Skip to content

2010 Film Festival, Day 4

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

I don’t know why I keep on going to documentaries about architects… they certainly seem to be a more popular film subject than, say, chemical engineers or traffic flow designers. Anyway, I was about two minutes late for Learning From Light: The Vision of I.M. Pei, but I don’t think I missed anything essential. This movie was about the famous architect in the title, and his involvement in the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar. I think I learned some really interesting things about his take on Islamic architecture, and a bit about Islamic art in general.

One of the interesting points that I took away is the importance of light, particularly the strong, shifting light of the sun, in keeping strongly geometric building shapes alive – the circular dome on the octagon on the octagon on the square on the square that makes the iconic Islamic temple shape takes on different looks at different times of the day. He talked about looking at the fortresses of Islam to see purely secular examples of Islamic architecture, and used the traditional hanging oil-lanterns as his inspiration for his chandeliers; it was fascinating to hear a bit about his process, and how much a role actually building the museum had in the design (or re-design) process.

The other nugget of knowledge was the observation that almost all the art in this particular museum was functional – wall tiles, carpets, jewellery, pots, they all served a function in addition to their value as art. Presumably the ban on representational art meant that statuary and paintings weren’t in the picture, and those are the big two things that are objects whose only use is decorative. Well, I guess they’re slightly functional, since you can use them to cover up unsightly patches or what-have-you…

Anyway, interesting and well done, and I think Ellen would enjoy it, but I don’t think I need to see it again.

* * *

Women Without Men was sad, as you’d expect a movie about the situation of Iranian women circa the 50s military coup to be. Some quite impressive camera work, and what I sincerely hope was some impressive makeup or effects (because otherwise one of the actresses got terrifyingly thin for her role). One interesting character was the brother, determined to marry off his sister before his wedding, and who offers to marry a girl who had crush on him… and says that his current wife will be her servant. Until, she points out, he tires of her, and then she will be the servant to the next girl who catches his eye.

I thought it was a good film, in the sense that it was well made, but I’m not sure that I enjoyed it.

* * *

I hadn’t intended to have as Islamic theme to my day, but Four Lions turns a coincidence into a theme. The premise was that a bunch of bumbling British Muslims are trying to join the jihad, but they’re a white guy convert who does things like leave a Twin Towers cake at a synagogue on 9/11, a guy who thinks he can train suicide-bomber crows, an amiable but dim guy, a rapping rich kid, and a moderately bright one.

But – in some ways the film made the problem of Islamic terrorists a scarier prospect, since it humanised them, but didn’t make them seem less dangerous. The bright one has a son who he reads stories to, and a wife who works as a nurse, both of whom cheerfully support his decision to martyr himself, to be “in heaven before his head hits the ceiling”; and I have no basis to know whether their normality is ridiculous for a jihadist bomber. While the rants he’s seen trying to record seem more rehearsed than heartfelt, he does mention that his uncle died in the Balkans defending a mosque – and that anger seemed to be intended to be genuine.

Very few people come out of this looking good; the security forces are depicted as gung-ho incompetents consistently targeting the wrong guys, for example, while the Islamic brother of the bright one who advocates peace won’t enter a room or argue with a woman, and comes across as annoyingly sanctimonious. In fact, the people who seem most competent and focused are the terrorists in Pakistan… which might not be the message that the film-makers intended to send

It was a funny film; but it mostly left me a bit sad, because there was a certain amount of “ha-ha, only serious.” I don’t think I’d watch it again… although I’d be interested to see how it reads in, say, twenty years time.

* * *

I met up with C for Candyman, which was preceded by a short doc made by a woman about her two dads (biological and step). One was an outgoing Polynesian ladies’ man with a smart new car who was shown drinking beer with his mates and barbecuing, the other was a quiet, reserved Pakeha with a vintage car who was shown watching Coro St and hoarding enormous amounts of stuff in the garage. I asked C which one I resembled more, but she couldn’t stop laughing long enough to answer, so I guess it will remain a mystery.

The movie proper was both fascinating and sad – basically David Klein had his one big idea when invented Jelly Belly jellybeans, but a series of poor business decisions has meant that not only has he been muscled out of his trademark, he’s been erased from the history books: despite the fact that he was the public face of Jelly Belly until 1980 (where he was browbeaten into signing over his interest to the current owners), he is not mentioned by the current company in any of their histories, which seems a very petty act for no obvious reason. And he hasn’t had another big idea.

