one-note samba
Mar. 6th, 2003 12:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jfbLast year sometime I was wondering if there were any Vietnamese movies about the Vietnam War (you know the one I mean). Now there's Song of the Stork. What I'd forgotten is that, with two exceptions, I find war movies pretty dull. Nice cinematography, though. Unfortunately one reel, in the middle of the film, was missing subtitles. So most of us sort of lost the plot.
Here's the thing about short films: They're short. But twelve of them in a row are not short. On the bright side, those in the Joyride program were mostly funny. Actually they were all at least somewhat funny. I especially liked... wait, there were thirteen. I especially liked Jeff Farnsworth, about a Northwestern grad who wants to make it as a bouncer instead of going into investment banking like his father wants. The lead actor had a great silent comedy quality--expressive face, put-upon character--and apparently hasn't been in anything else.
Often at these screenings of shorts, they'll bring out the filmmakers who made several of the films for a Q&A, and then almost all the questions will be for one or two of the filmmakers--usually the ones who had the highest budget and/or most friends in the audience. Watching the others get ignored makes me cringe. Tonight's Q&A was nice for me--there was a whole lineup of like a dozen people from maybe eight films, and the questions were divided pretty evenly, even though the budgets ranged from $3 to $lots, and one group from San Francisco had clearly brought friends to stack the audience. A lot of the questions were for everyone--"what was the biggest hurdle you had to jump", and they just answered down the line. It was really cool to watch people at different career stages and with wildly different films give their answers to the same questions.
Sleep.
Here's the thing about short films: They're short. But twelve of them in a row are not short. On the bright side, those in the Joyride program were mostly funny. Actually they were all at least somewhat funny. I especially liked... wait, there were thirteen. I especially liked Jeff Farnsworth, about a Northwestern grad who wants to make it as a bouncer instead of going into investment banking like his father wants. The lead actor had a great silent comedy quality--expressive face, put-upon character--and apparently hasn't been in anything else.
Often at these screenings of shorts, they'll bring out the filmmakers who made several of the films for a Q&A, and then almost all the questions will be for one or two of the filmmakers--usually the ones who had the highest budget and/or most friends in the audience. Watching the others get ignored makes me cringe. Tonight's Q&A was nice for me--there was a whole lineup of like a dozen people from maybe eight films, and the questions were divided pretty evenly, even though the budgets ranged from $3 to $lots, and one group from San Francisco had clearly brought friends to stack the audience. A lot of the questions were for everyone--"what was the biggest hurdle you had to jump", and they just answered down the line. It was really cool to watch people at different career stages and with wildly different films give their answers to the same questions.
Sleep.
