Jason goes to the Niles Film Museum to see Gary Cooper in NEVADA

But first, a couple of shorts:

THE NARROW ROAD (1912): America's Sweetheart Mary Pickford stars in this early Biograph short. She anxiously awaits her husband's return from prison. He's determined to stay on the straight and narrow, but his counterfeiting biddy has other plans. A funny morality tale, and if I'm not mistaken I saw a Max Davidson cameo in there.

MANY SCRAPPY RETURNS (1927): My favorite forgotten funnyman Charley Chase is in his element. And that element is marital strife. He seems to have a fine marriage, it's his brother who always fights with his wife. So Charley and his wife stage a mock fight to teach them a lesson. Things get out of hand, culminating in a hilarious and perfectly times extended gag of everyone running around among adjoining rooms, never quite running in to each other.

Then an intermission, and on to the feature. But first, the musical accompanist, Jon Mirsalis at his Kurzweil electric organ, gave a brief demonstration of the art of accompanying a silent film. Very few of the thousands of silent features had full scores written. Some more had cue sheets, but for the vast majority the pianist was left to his or her own devices. And Mirsalis did an excellent demonstration of how what you play doesn't matter, it's how you play it. He played "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" in several different styles, ranging from romance to western and everything in between. Very illuminating.

And the feature, NEVADA (1927). Gary Cooper, William Powell, and Thelma Todd...all before they were really famous. It's a somewhat standard B Western. Cooper plays Nevada, wanted for killing a man back in Lineville. But he feels the tide of history turning--it's no longer the wild west, but a place where law will reign and he wants to change to the right side of it. The pursuing sheriff makes that kind of hard, especially when he's accused of being in cahoots with a gang of rustlers. William Powell co-stars as the bad guy (he was the villain in a lot of silent films before becoming a hero in the talkies) and Thelma Todd is the love interest--the main impetus for him turning good. Pretty good.

Total Running Time (estimated): 97 minutes

My Total Minutes: 235,529

Jason goes to SFIFF--Closing Night

But I chose not to attend the closing festivities. Instead I decided the best way to end a film festival, in my utterly exhausted and brain dead state, is with a 3 hour film that requires a little extra concentration.

AURORA is a crime story, but one carefully stripped of all genre elements. Viorel (director Cristi Puiu is a quiet man who goes about his life in Bucharest. He redecorates his apartment. He talks to the upstairs neighbors when their son overflows the bathtub and causes some water damage on his roof. He cleans and tests his guns. And eventually we (the audience) catch on that he's planning a shooting. I hate to say this, but it kind of reminded me of BULLET IN THE HEAD. I hate to say that because I hated BULLET IN THE HEAD, while I didn't hate AURORA. At 3 hours it's tedious, often boring, and always a challenge. But I didn't hate it, I was fascinated by it.

And that's how my SFIFF 2011 ended.

Running Time: 181 minutes

My Total Minutes: 235,432

Jason goes to the penultimate day of SFIFF

As regular readers know, I like the word, "penultimate."

Another night, another two movies.

First up, THE TRIP, which reunites Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, and director Michael Winterbottom from the hilarious TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY. Coogan has an assignment writing restaurant reviews for the Observer. His girlfriend, who's the real foodie, was going to accompany him, but had to go to America. So he calls up his old pal Rob, and they set out on the road together. And that's about it. It's as close to "about nothing" as you can get, but very, very funny. They're two showmen who can't ever let the spotlight be on anyone but them, so they're constantly cracking jokes at each other, and especially doing impressions (they have a running contest over who does the best Michael Caine). There is some stuff in there about career anxiety (especially a brief but awesome Ben Stiller cameo), but it's hard to care about the worries of someone who makes a lavish living entertaining people. And that's when they're at their best--when they're entertaining. Or when Rob is challenging Steve by asking him if he'd let his son contract a painful disease (from which he would make a full recovery) if it meant he (Steve) would win an Oscar.

