Jason goes to SFIFF--Day 12

Two more movies on Monday, starting with the late addition to the festival, THE SPECTACULAR NOW. First, a comment on the added programs. The festival has done, in general, a pretty poor job of publicizing the added programs and the added screenings of existing programs. For your elucidation, the added programs can be seen here. If you wanted to find that yourself, you'd go to the film list, click on the drop-down list of Categories, and select Added Programs. Yeah, you have to think of added programs as a "category" in the festival, similar to documentaries, new directors, world cinema, etc. Now to find the added screenings...as far as I know, you're S.O.L. I have heard there are flyers on the festival information desk at the Kabuki, I have also heard that they weren't initially available when they first added screenings. For the most part, the way I've heard them communicated (other than just appearing unceremoniously online) is to tell people who attend the earlier, previously programmed screenings. So, for example, if you were in an earlier screening of LEVIATHAN, you would be told they've added a screening on Thursday, May 9th at 5:30. I guess you could get some word-of-mouth dissemination of the information, but is the best primary target for this information really people who are already about to see the movie? That seems a little...dumb.

Look, I don't want to turn this into a rant about the festival. I know there has been a lot of turmoil over the untimely deaths of two executive directors in quick succession (gives new meaning to "Keep Hope Alive") and other turnover in festival management. And I really have had a fantastic time at the festival. It's just frustrating to see an organization not execute it's centerpiece in the best way possible...especially when you've seen them do it in the past. I'm giving them some leeway this year, but I expect some organizational and communications improvements next year. At the same time, I promise to be vigilant against myself just becoming a grumpy old fuddy-duddy who simply objects because "it's not the way they did it in the past!" (with that said, please don't get rid of the printed program guide! In fact, bring back the larger guide, even if you only give it Cinevisas or sell it for $5 or something!)

Okay, on to the movie, THE SPECTACULAR NOW, which played to a much smaller audience than it should have. It's a teen drama/comedy/romance that is 90% excellent and realistic and 10% over-written. Let's get the over-written part out of the way first. It's just isolated lines and scenes, and might get a little spoiler-y. Lines like "Get away from me, can't you tell I'm bad for you!" Or the exchange, "I suppose if I were your father this is where I'd give you a lecture." / "If you were my father, you wouldn't need to." Or the framing device of a college essay where the protagonist eventually writes about how his poor decisions have been the toughest obstacles in his life. These are fleeting moments, that momentarily take me out of the movie before I get sucked right back in (they're also similar to complaints I made about SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK and not only was it nearly universally loved, it was nominated for several Oscars including Best Writing, so I'm usually on the minority dissenting side of these thing.)

Now on to the excellent stuff. The lead character Sutter Kelly (Miles Teller) is an unusually fully realized and recognizable high school character. He's the life of the party, a funny, charismatic guy who gets carried away with the drinking way too often. The awkwardness of teenage friendship and romance is very well depicted. The love scene is one of the most tender, awkward, and erotic scenes ever put on film. And almost every time it had a chance to veer into melodramatic cliche (There will be a love triangle with his ex, they're going to be in a terrible car accident, etc.) it pulls back--so that actually the one huge dramatic shock packs a heck of punch. Seriously, there's a scene that made the whole audience jump and knocked the breath out of me, it was amazing! This is easily more than enough to counterweight the handful of over-written scenes, and make it a highly memorable--and highly recommendable--movie.

