Sarasota Film Festival 2009 Shorts 1 Reviews

Second Guessing Grandma (dir. Bob Giraldi)
This was about a young Jewish guy coming out to his family and focuses primarily on the reaction of his grandmother. The dialog is witty and comedic and story has some heart to it, but the scene cuts are fast and the camera is a bit too close up on the subjects with a lot of hand-held camera bobbing. ■■■□

Trece Años (dir. Topaz Adizes)
A very short story of a young man who returns to Cuba to visit his family after spending most of his life in New York and the familial conflict that surfaces. The presentation of both sides―struggle, tears and a mother's broken heart―is sincere and well done and the shots of Cuba are impressive, though the subject itself is depressing. ■■□□

Countertransference (dir. Madeleine Olnek)
A brilliantly-acted comic character study of Carla Carthrop, a fidgety and reserved woman trying to change her circumstances. We watch her personal battles against her domineering boss and totally insane therapist. I guess you would call this surreal absurdism. The dialog was weak in a few places leaving me to wonder how much was scripted versus improvised, but overall the short is hilarious and highly recommended. ■■■■

Nowhere Kids (dir. Eric Juhola)
Nowhere Kids follows a homeless teenage girl and her dog as she tracks down her mother. Along the way she falls in with a small group teens in the same situation and the audience gets a view of their grim existence with little hope and no real home or connection to the world, emotionally broken. With costuming a little too stylish and makeup a bit too gritty the realism gets hindered, but overall the storytelling is good and the acting and subject matter commendable and evocative. ■■■□

The New Yorkist (dir. Dana O'Keefe)
I'm not sure what to make of this short. It's what looks like an abstract first person delusion of grandeur. The story is told silent film-style as Alexander studies history, fights ants and eventually becomes Alexander the Great as he "conquers" Kyrgyzstan (represented with a disused airport terminal) by simply showing up. Strange stuff. ■□□□

I Am So Proud Of You (dir. Don Hertzfeld)
This new Don Hertzfeldt short was the main draw of the short film collection and didn't disappoint. For those who don't know, Hertzfeldt is known for his stick figure drawing style and his 2000 comic short Rejected. Over his past three short films he's been shifting from comedy to drama, or a kind of "dramedy". The second chapter in what Hertzfeldt has said will be a three part series follows Bill one year after his recovery from an undisclosed illness in Everything Will Be OK (trailer). The story starts with memories of Bill's childhood and a pastoral look at his (comically) mentally ill family's past. The funny and creative presentation works towards profound ruminations on time and death. Meanwhile Bill learns that at the same time he is improving, everything is not ok. The core of the story is the one certainty in life, "You will only get older."

Hertzfeldt has a real focus on sound and music in his short films, for example see the shot of sound files used in the 2005 short The Meaning of Life above. In Proud Of You you can hear this focus in the family history portion, and in the impact of Richard Wagner's "Vorspiel" near the end. As for animation he really surpassed himself. Hertzfeldt has always strictly limited his films to hand-drawn effects and animation with no computer assistance. In Everything Will Be OK he experimented with some animated photography and does even more here to great effect. There's a lot of humor and philosophy packed into this 22 minute short, most of it subtle but all of it pleasing and worth a look. ■■■■

Five Word Review: Let The Right One In (■■■■)

trailer · rottentomatoes · metacritic · imdb

Beautifully grim adolescent vampiric love.

"Please Oskar... Be me, for a little while."

Five Word Review: Synecdoche, New York (■■■■)

trailer · rottentomatoes · metacritic · imdb

"There are millions of people in the world. And none of those people is an extra. They're all leads in their own stories. They have to be given their due."

Five Word Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (■■■□)

trailer · rottentomatoes · metacritic · imdb

Best tale since Big Fish.

"We're meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us?"

Five Word Review: Futurama: Bender's Game

trailer · rottentomatoes · jon choo · imdb

Keep giving these guys money!

( + )
(positive)

"Is that a hobbit over there?"
"No that's a hobo and a rabbit, but they're making a hobbit."

Five Word Review: Zack & Miri Make A Porno

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Penis vagina, penis vagina. L♥ve.

( + )
(positive)

Five Word Review: Tropic Thunder

trailer · rottentomatoes · metacritic · imdb

War with blacktion & retards. (Sorry!)

( + )
(positive)

Five Word Review: Step Brothers

trailer · rottentomatoes · metacritic · imdb

Ludicrous babymen's dick battle. Balls!

( + )
(positive)

Five Word Review: Hellboy II: The Golden Army

trailers · rottentomatoes · metacritic · imdb

Supernatural graphic symphony wrought corporeal.

( + )
(positive)

Five Word Review: The Dark Knight

trailers · rottentomatoes · metacritic · imdb

Redefines "You complete me." Scorseseazing.

( ++ )
(double-positive)

Five Word Review: WALL·E

trailer · rottentomatoes · metacritic · imdb

Prophetic poetic robot love. Glee.

( ++ )
(double-positive)

Five Word Review: You Don't Mess With The Zohan

trailer · rottentomatoes · metacritic · imdb

Ludicrous stereotypes, disturbing cougar coitus.

