Or... The Importance Of Being The Situation...
Thanks to the rooftop minigolf putt from FVM! =)
Keep on keepin on~
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
IFFBoston 2011: more of what I've seen...
[I'm gonna list the movies I've seen since my last post and try to fill in with rambles/reviews over the next couple days. I'll lead with a rating (all the films I saw after ELMO were up for prizes, so all audience members were given ballots with which to rate films on a scale of 1 to 5). The first piece will be spoiler-free, but after the *SPOILERS* marker, I'm likely to drop plot bombs or descriptions of cool bits or plot twists, partly to explain something I liked or didn't, but probably just as much so that I can remember, too, so beware.]
day 4.
BELLFLOWER.
IFFB
3/ 5. A great midnight movie. Unfortunately, I caught it at 10pm. =) Two best friends who are just a little bit obsessed with the post-apocalyptic vision of MAD MAX spend their days modding muscle cars and assembling flamethrowers in anticipation of ruling the wasteland and their nights drinking and attempting to hook up. When one of them falls head-over-wheels for Milly, a girl who smiles sadly as she warns/promises that she'll only hurt him, the apocalypse arrives in a way neither expected. Wacky fun ensues.
I gotta say, the two leads create a great rapport between Woodrow (also the director) and Aidan, and the cast overall is pretty strong for a B-movie. The courtship of Milly is sweet and mumble-ish, with quiet guy Woodrow charming the wild child with his bouquet of roadside wildflowers and his ROAD WARRIOR dreams, y'know? The rest is almost determined by dice-rolls: the trouble in paradise, the crack-ups, the violence, the cops?
Don't look too hard for logic. That was my mistake. Just go with the smartmouth, dirty, sexy, sweet, dark, and combustible flow. When things get chaotic, think fever dream, and it'll all work.
*SPOILERS********
I know I advised just above to let go of the idea of the story as something real-ish in favor of a more dreamlike/nightmare experience. Here, tho, I'm gonna pick at it as if it should have been more straightforward, cuz that's how the film begins and how I felt it should have followed through.
The film is divided into chapters, which sort of work, but don't seem to know or care anything for the passage of time. The chapter divisons could've gone a decent way toward reining the storytelling into a more coherent A-to-C-back-to-B-to-D narrative. It's difficult to get a feel for just how much time passes between key events. If you track the construction of the boys' flamethrowing machinery, it's days, but how long does it take for Milly to start cohabitating with Woodrow? How long is Woodrow in the hospital? To make it work in my head, I have to write off a lot of events as fantasy. I think the filmmakers, maybe in part due to the limitations of the footage they shot, play fast and loose with reality in order to use the best of what they have on their hard drives (the writer-actor-director Evan Glodell talked about building the cameras they used, to be featured in a POPULAR MECHANICS write-up soon... nerds. =).
There's one explicit moment that we can read as a reset/restart point, when Woodrow is sitting across from the box of "Milly's Shit." We see it first before he decides to go and confront Milly, and her live-in whatever, and then after a whole lot of violent, deadly, stuff goes down, we snap back to it and move forward again. However, it's not clear that we're seeing anything different, just moments that we weren't shown before that fit under a new chapter title. Confusing? Yeah, I guess I'm writing this more for me to remember how I tried to stitch this thing into a cause-and-effect flowing narrative when really, after a certain point, it's a bitter, hate-and-diesel fueled romant-apocalypt-ic fever dream.
With a muscle car with afterburners named Medusa. =)
STAKE LAND.
IFFB
5 / 5. Still awesome. (Caught this for the first time at TIFF =)
*SPOILERS********
The reaction from the crowd to the vamp-bombs was thoroughly satisfying. I'd forgotten one thing (THE one thing?) that bugged me action-wise about the film: the final confrontation with the cult's big bad. Non-optimal lighting and camerawork make the final blow (and the assist) almost impossible to actually see. I only sussed out the physical blows after the fact based on the reaction and result. Both times I saw it. Looking back at my quick write-up from TIFF, I'm pretty certain that was the "nit" I mentioned.
day 5.
ON THE ICE.
IFFB
3 / 5. When three boys from an isolated Alaskan town head out on the ice for a seal hunt, a disagreement turns violent, leading to a tragic accident. Accident or not, each of the surviving best friends, Qalli and Aivaaq, has his reasons to cover up the details, so the two conspire to sell a lie about what happened. Each lie leads to another, and the guilt each feels grows and grows. With their futures on the line, can the boys live with their secret. And can they trust the other to?
