Jason goes to Indiefest --Day 12

Heading into the final stretch. Two more films last night, and now just five more left in the whole festival. Guess I gotta start preparing for Cinequest soon. Here's the movies on the night of a President's Day that I really needed for rest.

First up was EASIER WITH PRACTICE, a drama carefully crafted for realism and sensitivity (and based on a true story). Davy is a shy writer of short stories. He's going on a book tour, speaking to rooms of maybe a dozen people if he's lucky, and then going to bars and not having the courage to talk to women. But his brother Sean, just "along for the ride," has no such problems. One night in his hotel, he gets a call out of the blue, and it's a breathy, seductive woman named Nicole. They have phone sex, she won't give him his number, but he gives her his, and she calls back several times. Quickly it becomes about more than just sex, as they talk about many other things. It's really the most successful relationship he's ever had, which is in very sharp contrast to his real life romantic attempts. He's a shy intellectual, and can't really talk to anyone but Nicole. As I said, it's a carefully crafted film, and the performances are fantastic. The ending is not that hard to predict, but the care and sensitivity put into it is surprising.

And then after a quick beer (support the sponsors--have a Trumer Pils at Gestalt), I settled in for some bizarre garbage made with no care at all, ACCESS DENIED. It's a compilation of public access TV clips (seems most were either from San Francisco, Austin, New York, or Winnipeg), and it's insane what some people will put on the air. The show was divided into three chapters. First up, "Calling It In"--weird clips from call-in shows. Mostly profanity riddled, often with the callers abusing the hosts (although plenty the other way around). Second was "The Arts"--performers really hoping to become famous (and did I see Blossom in there, or did that girl just really look like Mayim Bialik?). So...many...awful...performers. Easily the most excruciating of the chapters. And we end it with "Outre"--the really strange ones, like Guy Maddin's survival guide.

I think I forgot to mention that the 80's power ballad sing-along yesterday came with free booze. This show needed the same. Still, it was fun to heckle, and I'm going to go ahead and assume I was supposed to.

Total Running Time: 160 minutes
My Total Minutes: 171,608