the stroke and he doesn’t change even after at one point he allows his ex-wife to interpret a phone call from his lover that caused the end of their marriage. This is a very powerful film and I can’t believe anyone will turn in a better performance this year than Mathieu Amalric as Bauby – though I doubt the academy will award him a trophy.

Next, I finally was able to check out Margot at the Wedding, the third film from writer/director Noah Baumbach, a film that is decidedly less charming than his first 2 efforts. The film about a New York writer returning to her childhood home for the wedding of her estranged sister is laden with big actors. Nicole Kidman plays Margot the writer, Jennifer Jason Leigh is her sister who is engaged to Jack Black. Black is the surprising highlight of this film as his performance goes well beyond what we’re used to seeing from him. Kidman and Leigh however are uninteresting and at times unwatchable in their morose tone and passive aggressive attitude. Baumbach’s head is firmly up his ass on this one as the film oozes self importance and produces nothing of insight or, as was the case in his previous films, charm. He needs to stop writing about wealthy writers and their family problems and take on something new.

I followed this with a film I liked even less – 2007’s Palm D’or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. The film is set in the late 80’s in Romania just before the end of communist rule. A young co-ed goes with her friend to get a back room abortion but she wasn’t aware of what the cost was. Not sure what the jury at Cannes was thinking but this couldn’t have been the best film at the festival. The build-up to the actual operation is extremely tense – and it takes only the first 30 minutes of the film. It is followed by nothing at all. There is a 20 minute scene at a dinner table where the subject was Easter eggs. They talked about Easter eggs for 20 minutes! I find nothing interesting about this mundanity and similarities to Day Night, Day Night were also excruciating. It’s a whole lot of footage with out any plot or motive – but shot in a very Cannes winning way. Oh and there’s a completely unnecessary shock scene right in the middle that makes the film even less valuable.

Finally it was time for the last film of the festival, and finally I was able to check out Into the Wild (I’ve only mentioned it 10 times or so without ever seeing it). I said Diving Bell was the best film of the festival, but this one was my favorite. Based on the non-fiction book of the same name this is the story of one Christopher McCandless who abandons his upper-class suburban life assumes the name Alexander Supertramp and hitchhikes his way across the USA in search of experience and communion with nature. Finally making his way to the foothills of a mountain range in Alaska and spends several months living off the land with nothing but a sack of rice and a shotgun. Alex is played by Emile Hirsch in his finest role to date. Hirsh creates a brash, confident, mischievous, affable yet troubled young man who carries the film on his back and makes it look effortless. Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys costar Jenna Malone plays his sister, William Hurt his father and Marcia Gay Harden his mother. Vince Vaughn, Catherine Keener, Kristen Stewart and Hal Hollbrook round out the cast as people Alex meets and touches on his travels. I haven’t seen a film this alive in a while and it is extremely infectious. Nightline recently did a story on people who have seen the film or read the book and despite the cautionary tone they feel the need to make the same pilgrimage north to an abandoned 1920’s era public transport bus that was Alex’s home for the summer of 1993, so many in fact that the park service is thinking of moving that bus. Alex boils over with hobo ideology and anger over the facts of his parents’ marriage and his father’s former life. These details are fleshed out in the many narrative devices in the film including latter writing by Alex, diary entries from his sister and voice over from Alex himself. But I never found these exposition points burdensome in fact they are essential to the telling of this story in which Alex keeps his motivations from everyone he meets. One gets the sense though that his family issues are only part of it and that the need for adolescent and post-adolescent males to find themselves in this perfectly regimented society and break with norms to find out what else it out there is also a huge factor. The stunning climax of the film left many speechless and other with watery eyes and it was also the perfect way to end the festival for me.

I have since read the book and while also very good it is a whole different animal than the film. It tries to detail the life and history of McCandless and his family to provide motive and understand the person and it also tries to place him in a lineage of outdoor eccentrics who have over the years shunned society to live off the land and test themselves against something greater. I would say to watch the film first and absorb the emotional punch of it before getting into the details of the book – but definitely pick up the book as well because it answers many questions you may have after watching the film.

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So finally after a weekend cooped inside the makeshift (boutiquely so) theaters of Telluride and Mountain Village and a day where I was finally able to see everything I wanted, we all gathered for the first time since Friday morning’s breakfast to have a drink and talk about everything. I said that I was planning on waking up early the next morning to take some pictures of the beautiful landscape before setting off on the 3 hr drive north to Grand Junction (McCandless actually spent some time here I found out in the book) for my noon flight but then said I knew that would never happen and I would be rushing because I’d wake up late. So I left at 8:45 just in time to get stuck in 45 minutes of traffic just getting down Telluride’s main access road as they were expanding it. I flew back over the rolling Rockies noting Ralph Lauren’s “Double RL” ranch and found that the Pontiac G6 is governed at 106. I did however make it with 15 minutes to spare – luckily the plane was late…good ol’ US Air. And now the recap is done. I will do a graded highlight post though.