Within the first couple of minutes, I felt a WINTER'S BONE vibe, the potential for a dark noirish journey set in a niche subculture and environment of America. Unfortunately, about halfway thru, that vibe fades. Don't get me wrong, the film is good, beautiful in its isolated setting, but there was the possibility of exellence in it that alas, isn't realized.
The leads are solid and likeable. Aivaaq is a charming screw-up doing a poor job of hiding a bad habit. Qalli is something of a kind lug, the dependable college-bound good son. Qalli's father is somehow instantly wise and correct. The boys' secret and the father's job as the leader of the local search and rescue team sets them on a collision course, but that course turns out to be disappointingly predictable and drawn out.
*SPOILERS********
There's a beautiful shot in the opening credits of a snow-coated cemetary. We see the white cross headstones receding from foreground to back, and just beyond, satellite dishes. An easy, but striking juxtaposition. Dishes and crosses are given equal importance.
The film opens with the two boys performing a traditional dance at their high school and then follows them to an after-party where together they perform some original hip-hop, with Qalli on the beats and Aivaaq on the mic. These seemingly polar pursuits and passions of the boys hint at something special unfolding. As the story unfolds, the introduction of a drug element in the shadows of this small community promises some extra menace, too. Unfortunately, these all drop away into the background pretty quickly and the boys' guilt and paranoia-driven descent offers only one surprise and plays out a bit tiresomely, as demonstrated by Qalli's repeated interrogation-and-lie confrontations with his father. The one surprise, that in the end Aivaaq steps up for himself, and incidentally, for Qalli. His logic is moment-of-clarity crisp.
LITTLEROCK.
IFFB | site
5 / 5. Sweet and beautiful and so unlikely but so perfectly real. The other side of the foreign exchange program with LOST IN TRANSLATION.
13 ASSASSINS.
IFFB
5 / 5. A w e s o m e . I have not seen everything of his, but I've tried to get to everything that's played in theaters here. Based on that pool, definitely Miike's best since AUDITION and a beautiful and kickass addition to the Japanese samurai film genre.
day 6.
SHORTS 2: NARRATIVES 2.
SHORTS 3: NARRATIVES 3.
Keep on keepin on~
day 4.
BELLFLOWER.
IFFB
3/ 5. A great midnight movie. Unfortunately, I caught it at 10pm. =) Two best friends who are just a little bit obsessed with the post-apocalyptic vision of MAD MAX spend their days modding muscle cars and assembling flamethrowers in anticipation of ruling the wasteland and their nights drinking and attempting to hook up. When one of them falls head-over-wheels for Milly, a girl who smiles sadly as she warns/promises that she'll only hurt him, the apocalypse arrives in a way neither expected. Wacky fun ensues.
I gotta say, the two leads create a great rapport between Woodrow (also the director) and Aidan, and the cast overall is pretty strong for a B-movie. The courtship of Milly is sweet and mumble-ish, with quiet guy Woodrow charming the wild child with his bouquet of roadside wildflowers and his ROAD WARRIOR dreams, y'know? The rest is almost determined by dice-rolls: the trouble in paradise, the crack-ups, the violence, the cops?
Don't look too hard for logic. That was my mistake. Just go with the smartmouth, dirty, sexy, sweet, dark, and combustible flow. When things get chaotic, think fever dream, and it'll all work.
*SPOILERS********
I know I advised just above to let go of the idea of the story as something real-ish in favor of a more dreamlike/nightmare experience. Here, tho, I'm gonna pick at it as if it should have been more straightforward, cuz that's how the film begins and how I felt it should have followed through.
The film is divided into chapters, which sort of work, but don't seem to know or care anything for the passage of time. The chapter divisons could've gone a decent way toward reining the storytelling into a more coherent A-to-C-back-to-B-to-D narrative. It's difficult to get a feel for just how much time passes between key events. If you track the construction of the boys' flamethrowing machinery, it's days, but how long does it take for Milly to start cohabitating with Woodrow? How long is Woodrow in the hospital? To make it work in my head, I have to write off a lot of events as fantasy. I think the filmmakers, maybe in part due to the limitations of the footage they shot, play fast and loose with reality in order to use the best of what they have on their hard drives (the writer-actor-director Evan Glodell talked about building the cameras they used, to be featured in a POPULAR MECHANICS write-up soon... nerds. =).
