Father Geek back with Paul Revere raiding the Boston Film Festival for the cream of a 24 film shorts program on day 3 of the fest...
Paul Revere here again, with a quiet day (feature-wise) from Boston. Someday, maybe I'll learn to give my opinions on movies with the sort of straight-to-the pointitude of "the redcoats are coming!"
Kiss The Bride
If Kiss The Bride had come a little later, it would be easy to say that it's a quick knock-off of My Big Fat Greek Wedding - but a little common sense (and, well, the writer/director/producer/co-star coming out and saying so) will tell you that it must have been in production well before MBFGW's release. Being somewhat MBFGW-like will certainly help it get distribution, which it deserves.
Not that I think a bunch of MBFGW knock-offs would necessarily be a bad thing - talky crime films ruled the indie scene for years after Pulp Fiction; it might actually be a good thing for young filmmakers to aspire to make movies their grandparents would approve of.
Kiss The Bride isn't quite as good as Greek Wedding; it doesn't hit the same dlicate balance of comedy and low-key drama, and your guess is as good as mine as to whether it will get the PG-13 it deserves or an R for some rear nudity and maybe one too many uses of the f-word. It's a mainstream movie in indepedent clothing - not a bad thing, but movies like that really have to work at finding their audience.
There's a lot to like - Amanda Detmer displays the same charm as she did in Saving Silverman as the bride-to-be, with Brooke Langton and Vanessa Parise as her successful older sisters and Monet Mazur as her rebellious younger one. The movie's got a good grasp of sibling dynamics - how they can be your closest friends in the world, but unlike friends, you can't walk away from them when they hurt you, and you can't avoid their lives' insanity overflowing into yours.
It's Vanessa Parise's first feature, and it shows. Her IMDB entry shows this to be her only credit aside from a short where she also wore the four hats, and she gives the weakest performance of the sisters. During the Q&A, she stated that part of her goal was to create good roles for women, and she does, for the most part, though the menfolk are sort of pushed to the side - the groom isn't terribly well-developed, and the "guy" with the meatiest role is Alyssa Milano, as the youngest siser's lover (who, thankfully, does express her resentment at being used as a prop so that Toni can look like a rebel). The film feels very uneven; she's clearly learning as she goes.
All in all, a serviceable mainstream picture, and I hope more people get the chance to see it, and I'd like to see what Ms. Parise comes up with in the future, with this experience under her belt.
Shorts Packages 1 & 2
I'll try to keep it brief on the shorts, since likely few will see them. Still, these guys work just as hard, and deserve some recognition.
"The Remembering Movies" (live action, 23 min)
- My favorite film of the festival so far. From the first scenes of 11-year-old Decker finding old 8mm home movies in the attic (and, along with his younger sister, being entranced by them) to the very end, it hits all the right notes - both about the power of movies to captivate and communicate across generations, to how Decker's youthful naivete collides with his father's well-earned cynicism about how making and showing movies can Grandma Rose's Alzheimers. Very moving; much sniffling was heard throughout the audience. Director Christopher Rowley and Producer Gary Griggs (the co-worte the screenplay) are names to watch for in the future.
"Birju" (live-action, 15 minutes)
- A young child, maybe five years old, wanders the streets of Pushkar, observing the world and causing mischief. Almost entirely visual, without any dialog, it does a good job of showing Birju's childish curiousity and delight at the world around him.
"King Returns" (live-action, 22 minutes)
- Pepe Reyes, once known as "The King Of Flamenco" but now living a semi-anonymous life in Los Angeles, gets good news and bad news simultaneously - his music is to be rereleased and a documentary made on him, but his ex-wife, the love of his life, has just died. According to the filmmakers, they chanced upon star Raul Gonzalez (a 71-year-old former bullfighter with no previous acting experience) in a restaurant when interviewing another actor; his craggy face makes the story instantly credible.
"Peeping Tom" (live-action, 12 minutes)
- A one-joke movie, but it's a good one. Ten year-old Tom Harris makes a wish to be able to see his sexy next-door neighbor naked (he's been misusing his telescope to that end), but when he wakes up the next morning, he can't see anybody's clothes. The perfect subject for a short - the material's got about ten minutes of possibilities, and director Jason Todd Ipson and writer Aaron Rahsaan Thomas wrap it up before it overstays its welcome.
(The first short package I saw should also have contained "Getting Out", which looked pretty funny from the description and was to be a world premiere... but didn't. Maybe it's been assigned to a later package)
"Climbing Miss Sophie" (live-action, 24 minutes)
- Most of these shorts are student films, but this one really shows it: Grainy film, weird situations, oblique plot. Near as I can tell, abandoned ten-year old Tomo lives with old Miss Sophie in exchange for pushing her up the stairs, but Miss Sophie is getting sick, so... Not completely incoherent, but not exactly great storytelling, either.
"Thought Bubble" (animated, 4 minutes)
- Only two animated shorts amoung 24, which is a shame. "Thought Bubble" has a nifty look - a stop-motion homeless man in a papier-maiche city - but doesn't come up with a lot of good gags in its short runtime. Sadly, we'll see no more from its obviously-talented creator Billy Greene - the closing credits informed the audience that he died in a random shooting last year at the age of 33.
"It's Not Me, It's Not You" (live-action, 11 minutes)
- A tragic story, as two Israeli soldiers chase and gun down a Palestinian who refuses to have his bag searched - and then we flash back to see how the Palestinian and the female soldier were a couple, and to outward appearances a happy one.
"White Like The Moon" (live-action, 23 minutes)
- The pressure for kids to fit in can be unbearable, and sometimes dangerous, as we see in this story of Nita, a pretty Mexican-American girl growing up in 1950s Texas, who aspires to be a ballet dancer. What's worse is that the pressure doesn't really come from her peers, but from her mother, who worries that Nita's skin is too dark for her ever to be accepted. The last scene is heartbreaking.
"Ocha Cups For Christmas" (live-action, 30 minutes)
- Neither this nor "White Like The Moon" is really an immigrant story, one of my admitted biases - Nita was born in America; Karen, the main character of "Ocha Cups", is an American exchange student in Japan during the Christmas season - but both have similar themes of a young character being a cultural outsider, and how tough it is. There's a realistic duality in Karen - she's part homesick girl-next-door, part precocious brat. There are some creepy scenes with her teacher where it's tough to tell who's trying to seduce who; she steals from her host family, but it's not immediately apparent whether it's out of malice or because she wants to get caught and sent home. Star Emily Harrison may be a find; she's got the intelligence and looks of a less-severe Julia Stiles. Writer/director Michael Fimognari also seems well-versed in both cultures and how they intersect, and makes a nice-looking movie (how many student films have credits from two continents?). (