There are other stories of skullduggery, too – the ice-cream shop where he started his business taking out the California trademark and extorting money from him, for example. And Costa Botes has done a good job sketching out how the character of the man made these tricks possible, as well as the dark times that this led to… showing the consequences for the family, without wallowing in them overmuch. I thought it did what it set out to do well.

There were a few interesting anecdotes in the Q&A, but one that caught my attention is how difficult it is to get into festivals – I believe he said that one festival where he was accepted had 5000 submissions, and accepted 8. He attributed this to the lowering of the entry costs, but didn’t suggest a possible solution.

* * *

Finally, it was off to the remastered Once Upon A Time In The West. Firstly, watching this made me want to play Railroad Tycoon again. Secondly, it reminded me that a lot of the Morricone soundtracks that I’ve heard just don’t work for anything but the film which they were made for. And thirdly, even though it’s a bit slow by today’s standards, it is good, clever, funny and tense.

I enjoyed watching this film.

Filed in Uncategorized | | Comments (0)

2010 Film Festival, Day 3

Monday, July 19, 2010

The first movie was An Inside Job, about the origin of the financial crisis. It did a good job at gathering all the information together, and presenting a unified “here is why things went wrong”. Which is basically – people had big incentives to do bad things, and the freedom to shield themselves from the consequences of their actions. And then they got to write the rules, to make sure that this state of affairs to continue.

One of the most interesting points was how academia has been coopted, to a large degree, by the people they’re meant to be critically commenting on. The film implied that there were financial reasons why they might do that, but I suspect that there may be other factors in play as well: you tend to want to please those around you, and you sometimes give undue weight to what important people say. Another interesting fact they mentioned was that bond traders used to earn so little in the 60s that to support a family of three kids, one took a second job as a train conductor; and they spelled out how very old-guard the Obama financial administration is.

It’s kind of a scarey film, because I doubt anything will change, which means another, bigger meltdown is just a matter of time. At least it’ll cut carbon emissions, I guess.

* * *

Next was The Marvellous Corricks, a collection of silent shorts made from 1901 to 1911, which a family group of performers bought and showed in between their other vaudville acts while they toured. In our showing, there was a narrator to give the films a bit of context, as well as a pianist – one of the points that narrator made was that there was a wide variety of practice before cinema settled down, where one theatre would show a film silent, another would have an accompanist, and another would have actors behind the screen lip-synching to the action – and the same reel might be playing simultaneously in theatres across the street to each other, in completely different ways.

The shorts varied in content – part of a “this is London”-style travel film; a sort of dance thing about a chicken laying golden eggs; and a man who is served beef from a bull, puts on horns and goes crazy (thinking he’s a bull), charging people and knocking them over. There was a very clever sequence in that last one where they went to the telegraph office to send a request to Spain for a matador: we see wires strung everywhere (because it is a telegraph office), and then, as the message is being sent, the letters of the message get pulled into view along the wires up the top of the screen (presumably like winching out clothes on a washing line). It was effective, simple, and fit in with the scene; it would be awesome to come up with something like that.

I’m glad I saw these.

* * *

Next, I realised that my last film had taken rather longer than I thought, and so I made a dash from Te Papa to in front of the Embassy, where I was meant to meet my brother – luckily, C had saved my bacon once again, and was chatting with him inside.

After a quick talk with him, it was into the theatre for Lourdes, and a look at faith, miracles, and permanence, and the weird conflation of miracles and fame. The envy that a possible miracle produced reminded me of the story The Same To You, Doubled, about the Devil giving a man three wishes, but telling him that his worst enemy would get twice whatever the man got… and then ensured that this person was the worst enemy by naming a friend of the man who was doing just a little better than him already.

The problem of suffering is harder, to me, than the problem of evil, in terms of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being… just as the story about the man and the disguised angel who kept on doing things that seemed malevolent (throwing a widow’s son off a bridge, stealing from a kind man and burning his house while giving to a miser) which actually had hidden benefits is a hard one to accept. I’m very much a “may this cup pass me by” guy, I’m afraid.