There's one explicit moment that we can read as a reset/restart point, when Woodrow is sitting across from the box of "Milly's Shit." We see it first before he decides to go and confront Milly, and her live-in whatever, and then after a whole lot of violent, deadly, stuff goes down, we snap back to it and move forward again. However, it's not clear that we're seeing anything different, just moments that we weren't shown before that fit under a new chapter title. Confusing? Yeah, I guess I'm writing this more for me to remember how I tried to stitch this thing into a cause-and-effect flowing narrative when really, after a certain point, it's a bitter, hate-and-diesel fueled romant-apocalypt-ic fever dream.
With a muscle car with afterburners named Medusa. =)
STAKE LAND.
IFFB
5 / 5. Still awesome. (Caught this for the first time at TIFF =)
*SPOILERS********
The reaction from the crowd to the vamp-bombs was thoroughly satisfying. I'd forgotten one thing (THE one thing?) that bugged me action-wise about the film: the final confrontation with the cult's big bad. Non-optimal lighting and camerawork make the final blow (and the assist) almost impossible to actually see. I only sussed out the physical blows after the fact based on the reaction and result. Both times I saw it. Looking back at my quick write-up from TIFF, I'm pretty certain that was the "nit" I mentioned.
day 5.
ON THE ICE.
IFFB
3 / 5. When three boys from an isolated Alaskan town head out on the ice for a seal hunt, a disagreement turns violent, leading to a tragic accident. Accident or not, each of the surviving best friends, Qalli and Aivaaq, has his reasons to cover up the details, so the two conspire to sell a lie about what happened. Each lie leads to another, and the guilt each feels grows and grows. With their futures on the line, can the boys live with their secret. And can they trust the other to?
Within the first couple of minutes, I felt a WINTER'S BONE vibe, the potential for a dark noirish journey set in a niche subculture and environment of America. Unfortunately, about halfway thru, that vibe fades. Don't get me wrong, the film is good, beautiful in its isolated setting, but there was the possibility of exellence in it that alas, isn't realized.
The leads are solid and likeable. Aivaaq is a charming screw-up doing a poor job of hiding a bad habit. Qalli is something of a kind lug, the dependable college-bound good son. Qalli's father is somehow instantly wise and correct. The boys' secret and the father's job as the leader of the local search and rescue team sets them on a collision course, but that course turns out to be disappointingly predictable and drawn out.
*SPOILERS********
There's a beautiful shot in the opening credits of a snow-coated cemetary. We see the white cross headstones receding from foreground to back, and just beyond, satellite dishes. An easy, but striking juxtaposition. Dishes and crosses are given equal importance.
The film opens with the two boys performing a traditional dance at their high school and then follows them to an after-party where together they perform some original hip-hop, with Qalli on the beats and Aivaaq on the mic. These seemingly polar pursuits and passions of the boys hint at something special unfolding. As the story unfolds, the introduction of a drug element in the shadows of this small community promises some extra menace, too. Unfortunately, these all drop away into the background pretty quickly and the boys' guilt and paranoia-driven descent offers only one surprise and plays out a bit tiresomely, as demonstrated by Qalli's repeated interrogation-and-lie confrontations with his father. The one surprise, that in the end Aivaaq steps up for himself, and incidentally, for Qalli. His logic is moment-of-clarity crisp.
LITTLEROCK.
IFFB | site
5 / 5. Sweet and beautiful and so unlikely but so perfectly real. The other side of the foreign exchange program with LOST IN TRANSLATION.
13 ASSASSINS.
IFFB
5 / 5. A w e s o m e . I have not seen everything of his, but I've tried to get to everything that's played in theaters here. Based on that pool, definitely Miike's best since AUDITION and a beautiful and kickass addition to the Japanese samurai film genre.
day 6.
SHORTS 2: NARRATIVES 2.
"8"
IFFB
3 / 5.
"All Day Yeah"
IFFB
4 / 5. A kid skates and wanders away an apparently just-like-every-other day.
*SPOILERS********
If you're paying attention, you see that the one piece of mail he saves from his raid on the mailbox is a postcard coupon for free admission to an amusement park (frack, I've totally spaced on the name of it - Joey's World?), sent to him for his birthday. So, this day that he's been slackerly strangling is his birthday. It's a little bleak, but I really like it. And the final shot of the film, camera pointed at the boy as he ponders, then decides, and hops in the four-by-four to drive away, is pretty ingenious. The camera is mounted in or on the car itself, so you see him start to jog around to the driver's side, hear him get in, find the keys, start the car, and once the engine is going and he puts it into drive, the camera begins moving, tracking the ocean view as the boy makes his getaway. In Q&A the director says he wanted to put the audience somewhere WITH the boy, but not in a position of condoning his choice, so we end up as an unwitting stowaway/passenger, along for the ride. Pretty sweet.
