Month: June 2006

I saw 24 full length features during this festival. I’m having difficulty picking the “best” of the festival, because while there were several very good movies, I can’t pick any that really got me. But here are the movies I liked the most, in some sort of order:

Sweet Land ( IMDB / website ) Puppy ( IMDB / website ) Brothers of The Head ( IMDB / website ) Independent, Doin’ Major Things ( IMDB / website ) The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound To Lose ( IMDB / website ) Crossing Arizona ( IMDB / website ) Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story ( IMDB / website )

What’s odd for me is that I saw several narratives that I liked (Sweet Land, Puppy, Brothers of The Head); in the past I’ve tended to avoid narratives (sticking to documentaries) because I usually find them tiresome, silly and cliche’d. This year they were … just good.

When setting up my schedule for this year’s festival, I found that there was a LOT that I wanted to see, and I think that can be attributed to a programing shift at the festival. Apparently they decided to go decidedly more “indie” this year, and all I can say is that I liked this festival noticeably more than past years. None of the movies were out-of-the-park hits for me personally, but there were a lot of good ones, and it was time well spent. The tradeoff of leaning towards independents as that we don’t get to see the movies that made big waves at Sundance, like God Grew Tired Of Us, Iraq In Fragments, American Hardcore, etc. But I don’t mind that so much since those are likely to get distribution some other way, either via theaterical or DVD release.

Logistically, this festival avoided the messes of last year: there were hardly any technical problems, no cancelled screenings, all the information was at our fingertips on the website, etc. Hopefully next year they’ll figure out the GSU parking situation better.

American Blackout — obivously intended to be most flattering to Ms. McKinney, but a lot of the accolades are warranted since she is one of the few elected people at the federal level speaking truth to power; at this point she’s got nothing to lose, so she’s tackling issues and taking positions that other politicians won’t touch since she was taken down in 2002’s conflagration of media attention.

The doc is of course absolutely correct in its representation of the core issue of black voter disenfranchisement. but these docs don’t reach broad audiences and are likely to alienate moderates that they do reach, and so these docs like these an be seen much like the similar (but opposing) films that play to the conservative megachurch crowds in the white exurbs.

I suppose that there is still value in preaching to choir, perhaps energizing that choir; but the fact is that, as she observed on Election Night 2004, the right-wing is simply better at this; they can distort facts, hone simple messages and manipulate people into voting against their own self-interest. Further, they are now demonstrated experts at the disenfranchisement tactics that worked in Florida and then Ohio, and they’ll continue to stay one step (one election cycle) ahead of those of us who just want an honest vote. Democrats/liberals/progressives simply can’t execute on these kinds of tactics that modern politics require — I don’t know if it’s the diversity in the tent that prevents them from being able to dumb their message down to a simple set and then staying on message, or simply scruples, but it’s just not happening.

Oh, and, I’m probably naive about this, but I still blame Denise Majette for screwing up Cathy Woolard’s political career …

Pope Dreams — Damn them for making such an effective tearjerker; they just hammered away at all the big buttons. In general it’s a by-the-numbers romantic comedy that might star John Cusack or Meg Ryan, and thus it’s appropriate that the writing is pretty bad (like Saved-By-The-Bell bad) but as the movie wore on it kept getting better and better. The acting was good, although it was kind of hard to tell behind all that cliche’d writing. William Faulkner said “love, money and death are the only three things to write about”, and they thoroughly covered all three in this movie. I imagine that it was probably a tough call for the AFF folks about whether to include this film in the festival, what with the vigorously dopey 10th-grader writing and kleenex artillery, but there’s a lot of raw talent here and I’m sure we’ll see more from a lot of these people. Noel Fisher steals all his scenes, and Stephen Tobolowksy turned in his usual solid performance. Character development is messy but there’s lots to chew on.

Oh, Mr. Faulkner, Do You Write? — nice insight into Faulkner the man, adaption of a one-man play, although there’s hardly any “adaptation” since they just ran a few cameras during his stage performance, a la Spalding Gray, with audience engagement. Note: seeing movies with old people in the audience (a la Prairie Home Companion) is really annoying, what with their astonished gasps, agreeing mutters and other emotive grunts. I need to read another Faulkner book.