* * *

Then I had to run, since I had five minutes to get from the Embassy to the Film Archive to see The Peddler — which I very much enjoyed. It was a documentary about a man who goes from village to village in Argentina, making films starring the locals. He only asks for food and board while making the film, and makes the money to go on working off the tickets and selling copies of the film. He used to make a new script every time, but has boiled it down to four or five scripts, and talked about (IIRC) making five movies in four months; he’ll sometimes go to nearby, slightly bigger villages if he needs, for example, firemen, and the village he’s in is too small to support a fire brigade, but the locals are the stars.

This is an impressive man – he gets a lot out of his actors, and though he’s in his 60s he’s not afraid to ride a bicycle while filming, or climb a power pylon, or build a trick coffin with a bottom that can fall out. He makes changes to the script on the fly, hands his precious camera over to someone local who has some experience using their own handy-cam, and he edits on video! What he’d be able to do with a bit of experience with Final Cut or Premier, I can’t imagine.

This kind of reminds me of the Nigerian film industry – local people making local stories with local jokes and plots. But the way this film-maker operates is almost like a itinerant playwright/director getting local people to put on a play; I wonder whether we’ll get to a stage where we can have the equivalent of the Porrirua Little Theatre players making films for the (very) local market… which I guess was the direction that Be Kind, Rewind was exploring.

Anyway, a good movie about an interesting man. I’d watch it again.

* * *

After dinner, I went to the Paramount to see the Australian horror The Loved Ones. It was well done, in that it was horrific – there were a number of nice pieces of set-up and reveal, and some good use of humour to draw out the tension. There were a few tiny continuity niggles, but they only really emerged afterwards; and there was a lot of blood and a fair amount of vicious violence, which means it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.

I didn’t find it as good and unsettling as Dogtooth; but it was a good horror film, and I think that the people I know who like horror and don’t mind gore would enjoy it.

Filed in Uncategorized | | Comments (0)

2010 Film Festival, Day 2

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Saturday brought an early-morning start with Animation for Kids, which was my first film with company. This was reliably good – only one that made us go, “Huh?” (Red Riding Hood, where a little girl riding an abused hobby-horse steals a riding dog from a little boy, and then rides happily on an adult). Most were straight-up slapstick (Ormie — a pig tries to get cookies from a jar on top of a fridge), funny narrative (Tally Ho, Pancake: a flying pancake inspires a variety of people to chase it, waving toppings of varying probability), or educational – Night Club is the example I’m thinking of, which had various nocturnal birds shown as urban clubbers, with the kiwi in a bright yellow bucket hat. I liked the idea and the graphics, but I wish they’d spent more time on the lyrics – I would like to be trying to remember them now, rather than just thinking, “Oh yes, they’re serviceable.”

Mushrooms in the Storm taught us we should buy mushroom hats, or we’ll be chased by angry villagers who don’t like the fact we saved them with annoying music; Garbage Angels taught us that chainsaws and hedge-trimmers will cull the weak high-chair from the herd of chairs (it was pretty nifty); and The Lost Thing gets a pass for encouraging people to trust cthuloid tentacle machines by being charming and cool.

* * *

Next was The Woman With Five Elephants, about a Russian who is best known for translating the classics of Russian literature into German. It turns out that her father was swept up in one of the first of Stalin’s purges, and at fifteen she ended up looking after him when he was unexpectedly released (one of the rare few to be); he died of injuries sustained at the time six months later. There was a sad parallel with her son of fifty or so, who was hospitalised during the filming of the documentary, and later died; hearing her talk about how to deal with that sort of loss was hard but good.

There was an appreciative audience for her thoughts on how translation should be approached, and the crowd laughed at the interactions between the woman and her collaborators – the increasingly sour look of the musician as he waits for her to sharpen her pencils, the arguments about punctuation, the routine of starting work after the second cup of tea, etc. And the story of how a Russian came to retreat from Kiev with the Germans (without being a fascist herself) was very interesting – they didn’t shy away from the slaughter of the Jews that happened at Kiev, either.

It almost ( but not quite) makes me think that I might read these classics at some point.

