02.16.08
Posted in film festivals, indie, double feature, documentary, drama at 11:36 am by FilmFemme
A Screening of 3 Short Films at the Northwest Film Forum in Seattle.
(1) Documentary about some guy who built some crazy instrument. Documentary consists of black and white digital interview that occasionally zooms in just on his eyes because that’s ‘artistic.’ Second half of documentary is silent footage of said guy while he plays his crazy instrument LIVE. Crazy instrument sounds like something Phillip Glass’ retarded child would make. Only worse.
(2) Silent Super 8 movie in which a woman hires a hitman to kill her husband’s mistress. It’s a good thing the (brilliant) director (of all 3 films) explained the plot before the screening! Thanks, guy!
(3) Silent 16mm movie in which a woman may or may not be the last person on earth. A skeleton follows her around. Then some people make out and drink martinis. Martinis are so cinematic. Also in black and white. And there is a band with a cello in it that plays LIVE.
I never thought that I would long for film school screenings. Mercifully all three films were under 10 minutes in length. After the last one, they tried to trick me into staying to watch the band jam (practice) by not having a pause. Fuck that.
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01.27.08
Posted in film festivals, indie, documentary, reviews at 1:17 am by FilmFemme
On a whim, I found myself at the Sundance Film Festival last weekend. It’s a weird scene, like everyone that you bump into on Beverly Drive between 1 & 2 PM just decided to buy a puffy jacket and a scarf and head off to Utah. Like everyone’s all makeup’d with straightened hair and sunglasses in case they find themselves in the background of some WireImage photo or something. It’s kind of awesome and was really entertaining to me. Anyway, on to the movie.
The one screening that I got to go to was the world premiere of a documentary about rock legend Patti Smith called Patti Smith: Dream of Life. It’s been well documented that I am a fan of music documentaries (yes, Rockumentaries) and I think that’s what made me like this one, more than the quality of it. It’s a meandering dream of the last 12 years of Smith’s life since her husband died. It seems that the filmmaker (colossally douchey photographer) Steven Sebring (careful, that site takes control of your browser size…classy…) basically just followed her around for about 12 years and they became BFF and he filmed her and put together this movie. It’s definitely a valentine to Smith, who is a totally cool and talented and rocking chick. But as a film, there’s not much of a story which made it wear on me pretty quickly. As a result of budgetary and equipment restraints, there are a lot of different looks to the film - black and white, grainy, saturated, etc. which was kind of interesting but didn’t have any real rhyme or reason to it. Smith herself is captivating, but as someone who wasn’t a fan before this movie, I couldn’t help but think: “Ok, great, but, so…?” I don’t think this will win the Audience Award, but it’s kind of interesting to have what amounts to a backstage pass to such an influential figure’s life.
Smith obviously loves her children and did love her husband, but I wish I had known more about who he was and what their relationship was like. Smith provides a haunting voiceover throughout and frames the film with some candid interviews in her bedroom. This minimal structure definitely helped, but I wanted more - more story, structure, more past. I still liked it, though.
The Q&A afterwards was great, too. Patti Smith was inches away from me and really funny. One exchange with an audience member (seriously, don’t let people ask questions because people are idiots) went like this:
IDIOT: As someone who has basically shaped their life and choices around your music…
PATTI: You know, there are doctors for that
IDIOT: Huh?
Haha - zing!
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12.27.07
Posted in misogyny, documentary, reviews at 3:23 pm by FilmFemme
Ok, maybe I’m on some totally misogynistic kick because like, my estrogen levels are depleted or something crazy, but once again, I hated this totally woman-centric ‘documentary’: Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project. So, the movie was actually made by a couple of dudes (if I’m remembering right, because IMDb sure doesn’t know) but it’s about this woman/model/photographer, Tierney Gearon, who goes to visit her schizophrenic mother in upstate New York to take pictures of her. Through the course of filming, she also gets pregnant, moves from London to L.A. and does her very best to completely fuck up her kids. Seriously, I hate hate hate this woman.