Thank You to Jana for the invitation and the hospitality and the directions on how to do the festival right. And thanks to Ian, Ralph & Vanessa for being there as well...couldn't have done it without ya (well I could've but it wouldn't have been as much fun or cheap )

Telluride Film Festival 2007: Chapter 3

Honestly, I Don't Snore

The plan for the next day was to immerse myself in the biggest named film of the festival Into the Wild. There was a screening at the Chuck Jones early in the morning followed by a Q&A and later in the day was a discussion on the film and the novel and story and whatever other condescending questions discussion moderator Werner Herzog wished to discuss. Given its marquee status though, the Chuck was all sold out. We were tagging along with a couple people on the Gondola up when one got a phone call from a friend who had gotten in line and hour earlier and said that he was going to be turned away. So we got to the Mountain Village and hoped right on the down going gondola.

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The only viable option (viable = timely and interesting) was My Enemy’s Enemy. This is a doc by Kevin MacDonald who previously directed acclaimed and controversial doc Touching the Void and my #1 film of ’06 The Last King of Scotland. The film tells the story of Klaus Barbie, noted Nazi was criminal and famed “Butcher of Lyon,” who weeded out dozens of members of the French Resistance, detailing both his rise to power in the within the fascist regime but focuses more on his post war exploits. Using found footage, talking heads, first hand accounts and a document trail a mile long the doc shows how Barbie became a CIA informant and later schooled the then fledgling agency on the arts of torture and sedition in order to combat the Soviet threat. He was called as a witness in a trial of Vichy treasonists despite his place in French history he was never tried himself due to US pressure. When the French eventually did demand his arrest he escaped to South America with the help of a Vatican group who smuggled Christian Nazi war criminals out of Europe. From there he became a power broker in Bolivia with a close knit cabal who helped the CIA to overthrow the socialist but democratically elected government and train the new Military regime in his form of expertise. The film paints a picture of the Cold War era in which anyone who was your enemy’s enemy was indeed your friend. It shows how Barbie was indeed a monster and how he could sometimes be an affable guy and how he was used by our government to further their ends and because of his past crimes was easily deniable. The parallels to our current extended war are unmistakable. Pakistani President Musharaf is definitely our enemy’s enemy and even more eerie is the connection (not made in the film) that many of the torture tactics being used in Gitmo and other less publicized prisons are just hands me down techniques from the Nazi era.

MacDonald was on had for a Q&A after the film and talked about his desire to make a small, back to basics, anti-style documentary. He was actually editing the film on his laptop the previous year when he brought Last King to Telluride. Unlike Touching the Void which was praised and scorned for its reenactment of almost the entire episode, this film was totally undramatized.

Following the film I went to the poster signing of the official 34th Festival poster – the artist typically paints in this 40’s 1-sheet style and did the poster in that way. Deciding that since I had neither seen the film nor read the book I was going to skip the Into the Wild discussion and use the time that so many were there to add in another film to replace the one I missed the day before. So I went down to the Masons Hall Cinema (a theater set up in a room of a Masonic hall) to catch Wind Man. To my surprise Ralph and Vanessa were in line already and I hadn’t had a chance to see something with them yet.

Wind Man was described as “magical realism” in the program guide. I had seen a film at the Philadelphia Film Festival earlier this year with the same label and was very much bored by the proceedings so I was a little wary of this film. All that changed seconds into the film. The setting is drab; a small village in Kazakhstan (jagshemash) at the start of the post-Soviet era, but this just serves to contrast the colorful characters that inhabit the village. It opens on a grim reaper like figure wandering through the scrub and desert of central Asia. A young boy stumbles upon him and lifts up his hood to have a look and promptly runs screaming back to his village. Later that night the child becomes deathly ill…and a decrepit old angel falls from the sky into the boy’s family’s barn. The child is healed but the demon still roams and the townspeople are left to figure out what to do with this angel and how to stop the demon. The film is pretty visually sedate except during the lightning storm that brings the angel when the director conjures up a most ferocious thunderstorm with incredible sound to boot. The film features plenty of mysticism from the Islam of the people to the pre-Muslim myths that talk about the death demon to the Christian myths of angels. All of this took place in an era when Soviet suppression on these kinds of ideas had finally ended – though the other traditions provided their own brand of suppression…and suppress they do. The father sees his barn burned down by people trying to kill the angel and is tossed in jail for it. He eventually is forced to sell the thing but gets nothing due to its condition. Meanwhile more tragedy happens at home which is both caused and cured by this enigmatic angel. The cast plays these quirky townsfolk perfectly and in the end life just goes on – as is to be expected.