Also love that the title shows up as the tag line on the postcard coupon. =)
"Bob And The Trees"
IFFB | vimeo
5 / 5. There are moments of pure joy in this. Bob teeing off from that hilltop, beer in his back pocket, his post-swing follow-thru and pose... Just perfect. The righteous fury in his pumping and singing along to "Point Of Now Return" almost had me jump to give a standing o. =)
I'm really excited to learn that the director, Diego Ongaro, is developing a feature film based on Bob-ness. =)
"Jupiter Elicius"
IFFB
4 / 5. Some clever and well-crafted cutout animation set to what sounds like poetry about the life and passion for the storm of a born meteorologist.
"Ice Hockey"
IFFB
3 / 5. A high school hockey player is having problems w his mojo. This certainly would've resonated more for me if I was a proper hockey fan.
*SPOILERS********
I *really* love the flash of life in the moment before the boy takes his mid-ice slapshots.
I think the film might've been able to expand its appeal by educating us about this Jersey Devils legend of a player, perhaps by letting the boy tell someone about his hockey idol, or maybe show him watching highlights online. Maybe I missed posters in his bedroom or locker...?
"Pioneer"
IFFB
2 / 5. The film has a cute premise, and creates a wonderfully intimate atmosphere/scenario - a fanciful bedtime tale to lull a nightmare-startled child back to sleep - but I feel like that tale could've or should've been or done more.
SHORTS 3: NARRATIVES 3.
"Deeper Than Yesterday"
IFFB
2 / 5.
"The Strange Ones"
IFFB
5 / 5.
"Boy"
IFFB
3 / 5. A simple, naturalistic, short about a father and son who happen upon a rite of passage for the boy. Visually, reminded me of a Wyeth painting in moments. Dad takes his son with him when he goes to do some contracting work. The boy is left on his own to play, fighting imaginary battles, target practice with his air rifle, and exploring the nearby fields and woods. At lunchtime, father and son bond and relate as men typically do: tersely. On the ride home, they come across a pair of wolves, menaces to put down. The father arms the boy with his rifle and charges him with the duty. Good times. I really like the father-son-ness of the pair, established with nothing more than riding in the same truck and reinforced by the very few words they exchange.
*SPOILERS********
After dealing with the animal, we see the boy walking back down the hill to his waiting father and then... BOY. I like that close.
"Baby"
IFFB
3 / 5. An alternately disturbing and charming stalkerly courtship ritual, with a not-so-hidden layer of vicious consequences, and perhaps vicious intent. When a young woman attempts to thwart a thief's pocketbook-picking attempt, the thief relentlessly stalks her for the rest of the evening. The woman tries to resist the undeniable electricity between them, but in the end has to give in. Or is it she who has captured him? More than the twist in the plot, I think the film's strength is in making the attraction between these two palpable, if more often creepy than romantic.
*SPOILERS********
I kind of wish that the reveal of the woman's behavior wasn't so ambiguous. Does she manipulate the evening so that she can hurt the thief, first for being a thief, and then for having the gall to pursue and harass her after she outs his thievery? I want to believe that that's so, and that she surprises herself by actually not wanting to hurt this man because he's so gentle (she tells him not to look at her "like that," and to be rougher with her, but he doesn't listen to her). It's really smart that the two of them share a look before he's revealed as a miscreant. Establishes the attraction before the crime.
"Fracture"
IFFB
4 / 5. A beautiful portrait of a crack-up. A loving family man seems to have it all. However, one afternoon after swimming in the backyard pool, he wakes from a disturbing dream of dying and begins to see things differently. As the day continues, he becomes increasingly impatient with his wife's completely reasonable suggestions and his daughter's playful, if annoying, behavior. He struggles to keep from taking violent measures to keep his family in line. Will his afternoon nightmare come true? The short's portrayal of the father's descent is creepily crisp and shiny, like a sharpened knife.
