I got in 7 flicks during the media screenings:
Love In Medina
We Were Children
Little Trips 2 (shorts program)
The D Train
Double Shift
Dunas
Good Karma $1
Home
Never a Shade of Gray
No Where No One
Punched
The Return
Voice Over
Persistence of Vision
The Unlikely Girl
When The Night
Day 1
The first day, I got in Last Friday before my shift, and snatched a section from these 2 documentaries:
Far From Afghanistan
The Flat
After that, went for a Frankenweenie promo
Day 2
Twilight Portrait - great scene where she fucking pierces the hypocrisies of her husband and friends at her birthday party
The Comedy - bleak and hilarious. kinda deep.
part of Werewolf Boy - sweet and silly
The World Before Her - feministic!
Day 3
5 movies + 1 short + 1 cartoon = fully entertained. Stellar flicks from around the world: Cuba -Una Noche, HK - McDull: The Pork of Music, Korea - The Blood Seller, Indonesia - Postcards From The Zoo, Spain - As Luck Would Have It, France - Rust and Bone, and New Zealand - Two Little Boys.
Postcards From The Zoo, dreamy languid, slowwww, the animals were superb, but the footage wasn't as crisp as I thought it would be.
Una Noche, anti Castro but compelling none the less.
McDull: The Pork of Music, sweet and cute and funny, nice message on the importance of music
The Blood Seller, vampire story that you could see coming
As Luck Would Have it - funny pointed stick in the face of greed and media fame
Rust and Bone, I could see this being remade and having a simpler happy ending, not that the ending wasn't happy, just that it was a little too unhollywood happy.
Two Little Boys, great soundtrack, dude is a sociopath! It was funny. He reminded me of Russell Crowe and Brendan Fraser looking, Kenny Powers.
Day 4
The Minister - "Politics is the wound that never heals."
Antiviral - "Celebrity is a consensual hallucination"
Berberian Sound Stage - "This is not a horror film, it's a Santini film!"
The Flat - "They want to believe in the one good German."
Off White Lies - I don't have a good quote from this one, except maybe the sweet scene with the Supertramp song lyrics - give a little bit...but I really enjoyed it. Reminded me of Paper Moon some, and of my father. The father character and my dad were the same kind of affable bullshitter. :)
Day 5
end of Raising Resistance
beginning of Key of Life
First hour or so of Design of Death
Paradise: Love
Day 6
Tabu
first half of Street Dogs of South Central
Nameless Gangster
In Search of Haydn
Bad Weather
Day 7
The Compass is Carried By The Dead Man
Lore
Teen Tales
Zug
Yardbird
No Intoxicants Required
Bad Moon Rising
Cluck
Encounters
Sesame Theory
Skull Punch
Thirst
The Twitch
UFO
Seven Psychopaths - promo
The Hunt
Day 8
Twilight Portrait
metaphorical? woman gets raped and then she's trying to controvert the typical rape revenge plot by having her abruptly abort that process and switching gears to seduce her rapist. Why does she keep telling him he she loves him?? Is she love in the face of evil? Essential nurturing womanhood vs brutal male violence? I thought the Russian cop was hot with his manly gravel voice. Sexy perpetrator!
Best scene was still the birthday party meltdown
she lays bare the hypocrisies and lies that allow her and her friends to exploit and fuck each other over without too many problems.
Life and Death (shorts program)
Unmanned - military drone drama
Crescendo no abortion = Ludwig Van Beethoven
Francine
women gets out of jail and becomes a crazy cat lady
she lets people do what they want to her, but she doesn't really connect with them
it's like she can't relate. It's why she loves animals so much.
Leo does a good job. Sad story. Does it treat mental illness with compassion or exploit it? Not really sure.
Liverpool - missed the beginning and the end, but I enjoyed the plot and romance too. Sweet funny flick. good soundtrack, esp Liverpool by Renee Martin?
Dom - really great macho manliness. James Coburn looking Russian gangster goes back to rural homestead for Grandfather's 90 birthday, also to hideout from some hit men. Things get bloody.
Angel's Share - whiskey provides a future for a Ken Loach character, a trackie? Tracksuit wearing thug who wants to turn his life around - his gf is preggars, but there's problems. I spent most of the movie baffled by the accents, but it was easy enough to follow what was going on. Missed some jokes though.
Design of Death - watched the beginning for the 3rd time! Saw the whole thing finally. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Weird and visually wonderful. Reminds me of Visitor Q crossed with the Jeunet Bros. Nie's face totally made me smile when he did, such lovely crinkly eyes!
Somebody Up There Likes Me was the surprise hit of the night. It's very deadpan humorous, and it silly, but it left me with good feels. Plus I really liked the soundtrack. It has a cover of The Car's Double Life, sung by Bob Schneider backed by Quiet Company.
Day 9
Everybody In Our Family - missed the beginning, but I think that just set up the circumstances of the flick - divorced dad on his way to pick up his daughter for a beach vacation. It was funny, and it got crazy, but I liked it. It got ugly and unbelievable too, but I give it license to be unrealistic in order to tell a story. The actor reminded me of the guy who played The Minister. Bigger and more virile looking though.
Occupy Love watched about 20 minutes of this. It's good. Bolivia has a pluralistic society. "I want to live well, not better."
