Monday, February 29, 2016

Jason goes to Indiefest--Day 12

It's all over but the writing. A ton of writing to get done today, or at the latest tomorrow, before Cinequest starts. This is from last Monday.

First up was the comedy DIAMOND TONGUES. If it's true that the hardest thing for an actor to do is pretend to be a bad actor, then Leah Goldstein is a master. She plays Edith Welland, a struggling actress in New York with big dreams. All her friends' careers are starting to take off. Even her ex-boyfriend just decides on a whim to become an actor, and lands the lead role in an indie film. A film that she auditions for...opposite him--awkward! But it's not like she doesn't deserve all of this. She really...isn't that good. Both in the sense that she's not very talented, and in the sense that she's kind of a vindictive bitch who starts sabotaging other people's careers. Bad people doing bad things, and the end result is pretty darn funny.

And then the documentary BURIED ABOVE GROUND, a personal look at people suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD.) From an Iraq war vet, to a Katrina survivor, to an addict struggling to keep clean. It's a well enough made movie, so it probably says something about me that I found the most sympathetic character to be...the service dog. Al Franken makes an appearance, supporting his service-dogs-for-vets bill, and reminds me again what an effective statesman he is. And I'm very glad that the featured vet got his dog and bonded with him well. But mostly I just like dogs, because they're cool.

Total Running Time: 178 minutes
My Total Minutes: 419,772

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