*SPOILERS********
I really liked the father's final act of self-immolation was done really well. Seamless effects/post-production work. The way that the daughter's tapping and patting and smacking grates on him is conveyed extremely well by the film. I can't put my finger on specific elements, but their net effect is totally successful. I hafta say, as I was watching, I thought that this might be an Owl Creek scenario and that pops was gonna be poolside, unconscious, lungs full of water, receiving futile CPR, y'know?
Keep on keepin on~
Monday, May 02, 2011
BTIES: The Monster Engine
"The process is simple. I project a child’s drawing with an opaque projector, faithfully tracing each line. Applying a combination of logic and instinct, I then paint the image as realistically as I can. My medium is mixed—primarily acrylic, airbrush, and colored pencil."
--Dave DeVries
Check it out at TheMonsterEngine.com. Thanks to KG for the point-out. =)
Keep on keepin on~
Sunday, May 01, 2011
IFFBoston 2011: THE FUTURE: spoilery take on WTF is going on
This is a consciousness-streamy post about connections my dopey synapses made while watching Miranda July's THE FUTURE. It started as what was supposed to be a couple of sentences in a short-ramble post about IFFB flicks I've seen so far. If you haven't seen THE FUTURE and don't want to be spoiled for it, stop reading now...
Thanks. =)
The first radical changes that Sophie and Jason make are quitting their jobs. She is a children's dance teacher and he is a tech support jockey. She vows to push her creativity, and create and perform 30 dances in 30 days. He vows to become more alert and aware of the cosmos and any messages or clues it might have for him. She hits a wall, and lets herself get distracted with yelling out the window at an older man who wears a gold chain (a man whose phone number is written on the back of a drawing of his daughter that Jason bought from the animal shelter, stating that the drawing was in fact his "cup of tea." =). From their window, the couple can see an old woman across the way, brushing her hair out every morning and night. Sophie comments that that woman has got it all figured out, while Jason remarks, but she's a spinster! He feels compelled to join Tree To Tree, and go door to door soliciting people to buy trees to plant to help fight climate change (only $10 a tree!). Oh! Before the couple agree to changing their lives, they come up with a signal, something to snap them back to themselves, should either one of them get "lost" somehow. A song. There is an opportunity to save themselves by playing this song—Sophie asks Jason to play the signal—early on—perhaps it's after Sophie yells out the window?—but the power cord for the ipod is in Jason's car. It seems like he's going to get it, but we never hear the song played. Sad. But wonderful that Sophie thinks of it. =) Anyhow, Jason goes door to door, speaks to a woman who has no intention of buying a tree, but does quietly get him to hand her the day's mail, and then asks him to throw away the junk mail she doesn't want, giving it to him. In that junk mail is a PennySaver, which includes an ad for a refurbished hair dryer for three dollars. He visits the man, Joe, who is selling it and buys the dryer for Sophie. Jason continues to visit Joe, a man in his 90s, who reads to him the naughty limericks he wrote for his wife over their 60 years of marriage and shares his relationship wisdom, advising Jason that he is still just in the "middle of the beginning," and that you have to be strong, because one of you will do something terrible, but to have the happy life that Joe and his wife had, Jason will have to bear it, somehow. At the end of one visit, Jason sees the same Escher print on Joe's wall that's on his wall. He also sees three ceramic hippo figurines in a shadowbox frame at Joe's, the same ones that they keep on a table in their home. After a few visits, Jason has told Joe about the cat, and Joe offers him a cat playtoy as a gift, which Jason takes home. Puzzle box. In Joe, Jason has met his future self, one who has led a long happy life with a woman he loved. In the woman across the way, Sophie has seen her future self, alone, but apparently fine with it.
I kind of wanted more from the cat. Meaning, I'm not sure he had to be in there, as himself. Having the cat be a sort of nexus point is great, a hinge upon which the future of the relationship turns, especially cuz it introduces the "cup of tea" drawing and the 30-day deadline. The cat as a character could've been a voice that's more Watcher-like, y'know? Or like a Gaiman cat. Imparting cosmic truths and understandings of her new owners-to-be that somehow only a cat could know. Or maybe the cat did just that and I didn't catch it...?