There was a Q&A after the film but I couldn’t stay as I was trying to run the length of the town to make it to yet another screening of Into the Wild. Of course this was not to be. So instead I went next door to catch the Le Pierre to catch the only film that would be out in time for the next film on my schedule. I probably should have just taken a nap. The film was A Journey with Peter Sellars. It’s a documentary about the titular man who is a dramatic prodigy. He was working at a puppet theater in Pittsburgh as a kid, modernizing Shakespeare at Harvard, ran the National Theater Company in DC and now teaches at UCLA and creates several different productions a year. The largest part of the film is watching extended clips of these productions. I fell a sleep at one point and was nudged to stop snoring…must’ve been the angle I was sitting at as I don’t snore.

After the film blessedly ended I got out ASAP to get in line for The Band’s Visit. Easily the best film of the day, this subtle, fish-out-of-water comedy was a riot. The fish are a band Alexandrian of police men (band is literal) who are sent to play at the opening of a new Egyptian cultural center in Israel. The headstrong captain gets them all lost and they end up at a bus stop a small, nearly deserted town in an arid corner of Israel in their bright blue concert uniforms. The out of water is this town and its people who take the band in and provide places for them to stay for the night. The framing of this film was impeccable. Very similar to Wes Anderson, the story is told in the straight on shots and the action of the film takes place all in the frames – even when it starts outside of them. There were very few insert shots or camera moves. The timing on the jokes was pitch perfect both on the part of the characters and on the part of the filmmaker. The story skirts a fine line between comedy and sadness, often on both sides of the fence at the same time. This is just one aspect of the numerous contrasts that make this film up. The choice that is made to spend the film away from the “canned” Arab/Israeli conflict allows the audience to see the characters to interact as people and believe their interactions to be more real. In the Q&A after the film the Israeli writer and director said they were very influenced by Arab/Egyptian films and actors and kids and that is actually voiced by the characters on screen and shows that the 2 sides aren’t as monolithic on a cultural level as we may think despite the political situation.

The final film of the night was the first I was able to see with Jana (well she was at Juno but I didn’t see her at all). The buzz for The Counterfeiters was huge by Sunday night – despite the fact that no one I had talked to had seen it. It was sold out Friday night and Ralph & Vanessa got turned away and the same happened to all 3 of us on Saturday night. But despite the fact that it was playing at one of the smaller theaters I decided to see if I could get in. I get there and Jana is already in line – yeah! Unfortunately we were later informed that it was the wrong line but we got in anyway – likely due to the rain and the fact that Margot at the Wedding, another perennial sell-out was once again playing at the same time.

The Counterfeiters tells the tale of the Nazi attempt to destroy Britain’s economy during WWII by flooding the country with fake pound notes. To this end they used the forced labor of a large group of Jews in a concentration camp. Due to the importance of this project this group was not only kept separate from the rest of the camp, they were treated with a much kinder hand than those outside their walls. Naturally this causes psychological strain on these trained craftsmen. The leader of the group, a world renown forger who was arrested whist working on this very same project, is torn between his need to accomplish the task, his own survival and that of his group of comrades. The voice of dissent in their band is a communist who is trying to sabotage the project so that they can help win the war against the Third Reich. There is never a dull moment in this film. The story and editing are solid and briskly paced and the acting is top notch. There are moments that evoke Schindler’s List though the film never veers to the emotionally manipulative level of that film. This film was actually opened in Prague a month later as I saw poster’s for it’s opening in a theater up the street from my hotel.

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Frankly I can’t remember what happened that night anymore. I believe there was a good bit of planning as most of the next day was TBAs and so we poured over the page announcing what they would be and witch ones were worth seeing. I also think we were trying to come up with the themes of the festival and WWII & life under totalitarian regimes seemed to be the big ones so far. In fact the doc at the begining of the day mentions the episode of the war that was dramatized in the final film of the day...and the trial that closed out that doc was covered in another doc at the festival about Barbie's lawer.

In the next chapter we get what we want.

Telluride Film Festival 2007: Chapter 2

Running, Jumping, Standing Still

I don’t get up this early for work but I sacrificed this holiday weekend in the name of great Film (well a few great films and frankly a few duds). The atmosphere gelled the previous night where in we would mostly all wait up for each other back at the house in order to discuss the days views and make recommendations and cautions and see what the TBAs for the next day might be and plan a schedule – all for only about 30 min before we passed out. So the big thing the Friday night was that one of the 4 TBAs on Saturday would be filled with Juno – the second film from Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking) I considered this a must see as did several others so the reshuffling and the dread at how much time to make it up to the Chuck Jones theater - a 15 minute gondola ride up and down a mountain - from the Palm theater – in the town highschool and the furthest from the gondola base. Luckily, for this theater only you get W2 (Wabbit Weservations – an ode to the creator of Bugs Bunny) either 90 minutes before the start of the film in Telluride or 5 hrs before the start of the film up in the next town of Mountain Village where the theater is actually located. Ralph and Vanessa were seeing 2 films up there early in the morning but not that one. So they agreed to snag me a W2 so I could get into the screening.