* * *

Then I met C for Kapai (chilli chicken & a choco-chai), and then we went to The Illusionist, which was pretty and sad; a marginally employed stage magician ends up looking after a girl who follows him from a performance in the Highlands to Edinburgh. There were plenty of images of the various vaudeville performers fading, each in their own way – some using their skills in other jobs, some selling up and moving on, and some selling up and slipping through the cracks. I think there’s something about the fact that they’re so public, so dependent on public sentiment, that makes out of work vaudeville performers, comedians or actors a more immediately tragic figure than, say, workers in a disappearing industry, like high-rise advertising painting.

They did a good job evoking Edinburgh, at least for me. But I can wish for a happy ending, even if it wouldn’t have been as strong a movie.

* * *

It was back to the Film Archive for Asylum Pieces. When we watched a man mopping the floor in the foreground for thirty seconds, I realised that this is a film that I shouldn’t have seen tired; I don’t know whether it was this or muddy audio, but I found it hard to follow some of the dialogue. I know I ended up drifting off in places, on account of how refreshed I felt afterwards.

So – given those limitations, what did I think? I think… that it felt like the person making the film was very angry at Big Pharma for encouraging the medical profession to over-prescribe, and for putting out anti-depression medication that can increase suicide risk, and at the medical profession for not properly warning the friends and family about those risks. I felt bad for the person, but not compelled by their… well, they were statements rather than arguments.

There was some very interesting information about the history of mental asylums in New Zealand, and the way that most of the buildings were substandard and/or on unsuitable land. It felt like there were two films here, and I was only in the target audience of one of them.

* * *

I had to jog smartly to get to the Paramount to see Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, but I’m glad I did. I think I grew up in the “Joan Rivers as a punch-line” era, and there’s certainly plenty that is ridiculous – for example, she claims she and her daughter reconciled after her husband’s death during the filming of a made-for-TV movie about them reconciling after her husband’s death, in which they played themselves. But while she came across as self-centred as a cat, she also came across as hard-working, shrewd and smart. And when she says, during the end-credits, that the film crew must be hoping she dies, because it would make great film – she’s not calling them vultures, she’s just thinking about what sells, because being a star is a business.

There were some interesting asides about how the comedy business has changed – she showed her filing draws full of jokes, and talked about how she prepared, but while she was worrying about being part of a show with a bunch of current big-name comics, she talked about the number of writers that each has. And because they started filming at a low, we got to see some of the dives that she was prepared to perform at to keep working – because she feels she has to always be working.

A good documentary, where I was entertained, and felt I knew more about stuff when I left.

* * *

Dinner, and then off to the Embassy for Animal Kingdom. Not much to say about this one – an enjoyable Australian crime film. Well, “enjoyable” may be to fluffy a word, since it was violent and grim, with a truly evil mother figure… write-ups I’d read gave the impression that she was a godfather-like figure, but in actual fact she is more reactive than that; but she was cold as a spider once she decided the right thing to do. Not a happy film, but a good one.

I was too tired to stick around for the director’s talk, and so went to get my car… which apparently has a leak, since I had to mop out a bucket-full of dirty water out of the passenger-side once I got home, so it will be garaged until I can get it fixed. Thank goodness C has a car.

Filed in Uncategorized | | Comments (0)

2010 Film Festival, Day 1

Sunday, July 18, 2010

It’s just before 9am, I’m in Sweet Mother’s Kitchen, and I’ve already been up for more than three hours. This isn’t how I had intended to start my Film Festival experience – I’m hoping waffles will help.

What I had intended to do was to have a mellow end to Thursday, possibly finishing off some ideas I had for this year’s I.T. Crew gear, and then knock off around 6:45pm; unfortunately, an unforeseen request at 6pm, combined with FileMaker deciding to be a complete pain in the bum, meant that I didn’t get to leave work until a bit after 8pm, and then had to go back in at 6am and reboot the server (or risk it all turning to custard for the guy covering for me).

Anyway, I’m just waiting for the theatres to open so I can buy the first 10-trip of the season, and then I’m off to Te Papa to see Space Tourists. More after waffles.

* * *

It turns out that Te Papa doesn’t open until 10am, so I read about the history of sheep in NZ in the Te Papa store until they let us in.

There were a couple of things that Space Tourists reminded me of. The first, and most superficial, was an article I read about the injustice done to the women who tried to become the first astronauts (though this New Scientist article suggest that they were never in the running since they weren’t (and couldn’t be) test pilots, and thus automatically disqualified); the second was the movie last year, Paper Soldiers, which was a drama set in the beginning of the Russian space programme. The Russian facilities were anything but new and shiny, with dated décor and an air of decay; but that drama suggested that it was never chromed and shiny.