And then I ended the night with a personal treat, DECEPTIVE PRACTICE: THE MYSTERIES AND MENTORS OF RICKY JAY. I love Ricky Jay, I remember in college watching more than a few David Mamet movies on VHS in the lounge, and always noticing that big, bearded guy who had a supporting role. In one (and I can't remember which, it was many movies ago) he says something like "I can't do that, I'm not a magician!"* Then a friend pointed out this was an inside joke, because he's actually one of the most highly regarded sleight-of-hand magicians in the world. Shortly after that I saw his TV special (I don't remember the title) where he threw cards all over the theater and even into the hard outer rind of a watermelon. He was funny and amazing, and I was a fan, if not quite a rabid one. And now this documentary, which at times tries to be hero worship, but Ricky is quick to deflect a lot of that. Nor will you learn a darn thing about how he does any of his tricks. Instead, you'll get amazing profiles of his mentors and a history of magic going well back into the 19th century (and at times, much further back). His grandfather, the amateur magician Max Katz. Masters that amazed him in his childhood, like Cardini, Slydini and Al Flosso ("The Coney Island Fakir" who played at young Richard Jay Potash's bar mitzvah.) His later mentors--Dai Vernon and Charlie Miller--both of whom Ricky regards as mythical senseis in the art of magic (interestingly, he seems reluctant to accept the same role for himself.) And there's a lot of talk about the magicians' code--but it's not so much that you never reveal your tricks, you just reveal them slowly, over the course of  years...to select students...and only when they're ready. What great fun. I want to see Ricky Jay live now. But as he himself points out, the best magic isn't on stage, it's spontaneous, when you least expect it.

And that was Monday at SFIFF 2013. I'll be seeing a silent film (WAXWORKS) with live music tonight (Tuesday). I'm actually skipping the festival on Wednesday to see a SJ Earthquakes game. And then two more movies on closing night (I'm skipping the closing night special at the Castro to see KILL TEAM** and BYZANTIUM at the Kabuki). So I'm down to my last three screenings. Looks like I'll survive after all.

Total Running Time: 187 minutes
My Total Minutes: 327,469

*Update: Chalk this one up to an incredibly faulty memory. In poking around for the movie quote where Ricky Jay says, "I'm not a magician!" It turns out I was completely wrong. It wasn't a David Mamet movie, it was the 1999 (after I was out of college) superhero parody MYSTERY MEN. Ricky plays Captain Amazing's (Greg Kinnear) publicist. And I was the one who pointed out the inside joke to my friends, not vice-versa. That's odd, because usually my faulty memory makes me look more awesome, not less.

**Due to a brain fart, I originally wrote KILL LIST instead of KILL TEAM. KILL LIST is an excellent British horror film by Ben Wheatley. I've seen it twice (once while fully awake) and own a DVD of it. I kind of want to see it again now. But on Thursday, I will be watching KILL TEAM, not KILL LIST.

Jason goes to SFIFF--Day 11

The second big weekend of SFIFF is over. I saw only three movies on Sunday. But one was a 5 hour, 16 minute masterpiece of Finnish cinema, so I think I get extra points for that. Yes, I give myself an extra 2 points for that (note: "points" are something I just invented on the spot and have no value--monetary or otherwise--whatsoever. In fact, I'll probably never speak of them again.)

That Finnish epic was EIGHT DEADLY SHOTS, originally shot in 1972 on 16 mm film and shown as a 4-part series on Finnish television. It was edited into a ~2 hour film, which allegedly isn't that good. This was actually the U.S. premiere of the full 5+ hour cut. It was inspired by an actual incident, although the opening of every episode takes great pains to emphasize it's fictional and not based on any specific case. In that incident, a farmer--drunk--killed 4 policemen with eight rifle shots (he made sure to get them all twice, I guess.) And the film opens with those shots. After a few minutes of the stark winter of the Finnish countryside, we hear those shots before we see a single person on screen. And that person is the farmer, Pasi (played by director Mikko Niskanen, who has said it was such a difficult role he couldn't ask anyone else to play it.) We see the funerals of the cops, and we see Pasi sitting, remorsefully, in jail. And then we go back one year, we see the last year of Pasi's life, leading up to that moment and leaving us--some five hours later--in a position where if we don't approve of his actions we at least sympathize with his plight.

