Hey folks, Harry here - with the noted Rabbi of Cine'! That's right, Rabbi Rav is here with the latest combing through the Palm Beach Film Festival. He's found a really keen sounding short and a feature called CALL WAITING. Silly kid - everyone with a cel phone has that feature! Pffft! Here he is to tell us all about it...
Day 2 here, I really have nothing worth writing about today, but am only doing this because I made a declaration to myself that I would write everyday here. Last night was the big old rich person celebrity gala here. I made the mistake of going, it was a nice free dinner, but I really can't translate a night of over-dressed people watching actors thank them for their money and tell them they are helping the children. Ark! ....I watched one movie today, it was called Call Waiting and it had a short attached that surely will make Moriarty happy called The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle. Ordinarily the feature wouldn't exactly be worth writing home about, but I'm really desperate to quickly type someone and get outside watching movies today.
This film I had to see because while Quint was at the Santa Barbara film fest I would nag him over the phone and online to watch it, because "it's gotta be worth watching, it's executive produced by Don Roos, and The Opposite of Sex is the fucking bomb." Quint's response usually went something like this "Feminist, One woman on a phone, uhhh no." and he was sort of right, any movie that isn't stand-up performance movie that only features one character for an entire show should be a warning flag. I didn't head it, I watched it, and I can say that under those circumstances Call Waiting is the best movie that could come out of them. The film follows a movie-in-the-same-movie of an actress on multiple phone calls struggling to write a holocaust book as well as convincing herself her husband is cheating on her, you don't get the other side of the phone calls so its all Carol Lane for 90 minutes, you should probably walk out if you still aren't into it after ten minutes. I can say that my only real criticism other than drop the one person on the phone gimmick and make a real fricken movie is that at least they should give us the audio on who she is talking to, it really is isolating her droning on and on for 90 minutes. As neurotic as she gets it at times it can be really entertaining because Caroline Aaron is a really good actress and the part is a perfect fit for her. She's a character actress who's been in tons of stuff, Click Here To Stalk - if you are really in to her then I suggest checking this movie out.
Onwards to the short film, I was talking to the greatest of great Palm Beach festival director/guru/allaroundkickassperson Hal Axler earlier in the day and was asking about what films should I make sure not-to-miss (also there was a slight disagreement over "Shitty Movie #2 from the previous report), as he was going through my festival booklet a pair of eager young filmmakers heard i was going to Call Waiting and stopped me to tell me that their film was playing in front of the movie. They were a pleasure to meet, seemed like the nicest people ever, and were Young Frankenstein fans, so they earned quite a few cool points there. It's always a bit nerve-wracking to meet really nice filmmakers before you see their movies, because if you don't like their movie you tend to want to try to hide from their view for the rest of the fest. Fortunately I won't run next time I see Michael Vainguaz and co. His short follows Arthur Conan-Doyle dealing with the immediate backlash after killing off Sherlock Holmes, one day while leaving his children with his Watson-like illustrator his daughters are kidnapped and ransom'd to bring back Sherlock. It is up to Arthur and his Illustrator to solve the case and get his kids back. It's a really good wacky comedy and I recommend anyone that comes across it to take a look at it, Vainguaz has quite a bright future ahead of him.
Okay I'm now running off for a day of movie-watching, there will be no celebrity-filled dinners tonight, just good ol hardcore film-loving! Though I feel I should cover the dinner last night a little bit more, so here's last night's dinner in 2 lines or less of garbled nonsensical text. "Bai Ling very pretty, Brett Ratner make lotsa mediocre movies that make billion dollars, thanks for all your money rich old people, the kids thank you wherever they are...Did I mention Brett Ratner's made a billion dollars?"
okay off for movies,
Rav
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