And then I saw BLACK BREAD, a dark look at the Spanish Civil War through the eyes of a child but not featuring Pan or his Labyrinth. Instead, it features politics, reprisals and murder. Oh yeah, it starts with a murder. A very gruesome murder that literally made my jaw drop. Young Andreu finds the dead bodies, and recognizes his friend. And his trauma is complete when his father is accused of the crime--perhaps truly, or perhaps as political retribution. Anyway his father goes into hiding, his mother works extra shifts, and he is sent to live with relatives. And in this environment he has to try to make sense of the world as he's growing up (including young love. Creepy, young love). A fantastic, traumatic story with a lot of great performances. No wonder it took in such a big haul at the Goya awards (Spain's equivalent of the Oscars).

Total Running Time: 215 minutes
My Total Minutes: 235,251

Jason goes to SFIFF--Day 13

Okay, it's getting to me, I'm exhausted. Of course that didn't stop me from seeing two more movies last Tuesday night, starting with LETTERS FROM THE BIG MAN, a Bigfoot movie that is one of the oddest by virtue of playing it totally straight. Sarah is an artist who has recently broken up with her boyfriend. She takes off, leaves no forwarding address, and takes a job surveying old growth forests (especially their regrowth after a devastating fire) in Oregon. I should start by saying how much I love the Pacific Northwest. I grew up in Bellingham, WA (until my junior high years when we moved to Anchorage, AK) and you'd be hard pressed to convince me there's a more beautiful place on earth than the forests of the Pacific Northwest. So if this movie was just 100 minutes of her sitting in the wilderness with beautiful shots of the forests and streams, I'd groove on it and be homesick for a place I haven't called home in over two decades. But there's also a story, that's a bonus! And that story involves Bigfoot spying on her, a political intrigue involving deforestation and government researchers, and perhaps a new love. There's never a big "wow, we found Bigfoot!" moment, just a series of quiet encounters and gradually acceptance. There's a little pseudo-scientific explanation (which frankly I could've done without) about how Bigfoot can control ultra-low sounds to either terrify enemies or put people completely at ease. It borders on making Bigfoot a metaphor for nature--that depending on how you approach it and your state of mind, it's beautiful and calming or incredibly dangerous (or, for that matter, an economic opportunity). But I decided I prefer to avoid the metaphor and accept Bigfoot as a character like anyone else in the movie, simple but powerful.

And then TABLOID, the newest film by Errol Morris, and perhaps the most controversial ticket in the fest, spurred by the film's subject protesting outside the theater. I have to admit I put this on my schedule as soon as I read the name Errol Morris, and didn't know more about the subject. As fellow blogger/tweeter Brian Darr/@hellonfriscobay put it, that's the right way to see it. So I'll now attempt to describe it without giving anything away:

Joyce McKinney is the star/subject, and some time in the past she was a subject of the tabloids. Mr. Morris got her to talk about it, and the result is his funniest movie yet...by far. He also interviews other related characters--her friends, cohorts, tabloid writers, and while everyone gets to spin their side of the story no one really comes off looking good. But it's easy to tell how McKinney got into trouble. She likes talking about herself, she's funny and engaging, and she has a penchant for making quotes that writers can run with. And it seems she might have just done it again on film.

So Errol Morris was there to introduce the film (which he said was his favorite so far. The rest of his films took him some time and distance to appreciate), but he didn't stay for a Q&A. kind of disappointing, but I did have to run to catch a bus to BART to home anyway, so I wouldn't have been able to stay long. McKinney was there, and a small crowd gathered around her (and her doggy, I think she said it was Booger-Lee) to listen to her. I did hear her say how Morris had approached her saying he was doing a series on paparazzi victims for Showtime, and she thought if he used her at all it would be a brief clip amongst several other victims. She never knew he would make a feature film all about her. That appears to be at least part of her anger at the film. Although I have to say in person she was pleasant, engaging, and still way too eager to talk about herself.

Total Running Time: 192 minutes
My Total Minutes: 236,043

Jason goes to SFIFF--Day 12

Now we're really heading down the final stretch.

Two more movies last night, starting with the French-Canadian Oscar submission INCENDIES. It's a very well constructed, overly melodramatic piece of excess. Twins Jeanne and Simon Marwan are given instructions in their mother's last will and testament. Their previously unknown father and brother are still alive, and her will instructs them to go to Unnamed-istan (somewhere in the Middle East), find them, and deliver a letter to each of them. Simon refuses, but Jeanne is game. And while she's there she learns horrifying things about her mother's past. How she barely escaped the violence of a civil war, how she assassinated a right-wing militant leader. How she was tortured in prison. And ultimately the complex web results in a bizarre, unbelievable climactic reveal. It's an odd movie, while I was in it I was drawn in by the power of the highly accomplished cinema. As soon as it was over and the applause died down I realized exactly how absurdly overblown the melodrama was. I don’t know, maybe your mileage will vary, but I just couldn't swallow that story taking itself so earnestly.