War and Truth — very frustrating. The title implies far more than they deliver in this doc about journalists in war zones. The first 45 minutes is a meandering collection of stock footage interpersed with random soundbites from interviews with journalists who have been in warzones. The last 20 minutes tries to redeem the doc with a jumbled mess of opinions from everyone about everything; they overstate the politics (WMD lies blah blah blah) but understate the propaganda/spin angle that they should be nailing. What goes unsaid is how reporting in vietnam was different from iraq; military’s control of story via embeds; the effect that security concerns have on journalists’ ability to seek out stories and context; military’s use of inexperienced local reporters who are happy to do stand ups without serious context or hindsight, thus playing lip service to “access”. There is a clear abandonment of neutral POV (e.g. showing images of White House or Bush when voiceover says “lies” or “propaganda”) with resulting alienation of audience; this might work if audience is led to that conclusion, but it’s just plopped in front of them. The only clear, pointed commentary came from Danny Schechter of www.mediachannel.org , so if nothing else, I got that pointer out of this. The filmmakers’ hearts are in the right place, but this is just yet another squandered opportunity to make a clear point. In the Q+A afterwards they said they weren’t done with it yet, so maybe they can resequence it and put together something …

Independent, Doin’ Major Things — You need to see this movie, although I don’t know how since it probably only plays in festivals or other oddball screenings (you can buy the DVD). “Hustle” Simmons (get it? har har) leads us through a fast paced introduction to the music and promotions business; technically it’s a complete f*cking mess, with bad edits, glitchy sound and awful transitions, but packed full of insight into the Atlanta hiphop scene, especailly the independent promotions activities from which all the hype and postcards and merch flows onto the streets. Drives home the point that major label agreements are designed to screw the artist and enrich the label, and that the way to riches to work outside the system, or somehow partnered with it, but definitely not inside it. Another great slice-of-life documentary.

Psychopathia Sexualis — a very unique film; most of it verges on pornography so be forewarned.

Too Tough to Die: A Tribute to Johnny Ramone — I had to surpress the urge to leave at least 4 times during this; it really highlights how good last year’s Ramones doc End Of The Century was. Performances by various punk movement luminaries (and not-so-luminaries) at a tribute concert in Los Angeles just days before Johnny dies of cancer. Great appearances by The Dickies and Henry Rollins, but that was overwhelmed by phoned-in interviews and performances by the likes of Anthony Kiedis, Pete Yorn (?!), Eddie Vedder, etc. Stuck it out to the end to be rewarded with a nice eulogy for Johnny. Hey director: next time you’re filming X, spend a tiny bit more time on Billy Zoom and DJ Bonebrake, mmmkay? And don’t relegate Joan Jett to the credits …

Factotum — nice little narrative with some big names; nothing much happens in the flim but that’s OK with me, considering that this is Bukowski; I especially liked how the theater was populated with a lot of people seeing it alone. This film has distribution (Matt Dillon and Lily Taylor? Duh!) and will be in theaters later this summer.

The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound To Lose — two musical soulmates who drive each other up the wall; both get carried off in the drug waves of the 60’s; one cleans himself up in the late 70’s, but the other takes another 20 years to do it — defying the expectations of everyone else waiting for him to die. Great documentary about dysfunctional artists, patient fans and the flipside of charisma and magnetic personalities.

Passion & Poetry – The Ballad of Sam Peckinpah — a sonofabitch to work with but a great director (The Wild Bunch, Cross Of Iron); the documentary itself was actually fairly bad and far too long, what with all the sycophantic Germans and Ernest Borgnine belly laughs.

The Reivers — See, it’s my own fault, really. I saw “William Faulkner” and I thought “seriously f*cked up southern gothic”, but what I got instead was “The Apple Dumpling Gang plus whores and horses”. A sugary coming of age story that I could have gone without.

‘Tis Autumn — The slighty rough filmmaking got on my nerves at first, but the subject at hand (the mystery of Jackie Paris) quickly won me over. A really nice jazz doc and a fascinating story.

Crossing Arizona — standard doc with insight into the lives of the people who are literally at the frontlines of the illegal immigration debate. One on side you’ve got the right-wing blowhards taunting their own right-wing government for not properly securing the border, and the other side you’ve got the humanitarians trying to save the lives of the Mexicans who are taking increasing risks to cross over. In the middle you have the low-wage workers trying to push through it all and get to the jobs. All this on a background of ballot initiatives, posturing for the media, how NAFTA created the problem, etc. Covers many angles, worth seeing.

Sweet Land — A beautiful film and an engaging , sweet story, and that’s coming from someone who usually gags at that kind of stuff (see Things From Trees). It had me in a pleasant fog all the way home. It doesn’t hurt that Elizabeth Reaser is so easy on the eyes …

Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story — basic good documentary, about a kidnapping whose scope and impact gets larger and larger as the years pass.