Each episode is introduced with text about how alcohol was the root of all evil (I don't recall the exact text, or I would quote it.) And that's certainly a huge part of it. Pasi is a moonshiner who drinks a bit too much of his own product. As his wife notes, if it was just a little bit now and then, it would be okay. But he definitely drinks to excess far too often. But there's a lot more than that. When he has work, he's a hard, diligent worker. "When he has work" is the important part. And this is something that would have been lost without Peter von Bagh's introduction. Finland in the 70s--particularly rural Finland in the 70s--was the fastest declining region in all of Europe. People were leaving either for the cities or for Sweden. Those who stayed found it increasingly difficult to make a living on their small single-family farms or with the occasional part-time work offered by the employment office. So he supplements what little he gets from his farm by taking on odd jobs, clearing forests to sell firewood, but mostly through moonshining. The rest of the village is in a similar dire situation, particularly his neighbor and partner-in-moonshine Reiska. The pressure, the poverty, and yes the drink weighs on him--on more than one occasion his wife and children flee from his drunken rages into the cold Finnish night (something he had to do as a child when his own father came home drunk and angry.) Add to that a heart condition that incapacitates him from time to time.

But I don't want it to sound like everything is bad. He has periods where he's clean, he's working hard, and he gets along with his wife and children. It's that journey, the multiple cycles of hope and despair--with increasing pressure from the authorities--that has to be done over 5 hours (it could've been drawn over even more episodes, in my opinion.) I can't imagine taking that journey in only 2 hours. Maybe you could've told the story, but you couldn't have taken the emotional journey. Cutting this down would be the equivalent of saying you've visited Finland because you changed planes in the Helsinki airport once.


Then I finished the night with two very engaging and very different documentaries, starting with GOOGLE AND THE WORLD BRAIN. The world brain--a library of all human knowledge accessible to everyone--was a Utopian vision of H.G. Wells. But the idea of a library of all knowledge is much older--dating back to the Library of Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE. Now, with the power of the Internet, it's possible...but with complications. Google is not the only one trying to do this, but they are the biggest and most ambitious. And this isn't about search, it's about book scanning. After all, there's no bar to what gets put on the Internet (trust me on that), but what we put in books--at least, books with a real publisher instead of self-published--has at least a minimal standard. But who are the interested parties. Google, of course, who has sunk billions into the world's most ambitious book-scanning project. Libraries, many of which have partnered with Google, whose mission is to share as much information as possible. And copyright holders...ah, there's the rub. What to do with copyrighted works? Well, Google made deals with some publishers, for sure. But what about "orphaned books"--not in the public domain, still under copyright, but out of print? Sometimes you can't even find the author to ask for his permission. Well, long story short Google's initial strategy was to offer snippets. You could search on keywords and see a few lines of the book for each keyword found. Some people had a problem with that. First, if you searched for enough keywords you could piece together most if not all of a copyrighted book. Second, the mere act of copying a copyrighted work, even if you never show it to anyone, is a violation of copyright law...maybe...or maybe not. Look, I'm not a lawyer, and as far as I know this is still under litigation (it was at the time of the film, at least.) An initial settlement proposal gave  Google the rights to publish "orphaned" books and give the copyright holders a substantial cut. But this suddenly changed Google from a library to a bookstore, and the library partners objected. The movie provides several competing views (anywhere from 'Google has a secret nefarious plan to control the world's information' to 'copyright is obsolete in the modern age and Google is doing a good thing') but it still definitely has its opinion. Which is that Google is not malicious but has played fast-and-loose with the project and has crossed lines that companies with a more conservative legal department would not have crossed. And fighting the court battles has become huge. In fact, to hear some subjects talk about the potential cost per copyrighted work, this could be a bet-the-entire-company move. For what it's worth...I want a universal library. I want a World Brain. I don't have any particular stake in whether Google owns/manages/controls access to that World Brain or not. Maybe it's better that it be taken out of the hands of a for-profit company and be acknowledged as a public good. But if that's the case, who's going to fund it? Anyway, ideas and opinions aside this was a very engaging, well-made movie that certainly doesn't suffer from either a deficit of balance or a deficit of opinion.


