Ahoy, squirts! Quint here... Rav makes me laugh. I'm sure he'll make you laugh, too. Read below for more of his crazy adventures at the Palm Beach Film Festival!
Okay third day here in the land of the palmed beaches. I would like to take this moment to give my first personal AICN award for the tenth anniversary PBIFF, this being for craziest, annoying, loud, badgering filmmakers. This is being awarded to a group of people who have managed to offer every single person free panties and condoms at the most bizarre moments and are just all around the most loudest, desperate gang of people here. You can't walk into a theatre without seeing an I Will Avenge You, Iago! person clamoring for your attendance at their next screening or perhaps impromptu press conferences that envelope the entire floor of the Festival HQ. It's normally like, "oh my god get the silly russian guy and Giancarlo Esposito the hell out of here, I'm trying to eat my three-hour-old sausage roll and complementary soda, crap!" And I don't really intend for this to be mean-spirited or with any malice whatsoever, its just an observation of mine. I'm actually very curious to get a look at their movie, I like Esposito's work in lots of stuff, it could really be good or perhaps they are just over-compensating with promotion. People need to learn that that does not work too well in independent film. Oh well, on to fun stuff.
Earlier today someone asked me if I take notes during the movies. I think I gave them some long pretentious answer that made me sound really smart or like a big douche. The real answer, for you people that dont care, is I just watch what I can then type what I can remember in the morning. If I can't remember something the next day, it obviously wasn't that good or suck that much enough so that it should matter to anyone else other than me. Though I do carry around a notebook, that is so I can make my important drawings of Commissioner Burt Aronson in a Godzilla-suit.
This morning I woke up with the intentions of seeing this movie called Aryan Couple, unfortunately since Palm Beach is the size of a small European Nation, I could not get to the screening on time and wound up settling with the shorts program. It's always a bit fun to cover shorts, because usually no one else does and they get lost in the fray so people are really genuinely enthused about getting some press. Onward to the movies and my stupid babbling will cease.
Since I am doing a short article, I have a special mention for a short that really impacted me this morning, continuing my untitled review of shitty movie policy I will refer to this film as "The Boring Old-people Have Cancer and Ride Bike Short." This film was six hours too long and I pray for a head injury to forget it. A waste of my life, their life for making it, and a room full of people lost thirty minutes of theirs, thanks old women...You raped us. Happy?
I'm going to go through the preliminary round of cute funny stuff that just generally deserves a little bit of notice, then on to the really kickass stuff or I'll just be lazy and run through them really quickly....or both.
The first short I saw was a film called "Neck Deep," directed by a bloke by the name of Todd G. Bieber. It followed a disgruntled upper-class fisherman's attempts to get rid of a random street person from his "private member's only stream." I know by description it sounds kind of lame, but it actually had a lot of heart and charm to it, as well as it only ran five minutes. It got a few laughs, all around good short. Next up was "Hole In The Wall" this one had a girl interviewing for a sublet apartment in New York, its cheap its perfect, except the only problem is theres a giant hole in the wall to the bitchy artist neighbor. It's directed by a guy named Matt Ehlers, it's cute, funny, fluff, I recommend you to check it out if it ever hits IFILM or something. The next one is a film made by a very delightful couple of filmmakers, it's called Laundry Night, it's directed by Jared Ramsey Patrick. This stylish little comedic bit follows a seemingly sleazy guy who flirts with infidelity after seeing a beautiful woman late at a laundromat. It's really quirky, well shot, I liked it a lot, it'd be really nice to see a Jared Ramsey feature. The last sort of cute short was called How To Ace An Intervention, this one in which an alcoholic woman fends off a group of loved ones trying to help her. It's sadistic, insane, I love it, thank you Ned Farr.
Okay I love fucked up movies and I saw a couple of shorts that totally fit the bill today. One film was a pseudo-serial-killer happy stalker musical named "I Will," it's two minutes and psychotic as all hell, Tom Metz (the director) rules. As well there was also a film which sort of was a sexual/racial/age/gay bender movie with a really cute girl in it called "Things That Go Bump In The Night," really good movie.
Lastly I came upon a work of genius by a man named Shoe Schuster who made a movie called "Fight of the Fly," it was a perfect short film, it had foreign organized evil subtitled flies and deadbeat husbands with insect-torturing children. I'd fawn over this film all day if it wasn't for the fact that I'm writing this at 1:45 AM and really really want to go to sleep right now.
Okay off to the hotel bar now to email this out,
Rav
