Boppy's Journal

It's Film Festival time in Melbourne again. It snuck up on me as I had the flu and had felt flat about the festival by the end of last year. But the line up this year is far more interesting to me (though the Festival at a whole has been plagued by political controversies and several movies have been pulled--thankfully none that I really minded about!).

So far I've seen three movies.

Mommo
A simple, poignant tale of a Turkish brother and sister abandoned by their father. ( not much to say )

Action Boys
Oh, man! I LOVED this. Korean documentary by and about stuntmen working in the Korean movie industry. Quirky narration and absolutely hysterical. ( fangirling within )

Chocolate
Thai martial arts flick about a chocolate-scoffing autistic girl kicking a whole lot of gangster ass to pay for her mother's chemotherapy. ( in every way lived up to the expectations that premise generates (warning for un-PC content) )

Well, I'm off to a great start with the film festival, due largely to the queuing. Each year, the queues are probably the most annoying part of the entire process: they stretch whole city blocks for most sessions. And this is in the middle of winter--so cold and rain are definitely an issue. And as a solo film-goer, it is always a dilemma: do you buy that cappucino to keep you warm (and awake) or do you grab a higher spot in the queue?

Not this year! This year I have: PRIORITY QUEUING. OMG the joy! I get to walk past 200+ freezing people and sweep into the cinema ahead of them. :D Totally worth the MIFF membership $ (even before you consider the other discounts we get)!

Anyway, the films...

Terror's Advocate
( Documentary about Jacques Verges, French lawyer who defends terrorists such as Carlos the Jackal and war criminals such as Nazi Klaus Barbi or the Khmer Rouge )

California Dreamin'
( Romanian farce-tragedy about a train of American soldiers waylaid in a small Romanian town during the Kosovo-Serbia war )

Animation With Dogs
( self-explanatory: 8 short animated features involving dogs )

Three down, eight to go!

This week's been pretty frantic for me, getting the house back in order and returning to work, so I only managed three movies. Got more lined up tomorrow though--just one week of the festival to go. My early luck with movies seems to have worn off somewhat, but there's still a few to come that I'm looking forward to.

Grace is gone
( John Cusack plays a military husband whose wife dies in Iraq )

Azur et Asmar
( animated French inter-cultural fable with an Arabian Nights aesthetic )

Wolfsbergen
( appallingly dull Dutch movie made worse by projection failure )

Day 2 proved more sociable, since I caught up with friends between movies and went out for drinks after the last movie--alcohol was definitely required after that one. *g*

Your Mommy Kills Animals
( complex documentary about animal rights activists and animal welfare advocates in the US )

My best friend and his wife
( Korean observational drama )

My Kid Could Paint That
( intelligent and funny documentary about a four-year-old heralded as an artistic prodigy )

A Savage Grace
( Julianne Moore stars in a society murder story based on real life )

The Melbourne International Film Festival program came out today. It starts on 26 July.

The bad news: Through my own mindboggling stupidity (the details of which I don't want to go into because they make me cry) I am only actually able to go to four full days of the festival--plus two other weekends. 8 days in total out of 19. I am not happy about this but only have myself to blame, so I will suck it up. It means I'll probably just push myself to get as much out of those days and other evenings as I can, until I crash in a heap, ill, as I usually do each year. The idea was to avoid that this year... ah well. :(

The good news: The program's out, so I can begin the obsessive reading, circling, question-marking, planning, scheduling and liaising that accompanies it. I usually spend about a month doing this, but it's out late this year so my obsessing will be confined to two weeks. I'm currently drafting a 'priority viewing' list which I'll then compare with friends and see if we can see some together. There's a real art to picking the right festival movies. So many haven't been widely reviewed overseas yet, so it's hard to know which will be the surprise hits. And it's also really hard to get the right balance of movies. I have a great track record of picking all the truly soul-destroying depressing flicks, and I wound up seriously emotionally overwrought the last couple of years running. *g* This year, I'm instituting a 'one light film to every four heavy ones' policy. I may even up that!

If anyone out there is truly horrendously bored, you can browse to the festival website and tell me what I should see. ;)

And finally, I'll be keeping my own record of the films I go to see, but I wondered if others would be interested in hearing about the festival. Warning: the reviews may get more and more whacked as the Festival progresses. ;) You can read some from last year here.

[Poll #1020647]

Well, the film festival ticks on, and my lucky streak has ended. Today I was scheduled to see C.R.A.Z.Y., but the parking restrictions got the better of me. After circling city blocks for half an hour I decided to fork out for a parking centre spot, only to hit Melbourne's only Sunday CBD traffic jam. I missed the session. I've also been OD-ing on documentaries prior, of which the best was Iraq in Fragments, though the camerawork in the middle third had a hypnotic effect on me--I kept nodding off!

In other news... I made an icon. Yes, that's right. This icon. Does this make this a GIP?! Jen! Where is nehellania?! See! I listen to you! I took you up on your dare. *g* Jules, I'm still quaking in my shoes about your mayo-peanut-banana combo. I'm pleading for an extension due to the high price of bananas here in Aus right now. We have a banana crisis, miss! Really.

Anyway, isn't Maggie cute?! *g*

Well, the countdown is on until I am sane again and/or have time to myself. I'm getting through record amounts of work, and I'm three films into my Melbourne International Film Festival. This is a brief rundown of the films I've seen so far for anyone who's interested.

Offside
( An Iranian film about female soccer fans )

Sherrybaby
( Maggie Gyllenhaal in purple jeans singing 'Eternal Flame' )

An inconvenient truth
( Essential viewing--it gets a mainstream release next month, but I couldn't wait that long )

In other news, the Israel-Lebanon war is alternately breaking my heart and enraging me. It's getting to the point where I can barely watch the news. I'm sure my cries of frustration are not appreciated by my boy! Today I watched the Lebanese protest in Melbourne with a feeling of complete impotence. It makes me wish for a swifter-moving, more interventionist UN. There doesn't seem to be even a flicker of hope for a ceasefire any time soon.

That's all I got for now. But as I say, I can see a flicker at the end of the tunnel of busy-ness--not this week, but next week perhaps ...