Keep on keepin on~
Thanks. =)
The first radical changes that Sophie and Jason make are quitting their jobs. She is a children's dance teacher and he is a tech support jockey. She vows to push her creativity, and create and perform 30 dances in 30 days. He vows to become more alert and aware of the cosmos and any messages or clues it might have for him. She hits a wall, and lets herself get distracted with yelling out the window at an older man who wears a gold chain (a man whose phone number is written on the back of a drawing of his daughter that Jason bought from the animal shelter, stating that the drawing was in fact his "cup of tea." =). From their window, the couple can see an old woman across the way, brushing her hair out every morning and night. Sophie comments that that woman has got it all figured out, while Jason remarks, but she's a spinster! He feels compelled to join Tree To Tree, and go door to door soliciting people to buy trees to plant to help fight climate change (only $10 a tree!). Oh! Before the couple agree to changing their lives, they come up with a signal, something to snap them back to themselves, should either one of them get "lost" somehow. A song. There is an opportunity to save themselves by playing this song—Sophie asks Jason to play the signal—early on—perhaps it's after Sophie yells out the window?—but the power cord for the ipod is in Jason's car. It seems like he's going to get it, but we never hear the song played. Sad. But wonderful that Sophie thinks of it. =) Anyhow, Jason goes door to door, speaks to a woman who has no intention of buying a tree, but does quietly get him to hand her the day's mail, and then asks him to throw away the junk mail she doesn't want, giving it to him. In that junk mail is a PennySaver, which includes an ad for a refurbished hair dryer for three dollars. He visits the man, Joe, who is selling it and buys the dryer for Sophie. Jason continues to visit Joe, a man in his 90s, who reads to him the naughty limericks he wrote for his wife over their 60 years of marriage and shares his relationship wisdom, advising Jason that he is still just in the "middle of the beginning," and that you have to be strong, because one of you will do something terrible, but to have the happy life that Joe and his wife had, Jason will have to bear it, somehow. At the end of one visit, Jason sees the same Escher print on Joe's wall that's on his wall. He also sees three ceramic hippo figurines in a shadowbox frame at Joe's, the same ones that they keep on a table in their home. After a few visits, Jason has told Joe about the cat, and Joe offers him a cat playtoy as a gift, which Jason takes home. Puzzle box. In Joe, Jason has met his future self, one who has led a long happy life with a woman he loved. In the woman across the way, Sophie has seen her future self, alone, but apparently fine with it.
I kind of wanted more from the cat. Meaning, I'm not sure he had to be in there, as himself. Having the cat be a sort of nexus point is great, a hinge upon which the future of the relationship turns, especially cuz it introduces the "cup of tea" drawing and the 30-day deadline. The cat as a character could've been a voice that's more Watcher-like, y'know? Or like a Gaiman cat. Imparting cosmic truths and understandings of her new owners-to-be that somehow only a cat could know. Or maybe the cat did just that and I didn't catch it...?
Keep on keepin on~
IFFBoston 2011: what I've seen so far...
Some rambling reviews of the first few films I've seen at IFFB 2011.
day 1.
BEING ELMO: A PUPPETEER'S JOURNEY.
IFFB
SEE IT! As the opening night film, a total joy to watch. I was originally a little skeptical of the ability of its subject to draw me in, but the film proved my doubts foolish. It's not the story of a red furry monster, but the story of Kevin Clash, a boy who discovered a passion for the craft of puppetry and the happiness it could bring to children. The story is told pretty much from beginning to end with some remarkable footage, images, interviews, and artifacts from all parts of Kevin's journey. It's also partly a "craft" documentary, one that introduces you to an art that most aren't so familiar with, gives you a survey of its landscape, and teaches you or visits with its masters, and perhaps its old man on the mountain (Jim Henson).
day 2.
Volleyball.
day 3.
GREEN.
IFFB | vimeo | site
It's a great, intimate little picture, and it deserves some love. It's a beautiful little film about some very un-beautiful behavior. Young couple Sebastian and Genevieve leave Brooklyn for a sublet with farmland in West Virginia when he decides to undertake a writing assignment on the firsthand experience of sustainable living. Soon after they arrive, local sprite with a gift for chat, Robyn, visits, and soon becomes the couple's regular and mostly welcome third wheel. When the couple's relationship hits a bump or three, Genny begins to wonder about just why Robyn's spending so much time with them. Atmosphere and vibe-wise, the film's projection of Genny's growing unease and suspicions, set against the alternately bright-and-lush and dark-and-unknowable green of nature, reminded me uncannily of ANTI-CHRIST. Which really goes to show just how well done GREEN is.
THE TROLL HUNTER.
