Thursday, October 31, 2002

Vacation pickings were kind of slim. I love Vegas from the bottom of my heart, but its a cultural wasteland. I think the most obscure thing showing there was Spirited Away.
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Posted by gdd @ 02:24 PM CST [Link]

Thursday, October 17, 2002

I am leaving for a week for vacation so no updates for a while. I saw one more film at CIFF - A Hong Kong film called The Turning Gate - which I liked quite a bit. I will write more on return. All I can think about now is getting somewhere where it is not cold and raining.

Posted by gdd @ 09:36 PM CST [Link]

Tuesday, October 15, 2002

So Sunday's lineup consisted of the remaining two films of Lucas Belvaux' Trilogy - An Amazing Couple and After Life. I think The Trilogy taken as a whole will end up being my favorite thing in the fest. Certainly thus far, its the best thing I've seen, and there's not much left. Belvaux actually presented these films and did Q&A during their first presentations last week, and I really wish I could have caught up with them at that time. From all accounts, it was a really interesting discussion. [more]

Posted by gdd @ 09:25 PM CST [Link]

Sunday, October 13, 2002

I had three films planned for day eight. The first was My Sister Maria, a documentary about German actress Maria Schell, directed by her brother Maximillian Schell. Second was a non-CIFF film called Kwik Stop playing at Facets. Third was the first feature in Lucas Belvaux' trilogy following the same characters and events from three viewpoints - On The Run. The problem is I leave for vacation on Friday morning and I really had a ton of stuff to do before I left. I finally decided to jettison one film, and it ended up being My Sister Maria. I have advance tickets for the whole Belvaux trilogy, so I couldn't skip that, and Kwik Stop had come highly recommended by basically every critic in town. I later regretted the choice, but I will write something about Kwik Stop in a separate non-CIFF entry. [more]

Posted by gdd @ 11:43 AM CST [Link]

So, after taking two days off from CIFF, it was back on the saddle again Friday, boosted by the fact that my boss gave us a half day. I already had advance tickets to Unknown Pleasures, and after a perusal of the schedule on the train ride home I decided to also check out Springtime In A Small Town. [more]

Posted by gdd @ 11:23 AM CST [Link]

Thursday, October 10, 2002

So I skipped out on CIFF Tuesday to go see the re-screening of Cold Water at Block Cinema. Unfortunately, my initial reaction to this was, "Wow, I really need to see that again sometime when I've had more than four hours of sleep." Fat chance. [more]

Posted by gdd @ 03:08 PM CST [Link]

Tuesday, October 8, 2002

I noticed last night that every audience so far has burst into spontaneous applause at the end of the film in question. I have no other comments on this subject. I also wonder about the people who laugh at the Mercedes ad with the genie, its just not funny. However, there is this cool little CIFF promo that I enjoy. This guy is waiting for a movie to start, and two yakking women sit down behind him. He offers them some jujufruit, and of course it shuts them up since you can't talk while eating jujufruit. Believe me, its better than it sounds. Really. I was pondering my audience comments from yesterday, and I'm less encouraged after some thought. I mean, look at what I've seen. Bowling For Columbine, with Michael Moore there. Well, sure, thats gonna sell out. Happiness Of The Katakuris - heavily hyped cult director. Makes sense. Bellaria and Afghan Alphabet - shown in a room that seats like 10 people. Russian Ark selling out the big room at Music Box is the only real surprise. Turns out City Of God did not in fact sell out, which I guess isn't surprising considering it was letting out at around 11:30 on a school night. So while it is nice to see the crowds I've seen, its not really all that surprising or necessarily an indication of anything. Sorry about all this babbling, I'm pretty beat. [more]

Posted by gdd @ 01:51 PM CST [Link]

Monday, October 7, 2002

Took most of the afternoon off, watched football and pondered what to see. I was wavering between several things, but finally decided on Women's Prison, from first time Iranian director Manijeh Hekmat. I had originally scheduled this, then decided I didn't want to see another heavy "issue film", then came back to it because nothing else really fit my schedule properly except Safe Conduct, and I already know I'll be able to catch that another time. I have two general fest-realted notes to make. First, it is nice to see that of the 9 screenings I had/have scheduled for the first four days of the fest, 7 are/were sold out (although admittedly this often seemed to have more to do with the size of the room the film was playing in as anything else.) It is good to see people coming out for the showings. Second, I don't know how I am going to get through a week and a half more of that Ken Nordine intro film without shooting myself. [more]

Posted by gdd @ 01:39 PM CST [Link]

Sunday, October 6, 2002

I actually ended up adding a film today, making four. I was thinking about whether or not I've seen four films projected in one day before, and I don't think I have. Admittedly, one thing which made it easier here is that two of these were shortish (45m and 77m.) Still, it was pretty fun spending all day at The Music Box, and I never even had to pay for parking. [more]

Posted by gdd @ 01:10 PM CST [Link]

