Ebertfest 2015 Day 0

Having attended the last fourteen Ebertfests, I have a pretty good idea of what the festival should be, and what works. That is why I am approaching the 2015 Ebertfest with some trepidation. While "Overlooked" was the overriding theme for many years, the real strength of the festival was the variety in the films. Sure, the festival has hosted many small, independently made character studies, but there was always a nice mix of films. During the early years Ebert would include a 70mm film, a free kids' film, a film containing a lot of music, a silent film, a documentary, and several festivals even had a horror film. Unfortunately the 70mm film and the free kids' film have been left out of the programming for several years now. They did sneak in a "kids" film last year with the delightful Wajdja, which was shown in the traditional Saturday morning slot.

So what does that leave? Well, we still have the silent film. There will always be a documentary film in the lineup. There is also the usual mix of foreign films-usually one or two European films, one or two African/Middle Eastern films, and one East Asian film. Nothing to complain about there, as the festival has exposed me to a lot of good/great foreign films that otherwise would have remained off of my radar. But this year...

Ebert was always good about selecting some "mainstream" films for the festival, the kind of films that provide a break from the usual (sometimes quite depressing) independent and European fare. This year's festival appears to be lacking in that regard, though maybe a couple of the films are "mainstreamish," without being known by me. I have not seen any of the films yet, not even A Bronx Tale, so I hope to be pleasantly surprised.

The most bizarre pick of this festival, and perhaps of all the festivals, is the selection of Jean-Luc Godard's Goodbye to Language. Why? Well, here is where Roger Ebert's stamp of approval is missed. Up until last year's festival, there was a comfort level with each and every film, because they were picked by Roger Ebert, and the vast majority of the time this meant a very good film was in the offing. That does not mean that everyone expected to love every film. I suspect that in a typical year a couple films were not everyone's cup of tea, but that was to be expected from a diverse slate. But in this case, there is very good reason to believe that Roger Ebert would not have liked Goodbye to Language. Here is what I imagine Ebert would write in reviewing this movie-

This film is an affront. It is incoherent, maddening, deliberately opaque and heedless of the ways in which people watch movies. All of that is part of the Godardian method, I am aware, but I feel a bargain of some sort must be struck. We enter the cinema with open minds and goodwill, expecting Godard to engage us in at least a vaguely penetrable way. But in "Film Socialisme," he expects us to do all the heavy lifting.

Actually, Ebert did write the above quote. It is contained in his one star review of a recent Godard film, 2011's Film Socialisme. It is not a stretch to think that the same words apply to Goodbye to Language, missing only the obligatory 3D dis that Ebert was famous for. Another-

What he lacks is a port of entry for the viewer. Defenses of the film are tortured rhetorical exercises in which critics assemble Godard's materials and try to paraphrase them to make sense. Few ordinary audience members, however experienced, can hope to emerge from this film with a coherent view of what Godard was attempting.

Again, that would seem to be an apt description of Goodbye to Language, right? Instead it is taken from Ebert's 2002 one star review of In Praise of Love. So, if the inevitable conclusion is that Roger Ebert would not have liked Goodbye to Language, then was there no room for it at the festival? I am not saying that. What I am saying is that the festival programmers should keep this in mind in the overall programming of the festival. Ebert wrote positive, if not glowing, reviews for many, many films. Some of those films should be at this festival. Unfortunately it appears that they only included two films that Ebert actually saw and wrote about. And other than the silent film, only one film in the festival is older than 2008. Shortly after Ebert died, the festival programmers alluded to a list of hundreds of films that Ebert had compiled as possible candidates for the festival. Well, what happened to that list?

Gone Girl Done Gone

After one viewing of David Fincher's Gone Girl, I do not have a lot to add to my previous thoughts about the book. The movie hews very close to the book. Plus there is the problem of my mind filling in details from the book as I watched the movie, which makes it more difficult to compare the two without a second viewing. The report about rewriting the ending was probably true, but the substance of that denouement was unchanged from the book. In fact, I might have liked the book better in that regard, though again the movie zipped by so fast that I need to see it again to know what was missing and added. The one part of the book that I had a big problem with, the one involving the white trash at the lodgings, was cleaned up quite a bit by Fincher. Much of the nonsense from the book was removed, including the fishing sojourn. It still is the weakest point in the movie (hanging out at the swimming pool?), but it did not drag down the film. Surprisingly the scene with Nick at the mall was not in the movie. That mall scenes were the creepiest parts of the book, and I kinda thought Fincher would be all over those, but what did appear was so brief that it did not make much of an impact. Is it possible that this scene was filmed but cut? It is possible that we will see a longer cut on the home video release, though Fincher is not known for making available multiple edits. I do feel that some scenes could have been fleshed out, but I can understand why this type of movie cannot sustain a longer running time. The score is fantastic. Traditionalists will hate it like they did the other Reznor/Ross scores.

What If DM Composed a Song for Twin Peaks

With this week's release of the astonishing Blu-ray package of the complete Twin Peaks, a few things came to mind.  Here is one.  Blue Dress is Depeche Mode's Twin Peaks song.  No, Martin Gore did not write it for Twin Peaks, nor was it ever connected to the show.  But it has that....sound that is not far off in synthpop terms, and coincidentally Violator was released one month before the show's debut episode.  Blue Dress also has those "pervy" lyrics that seem to fit in perfectly with Lynch's Northwest Passage.