And then a very different, almost experimental documentary LET THE FIRE BURN. The MOVE organization in Philadelphia in the 70s and 80s was a controversial and confrontational organization founded by John Africa (born Vincent Leaphart). They were about...black liberation, back-to-nature,...okay, maybe they had a more explainable philosophy but at least in this movie all you get is a frustrating and elusive 'follow the teachings of John Africa.' What are his teachings? The truth! What truth? The truth about the lie of the system! What is the system? ...it gets frustrating. Here's the important thing--on May 13, 1985, a raid on their row-house headquarters ended in an inferno that left 11 people dead and several houses (not just theirs, but neighboring houses) destroyed. There's more, of course. They were a public nuisance and a thorn in the sides of the local Philadelphia authorities (and their own neighbors) for years beforehand. The authorities wanted to evict them a long time ago. And blame...well, blame is a tricky thing. Or, in the words of William Richmond (Philadelphia Fire Commissioner at the time), "Blame is a broad brush." And this movie attempts to untangle the incident--and the history of Philadelphia's confrontations with MOVE, solely by using archival footage. New interviews with some key subjects were done for the movie, but discarded (perhaps they'll resurface as DVD extras?) in favor of using footage from the time. Most prominently, public hearings in the aftermath of the May 13, 1985 incident. And those hearings, news reports, and an interview with a little boy who grew up in MOVE are...chilling. MOVE seemed at best an unpleasant, angry place (maybe some members were loving internally, but externally obnoxious at best. At worst, it was an organization that engaged in child abuse and stockpiled weapons.) Still, that doesn't seem to justify what is at best excessive force and at worst murder-by-arson on the part of the police. A powerful movie that is a difficult and painful look at a difficult and painful incident in American history.

And with that, Sunday and the final weekend of SFIFF 2013 ended. We're on the final stretch now, leading up to the closing night on Thursday.

Total Running Time: 499 minutes
My Total Minutes: 327,282

Jason goes to SFIFF--Day 10

I missed a good chunk of  Saturday at SFIFF in order to cheer for my San Jose Earthquakes. After going down 0-2, they stormed back and scored an exciting stoppage time equalizer! Exciting, but we've had too many ties lately, we need to start getting some wins.

Anyway, I did make it up to the city for the centerpiece presentation of INEQUALITY FOR ALL. But before I get to the movie, I have a gripe about how the festival staff handles rush tickets.

The majority of the screenings I've attended have been at rush, but almost all of them have had at least a few empty seats by the time the film plays. That's normal, they have to cut off pre-sales when there are still enough seats left for passholders--Cinevisas, filmmakers, sponsors, etc. I've always assumed there were seats left over at the end because everyone in line for rush tickets got them and there were still leftover seats. Now INEQUALITY FOR ALL was pretty full (including lots of reserved seats for VIPs--sponsors, board members, guests of the filmmakers, etc.) but from my vantage point in front row center there were at least a half-dozen seats available. This includes the seat next to me, and the one 3 seats from me (the guy two seats over had empty seats on both sides. I don't know why, he didn't smell that bad to me.) I assume there were other seats available throughout the theater. However, the staff simply declared it full and cut off rush sales. I know this because a friend of mine was at the front of the rush line when they did that, and they told her there were no more seats available. She was cool about it, but I will not be.

In every other festival I've been to--including previous years of SFIFF--when a screening is nearly full, they will make some announcements. They will ask everyone to move in to the center, making sure there are no empty seats in the center of a row that would be difficult for the late-arriving rush customers to get to. They ask people to raise their hands if they have an empty seat next to them. They ask people to please remove their belongings from neighboring seats unless they're saving it for someone who already has a ticket and is in the building (e.g., they're just at the concession stand or in the bathroom). None of this was done. They simply weren't interested in filling every seat.

Now I assume they didn't make the effort because they were more concerned with starting on time (or near that, almost every screening at every festival starts at least 5 minutes late). But that is misplaced priorities. First of all, it's pretty fuckin' rude to the people who waited for an hour or more in hopes of getting tickets. Maybe not everyone can get in, but they should be given the fair opportunity if there are still seats empty. Second, if the festival doesn't care about getting every dollar it can out of the rush customers, then why the fuck did they jack up the price of my Cinevisa!? Have I been forced to subsidize their ability to shit on the rush line?

