Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with Rav writing in from Sunny Florida where he's watching a ton of flicks at the Palm Beach Film Festival. He saw a couple that he didn't like, but apparently he really flipped for the new Hal Hartley flick which sounds odd, but damn cool. Enjoy, squirts!
So Rav here in West Palm Beach Florida covering the tenth anniversary film festival here. Kind of holed up in my room right now, downstairs is rumored to be some sort of "press event" I'm frightened to be near. It's not that I persay "hate" filmmakers its just I get enough short film press-kits thrust my direction walking through the lobby of the hotel on a normal day, I can't imagine what a press lunch would be like and I'm not curious enough to go down and find out. Today is their big star-studded celebrity gala, where rich people spend $500 to get their glimpses of Haley Joel Osment and Michael Clarke Duncan and eat pretty-looking catered food. This my second day here, yesterday I flew in, I had to be at my flight in austin around four a.m. and when my flight got in I was whisked away to watching movies soon after, so the entire day I was a walking talking zombie, unfortunately the first two presentations weren't exactly good movies, thank god by the end Hal Hartley saved my night. Mr. Hartley, I do indeed owe you a chocolate-chip muffin or something, if it hadn't been for your film I would have surely tried to bribe a homeless man to piggy-back-walk my fat-ass home to Texas with one of the Gideon's bibles from my room. I would probably have had to trade some alcohol too, fucking hagglers.
Ordinarily I would avoid talking about the bad movies I watched here, there's like an unwritten Aint It Cool rule that you dont talk bad about indie movies without distribution. You just take a prozac and forget about it, let the films go and get distribution while you go back to fighting the good fight searching for great films somewhere buried in the deep mediocre film festival haystack. This year I'm personally changing that in my reports, but I'll be changing the names to protect the untalented. For instance my reviews of my first and second movies will be titled as reviews of "Shitty Movie #1" and "Shitty Movie #2". If either filmmaker wants to leave me death threats under my door or have an uncomfortable argument on the merits of your movie, I'm room #317 at the gulfstream hotel here. Okay, onward to shitty movie #1!
Shitty Movie #1 I was warned about via IMDB, as well as the notion that it has been doing the festival circuit for nearly three years now and has yet to find distribution, I think I'm it's last theatrical victim. I went to the screening because I'm a big fan of some of the talents wasted in the film. Shitty is about a desperate actor who starts breaking other actors limbs in order to get character actor parts in movies. The premise had a bit of potential, unfortunately you've seen and heard all the humor before in much better movies. As well as in comparable movies, there's a sub-plot in the film directly out of that matthew broderick/alec baldwin the last hit movie and it's not funny here too. To cap-off it's mediocrity Eric Roberts makes an appearance as an out of work actor. Unbelieveably, Molly Parker isn't even able to save the movie as a condom-pitching super-model. I really was disappointed by this one, but I guess it had it's warnings.
Shitty Movie #2 isn't exactly shit, but there's no way I could write a positive review so I need to change the name to protect the innocent indie moviemaker, his heart was in the right place . This one was a premiere here and I went to it after hearing the buzz from other festival-ites, it was exactly the thing that could make a festival great, discovering good stuff from nowhere. It's a mock-documentary in which a college (student) accidentally buys an old master recording at a garage sale and becomes a fan of the band without knowing who they are, thus he sets out on the journey. Unfortunately there was also a can of 16mm film in the box with the master. Most of the movie becomes a blair-witch-style experience of that 16mm can which is just shots of hippies happily singing and dancing together, unfortunately the hippies aren't exactly that interesting and make-up most of the movie. There's a good group of actors behind the college sequences that book-end the boring footage, though unfortunately the dialogue is mainly just setting up more 16mm boredom everytime you see them. Ninety minutes of hippy singing with no character or story make me very very sleepy, people were getting up and walking in-and-out through this one very liberally.
Okay, thank Jesus's magical sword playset, thats over with.
The last movie I could choose from seeing a Tom Sizemore movie that I knew nothing about or the new Hal Hartley movie in which the only thing I really knew about it was that it had over 23 votes on IMDB and had a 5.3 average. I decided the way to go with this one was to just defy all judgement and watch the fucking movie, fingerscrossed, there's absolutely no way that it could be as bad as what I just went through. I was very tired and didn't exactly have much patience left for mediocrity. A short started and I groaned because I really just wanted to get the cinematic-beating over with and get back to my hotel room to sleep. As it turned out, the shitty streak had ended, and the good movie streak had began with this short titled "Everything In This Country Must." It had quite a lot of production value, as well as was off a 35mm print. It followed a group of Irish soldiers who after being a bit reckless accidentally hit a car with their tank and kill a mother and child, the rest of the short follows the soldiers as they help a family save their horse. Now that probably sounds a bit banal, but it's really something. The film has a wonderful cast of actors It's got a little girl that really can act as well as the whole squad of soldiers come off really well. Gary Mckendry should be really proud himself.
Now on to the really good stuff.
The new Hal Hartley film that showed at the festival was called "The Girl From Monday," in the festival booklet they classified it as a comedy/drama, though it has quite a bit comedic and dramatic elements I think it proves that they just hadn't watched the movie, as it's very much actually a sci-fi comedy/drama and they never really pushed that element in the description either. It's kind of a hard film to try to describe, last week when a review ran of a Werner Herzog sci-fi movie that had came out of nowhere I pictured a film similar to the girl from monday. This film is like if Jean-Luc Godard, Lars Von Trier, and David Cross teamed up to remake THX-1138 on a $12 budget they would come up with a movie like this. Thank god for Hal Hartley, I love this movie. It stars Bill Sage, who was the kick-ass cop in Evenhand, Sabrina "The Cute Girl From Sports Night" Lloyd, and Leo "I swear I never slept with Larry Clark" Fitzpatrick, in roles that you wouldn't exactly picture each of the actors best for, but they pull them off admirably. It takes place in a future where sex has come from a marketing tool to a vibrant part of the economy, where it even effects insurance premiums. It's got naked alien women, terrorists, and kids with guns hopped up on caffine, you don't really get much better than that. Sage plays a marketing guy trying to stop the govt.'s attempt to place a specially formulated high-caffine soda in children's schools where it will react with their ADD medication to create ultra-violent behavior. I'm going to stop trying to describe this film, as it's fairly ludicrous, but just know it rules, it's bizarre, and God I want to see it again already. It'll also have me quoting, "Fuck me, so that I can increase my consumer buying power" for quite a while.
The only criticism I have for Hartley's movie is that it's shot with a slurred shutter rate that makes it seem like it was photographed by someone hopped up on cough medicine, obviously intentional, but seems to be a vain attempt at style. Hartley did the score for the film itself and it's perfectly as well was a joy to listen to, I'd very much like a soundtrack to it one day. Sage absolutely rules in this movie, I hope he's casting in bigger budget bigger roles soon as he kicks clooney's ass. Again Mr. Hartley thank you, please god someone pick this movie up and release it.
Alright off for the day of indie movies and expensive dinners.
Rav
