(no subject)

No NYT summary this week--I'm still at Cinequest. I've been meaning to post about some of the films, but I just haven 't been home that much. So now I'm trying to write this on a PDA. Um, if I end up doing this a lot I'm going to have to adopt that all-lower-case, no-punctuation style that's so popular with the kids.

Anyway, here are some highlights so far.

Two of my favorites, unexpectedly, are documentaries. In Awful Normal, first-time filmmaker Celesta Davis and her sister and their mother, after 25 years of pretending nothing happened, confront the man who molested the girls when they were five and eight. Direct, complex, very intense, and kind of amazing what they got on camera. Often a film about an "issue" will be didactic, full of facts and generalizations. This one brings out the nuances of its subject by just showing one story about a few real people. Cinequest page, IMDb page.

The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam is a lighter film, also with a family angle: Filmmaker Ann Marie Fleming goes searching for the life story of her Chinese great-grandfather, a world-famous Vaudeville magician now largely forgotten except by other magicians. Fleming uses animation to bring old photographs and illustrations to life, which is a really cool form of magic itself, but wouldn't matter without the fascinating story--or stories, many of which are apocryphal--of Long Tack Sam himself, crossing national and ethnic boundaries (he married the love of his life in Austria in 1908). Official site, Cinequest page, IMDb page.

Aaand that's all I managed to key in today. (And I revised it and added links at home.) The stuff about the really good performances and the many many good short films and the brushes with filmmakers I admire will have to wait.

just one more thing

I do want to say one more thing before I try to get some sleep (stupid job!): Last year when I was writing about Cinequest I felt kind of dumb for recommending movies I knew most of you would never get a chance to see, or at least not until long after you'd forgotten skimming my posts.

This year, well, I'm still going to do that. But Cinequest has introduced a new web site where you can download DVD-quality (or so I hear) trailers, excerpts, short films, and in a few cases full-length features. You'll need fast net and Internet Explorer (and probably Windows), so it's still not for everybody, but it's really cool that they're doing it at all.

Anyway, the Cinequest pages for the films include download links for some films, and I'll try to point them out--like, you can see the trailer for and I guess a scene from Awful Normal by clicking the Cinequest page link in my previous post. It's nothing like seeing the full film with an audience, though. But that's another post for another day.

(no subject)

Two performances I've really enjoyed, although I can't unequivocally recommend the films:

Spectres is the story of a great teenage character struggling to break out of a kind of muddled ghost story. Lauren Birkell makes the central role sullen, witty, angry, and full of unwanted energy with no place to go--instantly recognizable from any high school. She's also given the best dialogue in the film, which is a good thing because she's in almost every scene. The movie's at its worst when it takes its metaphysics seriously, but I enjoyed watching the more everyday parts. Official site, Cinequest page (trailer, scene), IMDb page.

If Birkell shines in Spectres, Patricia Kovács practically is the Hungarian movie Down by Love. As the movie opens Eva is arriving at her apartment after a vacation, and with two brief exceptions she never leaves it. People come to the door wanting favors or offering help, and we hear but never see them. Her only other human contact is on the telephone with friends, family members, and a lover who is bad news. The whole story is her gradual emotional unraveling--it's kind of confusing, and kind of contrived (every character seems to have at least two relationships to Eva), but Kovács shows that disintegration in every moment, and it's fascinating. Official site, Cinequest page, IMDb page.

Both Kovács and Birkell are relatively unknown. Birkell is in some upcoming episodes of "Six Feet Under" and a horror movie of the also-starring-Bruce-Campbell variety. Let's hope for the best. And Kovács, well, not many Hungarian films get released over here, but she should be in some of them.

(no subject)

You know, I hate writing about movies almost as much as I hate writing about music. It's too bad I don't have a better way of sharing these undiscovered films without actually saying anything about them.

(no subject)

Well, they found Spalding Gray.

From what I've read, he was depressed and occasionally suicidal since a horrible car accident in Ireland a few years ago. Crushed hip, constant pain, but also head injuries. I'm just going to stop this paragraph here.

One of the recommended documentaries at Cinequest is about a promising playwright who fell off a bridge in 1978, suffered head injuries, and was never expected to do creative work again. It's supposed to be uplifting in the end, but I don't think I'm going to see it.