And then I saw the documentary I've been hearing everyone in the festival lounge talking about (other than HOT COFFEE), CRIME AFTER CRIME. Let me start by saying only twice in my life have I jumped to my feet and given a film a standing ovation without first checking to see if anyone else was standing. The first was the documentary THE RITCHIE BOYS at Cinequest in 2005, and of course this was the second. The case of Deborah Peagler is so compelling that as long as you laid out the facts, put her on screen, and the camera was at least close to in focus, you'd have a good documentary. So it's just a bonus that director Yoav Potash (FOOD STAMPED from this year's Indiefest) also knows what he's doing. Deborah was in an abusive relationship with a man who forced her into prostitution back in the 80's. She conspired with some local gang members to beat him up so he'd leave her alone. Well, they beat him a little too hard and killed him. Sure, she bears some responsibility, but the prosecution at the time went for the death penalty with a (very weak) case that she conspired in cold blood to collect his insurance money. At the time, evidence of abuse wasn't presented at trial (although the D.A. knew about it), and they intimidated her into a plea of first degree murder with a sentence of 25 years to life (as opposed to a more appropriate manslaughter charge, which would've carried at a maximum 6 years). Some 20 years later, California became the first (and still only) state to pass a law allowing women to reopen their cases if they were victims of abuse and that abuse had some bearing on their crime. Seems like her case is clear cut, right? Whatever she did, she's more than paid for it, and you just have to let justice work it out. Well, that's what pro bono team Joshua Safran and Nadia Costa thought. What they didn't count on was a parole board with little interest in hearing this new evidence. A court system with little interest in (or perhaps even understanding of) the new law, and especially an Los Angeles D.A. office that seems politically motivated to avoid the embarrassment (and possible civil action) of admitting to decades of wrongful imprisonment. The estimated 6 month pro bono project becomes 5 years, as parole, appeals, etc. are denied. Most disheartening is a written deal with the D.A.'s office that is then withdrawn.

You know, I could say more but I think I've said enough. Check out the movie when it comes out (should be August in the Bay Area), and check out the movie website here to learn more, and especially click on The Campaign link to find out what you can do to help other women in similar circumstances.

Total Running Time: 223 minutes
My Total Minutes: 235,851

Jason goes to SFIFF--Day 11

I stayed out late Saturday for the late show, and yet I was still back at the Kabuki bright and early for the member's screening. That turned out to be BUCK, the Sundance Audience Award winning documentary about Buck Brannaman, the 'real' horse whisperer. It's a well made and compelling piece of hero worship, and Buck's a pretty convincing hero. A soft-spoken, gentle man who doesn't 'break' horses, he 'starts' them. He's also a very funny man who jokes that after working as a consultant and Robert Redford's double in THE HORSE WHISPERER (confession, I haven't seen that movie) that he (Redford) was getting pretty good and if the acting thing doesn't pay off he could make a living as a cowboy. Underneath it all, and pulled out very slowly, is that he had a horrible childhood. He and his brother were child stars doing rope tricks blindfolded. But for all their fame (including a national commercial), their father beat them mercilessly. Much later in life, he can pontificate about how he can feel for the horses because he understands the cruelty and fear in traditional horse 'breaking.' But to the movie's credit, it balances well the pain in his past with the peace and contentment in his present, and celebrates the man he has become rather than obsessing about the abused boy he was.

Next up, a pairing of French animated children's programs starting with the short SPECKY FOUR EYES. Arnaud has awful eyesight, but with his imagination he sees more in the blurry shapes than people with 20/20 vision. Too bad his parents force him to wear thick glasses and act like an adult.

That led into the feature film A CAT IN PARIS. Leave it to the French to make a hero of a cat burglar, but the fact is nimble Nico is actually quite the gentleman. His faithful companion during his night raids is an actual cat, Dino. But during the day, Dino is the pet of Zoe, a little girl who is too shy to say a word. Her mom is the police commissioner, and she has no time for Zoe because she works too hard trying to catch mob boss Costa. But when Costa's gang kidnaps Zoe, Nico becomes the hero using his cat burglar skills to rescue and protect her. A charming little movie that shows traditional hand drawn animation doesn't need 3D or fancy computer graphics to have a lot of heart.