Another interesting thing is that each pass comes with 40 small boxes on either side of the badge, two of which are colored green. This means you have a guaranteed seat in the Sheridan Opera House – a small but high profile theater that provided the start of the festival 34 years ago – for those two films. Each of these boxes is punched when you see a film so that you don’t go to the same film twice. By day 3 you could start playing badge poker – my 3 in a row beats your two pair.

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My first film of the day was my first green spot. So I didn’t have to jump out of bead as early is I may have had otherwise (good thing with no Starbucks in town). I made my way down to the SOH and waited in the usual line for Secret Sunshine… as my badge was being punched I was told that there was another line for the greenies and that I could’ve been in much earlier and gotten a better seat than I had. Sign anyone?

A Korean film, Sunshine involved a widow who moves back to her husband’s small village from Seoul. The film had a plot twist every 30 min or so that sends it off in a new direction. This is interesting in theory but it becomes apparent after the first twist that they just keep going down hill – tragedy after tragedy, from a kidnapping to being born again and she just can’t seem to deal with anything…and screams and cries a lot. If things were handle differently this might be a very different review but it seemed very Korean TV in execution. The melodrama was allowed to go unchecked and there were extended scenes of singing and crying at prayer services. This does not make for riveting viewing. Perhaps it’s just a case of cultural viewing habits but I didn’t find anyone recommending this film and at 2.25 hrs it becomes an endurance test for even the most masochistic of filmgoers. (That’s 2 films with born again themes).

Flick 2 was the new Werner Hetzog documentary Encounters at the End of the World. My only previous experience with Herzog was Grizzly Man so I was not expecting this highly comical look at the people who choose to reside in Antarctica. Herzog narrates this blend of travel doc, scientific inquiry, anthropological examination, historical context piece and nature film in a dead pan manner that does little to belie the mocking condescension he seems to have for these colorful characters and creatures that live at the bottom of the world. He starts by giving the circumstances for the trip to the Antarctic (much like I did in an earlier post on the weekend!) that involved something about a monkey riding on a horse out in the desert…with animation. He proceeds to detail his disgust at the base camp/city that serves as the residence for most of the continents inhabitants and then interviews many of them occasionally asking pointed questions or providing commentary that undercut their scientific beliefs or play up their personal foibles. He spends some time with demented penguins watching one wander off into the deepest wastes to die. However one of his main inspirations for the trip was footage shot by the man who scored Grizzly Man. When he goes to the same area to experience some of this it is a truly remarkable sight. Some of the footage he used for a sci-fi film he had made previously. Even more surprising were the sounds that carry under the arctic ice shelf from the creatures that live down there – as Herzog said it sounded more like a Pink Floyd album than any natural sound you’ve ever heard. Equal parts fascinating and entertaining I’d highly recommend this doc.

Now with 25 minutes to spare and a 15 minute gondola ride ahead of us Ian and I started to run all the way from the Palm to the gondola… well I ran a bit of the time. Ian being 5 years younger and in much better shape apparently sprinted the ½ mile or so. Fortunately, I made it to the top, ran by Ralph and grabbed the W2 he had been holding (thank you) and got there just in time to be the last pass holder let into the theater. Of course I had to sit in row 1 but since those seats were angled backward and wend almost flat viewing the film wasn’t all that bad.

The director and writer of Juno were there to introduce their film. Jason Reitman said that he finished the final cut 3 days ago, screened it and it was put on a plane to telluride so this is the first time in front of an audience. Obviously the most mainstream film of the weekend this is a comedy about a high school girl (Ellen Page) who is knocked up by her longtime friend (Michael Cera – yes that kinda makes it funny to begin with). After running from the Planned Parenthood clinic terrified by the people she decided to give the child up for adoption. The chosen parents are played by a very proper and very eager to give of her motherly love Jennifer Garner and an indifferent and pan-laden Jason Bateman. Though this may sound mawkish, the film is far from it. Page delivers the acerbic wit penned by writer Diablo Cody (yes that is a pseudonym and yes she was a stripper) without any girly pretensions. I would call this film New Quirk (no I have no what the old version would be…Tina Fey?), from the opening credits that dissolve into animation from the cold open to the indie rock to the cute seasonal inter-titles the artifice of the film has a peculiar personality all on its own. I’m sure this will be a platforming indie hit in much the same way Reitman’s first film was.

