Tombrarian

For what it’s worth, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran an article about the film festival: http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/movies/15416650.htm?source=rss&channel=philly_movies

I guess I’m not the only Philiadelphian who care. I’m not surprised. We’re very much a film town. We have our own film society and 2 major festivals: the International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival and the Philadelphia Film Festival. The former is usually in July and the latter in April. Neither are as big as TIFF, but the Philadelphia Film Festival had about 260 films last year, so it’s a nice size.

I became a member of the Philadelphia Film Society back in the spring so that I could get a deal on attending the film festival.  But during the spring semester, I was not able to take advantage of any of the special screenings that members get invited to.  But it's summer and I'm finally able to take advantage and will be seeing a special screening of An Inconvenient Truth tomorrow night.

One of my favorite movies from the Philadelphia Film Festival, These Girls, is available on DVD.  I'm not sure why this film didn't get a theatrical run in the states, but there are a lot of things I don't understand about the movie business, so there you have it.  Apparently, it got a theatrical run in Canada, but I guess their tastes are so wildly different than ours…

As John Hazlett, the director, points out on his blog, the U.S. DVD does not have all the special features that the Canadian version does.  Again, I can't explain; I just report.

Anywho, just see the movie. 

The Philadelphia Film Festival site has posted this year's award winners:

Archie Award, given in memory of Archie Perlmutter and presented to the best film by a first-time director: Sweet Land (Ali Selim, director; US)

Jury Prizes:

Best Feature Film: Off Screen (Pieter Kuijpers, director; Belgium)
Best American Independent: The King (James Marsh, director)
Best First Film: Wristcutters: A Love Story (Goran Dukic, director; US)
Best Director: Ryan Fleck, for Half Nelson; US
Best Documentary: The Camden 28 (Anthony Giacchino, director; US)

Audience Awards:

Danger After Dark: The Descent (Neil Marshall, director; Great Britain)
Best Documentary: The Camden 28 (Anthony Giacchino, director; US)
Best Feature Film: Elsa & Fred (Marcos Carnevale, director; Spain, Argentina)

Alas, I did not see any of these.

April 8, 2006

POOR - Fair - Good - Very Good - Excellent

April 8, 2006

Poor - Fair - Good - VERY GOOD - Excellent

April 4, 2006

Poor - Fair - Good - VERY GOOD - Excellent

April 4, 2006

Poor - FAIR - Good - Very Good - Excellent

April 2, 2006

Poor - Fair - GOOD - Very Good - Excellent

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Strange indeed.  At previous film festival, I never went to any of the "Danger After Dark" films.  I'm not a huge horror fan and most of these films played late at night and I, alas, had to catch a train home.  But the festival often has a second showing of these films which may or may not be after dark.  This year, I decided to see a handful of these movies for a different experience.

Different indeed.  Strange Circus falls in that difficult rape-revenge category along the lines of Last House on the Left.  Which means, the first half is very disturbing as a 12-year-old girl is raped and tortured by her father.  Though we never witness the rape because director Sion Sono employees the interesting twist of having the 12-year-old empathize with her equally tortured mother, so that even when the young girl is being attacked, we see the mother, not the 12 year-old.  Not that that is pleasant to witness.  This empathy plays an important and clever role throughout the film.  One of my reservations about the film–other than those inherent in the rape-revenge genre–is that the clever twist at the end is broadcast and re-broadcast to make sure everyone knows how clever Sion is being.  The ending is anything but subtle.  Despite how gratuitous the film is, a little subtly at the end would have worked in Sion's favor.  The idea of how the revenge is carried out is powerful enough, we don't need the extend graphic representation

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April 2, 2006

Poor - Fair - Good - VERY GOOD - Excellent

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These Girls was one of the more pleasant surprises of the festival.  I don't always look up a lot about the movies I go see beforehand.  A lot of times, I'll pick something that will fit in my schedule, which was the case with These Girls.  In fact, I almost did not go because it was a Sunday morning and I felt I had other things to do.  And the desrciption made it sound unnecessarily prurient: three teenage girls all have their sexual awakening with the same 30-ish married man.  But I looked at the film festival site that morning and saw that it received high ratings, so I decided to give it a try and I am glad that I did.

This movie is hilarious and very far from prurient.  David Boreanaz plays the 30-year-old object of desire perfectly.  As These Girls opens, Keith is already sleeping with Glory (Amanda Walsh), one of three teenage friends.  When Keira (Caroline Dhavernas) hears Glory's tales of how wonderful sex is with an older man, she decides to seduce Keith.  The third friend, Lisa (Holly Lewis) is soon to be sent of to a religious bording school and decides she wants to loose her virginity before she gets to school and has to wait until marriage.  Based on that plot description, you may see why I thought the film might have been a bit gratuitous, but it plays out in some unsuspecting ways.  The most intriguing is that the three girls blackmail Keith into this sexual arrangement.  Keith isn't the willing participant one might think, and, by films end, he's so desperate to get out of the deal that he hatches a crazy plan to scare the girls off, which, of course, backfires.

Director John Hazlett spoke after the screening and explained that the film is already in theaters in Canada, but does not have a deal in the states and will probably go direct to dvd, which is a shame since clever comedies such as this seem to be in short supply these days.  (Speaking of which, one of my favorite films, and one of the better comedies of recent years, I saw at the Toronto festival is now in theaters: Thank You For Smoking.)

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