There were some very different attitudes about space travel displayed – the tourist who spent $20 million on a trip for herself, but also sponsors the various prizes for commercial spaceflight; the photo-journalist who takes pictures of decaying Soviet space propaganda monuments and art; and the former geologist who seemed to feel the same kind of contempt towards space tourism that a Unix geek feels towards Windows users, and said that it wouldn’t be “fun” if he paid for the trip, rather than getting there himself.

I think… that I’m not actually that interested about going into space. Zero-g looks really interesting, and I’d love to experience that; but I’m not that worried about the vacuum or the view. I’ll admit to drifting off during some of the landscapes at the beginning, but perked right up seeing them swirl ping-pong balls around the circular hatches.

I enjoyed it, but nothing I think I’d need to see again.

* * *

Next was off to Paramount for Summer Wars – one of the few anime options. It was a bit of a disadvantage to know a bit about internet security; but luckily I remembered to approach it as a kid’s anime, rather than a techno-thriller, and so it was fun and enjoyable. Not too slow, not to frenetic, lots of little flourishes of colour that would have been fun to do, like the avatars of all the characters in the virtual world, or the extravagant acts of the men of the family while trying to fix things, and the family interactions were good fun; I wasn’t blown away, but I’d happily watch it again, and will think about getting a copy.

One thing that I did think about, later, was that it might be interesting to have an animated film that did more with the Oz theme in an online-world sort of way. I think you would have to stretch to find Oz parallels in this story, and for all it’s flaws, I quite liked the Tin Man TV series. So… yeah, I think there’s a good film lurking in that whole “online Oz” idea, too.

* * *

I noticed someone filming in the Paramount – a college kid was doing some sort of interviewing assignment, and he was there with his mum filming people who were going to things in the Festival. I chatted to them, and ended up being interviewed, pita-pocket in hand. Hopefully, I was coherent; I hope even more that it disappears into the abyss of schoolwork.

Next, Hahaha – a pretty typical Asian slice-of-lifer. There were some nifty things that it did with the central conceit (two buddies sharing stories over drinks, not realising that the tales they’re telling are interrelated, with the audience seeing both sides). But – there were some really weird camera decisions. For example, it wasn’t’ shot in a documentary-style, no handy-cam jostling while the camera-crew keep up, but there were really noticeable jerky zooms, and sometimes the camera was slewed sidewise suddenly to keep the action in sight.

As is the case with many of these, most of the characters were sympathetic enough to keep you engaged, but you wouldn’t want them in your life. I doubt I’d watch it again.

* * *

Paramount a third time for Homegrown: Works on Film. I don’t know whether it’s completely true, but I got the feeling that there were more works where subtitles were important – Amandi, a low-key take on the experience of an African refugee trying to reunite with his family (contrasting with the loss felt by a woman gone strange after losing some of her children in a fire), and Manurewa, a retelling of the recent killing of the Indian liquor store owner in Auckland. I liked that the second one showed those that committed the crime as well as the victims – especially that not all of them were enthusiastic, but not all of them were victims of the system, either.

There was a Wellington film (Choice Night) where I’m afraid I found the Producer’s talk more interesting than the short. (Will a teen resist peer pressure and turn down a night in a strip club paid for by his rugby coach in order to be with the girl he lurves, but won’t acknowledge in front of his mates? Nope.) I feel bad, because they used a second-hand bookshop that I love, and the film was well put together; but there it is.

There was a depressing “abused teens do drugs with tragic results” short (Redemption), an uncomfortable short about a couple of larcenous pre-teen girls at the beach who may have encountered a sexual predator (Licked, in which I felt the actors did well, and that the innate selfishness and amorality of some kids was accurately portrayed, but I wasn’t enthused about the story); and a really well constructed and funny short called Careful With That Crossbow.  In all, I’m glad I went, but there were a number that didn’t really stir me.

* * *

I really liked Love In A Puff. I mean, I wouldn’t say that it was a cinematic masterpiece; but it was moderately funny, and I found myself invested in the central romance.

Maybe it’s because this movie seems to think that love can work out well, which is something that I believe is true.