From there everything went down hill. Literally at first! I went down the mountain on the gondola to get inline for Margot at the Wedding that had a Q&A with writer/director Noah Baumbach and low and behold the few people behind me were Reitman, Cody and their entourage. Those of us around asked a few questions and Reitman was a very congenial person, Cody was on the phone for most of the wait. They were ecstatic with the very positive reaction and were calling some other industry people to deliver good news. But the topic quickly turned to the fact that despite showing up more than an hour before the start of the film and being 110 or so people from the door of a 200 seat theater we were warned that we may not get in. There are certain levels of pass holders – Festival Passes are the standard all inclusive pass that gives you admission to all films and 2 dinners. Above those are Partron Passes which include priority seating then Sponsor Passes with even more priority and Show Ring passes for the ultra supporters (think there may have been another level I missed). But since they were all well above the rest of us (including the filmmakers) the line was cut around 95 and we were all turned away. At one point I said I would tackle the next patron who walked by…then that patron happened to be Laura Linney. As she gets applause in the middle of the street in town I thought that would be a bad idea. So I walked over to try and get into The Counterfeiters which was also turning people away the night before, including Ralph & Vanessa. Naturally the line for this is massive and even in a 500 seat theater I again get turned away. So I headed back to the condo pass in hand as all showings for that time block had started.

After kicking there a bit and chatting with Ralph and Ian at different times on how to rearrange my schedule to accommodate those that I had missed. I had rightly assumed that the massive turnaways would be added to the TBAs the next two days. Deciding to hit up the one film I was guaranteed to see I made my way to the small park in the center of town for the free open air showing of The Beatles in HELP! I’d never seen this and was a little taken aback by the sheer absurdity of the whole thing. Obviously influential on Austin Powers this spy spoof and Beatles spoof was actually too ridiculous to really like. Hmmm… maybe you have to know more about the life and times of the Beatles to really appreciate it. In order to get a W2 for my last show of the day (a paltry 5 instead of the desired 6), I left a little early when the 90 minute window opened and walked back for the close as the 2 locations were 2 blocks apart. It was so plotless I didn’t think I missed much.

I returned to the Chuck Jones for Saturdays final screening, Brick Lane, based on Ralph’s recommendation. The plot felt very well worn to me. A Bangladeshi girl is sent to England in an arranged marriage to an overweight, stubborn and chauvinistic older man. She feels trapped longing for her carefree life with her sister back home and starts a flirtatious relationship with a strapping young rogue which blossoms into more. Meanwhile their daughters can’t stand their father’s views and his inability to adapt to the English way of life. If you have seen East Is East, Bend It Beckham, (I was told) The Namesake or any number of Subcontinental woman cum UK wife films in the last few year you know the plot and the themes of culture clash, generation gap, unfaithful woman with marriage problems very well. The one new aspect of this film is that right in the middle 9/11 happens. I read that in the description and was still totally caught off guard to and moved at the scene when everyone runs to a TV to see what is going on. This event turns the plot and the rogue becomes more militant while it’s the father that pragmatically lectures the youth on their history and that their new found unity is unlikely to last. The film is superbly acted and directed well, but there is a twinge too much melodrama for me.

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The ride back down the mountain in the gondola was one of my favorite moments of the weekend. It was 1am and I was the only person on my gondola in the pitch black of ten thousand feet up in the Rockies…and the gondola stopped running. It wasn’t unexpected as it was doing this earlier nor was it long 1-2 minutes but it felt like much longer. There was a surprising lack of wind and it was both thrilling and a little scary. The stars look amazing from that height and with so little light pollution tingeing the pitch it was a dazzling sight. Soon the ride belts started up again and the silence was interrupted at intervals by the Doppler effect of the towers.

On the walk back to the condo I overheard some interesting and like HELP! absurdist conversational snippets I assumed were related to the days viewing but I didn’t know which films or the context of the larger conversation – things are often funnier that way. The first at the base of the gondola someone said, “But it wasn’t a Deus Ex Machina. It was, like a Nothing Ex Machina.” Further up the street was heard, “I’m not an American anti-Semite, I’m an Israeli anti-Semite.” I was silently bewildered and amused by these new pieces of knowledge but decided to continue my traipsing through the night instead of perusing a further inquiry. Upon returning to the condo no one was stirring so I turned a light on and realized Jana was already down for the count upstairs and no one else was yet back. So I turned the lights back off and I hopped on the computer for a bit (there is wifi everywhere) from bed. There were some brief discussions when Ian and Ralph made it back – mostly concerning the new TBAs and the Juno adventure – but as we were all pretty sleepy and most also had an early call time for our respective choices we retired rather swiftly.

In the next chapter we catch a few zzz's.