Monkey King 3D - Fun. I think it was great. But now, I'd really like to see HIndu gods stories in cartoons.
Liar's Autobiography - Graham Chapman died when he was 48 of throat cancer, this flick is animated in a variety of styles and was narrated by Chapman, culled from tapes he made a few years before he died.
Armour - Micheal Haneke does it again. Great movie about an old couple dealing with the aftermath of an accident. Dignity is something that can be difficult to maintain as you age.
Ape - a not so great firebug comedian and his low key low rent lifestyle. Mildly amusing. I chuckled quite a bit. The main guy reminds me of the younger brother who cut off his toe in Weeds.
Alternative Anime: The Next Generation
Soldier School - I liked the style - looks like a kid make it sometimes, very naive drawings. Sorta boring though
Red Colored Bridge - super psychedelic and crazy colourful. Escheresque at times.
Deep in Reflection - I was bored by this one
Hide and Seek 0 this one was boring too. Looked nice though
Abbau - a bunch of formulas and such = boring sciencey animations of equations and atoms etc.
The Hunter and The Skeleton - by far my fav. Totally cool style, like a Hindu god's stuff, or Katamari good story too. The demon/skeleton was mesmerizing and terrifying too.
Noodle Fish - 2nd love. Much better use of noodles than just eating them. or making macaroni pictures.
Day 10
Laurence Anyways - 1/2 hour or so of Laurence coming out as trans at work, and subsequently getting fired.
Grabbers - holy hella fun!
Consuming Spirits - walked out in part 4 after the mom died. Reminded me of Twin Peaks. grotesque animation.
I, Anna - great thriller. She's guilty of the woman crimes - being old, unmarried and mental. She kills a kid too. AND murders, but as one woman commented, she doesn't commit these crimes out of malice, they weren't of her own volition. Joe noticed that she was distracted with the child when she was asking her ex husband to include her in his weekend with their daughter and granddaughter. I asked about the music, director said he sent the music to Richard Hawley through a mutual friend and he was sympathetic to the story because his mum had an incident with an odd beau where he'd had to escort the man off the mom's property.
Late Quartet. good stuff, kinda white people problems, but still very enjoyable.
end of 237 - fun film theory!!!
Day 11
Camera Shy - end - really funny. So much better than Ape.
Our Children - end - too sad. About a woman who kills her kids. She's struggling with too much responsibility, post partum, 4 little babies and no sympathy.
Kinshasa Kids - snippet. Cute kids, lovely musics, crazy poverty
Reality - beginning. BORING wedding shit. I couldn't bring myself to watch it.
Anyday Now - beginning TRITE!!! Cummings makes a great drag queen but the dialogue was just so melodramatic bullshit.
Day 12
Leviathan - various parts - very pretty, cinematic artsy shots. One guy said it's a deconstructed horror film
Museum Hours - various parts - again pretty, funny, but I missed the beginning so I couldn't follow the dynamics of the narrative aspect. The observations of the museum guard and the docent were interesting and amusing too.
Shine of Day - didn't see enough to formulate an opinion, looked interesting though - German circus performer!
City Lens, the bits I saw looked cool.
Berberian Sound Studio - the beginning I missed! I didn't miss much at all, it doesn't establish anything about the main character! It shows the credits for the giallo he's been brought in to work on and moves right on to his observing the watermelon foley work and getting a slice of it shoved in his face.
Come As You Are - missed the beginning to get the Berberian beginning, but I could follow evertyibg. It was funny. and sweet and even the bit I didn't like, when the two boys were bullying the chubby bus driver, that aspect was addressed and they treated her with dignity after. Sweet movie!
Day 13
Occupy Love - my fav film of the fest. Offers hope in desperate times.
Incident in New Baghdad - Wikileaks Collateral Damage short - very well done short on PTSD and how the military uses and exploits soldiers, ultimately sacrificing their mental health.
No Job For A Woman - doc on women war reporters. Ernest Hemingway was a fucking douche. His wife was a correspondent for Collier's and he was pissed that her job kept her away, so he told Collier's he'd write for them. They could only accredit one writer, so the wife was booted. She had to take a freighter boat back home, and it took 27 days. or 7 weeks - a long ass time, while Papa too the press plane. ASSHOLE. She got hired by another paper and when she got to the hotel, he was shacked up with another woman already. I skipped out on the end for a loser flick.
Night Across The Street - holy hella pretentious. Dude is unstuck in time and all the characters are in his mind or some such nonsense. Absurd magic realism. I didn't like it, though it was well made and well acted, it just felt so masturbatory and self-satisfied.
We're Not Broke - US company's don't want to pay taxes. One note documentary, kinda boring.
Facing Animals - first 15 minutes. SAD and depressing how cruel we are to the animals we eat.
Rebellion - Kanaki? Uprising in new Caledonia gets put down. Negotiator is not allowed to do his job because elections mean the politicians, and the army are exploiting the situation for political gain. Great speech by the leader of the Kanaki? people Alphonse. It illustrates the principles of neo liberalism, colonialism and injustice. It's also a great action flick.
Day 14
Come As You Are - beginning I missed
Room 237 Beginning I missed, and the rest again
promo The Sessions
Beyond the Hills - religion and superstition, poverty, queer hatred, mental illness kills a girl in Romania
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