IFFB | youTube
SEE IT! Such a great execution of a wonderful idea: trolls are real, and—of course–they live in Norway! It's framed in a BLAIR WITCH way, with a trio of college filmmakers choosing to track down an elusive subject, in this case, an alleged bear poacher. They follow news reports of dead bears, unclaimed as licensed hunters' kills, and associated with all manner of violence against tourists and livestock. When they finally catch up to the accused poacher, they discover that the man lets himself be branded as one because the lie is preferable to the truth: he's hunting trolls. TROLLS!!! It's a lot of handheld running thru the wild, but not nearly as tiresome as BLAIR's, and the payoff in actual recorded troll encounters is SO worth it. Q&A w the director revealed that the man who plays the hunter is actually one of Norway's premier comedians with a gift for social commentary and sarcasm. The man reins that side of him in quite remarkably in creating the stoic keeper of troll secrets. The film DOES have a distributor in the U.S. and will be on screens in early June, probably at the Kendall on June 17. SEE IT!
day 4.
SHORTS 1: NARRATIVES 1.
I was running late getting to this, so I missed about 20-25 minutes of it. Foo.
THE SALESMAN.
IFFB | trailerAddict
Mostly dig it, but can't recommend it to everyone. If you're in the mood for a slow story that's more about an existentialist character portrait of a good-natured natural salesman, give it a view. I really like the wonderful lead, playing a gifted car salesman whose greatest joys, next to the pursuit of the sale, are his daughter and grandson. His daughter would like him to retire to spend more time living rather then selling, but he gently refuses, time after time, even now, as the prolonged "temporary" shutdown of the local paper mill threatens to destroy the community's economy, and effectively eliminating his potential customers. And what will he do when things go from bad to worst? It's a downer of a tale, but very well told. I was hoping for something a bit more... IKIRU, I guess, but, alas, not here. There is some really crisp imagery (the relentless snow of the area sets up some simple, beautiful shots thru showroom windows) that makes the slow pace worth it at times.
THE FUTURE.
IFFB
LOVE IT. You know, I like a good puzzle box of a film, and this is one of those. It's like Miranda July doing DONNIE DARKO, so, a puzzle box with much whimsy, wonkiness, and askew glances. =) Given the director's post-show Q&A, a puzzle box may not have been her plan, but it's how I read it. A young couple choose to adopt an injured cat. They have a month before they can actually pick him up from the shelter where he's recuperating. When they mark that day on a calendar, they talk themselves into a realization that Everything Will Change once they bring that cat home. They'll share a new kind of responsibility, and of course, the flip side of that, a new lack of freedom. This inspires them to make some radical changes, as if the day the cat arrives is the day they'll both die. These radical changes lead them down paths they never would have considered taking before, but ones that may reveal truths that even they didn't know about themselves. Can this one seemingly random event, the adoption of a cat, alter the course of the future and completely change their lives? Wacky fun ensues.
Allright, before I forget this stuff, I've gotta get down some *SPOILERY* thoughts. Skip to the next movie if you'd rather not know. *Okay, I ended up writing a lot more than I thought, and may write still more, so I'm just gonna put it all in a next post.
I've also seen BELLFLOWER, STAKELAND, and ON THE ICE, but hafta cut this post short here to head out for LITTLEROCK soon, and later, 13 ASSASSINS.
Keep on keepin on~
day 1.
BEING ELMO: A PUPPETEER'S JOURNEY.
IFFB
SEE IT! As the opening night film, a total joy to watch. I was originally a little skeptical of the ability of its subject to draw me in, but the film proved my doubts foolish. It's not the story of a red furry monster, but the story of Kevin Clash, a boy who discovered a passion for the craft of puppetry and the happiness it could bring to children. The story is told pretty much from beginning to end with some remarkable footage, images, interviews, and artifacts from all parts of Kevin's journey. It's also partly a "craft" documentary, one that introduces you to an art that most aren't so familiar with, gives you a survey of its landscape, and teaches you or visits with its masters, and perhaps its old man on the mountain (Jim Henson).
day 2.
Volleyball.
day 3.
GREEN.
IFFB | vimeo | site
It's a great, intimate little picture, and it deserves some love. It's a beautiful little film about some very un-beautiful behavior. Young couple Sebastian and Genevieve leave Brooklyn for a sublet with farmland in West Virginia when he decides to undertake a writing assignment on the firsthand experience of sustainable living. Soon after they arrive, local sprite with a gift for chat, Robyn, visits, and soon becomes the couple's regular and mostly welcome third wheel. When the couple's relationship hits a bump or three, Genny begins to wonder about just why Robyn's spending so much time with them. Atmosphere and vibe-wise, the film's projection of Genny's growing unease and suspicions, set against the alternately bright-and-lush and dark-and-unknowable green of nature, reminded me uncannily of ANTI-CHRIST. Which really goes to show just how well done GREEN is.