Puppy — good! Both leads are great, the film is well put-together … the only narrative worth seeing in the festival so far.

Things That Hang From Trees — Oh look, a sleepy southern town with a cast of quirky characters. Easy on the eyes though. That Ray McKinnon, he’s somethin’. But along with Sunday’s No. 2, it’s two hours that I wouldn’t have minded keeping for some other purpose.

Brothers of The Head — seems at a glance to be one those one-joke movies that I’d hate (siamese twin rockers! haha!), but it turned out to be very well done; filmaking, acting, music, it’s all good.

Brother Gordon — it was just a 15 minute short, but a compelling view of a man who speaks eloquently of his conversion from a life of shady civilian/military contract killings to a life of Buddhism and bringing herion addicts back to a healthy life.

Rain on a Dry Land — standard PBS/POV-style doc; illustrative of how immigrants can get chewed up and spit out by America, especially if they don’t know English well enough to converse verbally; particularly illuminating was one scene where you could see how the system essentially encourages them to have more children because it’ll solve their immediate money problems; this also illustrates the language problem because the state support mechanism was trying to communicate more subtle issues, but the “baby=money” message is what made it through the language barriers.

Rural Rock and Roll — careening between insipid interviews and dopey fun, this documented an inbred indie rock scene located in an isolated corner of northern California (pot-growing hippies, contractor rednecks, students of local liberal arts college). Illustrates well one of my rules of life: The Scene Is Now. Don’t wait for someone to tell you that you’re in the midst of a larger movement or scene, because by the time it’s recognized as such and the word gets out, it’s dead and the energy has moved elsewhere. Make your own scene, do it now, and let someone else write about it later. By the epilogue at the end of movie, all of the bands in the doc had broken up.

Edge of Outside: Independent Filmmakers — talking heads documentary about some key filmmakers who invented “independent”: Cassavetes, Fuller, Peckinpah, even Capra. Produced by the staff of Turner Classic Movies, this will air on TCM on July 5th at 8pm and is well worth watching. I’ll be watching it again to catch all the movie references and make my Netflix queue even longer …

No. 2 — writing was too pat, overwrought; but a nice slice of life in suburban (!) Fiji; adapted from the director’s play, and she probably didn’t (yet) have the skills to translate it to screen properly. Looks like I have a new actress to hate to take the place of Keira Knightley. I’m guessing that this got included only as part of the deal that brought Ruby Dee to the gala that preceded the festival.

Note: the film titles below link to the AFF description of the movie; please do read those short descriptions because I don’t recap that material in my comments.

Future By Design — a well-meaning utopian whose grasp of technologies is a mile wide but an inch deep, and none of his ideas would stand up to serious scrutiny. But he keeps his audience of lay dreamers (mostly itinerant retirees, it seems) entertained with lavish drawings and models. Oddly amateurish filmmaking.

Home Front — What strikes me during these scarred-by-Iraq docs is how I know absolutely nobody, even indirectly, who has been sent to Iraq. Middle America has bought into this delusional “freedom isn’t free” “fighting them over there to protect us over here” bullshit that the neocons have cynically fabricated to lure them into voting for their puppet, and Middle America pays for it with their sons and daughters lives and livelihood. But they can’t let themselves come to a conclusion other than “support the troops and the mission” because otherwise they might have to realize that they lost their eyes and limbs and lives for a fraud. These are simple, decent people who have been taken advantage of by a profit-making, body-chewing machine.

Al Franken: God Spoke — Eh. An entertaining crowd pleaser. Nice to see it demonstrated once again what a reptile Ann Coulter is. Anyway, nothing in politics really matters ever since the nation failed, on November 3rd 2004, to rise up en masse and correct the mistakes and crimes of the previous four years. Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?

It’s early June and time for the annual Atlanta Film Festival. As I do every year, I’m taking the whole week off of work, I’ve bought an all-access pass, and I’ll be going to every screening that I reasonably can. In the past I’ve usually found a gap here and there in the week’s schedule of movies where I can have a few hours to … run errands and generally relax my mind, but this year seems to be denser than before. I don’t know if it’s the quantity or quality of movies or what, but there’s a lot more that I want to see this year — mostly documentaries as usual.

I’ll be posting here with my thoughts about what I’ve seen, like last year, although unlike last year this time I will post daily to try to capture what I’ve seen as soon as I’ve seen it. We’ll see how that goes .. I don’t know where I’ll find the time.