Ah yes, another Paul Cox film at the festival. The thing about Paul Cox films is that they all seem to revolve around the same themes and ideas, so if you do not care for one of his films, you probably do not like any of them. I happen to like them, including Force of Destiny, though I wish he could have stuck with filming with "film" rather than switching to digital.
Radical Grace is fine for what it is, though I have a hard time categorizing it as a good documentary. The segment involving the nun who counsels prisoners probably does not belong in this film, as it had very little to do with the political activism that is the focus of the rest of the movie. Considering the documentary is only 75 minutes long, I suspect that it had to be padded out to reach this running time, and so they used footage that they had for this other nun, a story that ended prematurely while filming. The trips to Italy also felt a little phony, like they were arranged merely for the documentary.
Love and Mercy didn't work for me. It is always a problem when the most interesting part of these music documentaries is the music making process--a small part of the film. It is still hard to see John Cusack as Brian Wilson.
Blow Out is not as good as I remembered. An excellent premise is weakened by a cartoonish villain and a ludicrous John Travolta out-of-control driving scene. And the score is terrible--it even ripped off Blondie's "Call Me," a song that had been released the year before.
Sunday, April 17, 2016
2016 Ebertfest Day 3
Disturbing the Peace could have easily been edited into a twenty minute 60 Minutes piece and lost nothing of worth. Not much to talk about here then.
Many of my favorite memories from the sixteen years I have attended the festival come from the silent movies. So it is really disappointing when the silent turns out to be a bit of a dud. That is the case with L'Inhumaine, a movie that is irreparably damaged by a slow moving first chapter. Tedious and ponderous are the descriptive words that come to mind. The pacing is much better towards the end of the film, but the story still had problems. It is a long way from Metropolis.
Eve's Bayou is a good film and a solid debut job of direction by Kasi Lemmons. The acting is stellar, though I wish there was a little more to the story. But sorry Roger, ranking this film ahead of Boogie Nights and L.A. Confidential on your 1997 top ten list really reeks of trying to champion a film that others might have overlooked. Nothing wrong with championing a film, but sometimes the praise is excessive to the point of not being genuine.
Many of my favorite memories from the sixteen years I have attended the festival come from the silent movies. So it is really disappointing when the silent turns out to be a bit of a dud. That is the case with L'Inhumaine, a movie that is irreparably damaged by a slow moving first chapter. Tedious and ponderous are the descriptive words that come to mind. The pacing is much better towards the end of the film, but the story still had problems. It is a long way from Metropolis.
Eve's Bayou is a good film and a solid debut job of direction by Kasi Lemmons. The acting is stellar, though I wish there was a little more to the story. But sorry Roger, ranking this film ahead of Boogie Nights and L.A. Confidential on your 1997 top ten list really reeks of trying to champion a film that others might have overlooked. Nothing wrong with championing a film, but sometimes the praise is excessive to the point of not being genuine.
Saturday, April 16, 2016
2016 Ebertfest Day 2
Roger Ebert had a relatively short list of his favorite films. 2001, La Dolce Vita, Gates of Heaven, Apocalypse Now, The General, and now, The Third Man have played in the festival. It is actually surprising that so few of these "favorite" films have played in the eighteen years of the festival. Vertigo was rumored for the festival a few years ago. I am NOT counting Citizen Kane because it was not properly shown. It is still bewildering to me that they chose to show it with Ebert's commentary track without having first played the movie with its original audio. The other "favorite" Ebert movies are Casablanca, Floating Weeds, Notorious, Raging Bull, 28 Up, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Tokyo Story, and The Tree of Life. Note: This is a combination of his lists from 1991 and 2012. Considering how many differences there were in those two lists, Ebert probably had a more "general" list of around 20 or 30 films "floating" around in his head that were pretty much interchangeable depending on his mood and what he had seen most recently. Oh, and we can probably count Synecdoche, New York as another one of his favorites to play the festival, since he listed it as one of his two possibilities for new films to join that list (he chose The Tree of Life instead).
This 4K restoration of The Third Man looked incredible. I would never thought it could look so good, especially since I can remember seeing it in public domain quality home video incarnations. For some reason the dialogue often came across as muffled. Maybe it was just the accents, or maybe my hearing isn't the greatest. I'll have to watch this movie again at home, maybe with the subtitles on so that I can finally understand all of the dialogue.
Ok, so I liked Grandma. It is exactly the type of film that I would expect to play at Ebertfest, and that is not a putdown. At times the dialogue was too artificial--meaning that two people would never really talk to each other that way, and this is the type of relationship movie that needed to stay away from that. More naturalism (along with maybe going away from the word for word dialogue in the screenplay) might have helped here.
I was underwhelmed by Northfork. I didn't have high expectations going in, as Ebert was one of the few critics who liked the film. It felt like the Polish brothers were going for a Lynchian film without the creative inspiration to pull it off. What is really frustrating is that Ebert liked this movie so much (perhaps because he liked the whole angel thing), and yet he regularly bashed David Lynch movies. I was going to link to his review of the brilliant Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, but I couldn't find it, nor could I find a clip from the Siskel and Ebert tv show. Maybe he never formally reviewed it? He did post negative comments about it in an article written after viewing it at Canne.