Okay, enough griping, on to the movie. INEQUALITY FOR ALL is based on the writing, lectures, and other lessons of Robert Reich, the littlest giant (seriously, he's like 4'9" but packing a giant intellect) in economic matters. Using his UC Berkeley lecture on Wealth and Poverty as a framing mechanism, he answers three big questions--how much inequality is there? Why is there inequality? And is that bad? Spoiler Alert: A lot; many reasons, but mostly the vicious (instead of virtuous) cycle; and yes. Reich is a master at making very complex ideas understandable to the layperson, and his charisma as well as visually engaging graphics tell the story pretty well. Better than I can in my dry-ish text where I'd have to resort to numbers to try to explain it. (speaking of numbers, I could've sworn the scale was off on one of the graphs. They show a line that's supposed to be at 23%, and it was placed between the 20% and 25% divisions, but it looked closer to 20%. Like they graphed 22% and labeled it 23%. But I digress) They pepper his lectures and interviews with personal stories from his life, including how as a Rhodes scholar met the man who would later make his Secretary of Labor--Bill Clinton. He makes a compelling case that even the super-rich would be better off with a slightly smaller part of a rapidly increasing pie rather than a bigger part of a slowly increasing (or even decreasing) pie. To those who have heard Reich speak before (and my knowledge is basically limited to his regular, short pieces for NPR) there won't be a lot of really new ideas. But he does take some time to bemoan how he's been saying this for 30 years and nobody seems to be catching on. Perhaps this movie will change that.

Oh yeah, and after Reich the most interesting person was the multi-millionaire venture capitalist who comes in to echo a lot of Reich's points. One of the most interesting points is how one guy making $10 million doesn't generate nearly the same economic activity as 100 guys making $100,000 each. In the Q&A they mentioned they screened the film to a select audience of multi-millionaires, and the reception was remarkably positive. Perhaps there is still some hope of turning things around, if the so-called "job creators" start actually working in their long-term rather than short-sighted best self-interest. For more information (soon...it's kinda a placeholder now) check out their website here.


After that, I caught a quite, contemplative, and spiritual (that is, if I believed in such things) short and feature pairing. First the short, HOME. A wordless examination of a house becoming a home. We see the inside of a pre-fabricated home. Doors open and clank shut. Perhaps it's haunted? Then, looking out a window, we suddenly see that it's moving. It is being moved on one of those giant trucks, over windy roads, while a brave cameraman stands inside shooting footage, until it is placed on a foundation, the cracks from the move are patched up, and a family moves in. Very cool.

And then the feature INORI. Let me start by saying it was a long, long day and I struggled (and ultimately failed) to stay awake. Not that I snoozed through the whole thing. I awoke fitfully throughout the course of the film, and my half-open eyes were always greeted by scenes of beauty. It starts with a dying goat shedding a single tear, transitioning into a mountain stream (was the stream fed by goat's tears?) We gradually meet the few remaining denizens of a near-empty village. Decaying institutions are being reclaimed by nature, and watched over by the graves of the past. I don't know what to make of it all, but the shot of cherry blossoms blowing over the water might be the most beautiful thing I've seen in the entire festival.

And that was Saturday. That totally happened.

Total Running Time: 168 minutes
My Total Minutes: 326,782

Jason goes to SFIFF--Day 9

It's now Monday, the second big weekend is over and I can see the final stretch of films this week. Soon enough I'll be mourning that it's over (but not before a good night's sleep or two.) But first, to recap the weekend, starting with two films on Friday.

First up was JUVENILE OFFENDER, a drama from South Korea about (surprise) a juvenile offender. That would be sixteen year old Gi-ju, who lives with his ailing grandfather after both his parents abandoned him. So he spends most of his time getting into various shenanigans with his hoodlum friends, and landing in juvenile detention frequently. In his latest stay, his grandfather passes away and so the authorities look high and low and find his estranged mother. She had him when she was a teenager, and so she still looks young (and acts immature) enough to be his peer rather than his role model. But they try to make this work--she looks for a real job and an affordable apartment. He tries to not judge her too much. And then obvious parallels pop up when he finds out that his girlfriend had gotten pregnant (by him) and given up the baby for adoption. He claims to despise "irresponsible" people and wants to take responsibility, but she kinda doesn't want to have anything to do with him. It's more of a quiet character study than the title would suggest, but it becomes a subtle and unsentimental look at the difficulties of single mothers in Korea, and the lack of a social safety net (or even much sympathy.)