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12.21.07
Posted in double feature, documentary, reviews at 1:32 pm by FilmFemme
New York Doll
Directed by Greg Whiteley, New York Doll is a documentary about Arthur “Killer” Kane, one of the founding members and bassist for seminal punk band, the New York Dolls. It seems that after the Dolls broke up, Kane was in a pretty bad state. Hopelessly alcoholic and without any real direction, he went back and forth between New York and L.A. for a while, forming various bands and just trying to eke out a living. Until one day he joined the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He became a fucking Momon! Isn’t that wild?
Anyway, during the course of this documentary, Kane gets a chance to reunite with the Dolls in a show that Morrissey is putting on in London. The extent of the movie is basically just following him around while he works in the Momon library in L.A. and gets ready to go play a show for the first time in decades. Then he goes and plays the show and makes amends with his old bandmates and it’s pretty fucking touching, actually.
The story of his rise & fall was interesting and the way that he is such an unassuming guy is almost mindblowing. There are these 2 really hilarious old Mormon ladies that were like “Yeah, we had no idea Arthur was such a big deal!” Then he dies like, weeks after getting back from the show. It’s kind of sad, but because they had interviews with all these people that were like “All he ever talked about was getting the Dolls back together” the fact that he actually got to have that happen before he died is sort of awesome.
Technically speaking, the movie is kind of so-so, mostly beacuse it seems kind of Ex Post Facto - like the director heard about the Morrissey show and then tracked down Arthur and decided to make a documentary and just got lucky that he died at the end, so it seemed kind of epic and important. I’m sure all the other interviews were shot after Arthur died. There were some pretty cool animations though, but the whole thing could have been a little better.
The Devil and Daniel Johnston
In contrast, The Devil and Daniel Johnston was clearly a labor of love for director Jeff Feuerzeig who obviously spent years on it. And it was totally worth it, because I thought it was great.
As I have previously mentioned, I was not a cool kid. I’m not claiming to be a cool adult (especially not when it comes to music), but there is no way I would have heard of Daniel Johnston even though a lot of people have. I just like documentaries.
Apparently this guy was this totally brilliant underground singer/songwriter who also happened to be batshit crazy (seriously, majorly, unmedicatedly bipolar). But he was also extremely driven to be a musician and made his way on to MTV and Kurt Cobain wore one of his t-shirts and people definitely knew about him. But once he finally got a record deal, he went all paranoid crazy and wouldn’t sign the damn contract!
Anyway, I really enjoyed this movie because it introduced me to this guy who seriously, even though he really sucks at guitar writes these really awesome Bob Dylan-esque songs that are kind of great! And it’s one of those Better Than Fiction stories.
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11.09.07
Posted in documentary, reviews at 4:07 pm by FilmFemme
Ira Glass basically forced me to watch How’s Your News? because he talked about it for a while on This American Life about a thousand years ago when I could still podcast. So I got it from Netflix and it sat on top of my DVD player for 2 or 3 weeks until I tried to watch it last weekend. I got about 15 minutes into it and it was just too much!
A group of developmentally disabled adults get in a Winnebago with some filmmakers and interview people on the street and sing songs. I guess it’s meant to be heartwarming and/or provocative but I just found it incredibly uncomfortable. The part that made me turn it off was when they put a camera in some glasses (you know, like those ones they use on the blowjob [btw, this text editor thinks blow-job should be hyphenated?] amateur porn videos, um, not that I know anything about that) on this one guy who doesn’t speak English. I should rephrase that - he doesn’t speak *any* language. Rather, he communicates with grunts and pointing and some very scribbly writing. And they just sent him up to people on the street with a little notecard that said “How’s your news?” (this phrase annoys me too - is it a colloquialism? Who says this?) and he proceeded to grunt at them and they either ignored him or smiled politely and looked horribly uncomfortable. I mean, what is the point of this, really? What does that prove? How does that give me insight into the human condition? I would argue that it doesn’t, because the guy doesn’t know what he’s doing, the people don’t know what he’s doing and it’s just, like, creepy.
There was one lady, Susan Harrington, who was kind of awesome and would sing crazy songs in this loud operatic voice and maybe I could stomach more of that. But like, if I’m going to be that uncomfortable, I expect a Happy Ending…
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11.01.07
Posted in documentary, reviews at 10:19 am by FilmFemme
Fact: A humanitarian crisis is ravaging Darfur and it totally sucks.