Telluride Film Festival 2007: Chapter 1

Best Laid Plans

After a night’s sleep in the altitude it was tour and breakfast time. Jana led us on a stroll of the picaresque former mining town and from Smuggler Road to Brigadoon, the festival’s central tent, pointing out the venues and other places of interest. We walked through the town park (the plaque at the front says that this was the former working class area of the town in mining times – I found it funny that they made the ghetto a huge park with skate ramps.) We had breakfast at a nice little kitchen and collected the swag that was due us as a festival goers (3 cds that I have yet to listen to, a copy of Variety, coupons for Omaha Steaks, gum, mints, spice packets, info on whatever) and waited for high noon when the official program and schedule was released. We tried sitting on a bench/wall thing just outside the tent but that became difficult and it was right in the sun. We decided to go to the park – though Jana meant a different (and closer) park than the large one at the end of town. Oh well. So we had our schedules complete and got back together to discuss. I had an ambitious slate of 18 films, a discussion, and a poster signing set for the weekend – some of these I actually got to. Upon comparison Jana was nuts…but I will let her explain her opening night feat.

Almost forgot to mention that in there somewhere we strolled through the open air market and were completely enamored with a booth called Telluride Truffles. This woman makes what I can only call a ganache made from blends of chocolate and liquor. Some of the flavors were stunningly good: White Chocolate + Meyer’s Rum, Dark Chocolate + Chambord. Others were interesting but not in an awful way: Dark Chocolate + Jack Daniels, Dark Chocolate + Tequila…with rock salt. These are available in jars of as the fillings in said truffles. And of course the pieces of chocolate are shaped like mountain peaks with snow caps or ski trails…sweet…literally.

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I slated 3 for Friday night and made all of them easily – lulling me into a false sense of security. Ian and & both selected to start with Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, so I had a chance to ask him more about the festival whilst waiting in line.

The program description really does it justice as it is “like nothing else you’ve ever seen”. Haynes takes the biopic and shakes off the cobwebs while also infusing it with an experimental auteur’s singular vision. The title can be taken literally – it is a film about Dylan in which Dylan is not. Instead he is played both as person and persona by a series of avatars which represent the different periods of his life. Totally non-linear, the bits jump around like firecrackers while the film itself maintains a consistent emotional arc. A young boy named Marcus Carl Franklin is a find in his first film roll as the early Dylan’s Woody Guthrie persona. In his story he travels round the country on the rails as a vagabond singing about the working man and living off the kindness of strangers. He also sings a few tracks of his own and they sound great. Other pieces of the life and times of Bob Dylan include Heath Ledger as film star and estranged husband who is charged with handling the emotional relationship issues and does amicably but doesn’t stand out. Christian Bale plays the early folk Dylan and the later born again Dylan and is one of the stronger avatars. Ben Whishaw (who has also played Keith Richards and most recently stared as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in Perfume) as Arthur Rimbaud who always appeared in a static shot talking to camera in front of a white background – this and Blanchtte’s bits were mostly in black and white while the other segments are in color. Which brings me to Cate, wow, one of the best performances of the festival. You even forget that it is a woman playing a man and that she is 15 years older than the Dylan she is playing. It’s the attitude that makes this performance. She takes over from the infamous Newport Jazz & Folk Festival gig through Dylan’s tour of England as documented in D.A. Pennebacker’s Don’t Look Back. Granted this is the showiest portion of the story but she is simply electric in her time on screen. Finally if Richard Gere in the segment I found the most confusing – he plays the Billy the Kid of legend who was left to live by Pat Garrett and is just trying to live in solitude in what amounts to a land of circus folk. If you have seen what Haynes did with Velvet Goldmine and the story of Iggy Pop and David Bowie you can get a sense of what is happening here, even so, this is on a whole other level.

Slideshow of actors as Dylan

This was easily the most polarizing film of the festival and thus the most talked about. It seemed that people who did know more about Dylan were less into the film than I and others who knew very little of his life were. Odd that.

Unfortunately I followed this up with my least favorite film of the Festival. Cargo 200 is a Russian film set in 1984 the period before Glasnost and one of the darkest times for the Soviet people. It attempts to cinematically reproduce the decay of the empire and show the systemic corruption through the story of a Police Captain who moonlights as a vodka bootlegger and kidnaps a girl who he calls his wife, keeping her chained to a bed in the block he shares with his mother. What he does to her is depraved and shocking and the ignorance the mother shows not only to the girl but later to the death of her son is evidence of a crumbling soulless state. There are debates between a state Atheist teacher and another poor vodka bootlegger about this very subject – the fact that no god = no soul. Frankly I get what the film was saying and I still hated watching it. It was like watching death, drug out. There was a short before this film though that I really liked. The Pearce Sisters is a cartoon from the same studio and producers that created the Wallace & Gromit series. It is also depraved – but comedic-ly so and such was an amusing look at the live of two weathered and companionship-starved spinsters who live on an Island off the coast of Scotland and how they treat the occasion shipwrecked man who stumbles upon their stretch of the world.