* * *

The ultra-rich are a metaphor for vampires; or is it the other way around? Anyway, the thing I found most disturbing about The Housemaid was the servant’s complicity with what their masters wanted – both the housekeeper who was loyal to the household she despised, and the nanny who admitted to waiting for the man of the house to come for her in bed.

There were lots of striking images, especially as the household became more inward-looking and stranger, and the evil selfishness of some of the characters was well done; and I’ll admit that I don’t know how you can fight back against those much richer and more powerful than you. But… I’m not sure whether I wish I’d gone to see Birdemic instead.

Filed in Uncategorized | | Comments (0)

2010 Film Festival Schedule!

Monday, June 21, 2010

Here’s this year’s schedule:

Friday, July 16
TP 11:00am - 12:40pm  Space Tourists
Pa  1:00pm -  2:55pm  Summer Wars
Pa  3:30pm -  5:30pm  Hahaha
Pa  6:00pm -  7:20pm  Homegrown: Works on Film
Pa  8:00pm -  9:35pm  Love in a Puff
Em 11:00pm - 12:50am  The Housemaid

Saturday, July 17
Pa 10:30am - 11:30am  Animation For Kids 2010
FA 12:00pm -  1:35pm  The Woman with the 5 Elephants
Em  2:30pm -  3:50pm  The Illusionist
FA  5:30pm -  6:45pm  Asylum Pieces
Pa  7:00pm -  8:25pm  Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
Em  9:30pm - 11:25pm  Animal Kingdom

Sunday, July 18
Em 11:00am -  1:00pm  Inside Job
TP  1:30pm -  2:40pm  The Marvellous Corricks
Em  3:45pm -  5:25pm  Lourdes
FA  5:30pm -  6:55pm  The Peddler
Pa  8:15pm -  9:40pm  The Loved Ones

Monday, July 19
Pa 11:30am - 12:55pm  Learning from Light: The Vision of I.M. Pei
Em  1:30pm -  3:10pm  Women without Men
Em  3:45pm -  5:30pm  Four Lions
Pa  6:00pm -  7:15pm  Candyman
Em  8:30pm - 11:15pm  Once Upon a Time in the West

Tuesday, July 20
Pa 11:45am -  1:15pm  Love, Lust & Lies
CG  1:30pm -  2:15pm  Countryside 35x45
Pa  3:45pm -  5:25pm  Draquila - Italy Trembles
Em  6:15pm -  7:55pm  I Killed My Mother
Pa  8:15pm - 10:30pm  Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story

Wednesday, July 21
CG 12:15pm -  1:15pm  Gordon Crook
Pa  2:15pm -  3:40pm  My Dog Tulip
Em  4:00pm -  5:30pm  Exit through the Gift Shop
TP  6:00pm -  8:05pm  Senso
TP  8:30pm - 10:00pm  Cooking History

Thursday, July 22
Pa 11:00am -  3:05pm  Extraordinary Stories
Em  3:30pm -  5:25pm  Cell 211
TP  6:15pm -  7:30pm  Strange Birds in Paradise: A West Papuan Story
FA  8:15pm -  9:15pm  From Poverty Bay to Broadway
Em 10:15pm - 11:55pm  Dream Home

Friday, July 23
CG 12:15pm -  1:15pm  I Wanna Be Boss
TP  2:00pm -  3:35pm  The Most Dangerous Man in America
Em  3:45pm -  5:30pm  I Love You Phillip Morris
Pa  6:15pm -  7:25pm  TrinityRoots, Music Is Choice
PB  8:15pm -  9:30pm  A Town Called Panic

Saturday, July 24
Em 11:00am - 12:20pm  Babies
Em  1:00pm -  3:00pm  Agora
TP  3:00pm -  4:35pm  The Arbor
Em  5:45pm -  7:55pm  Gainsbourg
Em  8:45pm - 10:55pm  The Ghost Writer

Sunday, July 25
TP 11:00am - 12:30pm  HOWL
PH  2:00pm -  3:20pm  His & Hers
PH  4:00pm -  5:55pm  Farewell
PH  6:30pm -  8:00pm  Please Give
PH  8:30pm - 10:05pm  The Double Hour