And then a real oddity from Japan, RENT A FAMILY INC, a new documentary from Kaspar Astrup Schröder (THE INVENTION OF DR. NAKAMATS). The "hero" of the movie is Ryuichi Ichinokawa, who lives in the Tokyo suburb of Kawama City. He operates an unusual business--he rents himself (and ~20-30 employees) out as "surrogates." They pretend to be friends, parents, spouses, etc. for various social obligations. In the opening scene, he's pretending to be a husband while he and his client negotiate with her ex-husband to give her access to the savings account he set up when their son was born. Ryuichi's life of duplicity extends even to his family--he keeps his work secret from them, although (spoiler alert: he does come clean during the course of the film.) This is in fact the heart of the movie, what starts out as an odd, humorous look at a weird profession becomes a touching and troubled family story. His family life, to put it lightly, is not good. He doesn't bring home enough money (his surrogate business is just one of his jobs) his children don't respect him, and he and his wife seem to only be staying together long enough to raise the kids.  At one point he admits he thinks about suicide every day (not so much anymore, the movie seems to have actually been a kind of therapy for him.) A really fascinating look at social desperation, both from the clients' and the service provider's point of view.

Total Running Time: 184 minutes
My Total Minutes: 326,615

Jason goes to SFIFF--Day 8

Two more films last Thursday, on what I've dubbed "Mumblecore Night" at SFIFF.

First up was Noah Baumbauch's and Greta Gerwig's FRANCES HA. It's a sweet and funny story of best friends Frances and (Gerwig) and Sophie (Mickey Sumner). They live together, mostly off Sophie's money--she's an editor. Frances is an apprentice dancer who can barely scrape together rent money. Of course, this is in New York, so that's quite a bit, and as one friend points out she's not really poor, that's an insult to actually poor people. They're like two people with different hair. Until, as happens, Sophie moves in with her boyfriend, leaving Frances to bounce from place to place, trying to keep her head above water and never resorting to demeaning "normal" jobs just to stay alive while she chases her dreams. One wouldn't be too far off the mark to dismiss this as "spoiled white hipster problems" but there's a charm, wit, and goofy grace to it (as much a product of Gerwig as Baumbach) that makes you root for her, even when a happy ending would just be taking a shitty office job and getting a shitty apartment.

And then (after a quick stop for another Grolsch at the festival lounge)...something really weird. COMPUTER CHESS is the latest from Andrew Bujalski, and he recreates the lo-fi look of the 1980s perfectly. Not just the fashions, or the clunky computers with fat CRTs, but he actually shot on analog video (using a camera from the 60s). Teams of computer chess nerds from universities (including my alma mater, Caltech, as the defending champions), industry, and one eccentric lone wolf meet in shabby hotel conference room for a competition. And things quickly veer away from chess--to love, the soul, artificial intelligence, etc. They're sharing the hotel with a strange relationship encounter group/cult who do stuff like jamming their hands in loaves of bread to feel...something? And that's before the drugs kick in. Weird, weird stuff, and maybe my favorite film in the festival.

And that was Thursday at SFIFF. About time to start the big second weekend (where I'll miss a chunk of Saturday so I can cheer on my beloved SJ Earthquakes) and the final stretch to closing night next Thursday.

Total Running Time: 177 minutes
My Total Minutes: 326,431

Jason goes to SFIFF--Day 7

One week into the festival. Low on sleep, and we're only halfway through. This is the part where I begin to doubt myself. By midway through the weekend I'll see the light at the end of the tunnel. By this time next week I'll be sad that it's all over...but looking forward to the next big event. Maybe the noir films at the Roxie.