Fact: I fell asleep during Darfur Now.
Fact: It is not a cool phenomenon, but Janjaweed is a really cool word. Its definition is “Devil on Horseback” which is also pretty bitchin’. Sorry, it is!
Fact: The Spanish prosecutor for war crimes from the International Court of Justice is really charming! The Hague is another cool phrase.
Fact: George Clooney could cook filet mignon for everyone in Africa using only his smoldering glances.
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10.19.07
Posted in television, documentary, reviews at 11:51 am by FilmFemme
Top Ten Things that pissed me off about the screening of this I went to at Grauman’s
10. It started late.
9. The Netflix Original Content chick who introduced it and seemed like she had never held a microphone. Ok, I should cut her slack because she was probably really nervous. It was annoying though.
8. The girl who sat beside me and blackberry-d
7. The name “Dr. Sanjay Gupta”
6. The special looked slapped together - bad photography, bad utilization of HD, too much Anderson Cooper looking like a total prissy lameass. (My gay joke: “This is the only time you’ll ever see Anderson Cooper go on a search for beavers.”)
5. They didn’t update the CNN logo to be HD so it was all pixelized in the bottom corner of the screen.
4. The Executive Producer that attempted “banter” with Anderson Cooper et al who was such a total douchebag but thought himself to be hilarious when he WAS NOT AT ALL.
3. Anderson Cooper, Jeff Corwin and Sanjay Gupta are all the same height: short.
2. They spliced the special down to about 45 minutes and ended it right before Jeff Corwin is going to play with polar bears!!
and the number one thing that pissed me off about this screening was…
1. Anderson Cooper is so not that hot in person.
I take solace in this:
*Sigh*
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09.22.07
Posted in best of, documentary, reviews at 9:36 am by FilmFemme
An Inconvenient Truth? More like An Inconvenient Snooze!
But seriously, Global Warming Is A Serious Issue And We Should All Curb Our Carbon Emissions, Etc.
This movie had a lot of really nice graphics and was very informative and educational but Al Gore’s even-keeled southern drawl put me right to sleep.
Also, I wrote a paper about this subject in 7th grade and no one gave me an Oscar.
But look how broodingly sexy Al Gore was back in the day: 
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08.11.07
Posted in documentary, reviews at 3:21 pm by FilmFemme
So, Netflix sent me a new DVD of Born into Brothels since the first one was cracked and I watched it today. I thought it was really boring and I didn’t like it. I am a huge fan of documentaries and as long as they’re about something I’m remotely interested in, which this one was (brothels, prostitution, developing countries, women’s rights). But I just couldn’t get interested in this movie. The premise is that this woman, Zana Briski, went to a red light district in Calcutta to document the lives of the women working there. She ended up getting to know the children really well and gave them some cheapo cameras and taught them about photography so they could take pictures of their lives and eventually tried to help get them out of the brothels and into good schools. I think one of the big problems I had with it was Briski and how much she injected herself into the story (she was in front of the camera as much as the kids were) and I how I found her really annoying. Obviously, she wants to help these kids whose mom’s are whores and that’s completely noble but there was something about her mannerisms or something that just reeked of pretension and superiority, so it was hard to get on her side.
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07.26.07
Posted in documentary, reviews at 5:42 pm by FilmFemme
In 2001, when it came out, Hell House was probably a pretty cool movie for the religion-adverse. However, before I saw this movie I saw Jesus Camp and it was way better, way more disturbing and way more engaging. The most intriguing part of the people in Hell House is a weird side story that involves some guy’s wife cheating on him and now “she’s not with us anymore.” I assume that doesn’t mean he killed her, but maybe he did. But they really don’t delve into that story enough. Mostly it’s just a bunch of high school kids rehearsing for a play. Only their play is trying to scare you into the arms of Jesus or whatever. At least now I know why my parents never let me go to the Hell House in Colorado so I could watch girls pretend to bleed to death from abortions and get date raped at raves. Anyway. See Jesus Camp.
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