The Trading Post

I was convinced that little would happen on the trade deadline day, for the reason that nowadays very few teams are willing to give up quality prospects.  I was wrong, partially.

What happened is that many major league players were traded, with not much to note on the minor league side of things.  Sure, several minor league players changed hands.  But the real value resided with the known players already playing in the majors.  To understand what I mean, take a look at this ranking of the prospects traded by Baseball America.  Billy McKinney flew under the radar in that big Cubs-Athletics July 4th trade, and yet he is ranked higher than any other minor leaguer traded yesterday.  Bad news for Tampa, who reportedly could have had Addison Russell for David Price before the Cubs pulled the trigger.  In fact, it is perplexing that Tampa made this deal considering how little they received in return.  Maybe Tampa knows more than the so-called experts, and their trade history would indicate they know what they are doing, but on paper, this trade looks a lot better for Detroit than Tampa.

I am biased about this next team, but I doubt that I was the only person dumbfounded by the two Cardinal trades.  First, the trade violated the "cardinal" rule, followed by Theo Epstein, that you trade away guys who are performing at their peak, and you trade for guys whose recent disappointing performance has diminished their value.  Justin Masterson fits that last description, but he is also coming off an injury and a significant reduction in his velocity.  He is also set to become a free agent after the season.  A lot here not to like, especially for the cost of a decent prospect.

The other Cardinals trade is even worse.  Lackey is in the middle of a good year and will pitch next year for a measly $500,000, but he is a pitcher with a significant injury history and at age 36 does not figure to survive another one.  Worth a prospect?  Yes.  Worth two major league caliber players?  Not so much.  The only thing I can think of is that the Cardinals brass thinks that the league has figured out Allen Craig, with little chance of a return to the type of productivity he showed in previous years.  Also, many people probably do not realize that Craig is 30-which helps to put into perspective all of those Cubs prospects on the verge of hitting the major league club at age 22, instead of their late 20s.  The biggest mistake here?  Not trading Allen Craig during the last off season, when he could have brought much more.

Ebertfest 2014, Day Five

I would feel better about Bayou Maharajah if I had not seen this story before.  Talented jazz musician imbibes and dies young.  The story might be lacking but the music is rewarding.  Watch this documentary for the music.  In the case of this festival, we were rewarded with a bonus performance by the great Henry Butler following the film.  I have not seen many live piano performances, so I was truly wowed by this virtuoso.  A real treat for those who stayed till the end of the festival.

Ebertfest 2014, Day Four

Ebertfest used to have a "free kids matinee" on Saturday mornings.  Why that ended, I do not know.  Maybe the scarcity of quality family films made it difficult to program.  Whatever the case, it kinda returned this year with the delightful Wajdja.  That might be the first time I have ever written (or said) the word "delightful," so do not take this recommendation lightly.  The character Wajdja reminds me a lot of the title character in The Great Brain books, but it is unlikely that the writer/director Haifaa Al Mansour ever read those Utah-based books.

A Simple Life is one of those slice of life movies that stays with you due to the power of the story and the filmmaking.  At the end I felt like I was a better person for having seen it.  What more can I say?

I wish that liked Goodbye Solo more.  Filmmaker Ramin Bahrani has taken the minimalist approach before with a lot of success, but this time I found myself not caring.  Three months later I barely remember it.

I am afraid that if I were to revisit Oliver Stone's oeuvre that his films would not fare very well compared to my current lofty opinion of many of them.  This was my first viewing of Born on the Fourth of July, and I was surprised by how Stone bombards the audience to the point of nausea.  Maybe that should be expected considering his other films, but I was definitely not expecting a film that is not that far off from Natural Born Killers.  TAKE IT DOWN A COUPLE OF NOTCHES, OLIVER.  OR FOUR OR FIVE NOTCHES.

Ebertfest 2014, Day Three

The nice thing about writing about films months after you see them is that you now have some perspective.  Some films are memorable, and some films fall into the abyss of memories.  He Who Gets Slapped falls into the former category.  Not just that, it is a film that I would definitely like to see again.  Lon Chaney shows that he is more than just a man of a thousand faces, and the climax might be one of the greatest every filmed.  That lion scene...

I wish I could be as impressed with Capote.  It is a showcase for Hoffman but otherwise a rather standard film about a story that was anything but standard.  I didn't remember much about it from the first time that I saw it several years ago, and that is not surprising now that I have seen it twice.  Still glad that it showed at the festival due to Hoffman's death and the presence of Bennett Miller, who was a longtime friend of Hoffman.

Do the Right Thing is a much better film than I remember.  I first watched it in film class twenty years ago.  This is one where life experience come in handy to better appreciate what Lee is trying to say.  Despite the music and styles that are right out of the 80s, Lee's film transcends those dated aspects to be a true film for the ages.  By the way, word is that Lee went up to the projection booth to correct the framing.  He also reportedly asked for the film to be louder.  It was plenty loud where I was sitting, though in a theater as large as The Virginia there are bound to be some dead spots.  Interesting that some people complained about how LOUD the sound was.  Yes, it was loud, and it was also loud for Born on the Fourth of July.  I was told that the movies were played at a standard theater level, and they would not raise it (for Lee) or lower it.  Not enough to bother me, but I can understand how some people might be bothered by it.  My advice to those people?  Bring earplugs with you, just in case.  By the way, Lee seemed like a nice, affable guy.  The true test of that is when the dumb questions from the audience begin.