Anyway, two more shows last night, starting with a beautiful and emotional tribute to Les Blank. For those who don't know, Les Blank was a prolific and talented filmmaker who specialized in the sublime beauty of human joy and what inspires it (especially food, music, people, movies, etc.) Sadly, he passed away just under a month ago (on April 7th.) The film world, and the Bay Area have lost an essential voice. But we celebrated his career with this trio of rarely seen

CHRISTOPHER TREE (aka SPONTANEOUS SOUND, 1972...or maybe 1967? IMDb/the SFIFF website say something different than Blank's website): The closest thing to a conventional "experimental" film (I think there's a bit of experimentation in all of Blank's work, but this is closest to what people think of when they think of an experimental film) in the program. No narration, no explanation, no credits at all. Christopher makes music in the middle of a forest with a variety of instruments, but mostly with a huge collection of gongs. The camera maintains a distance, sometimes zooming in and sometimes pulling back behind the trees, to create a voyeuristic state of discovering a man performing to no audience.

CHICKEN REAL (1970): A commissioned industrial film for Holly Farms chicken. Focusing on two of Les Blank's passions--food and music. Hordes of people at a picnic downing mouthfuls of succulent chicken, before we go through the state-of-the-art (for 1970) process at the chicken hatchery all the way through to the "dis-assembly" line. They might have commissioned a standard industrial commercial film, but they got 100% Les Blank style.

SPEND IT ALL (1972...or 1971, another discrepancy on the year. Since Blank's website seems to list the earlier years, this might be the difference between when it was made and when it was first screened to the public): A beautiful, engaging, and loving look at the lives and passions of French-speaking Cajuns in the Louisiana bayou. Again, heavy on food and music, and it has that certain...Les Blankiness about it. He truly knew how to get people to reveal himself. He's never mocking people (even when they're funny.) He's never engaging in mindless hero worship (even when his subjects are freakin' awesome people!) He's getting them to tell their own stories, in a very warm and human way. They're a people who appreciate the enjoyment of life--they work hard enough to enjoy life, but not so hard that they make more money than they can spend--hence the title.

As a bonus, this opens with a very brief history lesson on how the Cajun people came to be. The original French settlers in the Americas set up a colony in what is now Novia Scotia, and called it Acadia (so they were Acadians.) When the English moved in on their territory, they gave the Acadians a choice--renounce their French Catholicism, join with the English, and help fight against England's enemies, or be driven from their territory. Those who agreed became the French speaking Novia Scotians, those who didn't were taken by slave ship to various ports along the coast from Boston to Georgia. They were pretty universally not accepted by the other settlers, and were driven from town to town until they settled in the bayou. "Acadian" became corrupted to "Cajun" and over 200 years they lived mostly in isolation, although their culture welcomed and was enhanced and enriched by other various outcasts--especially runaway slaves. They were very welcoming, and there's something very..."Prend moi tel que je suis" about it.


And then I continued the documentary night with the feature documentary BLACKFISH, about the mistreatment and violent incidents around orcas (killer whales) in captivity. The film opens with a chilling 911 call from SeaWorld Orlando with the words, "A whale has eaten one of the trainers." What follows is an exposé on the industry of orca shows that ultimately makes you sympathize with the orca in the incident. It shows how social, familial, and friendly orcas are in nature (there are no cases of orcas attacking humans in the wild--or so the movie claims). How families are torn apart so that the babies can be stolen for the shows (a simple matter of shipping costs, the babies are easier to ship). How non-family groups of orcas can often get violent with each other, leading to bloody "teeth-raking" attacks (and how the attacked orca can't leave the way-too-small tank and just go to another part of the ocean to avoid them). How the "trainers" are not really marine biologists, they just need to be good swimmers with the guts to get in the water with the orcas and the gutlessness to repeat the company line to the customers (example: They'll say orcas in the wild typically live up to 25-35 years, but ones in captivity live longer due to the great veterinary care. In fact, orcas in the wild have lifespans comparable to humans--up to 100 years for females, usually 50-60 years for males). That's probably the biggest takeaway I got--the "experts" at SeaWorld (and other aquatic parks) are lying to you in order to take your money without you noticing the cruelty. Look, I've seen the shows before. I didn't notice the cruelty before, I just noticed the beautiful, majestic creatures. I've also seen them in the wild, and let me tell you they're 1,000 times more majestic out there. Damn, and I always assumed FREE WILLY was just trite, sentimental claptrap. I might actually have to watch it and give it a chance now.

