Thursday, February 21, 2013

Jason goes to Indiefest--Day 14

The penultimate night. Two more shows, starting with the comedy shorts program Hilarious and Entertaining Adventures.
BEST IF USED BY: Sometimes the grieving process can be tricky. Sometimes it can be a health code violation. But if you've lived well and have friends who love you, they'll violate health codes for your corpse.
LOOKING FOR MR. COFFEE: So I wouldn't know about this because I'm not a coffee drinker. But apparently some people have timers set up to automatically turn on their coffee maker. And sometimes their coffee maker gets really turned on. Like...really turned on...sexually. I mean the coffee makers fuck...oops, spoiler alert.
KEEP THE FIRE: The true story of the genius of Kenny Loggins and the amazing album cover for Keep the Fire. Kids, albums were things we played music on before iTunes. They came in covers with unique artwork on them. Kenny Loggins was...I actually can't explain that.
O.V.N.I. (U.F.O.): Paranoia...or magic...turns an ordinary woman into a 50-foot tall monster who destroys Paris. Awesome!
Y2GAY: A man, his wife, and his best friend hide out in his bunker as the latest catastrophe hits Australia--the legalization of gay marriage.
THE STRANGE WORLD OF MAX X. - OFFICE PAPERWORK: Max does paperwork all day, until he realizes the paper has a more fulfilling life than he does.
BORN TO DANCE THIS WAY: The adventures of Joo Si, the fabulous, sassy, overweight dancer who is destined to become part of the 4 Play Ladies...as long as he nails the audition.
ANTOINE ET LES HÉROS (ANTOINE AND THE HEROES): Antoine is torn between a Jim Kelly karate flick and an Angela Steele horror movie. Cinema obsession, martial arts, zombies, a beheading, a talking bunny rabbit...this movie has it all. Except for a satisfying ending. [SPOILER ALERT!!!] I can't believe he gives up on movies and starts talking to girls at the end. What a disappointment! [END SPOILER.]

And then I saw the feature film, 28 HOTEL ROOMS, although I must have dozed off for bits of it, because I only counted 24 of them. In any case, the majority I stayed awake for was pretty darn good. An unnamed man (or named during one of the bits when I wasn't fully awake) meets an unnamed woman while they're both traveling. He's a novelist, she's an accountant. He's in a relationship, she's married. That doesn't stop them from sleeping together, though. And it doesn't stop them from organizing trysts all over the country. At least, I assume it's all over the country. It's in different hotel rooms (and I'll assume there were 28 of them. I trust the filmmaker's math more than my own) but that's all we see--never any establishing shots indicating the city. Which is pretty familiar for business travelers who never see more of a city than the airport and hotel. And the hotel room is this little oasis of candor and privacy in a strange city, which makes it the perfect setting for revealing intimate moments. Anyway, over the course of their 6-month relationship we get to see 28 of these unguarded moments. Sometimes funny, sometimes sexy (well, almost always sexy), sometimes tense and dramatic--like when her husband shows up for a little getaway vacation. This scene is one of the few moments that focuses on the reality that what they're doing is actually pretty horrible. And it's a bit of unpleasant reality that is necessary. But for the most part, it's an intimate look at an evolving relationship, anchored by a fantastic and fearless performance by the two leads.

Total Running Time: 166 minutes
My Total Minutes: 316,737

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