( + )
(positive)

Five Word Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Authentic Indy meets X-Files, fatherhood.

( + )
(positive)

Five Word Review: Iron Man

Improbable gadget porn addict flies.

( ~ )
(mixed)

Five Word Review: Speed Racer

Your eyes will bleed rainbows.

( + )
(positive)

Sarasota Film Festival: We Are Wizards

We Are Wizards was definitely my favorite film at the Sarasota Film Festival this year. I haven't read any of the Harry Potter books but I have seen most of the films and I'm not ashamed to admit that I love the story. This doc is about some of the culture that has sprouted up around Harry Potter like "wizard rock", online communities, comedic interpretation and religious criticism. The profiles really round out the characters and give their motives depth and background. The film is this perfect mix of humor and passion and creativity that surprised me. I didn't think you could do a story about people that have stories about creating stories based on a story and come out with something good.

Wizard rock is a term coined by the two guys in the band Harry and The Potters, who not only sing songs about Harry Potter but actually look like Daniel Radcliffe. Other wizard rock groups include The Hungarian Horntails (a couple of wildly creative boys), Draco and The Malfoys (a couple of guys with kids of their own), and Order Of Merlin. Watching little kids sitting in a library staring slack-jawed as a punk band yells their heads off is hilarious. The interviews with these groups take up the first half of the film but just when I thought the movie would focus solely on the rock aspect they switch it up.

Jumping to fans' community creations and coalitions they film focuses on a boycott led by Heather Lawver in order to stop Warner Brothers from sending cease and desist letters to Harry Potter fan sites. A religious critic is even featured to cover the topic of witchcraft and wizardry. Luckily they didn't pick some raving nut, but she did seem a bit misinformed.

The stubbly narrator you see in the beginning and end of the trailer above is Brad Neely, comic artist and creator of several funny-ass cartoons for Super Deluxe. In the trailer he's reading from a sort of soundtrack overlay he wrote, recorded and performed for the Harry Potter films called Wizard People, Dear Readers. Someone put together a VD rips of the films synced with the recording and I have one, but I have yet to watch it. In We Are Wizards he talks about Warner Bros. bringing the copyright hammer down on him and even performs a bit of infringement himself, adding a hell of a lot of comedy (an profanities, neat!) to the film.

In a Q&A with the director and editor they said they focussed on only a few individuals in the film because they wanted to give the people depth instead of a catalog of all things Harry Potter. They're hoping to get some sort of distribution or maybe even put the whole thing out online. It was shot in 4:3 so it could work well on TV. Even if you've only seen the films I would recommend this film, they made special effort to keep the subject matter light enough that anyone could follow it. You'll laugh, I swear.

Sarasota Film Festival: Gone With The Woman

Gone With The Woman (Tatt av kvinnen) is a Norwegian comedy about a unnamed thirty-something bachelor who finds himself pulled into a relationship by an odd, flighty and controlling woman named Marianne. She starts as a persistent acquaintance who shows up at his apartment randomly and never stops talking, but when he shows a glint of interest she jumps all over him.

Marianne moves in immediately, they meet each other's families, and they even take a trip around Europe together. Between their incredible sex, his dead end job and time spent at a private pool, they fall in and out over Marianne's loony eccentricities and her oddly heavy symbolic yellow dresser. I don't want to give too much away so I'll leave the summary at that.

The comedy works really well and benefits from the point-of-view film style similar to what you would see in something like Scrubs but without the constant badum-ching quick cuts and the pissy MD wisecracker. Marianne's irrational habits cause a lot of confusion for the poor guy, and as a connoisseur of other people's relationship issues I can see a lot of truth in their incompatibility. The perfect acting and clever humor ties it all together. I'd highly recommend this even if you don't like foreign films and hate subtitles because reading is for losers and old people and makes you irritable and violent and lose control of your bowels.

You can watch the trailer here, but there aren't any subtitles.

Sarasota Film Festival: Beautiful Losers

Beautiful Losers is the chronicle of 11 artists that raised the status if low-brow/pop art through New York's Alleged Gallery starting in the 90s. They came back together in 2004 to put on a show under the same name as this film with 30 other artists and put out a book under that title in 2005. This doc covers those core artists through their childhood to their time at Alleged to the show and tosses around ideas about influence, purpose and the movement.

The film is really interesting if you're already familiar with this subject and great even if you aren't. There were several points when I felt myself hoping that they would branch out with some other artists though. Admittedly it is difficult to make a narrative out of something as multidirectional as the personal lives of 11 artists, their connections and inspirations, and I really did enjoy it but it needed more... zazz.

Aaron Rose, the director, curated Alleged Gallery in the 90s and is featured in several interview segments. He and Mike Mills, Stephen Powers, Ed Templeton and Barry McGee provide the best introspective monologues for the film. Some of their thoughts revolve around the need to give life purpose through expression, hold onto that childlike skill for limitless ideas, and reject the traditional art world's snobby, depressing and cathartic ways.