Saturday, October 5, 2002

I was gong to do day by day updates of the films I see at the Chicago International Film Festival, although it seems silly in retrospect since most days I'll only see one film anyways. So, uh, today. Originally I was going to see The Uncertainty Principle and Happiness Of The Katakuris, but I had to skip Uncertainty Principle. So I got tickets to Katakuris right after work, then later on Bethany and I head over to Landmark. The first thing I notice is that there's a dry-erase board at the front listing all the sold out shows so far, which is convenient. Then I notice that it includes Sunday's showing of Russian Ark, which is not convenient. I was going to move the Monday viewing of Russian Ark to Sunday to avoid two films on a work day. Looks like Sunday rush line for us. Tomorrow is still OK though, everything looks good for My Life At McDull, Bowling For Columbine, and either Uncertainty Principle or Afghan Alphabet, depending on scheduling.

The Happiness Of The Katakuris was my first experience with Takashi Miike, someone I had heard a lot about in terms of his being a gore-drenched horror movie guy. This was not that. This was goofy, overboard musical comedy with a deep black humor streak. It was pretty riotous, and a lot of fun to see with a full house. Apparently this was one of seven movies Miike made in 2001, but you would never know it. Actually, this was quite a great piece of filmmaking. It looked great. Interesting bold compositions, edited with a delight that matches the proceedings perfectly. A lot of big wide angle shots, giving a real sense of depth to everything. My only bummer was that it lost a bid of steam in the middle, although after that outrageous song and dance number with Richard, how could it go any farther? They have these ballots so everyone can vote for the audience award, you tear a number from 1 to 5. I tore a 4, and I suspect Bethany tore a 5 (she wouldn't tell me.) Great fun.

Posted by gdd @ 12:46 AM CST [Link]

Thursday, October 3, 2002

Being a bit of an Errol Morris nut, I could not let life pass me by without seeing his only fiction film The Dark Wind. Never released theatrically in the US, it lives on only through out of print VHS. I managed to snag my copy used on Amazon, and they show up on Ebay/Half.com as well. I should point out that should you be inspired to go to such lengths yourself, the tape is of fairly poor quality. It is pan and scan, and towards the end the frame is cropped improperly, causing this floating black bar to appear and occasionally letting a microphone slip into frame. [more]

Posted by gdd @ 01:11 PM CST [Link]

Wednesday, October 2, 2002

So I had the day off work today and took in a couple Marx Brothers classics on TCM in order to celebrate Groucho's birthday. Having seen these two films, as well as Duck Soup, I have come to the following conclusions regarding Marx Brothers movies - they need less songs and more Groucho. The bits in these movies are great. Selling the books, the contract argument, the climaxes of both films - all inspired bits of slapstick comedy. I am especially fond of Groucho's one-liners. Even when you see them coming they crack you up just through the delivery. The songs though, why did we need 15 minutes of Vivien Fay in the middle of A Day At The Races, then followed later with 15 more minutes of singing in the farm? Man, these sequences really slow things down, making me wish they just shortened them to 60 minutes and threw the comedy at you nonstop like a Buster Keaton movie. It was still pretty fun watching this stuff, but unless someone puts forth a pressing need to see any others I think I'm done with Marx Brothers movies. Oh, does anyone know if Chico really plays the piano in his scenes? It really looks like he did. If not, he fakes it really well.

Posted by gdd @ 06:29 PM CST [Link]

Tuesday, October 1, 2002

I removed some crap today from the site. First to go was the "Films To See" list, which was silly having around since I never updated it. I actually liked the concept, but the idea of having some kind of master list of films I need to see was just too overwhelming. The thing would be like an 8 meg download or some shit. Second to go was the "Interviews" link, which was again not being updated and never turned into the resource I wanted it to. So rather than have the embarassing collection of links linger there on the sidebar, I took it down. Then I cleaned up those ugly dates, which I'm not sure if I like yet. The lists section may be headed for the chopping block as well, although I had some good list ideas recently and we'll see if I ever get around to it.

Also, for those keeping score, I had to eliminate Uncertainty Principle and Divine Intervention from my CIFF schedule due to the proverbial "scheduling conflicts." I also tried once again to find a place to sneak in Morvern Callar, and it just is not going to happen. That last week of the fest sucks for me for a variety of reasons, just too much shit going on.

Posted by gdd @ 10:50 AM CST [Link]

The original plan this weekend was to see two films by French director Olivier Assayas - Irma Vep and Cold Water. However, Block Cinema's print of Cold Water never showed up, so the audience was offered several choices of other available films to watch, and a poll was taken. One of the choices was Assayas' documentary about Hou Hsiao-hsien, which I was pretty stoked to see, and seemed to be the logical choice given that we were originally supposed to see an Assayas film. However, the audience chose 8 1/2 by a slim margin, such is life. Not that I minded, since I have never seen 8 1/2 either, ashamed as I am to admit it. So instead of two films by Assayas, I got two films about filmmaking.
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Posted by gdd @ 10:28 AM CST [Link]

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