The late film of the first night was the Icelandic thriller Jar City. The drab atmosphere really sets off this old school thriller with a futurist bent. With the help of a newly created private DNA database (based on an actual company in Iceland) a hardened detective with personal problems of his own tracks down a series of events spanning 30 years to solve the case… and there’s a young roguish sidekick to boot!! If you have seen Red Road (David I think you’re the only one) this film seems to be in a very similar vein minus the full frontal male nudity. Its deliberate, suspenseful and totally engrossing.

Preceding this film was a short that continued to get raves the whole weekend and a producer who was in attendance was claimed to have demanded the info on the director right away in order to sign him onto some project. It was called Spider and you can actually see it here.
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So finally we all made it back to homestead and I found out that my Saturday schedule would already need to be changed to accommodate a surprise sneak. This was a sign of things to come as the hours of though put into the original schedule were disrupted time and time again. Good thing I’m cool under pressure.

In the next chapter we move...occasionally

Telluride Film Festival 2007: Prologue

The Road to the Rockies

So Jana (a net friend met through the EZ1 Movie Games) had sent me some fest materials a few years ago in hopes of enticing me to come out to this, being the avid festivalgoer I am. Low and behold a few years later the opportunity to head up to the mountains and ignore this very scenic experience to watch movies for 4 days presents itself and not only would Jana be there with Ian (her son) in tow but Ralph (another netizen of the EZ boards) and his wife were going as well! (David - a third - was thinking of coming but circumstances didn’t permit, I feel for you as this was a great time.)

So of course there was some fun in getting there. This remote mountain village has seasonal service to its airport which is sketchy at the best of times and this isn’t even the right season. In addition I was limited to 3 airports in a 3 hr radius as I was using frequent flier miles and USAir only flies to these destinations. I settled on Grand Junction, CO which googles out to just under a 3 hrs drive. Flight 1 to Phoenix was fine but things got interesting on flight 2.

The gate person comes on and says that we will be delayed because there is a mechanical problem…never a good sign. So we start to board and I am last in line so I can snag an open row if there happens to be any. But when I get down the gangway and onto the tarmac to put my bag in the planeside check (it was a small turboprop) I was told that there was no room and that I’d have to take it aboard with me – even though there is no way for it to fit in the overhead bins. Luckily there are several open seats so stuff it in an open row and walk back to my seat. I sit down and low and behold a few stragglers arrive so the stow is no go. I carried it back to the front where a nice couple who were separated agreed to sit together so I would have an open seat next to me for my luggage. After a few minutes it turned out I wasn’t the only one this would happen to. The thrower gets on and talks to the attendant and the pilot informing them that a) there is no more room in the cargo hold and b) that the plane is too heavy. The FA tries to make an announcement when we find out what the mechanical difficulty was – the PA system doesn’t work!! So this nice British lady screams the announcement as several people’s uncarry-on-able carry-ons are carried on. All the while we are sitting in a metal tube in Phoenix, in August, at midday. So that situation gets resolved and the FA starts franticly handing out water to assuage the encroaching heat. One man head up to the rest room and surprise the flush doesn’t work!! So he go (quickly than god) and the FA takes some of the bottled water and spins it round the basin. Finally we are set to depart so the FA packs up the items and locks the door latches but one bugger slips back open dispensing plastic cups rapid fire into the isle. Finally we take off, a good thing as the AC comes on!

So after shouting the safety announcements over the propeller noise and a few more incidents of flush support we arrive in Grand Junction. I get the car and get lost. Quirky streets those small mountain towns have. I get back on track and find an Office Depot to finalize the gifts for my co-festival goers (M. Night’s first draft of the script for his new film The Happening w/ a few shooting notes) and get lost again – luckily I have a keen sense of direction as street signs were less than helpful (“B ½ Road” really?). Finally I set off for Telluride just in time to miss the open air showing of the Thursday night film – the 1967 version of The Thomas Crown Affair. And I wandered around several streets in this town as well and walked into (what I later found out to be) the wrong house looking for the right one! Fortunately Jana had returned from said film and called me to see where the hell I was. We were also both wondering where Ralph & Vanessa were as his phone was off and no one had heard a word. We talked, they arrived, and Jana gave us a quick lesson on the festival and I was off to sleep to get ready for day 1.

In the next chapter, we plan and enjoy.