Monday, July 26
Pa 11:15am - 12:55pm  Waste Land
Pa  1:30pm -  3:25pm  Police, Adjective
FA  4:15pm -  5:40pm  Collapse
FA  6:15pm -  7:45pm  A Film Unfinished
Pa  8:30pm - 10:05pm  Lebanon

Tuesday, July 27
Pa 12:00pm -  1:35pm  Teenage Paparazzo
Em  3:00pm -  5:35pm  A Prophet
Em  6:15pm -  8:15pm  The Wind Journeys
Pa  8:45pm - 10:05pm  Wah Do Dem

Wednesday, July 28
Pa 12:15pm -  2:00pm  GasLand
Em  3:45pm -  5:35pm  The Runaways
PB  6:30pm -  8:00pm  25 Carat
PB  8:45pm - 10:45pm  Ajami

Thursday, July 29
Pa 11:15am - 12:55pm  Carlos - Part One
Pa  1:45pm -  3:35pm  Carlos - Part Two
Pa  4:00pm -  6:05pm  Carlos - Part Three
FA  6:15pm -  7:50pm  The Strange Case of Angelica
TP  8:30pm - 10:00pm  Nostalgia For the Light

Friday, July 30
TP 11:00am - 12:50pm  Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould
Em  1:00pm -  3:00pm  I Am Love
Em  3:45pm -  5:45pm  The Killer Inside Me
FA  6:15pm -  7:40pm  Homegrown: Quirky Stories
FA  8:30pm - 10:00pm  Presumed Guilty

Saturday, July 31
TP 10:00am - 11:15am  In the Attic: Who Has a Birthday Today??
TP 11:45am -  1:00pm  Alamar
FA  1:45pm -  3:20pm  Secrets of the Tribe
Em  4:15pm -  5:45pm  When You're Strange
TP  6:15pm -  7:40pm  Bill Cunningham New York
Pa  8:00pm -  9:50pm  American: The Bill Hicks Story
Pa 10:15pm - 11:55pm  Triangle

Sunday, August 1
FA 12:00pm -  1:00pm  The Invention of Dr Nakamats
FA  1:30pm -  2:50pm  Autour de Minuit
TP  3:45pm -  5:40pm  Russian Lessons
Pa  6:30pm -  7:30pm  Under the Southern Cross

I hope I won’t be able to make it next year, since that will mean I am off gallivanting overseas.  So this one had better count.

Filed in Uncategorized | | Comments (3)

A fresh start

Monday, July 20, 2009

At some point, when I understand how to import the old records, my previous blog will be resurrected here in all its “glory”.

But today is not that day.

Instead, I’m going to write down some thoughts that I’ve had about the 48Hr Film Competition — specifically, the pitfalls of getting the genre “Musical/Dance”.

In my mind, the biggest problem is not the music or dancing, since there are a number of creative ways that you can handle that; rather, it’s the fact that the genre tells you nothing about the story.

This has a number of consequences.  The first is that you have no story constraints; this means that the elements that all teams have need to carry a much greater burden than if you know that you’re doing, say, a buddy movie.  It’s much harder to subvert the tropes of your genre, story-wise… unless you treat “Dance movie” as a subgenre of “Sports movie”, as the people who made the finger-dancing short did.

But in general, you have a much wider field of story to choose from, which is a real problem.  I’d be tempted to have a look at the genres that were possible, but not used, and choose one of them — at least then you’d have something to aim at.

The next problem is the story.  Singing or dancing takes up time, and you’ve only got seven minutes — which means that you’ll be pushing a lot of narrative weight into them.  I don’t know how you’d do that with dance; but one saving grace of singing is that it’s okay to be a bit more on-the-nose than you would with ordinary dialogue, especially since there’s a convention of people singing their feelings while people politely ignore them.

We’ve dodged the bullet so far, but if we keep on doing this, we’ll get Musical sooner or later.  So I’ve decided that I’ll go through the movies that we’ve made as Jenni’s Angels, and see how much work it would be to convert them into musicals.  I’ll try to use the sorts of resources that I’d have to hand in combat conditions, and see how far I can get.

I still sometimes see people quoting “Be Impressed”, which Erik & I wrote… ten years ago, maybe?  But I don’t think I’ll be inspiring anyone to remake “It’s A Wonderful Library” any time soon. 🙂

Filed in Uncategorized | | Comments (1)