THE TROLL HUNTER.
IFFB | youTube
SEE IT! Such a great execution of a wonderful idea: trolls are real, and—of course–they live in Norway! It's framed in a BLAIR WITCH way, with a trio of college filmmakers choosing to track down an elusive subject, in this case, an alleged bear poacher. They follow news reports of dead bears, unclaimed as licensed hunters' kills, and associated with all manner of violence against tourists and livestock. When they finally catch up to the accused poacher, they discover that the man lets himself be branded as one because the lie is preferable to the truth: he's hunting trolls. TROLLS!!! It's a lot of handheld running thru the wild, but not nearly as tiresome as BLAIR's, and the payoff in actual recorded troll encounters is SO worth it. Q&A w the director revealed that the man who plays the hunter is actually one of Norway's premier comedians with a gift for social commentary and sarcasm. The man reins that side of him in quite remarkably in creating the stoic keeper of troll secrets. The film DOES have a distributor in the U.S. and will be on screens in early June, probably at the Kendall on June 17. SEE IT!
day 4.
SHORTS 1: NARRATIVES 1.
I was running late getting to this, so I missed about 20-25 minutes of it. Foo.
"We're Leaving" (The first film, I missed this completely.)
"After You Left" (I only caught the second half of this.)
"Little Horses"
"Chainsaw Found Jesus"
"Tatooine"
A music video of paper cutout animated re-creations of scenes from the STAR WARS trilogy to a sweet original(?) song entitled "Tatooine." I can't not love it =)
"Protoparticles"
LOVE IT. A neo-La Jetee.
"Ich Bin's Helmut"
LOVE IT. Helmut's wife has prepared a huge non-celebration in honor of his 60th birthday. However, she's miscounted. It's actually his 57th. Helmut looks back on his friends, family, and the passions and accomplishments of his life, and they appear before him. A lovely bit of this-is-your-life whimsy involving an amazing single continuous shot and clever stage and set craft.
THE SALESMAN.
IFFB | trailerAddict
Mostly dig it, but can't recommend it to everyone. If you're in the mood for a slow story that's more about an existentialist character portrait of a good-natured natural salesman, give it a view. I really like the wonderful lead, playing a gifted car salesman whose greatest joys, next to the pursuit of the sale, are his daughter and grandson. His daughter would like him to retire to spend more time living rather then selling, but he gently refuses, time after time, even now, as the prolonged "temporary" shutdown of the local paper mill threatens to destroy the community's economy, and effectively eliminating his potential customers. And what will he do when things go from bad to worst? It's a downer of a tale, but very well told. I was hoping for something a bit more... IKIRU, I guess, but, alas, not here. There is some really crisp imagery (the relentless snow of the area sets up some simple, beautiful shots thru showroom windows) that makes the slow pace worth it at times.
THE FUTURE.
IFFB
LOVE IT. You know, I like a good puzzle box of a film, and this is one of those. It's like Miranda July doing DONNIE DARKO, so, a puzzle box with much whimsy, wonkiness, and askew glances. =) Given the director's post-show Q&A, a puzzle box may not have been her plan, but it's how I read it. A young couple choose to adopt an injured cat. They have a month before they can actually pick him up from the shelter where he's recuperating. When they mark that day on a calendar, they talk themselves into a realization that Everything Will Change once they bring that cat home. They'll share a new kind of responsibility, and of course, the flip side of that, a new lack of freedom. This inspires them to make some radical changes, as if the day the cat arrives is the day they'll both die. These radical changes lead them down paths they never would have considered taking before, but ones that may reveal truths that even they didn't know about themselves. Can this one seemingly random event, the adoption of a cat, alter the course of the future and completely change their lives? Wacky fun ensues.
Allright, before I forget this stuff, I've gotta get down some *SPOILERY* thoughts. Skip to the next movie if you'd rather not know. *Okay, I ended up writing a lot more than I thought, and may write still more, so I'm just gonna put it all in a next post.
I've also seen BELLFLOWER, STAKELAND, and ON THE ICE, but hafta cut this post short here to head out for LITTLEROCK soon, and later, 13 ASSASSINS.
Keep on keepin on~
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