The 2 Year Old Virgin (Festival)

Made it down to Baltimore for the second East Coast incarnation of the V-Fest over the Weekend of August 4th & 5th. Being to Coachella earlier this year and Bonnaroo last year I think I'm pretty qualified to judge destination festivals by now. This one was pretty good.
It was set up on smallest venue of the 3 which limited the activities and stages but i think what was there was solid and you really could get to everything available unlike the other 2. With no camping at the site we had to stay at a hotel but since I travel for work I was able to get that for free but with everything you need to actually camp I think the cost comes fairly even. The next issue was parking - there is none of it if you didn't buy a VIP parking pass which I didn't. People were selling places on their lawns around the venue for $20+. We parked in a middle school yard that was an "official" place and it took an hour to get out of there after the show, more on that nightmare later.

We settled into the North Stage first to see Amy Winehouse (iTunes) and Incubus (iTunes). Both good sets but not paired together well. Winehouse's sultry torch songs were soothed out some of the older folks in the crowd but the kids were fairly impatient for Incubus. Amy for her part was fun - and likely drunk...or worse, she did drop the mic and laughed it off. The set was a bit languid but that's not a bad thing early in the day on Sat. Plus not many of her tunes could be considered uptempo.

Incubus put on a solid set - only seen them mid days at festivals for some reason. Not a fan of the new set save the 2 singles to date and the live performances of other tracks didn't win me over. The rest of the set was very fest like and hit heavy - I wasn't complaining. Here is one of those hits:

So far I had missed The Fratellis (iTunes) due to parking and Paolo Nutini (iTunes) and Felix Da Housecat (iTunes) because I didn't wanna leave my cush spot on the north stage. So we explored a bit in the area of the south stage while PB&J (iTunes) were playing but never actually went up to the stage and we also went over to the grand stand area and snuck into the VIP section. It was uninteresting and not worth what they were charging - though they did get a gift bag so perhaps there is something in there that added value but I doubt it. Food wasn't better and there was still a massive drink line. Bad form V-Fest.
Next up was LCD Soundsystem (iTunes) on the south stage. Easily the best show of the day and it was completely hindered by mic problems. It was like a fat guy in a t-shirt doing all the singing. And he was freakin' out firstly in the good, lead singer way and secondly in the singer pissed that he can't hear his mic volume in the monitors and getting feedback for 1/2 the set kinda way. He actually went over and talked to the audio tech twice. In spite of that, the energy was 4 lengths ahead of anyone else playing the first day of the fest. The drummer (Jeff Daniels?) was rockin' out in flesh colored boy shorts - haha - and Nancy Wang was all sultry on keyboards. Though the day was in no more need of heat - I was a sponge in a lake by time the flailing ended. The single best song of the whole weekend was their closing track "Yeah" it's never been one of my favorites from the album but the crazy extended live version was blistering.


I was dead after this so I mossied over to the SoCo hurricane station and sat down to catch some of the Beasties (iTunes) set. Love the boys but was really not in much hurry to see 'em. Glad I saw some old school stuff - "Don't Sleep Till" & "Brass Monkey". They dropped "So What'cha Want" and I was satisfied and went off to the dance tent to take in Sasha (podcast) & Digweed (podcast). On the way I happened on the Incredibly Strange Wrestling ring. This is some kind of satirical send up of the WWE and it was superfantastic. There was a guy in a bad Chewbaca outfit named Macho Sasquatcho teamed up with a partner named El Pollo Diablo - he was dressed as a chicken. Another wrestler was named Oh My Goth...but more on ISW tomorrow. It was still ridiculously hot so I wasn't dancing yet and chilled in the back of the dance tent sitting for a while more before going in and shakin it for the rest of the set. The set wasn't as good as last years Sasha solo at Roo but it also wasn't 4am and the place was pretty skint on candy-paint ravers who tend to spruce up the tent nicely.

The rest of the night was spent between Modest Mouse (iTunes) & The Police (iTunes). The Popo show had none of the energy of the previous weeks show in Philly so I'm happy I was able to catch that - similar set list as well. MM were solid though I realized that I know way fewer tracks from them than I thought. "Dashboard" has been one of my favorite tracks of the year and it was a good performance but only getting into MM since their debut on alt rock radio I wasn't into as much as I had thought. Went back for the end of the cops and then back for the rodent encore then filed out to try and get to the car.

After the walk back we found the car after 20 min or so and then drove forward 15 feet or so to the exit line then proceeded to stand still for an hour. Finally we noticed someone had opened up some kinda back gate, or more likely clipped a fence as the transition from parking lot to street was a curb. But the Jetta handled that well and we were back to the hotel. I would suggest staying in Inner Harbor instead of Johns Hopkins despite being closer as there is nothing around there and the hotel bar closed at 12. Still the suite with a balcony was a quality set up.

Day 2 and my thoughts on the Telluride Film Festival on the way.