Margaret Kilgallen, who passed away in 2001, has the most technically impressive pieces in the film. The coolest shots for me were from the 2004 show and the signage they created for Coney Island because I read about the show in Juxtapoz back in '05 and I've personally seen the Coney stuff but didn't know their involvement. Paul Moore said in his review that Rose told him if people don't leave the film inspired to create, he failed. For me he didn't fail.

Sarasota Film Festival: Throw Down Your Heart

Throw Down Your Heart is a documentary about Béla Fleck and his trip through parts of Africa in 2005 in search of the ancestor of the modern banjo. He goes to The Gambia and Mali on the west coast and Tanzania and Uganda on the southeast coast, meeting up with African musicians from the renowned to the local to collaborate. The result is some amazing musical performances and a few illuminating lessons on African music and history.

In Uganda he meets with a couple of thumb piano players. The first shows raw emotion as he sings of losing his father and introduces him to a group that plays a giant balafon (a type of marimba) while the entire village joins in with the music. The second player is the only female thumb piano player in all of Uganda, and a great singer as well.

The name of the former slave port he visits in Tanzania translates to "throw down your heart," so titled because the slaves that were brought there from the inner continent found it so incredibly beautiful and terrifying they imagined they would never again feel as much emotion so they might as well throw down their heart. Here he meets with Anania Ngoliga, a blind but masterful and famous thumb piano player, and they combine their talents brilliantly.

In The Gambia and especially Bamako, Mali he meets with the area's convergence of musical talent on par with what you might find here in Nashville or New York. (On a side note a documentary about trial actually titled Bamako came out in 2006 and features performances by local musicians. I haven't seen it but I've heard some the music featured and it is very good.) Fleck finds the banjo's likely ancestor in The Gambia, the akonting, a three stringed fretless instrument made of a sand-filled gourd and a long pole neck. He meets with another prolific musician, Jesus Jah Jarju, who plays a small instrument similar to the banjo. In Mali he is brought into the entourage of his singer friend Ami Sacko, a celebrity famous for her rapturous voice. Here he meets the widest variety of collaborators, some of whom posses talent that can even intimidate Fleck.

Béla Fleck attended the screening, took questions and even performed afterwards. He said they filmed over 200 hours, including many performances not featured, but getting the sound and film to match and flow was difficult so they had to cut certain parts (including a few funny bits with Anania that ran during the credits) to get down to 90 minutes. When asked about his preparation he said he made himself familiar with as much of the music as he could ahead of time and practiced furiously, both before the trip and day and night while in the continent. They made several recordings and Fleck hopes to release an album of the results some time next year. As for the film he said it probably is not in its final form, and depending on how things pan out it might be turned into a television series (PBS, I'm guessing).

The film premiered at the SXSW Film Festival and will be coming to the Nashville Film Festival this month and the Silverdocs Film Festival in Maryland this June. If you are a fan of musical performance and get a chance to watch it, go damnit! Otherwise keep an eye out for the album, the music is very cool.

(Karina Longworth did a good review from SFF as well.)

Sarasota Film Festival: The Forbidden Kingdom

Sarasota Film Festival added The Forbidden Kingdom to their schedule at the last minute, and my friend and I got a chance to catch the screening last Saturday. It's a pretty good film, but it works more as a cult-ish comedy than as a martial arts epic.

The audience was pretty sparse, and we could tell at the end walking out that most of them thought they were going to see something on par with Crouching Tiger or Hero. Who could blame them, just look at this TV spot:



But when you realize that everyone in the film speaks English and it stars this guy



whose character is named Jason Tripitikas and calls things "sick" you might start to think you've been duped too. That actor's name is Michael Angarano, and while his stunts in the film are impressive (Angarano's family is filled with dance professionals) his character sticks out like... a white teenager from Boston in a film with Jackie Chan and Jet Li set in China. The filmmakers seem to be aware of this, and luckily they play it up to a point that's almost campy. Jason's rival (played by Morgan Benoit) is a white teenage bully motherfucker with gang in tow. That rival is so overly stereotypical I had to bite my lip to keep from bursting out laughing.

Once you get over the ridiculous caricatures it's easy to get into the film. The biggest draw of this thing is that it features Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Their interplay works really well, especially when they stop speaking in English and start kicking ass. Ninety percent of the film takes place in an ancient-China fantasy world where Jason must learn kung fu and quest to return a fighting staff to the mythical Monkey King. The on-screen violence is limited in order to get the PG-13 rating, and that's made obvious be several deaths that happen just out of the shot. However the sets and landscape panoramas are awesome, the action well choreographed and the special effects seamless.

The plot suffers at times though. For instance Jackie Chan's character at one point refuses to travel with Jason because he wouldn't be able get the wine he needs for his drunken style along the way. Five minutes later he's along for the ride anyway with no explanation for change of mind other than being asked to teach Jason. The biggest problem is many of the major plot developments are obvious from miles away, including the ending. The dialog can be funny, but other times it's just hokey.

Purposeful humor is sprinkled throughout the movie, including a great pee bit, but this makes it feel like the story is flipping between genres. I enjoyed the film and I think it would be great to see with a few buddies while out on a Friday night, but this isn't something I'd run out and get on Blu-ray to play on my (hypothetical) high-def television with 5.1 surround sound. Entertaining but only memorable for the two legendary stars.