Total Running Time: 153 minutes
My Total Minutes: 326,254

Jason goes to SFIFF--Day 6

Another night, another two movies. And little time in between, so I actually had no time for a drink. Meaning my one-sober-day-a-week streak for 2013 is still intact.

First up was the Experimental Shorts, and I really could have used a drink. These are experimental, so describing them can be difficult, but I'll give it my best shot.
THE NAME IS NOT THE THING NAMED: A stream, a tunnel, extreme darkness, extreme brightness. I...really don't know what to call this.
ARTIFICIAL PERSONS: P.T. Barnum's hoax remains of a 10 foot giant. And the continuing hoax that corporations are people, my friends.
A FEW EXTRA COPIES: On obsessive re-creation of Budd Dwyer's infamous final speech (Google it).
PIPE DREAM: The first Arab in space, Syrian cosmonaut Mohammed Fares, has a phone call with the late President Hafez El Assad. Connections with the current upheaval in Syria, as his statues are torn down (for safekeeping against vandalism).
LIFE IS AN OPINION, FIRE IS A FACT: Fragmented, partially animated look at a man who lights himself on fire. In protest? Out of despair? For the lulz? We don't know, but there is a doggy!
VERSES: Probably my favorite of the bunch. Old ledgers from an abandoned juvenile detention center. Flip the pages, and the dirt and decay become an animated Rorschach test.
THE INDESERIAN TABLETS: Okay, this one might actually be my favorite. Tablets of a mysterious language are translated, in increasingly surreal and absurd ways, until I finally realize it's all a joke.
VIEW FROM ACROPOLIS: From atop the actual hill, the view shows soldiers running drills, ruins, modern buildings, a changing landscape.
BLOOM: Oil fields, fire, flowers, and a woman throwing knives at a child. All set to multiple overlapping renditions of "Edelweiss." Taken from the Texas Archive of the Moving Image. The knife throwing scene alone was worth the rest of the movie. Heck, it was worth the rest of the entire program.

And then I caught the feature PEARBLOSSOM HIGHWAY, by Mike Ott (LITTLEROCK, which I thought I had seen when it played in 2010 but it turns out I haven't). Cory (who apparently was featured in LITTLEROCK and will be in Mike Ott's next film, LAKE LOS ANGELES, due out next year) is a weird looking, weirder-sounding vocalist for a shitty punk band in Lancaster, CA (about an hour north of L.A.) He does whippets of nitrous and has big dreams--like being a reality TV star. Really, his dreams are all about getting the heck out of Lancaster (the titular highway is the only road out of town.) His only friend is Atsuko, a girl who is desperate to raise money to visit her dying grandmother in Japan. Desperate enough to turn to prostitution. Meanwhile Cory's big brother Jeff returns from a stint in the Marines (don't call it the Army) and while he is there to take care of him he's also pretty fucking tired of Cory's shit. A road trip to meet his biological father ensues, taking them to San Francisco (yay, a shot of the Roxie! Which lately has kind of become the go-to shot for Indie films to establish they're in San Francisco. Even more so than the GG Bridge.) I found myself being both repulsed and fascinated by the characters, while mostly bored by the story. That doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement, and I guess it isn't. But there's something to this film I can't quite put my finger on. As often as it makes me cringe, I still find myself drawn to it. Perhaps when his "Desert Trilogy" is completed with LAKE LOS ANGELES, I can watch all three in a row and see what it is I couldn't quite grasp this time.

Total Running Time: 166 minutes
My Total Minutes: 326,101