jfb | cinequest

For the record, and since I did spend all that time watching movies at Cinequest, here are notes on a few of my favorites (in no special order):

The Third Monday in October, a wonderful documentary about the 2004 campaign for president... of the student council, at four middle schools across the United States. People are so great.
We Are the Strange, like nothing I've ever seen, with its mix of stop-motion animation, anime action, and old-school 8-bit video games, all animated over three years by one guy from San Jose in his bedroom.
Outsourced, the most conventionally enjoyable movie I saw at the festival, a sweet comedy about a salesman who goes to India to train a replacement to head his company's order fulfillment department.

Also of note:

Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out, a first-person documentary compiled by Stewart Copeland from miles of Super 8 footage he took while touring with the Police. Plus a fascinating appearance by Copeland himself, which unfortunately I had to leave early, so I don't know how it ended.
Blood Car, a mildly horror-ish comedy about a vegan schoolteacher who, while trying to invent a wheatgrass-powered automobile, accidentally creates instead an engine that runs on human blood. Over the top as a movie, yet nicely understated in its politics. lithiumnature, rent this DVD when it comes out.