[Edited to move The General to the "shown" list.]
This 4K restoration of The Third Man looked incredible. I would never thought it could look so good, especially since I can remember seeing it in public domain quality home video incarnations. For some reason the dialogue often came across as muffled. Maybe it was just the accents, or maybe my hearing isn't the greatest. I'll have to watch this movie again at home, maybe with the subtitles on so that I can finally understand all of the dialogue.
Ok, so I liked Grandma. It is exactly the type of film that I would expect to play at Ebertfest, and that is not a putdown. At times the dialogue was too artificial--meaning that two people would never really talk to each other that way, and this is the type of relationship movie that needed to stay away from that. More naturalism (along with maybe going away from the word for word dialogue in the screenplay) might have helped here.
I was underwhelmed by Northfork. I didn't have high expectations going in, as Ebert was one of the few critics who liked the film. It felt like the Polish brothers were going for a Lynchian film without the creative inspiration to pull it off. What is really frustrating is that Ebert liked this movie so much (perhaps because he liked the whole angel thing), and yet he regularly bashed David Lynch movies. I was going to link to his review of the brilliant Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, but I couldn't find it, nor could I find a clip from the Siskel and Ebert tv show. Maybe he never formally reviewed it? He did post negative comments about it in an article written after viewing it at Canne.
[Edited to move The General to the "shown" list.]
Friday, April 15, 2016
2016 Ebertfest Day 1
After the miserable weather we had earlier in the month, I was kinda dreading this year's festival, since the festival has never been scheduled this early in April. The festival used to always occur on the last weekend. Then it was moved up to avoid the marathon. Considering that the marathon is not until the weekend of the 30th this year, I don't know why the festival was not scheduled on the weekend of the 23rd. But this might turn out to be the best weather we have ever had for the festival (it ALWAYS rains at least once), so I can hardly complain.
Speaking of complaining, Chaz was doing some complaining about Sunday's News Gazette article. The best approach would have been to ignore the article, or to vaguely refer to the article while voicing her support for the future of the festival. There is nothing wrong with the article, which merely conveys some numbers from the festival in the years since Roger Ebert's passing. This is not a hit piece-it is more of a "draw your own conclusions" piece. And these numbers are VERY interesting to those people who wonder about the continued viability of the festival. It is no surprise that the festival might not have the same draw as when Roger Ebert was actively involved with the festival. The demand for passes and tickets peaked around the last year that Roger was still talking and moderating discussions. The fact that the demand dropped is more a testament to how important Roger was to the festival than anything else.
And while Chaz would like to stress the cultural and artistic aspects of the festival, there is a commercial component. The festival needs money to continue. Sponsors provide some of that money, and obviously those sponsors can derive benefit from having their business advertised in the program or on the screen in between films. I am also perplexed when she refers to the tickets for the Harold Ramis tribute. I was under the impression that there were tickets made available to that event. Perhaps they were "free" tickets, though I don't remember them being advertised that way.
Regardless of the downward trend, this year's festival has had some very solid attendance figures, if my eyes are not deceiving me. The opening night film, Crimson Peak, sold out of individual tickets, though there were seats left for standby ticket buyers. Speaking of Crimson Peak, it was a film that I very much wanted to love. The production design was a sight to behold. But the unsympathetic (or should I say dimwitted) protagonist kept the story from being as compelling as it should have been. I do not need realism, but I do need some type of logic, particularly for a character who was presented early on in the film has having a good head on her shoulders.
Speaking of complaining, Chaz was doing some complaining about Sunday's News Gazette article. The best approach would have been to ignore the article, or to vaguely refer to the article while voicing her support for the future of the festival. There is nothing wrong with the article, which merely conveys some numbers from the festival in the years since Roger Ebert's passing. This is not a hit piece-it is more of a "draw your own conclusions" piece. And these numbers are VERY interesting to those people who wonder about the continued viability of the festival. It is no surprise that the festival might not have the same draw as when Roger Ebert was actively involved with the festival. The demand for passes and tickets peaked around the last year that Roger was still talking and moderating discussions. The fact that the demand dropped is more a testament to how important Roger was to the festival than anything else.
And while Chaz would like to stress the cultural and artistic aspects of the festival, there is a commercial component. The festival needs money to continue. Sponsors provide some of that money, and obviously those sponsors can derive benefit from having their business advertised in the program or on the screen in between films. I am also perplexed when she refers to the tickets for the Harold Ramis tribute. I was under the impression that there were tickets made available to that event. Perhaps they were "free" tickets, though I don't remember them being advertised that way.
Regardless of the downward trend, this year's festival has had some very solid attendance figures, if my eyes are not deceiving me. The opening night film, Crimson Peak, sold out of individual tickets, though there were seats left for standby ticket buyers. Speaking of Crimson Peak, it was a film that I very much wanted to love. The production design was a sight to behold. But the unsympathetic (or should I say dimwitted) protagonist kept the story from being as compelling as it should have been. I do not need realism, but I do need some type of logic, particularly for a character who was presented early on in the film has having a good head on her shoulders.
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