Next up, THE DISH AND THE SPOON, a wonderfully acted two-person story of a woman breaking down after her husband betrays her, and about the new friend she meets. The movie opens with Rose (Greta Gerwig) driving through gray, wintry Delaware, wiping the tears from her face. She stops, goes into a convenience store and with the last of her money buys a pack of donuts and 5/6 of a pack of beer (provided by Dogfish Head Brewery). Her plan is to go to an abandoned lighthouse and eat donuts and drink beer. But that's interrupted when she finds a wild-haired English boy (Olly Alexander) huddling in the lighthouse. He's clearly been through his own trauma, and looks a bit sick so Rose carries him to her car and tries to take him to the hospital. But instead, they end up at an empty beach house (I think it was Rose's relative's summer house? The important thing is it's empty at the moment). There the commiserate and plan revenge on her husband and especially the little bitch he cheated on her with. Meanwhile there might just be a new romance brewing between them--or they might just be play-acting to cover their recent pains.

I left the movie thinking it was wonderfully acted, well made, and "quirky." I'm glad I talked to a couple of women in the lounge who assured me the odd behavior is perfectly realistic. Yes, they do odd things (like dress in drag or pretend they're married), but I was assured this quirky behavior is entirely in keeping with the actions of a betrayed woman.

I'll also add that Gerwig's rants on the phone were excellent, and her explication of Thanksgiving (that while the relationship between the white settlers and the Native Americans didn't really work out well, but we still celebrate the time they ate together) really stuck with me.

Oh, so I mentioned I went to the lounge. Yay, free drinks! The benefits of being press. But I feel like I should go to cinema confession and admit I had a chance to squeeze in an extra movie (even an outside chance of getting to the Castro for Serge Bromberg's program) but chose to drink for an hour and a half instead. I know I'm weak, but I ended up only seeing 4 movies on Sunday.

And that fourth movie was a doozy, Takashi Miike's celebration of battle 13 ASSASSINS (oddly, it was in line for this movie that I learned Osama Bin Laden had been killed. Interesting coincidence). Anyway, I won't swear to the historical accuracy of any of this, but here's the story: In the waning decades of the Shogun era, it was a time of peace (as opposed to the famed time of war of earlier generations). Lord Naritsuga, a well protected relative of the Shogun, is exceedingly--even comically--cruel. One scene--showing a woman he delimbed and used as a plaything before he grew tired and cast her aside--showcases the trademark Miike extreme abusive absurdity. But other than that he plays it comparatively straight (for him), showing the lords conspiring against Naritsuga and hiring famed samurai Shinzaemon to assassinate him. Of course, Shinzaemon needs help, and he recruits another dozen samurai to fill out the group. Okay, one isn't a samurai but a total kickass mountain man who provides excellent comic relief, but still think of it as nearly doubling up Kurosawa's SEVEN SAMURAI. They set their trap and prepare for a bloody battle against Naritsuga and hundreds of his soldiers, knowing full well that almost no one will survive. And that final battle is a non-stop 45 minutes of action. Traps, walls collapsing, explosives, swordfights, gunfights, fistfights... It's just amazingly staged and executed, and I would say exhausting but I was actually more amped up at the end then at the beginning. I suppose you could argue it's little more than an expertly crafted glorification of battle, but there's still something convincing and compelling in that glory. And on a night when America celebrates the end of the battle against public enemy #1, I find it hard to complain that a movie (especially a Miike movie) glorifies killing a truly evil guy.

And that's the end of the second weekend at SFIFF. We're really on the home stretch now.

Total Running Time: 380 minutes
My Total Minutes: 234,628

Jason goes to SFIFF--Day 10

Big Saturday program, so let's get straight to the movies:

First up, a Hong Kong romantic comedy about smokers, LOVE IN A PUFF. This isn't actually in the movie, but it brought to mind a statement by Nobel Prize winning physicist (and one of my personal heroes) Richard Feynman, who said that if he could save one sentence about physics to pass down to a civilization that lost all of our scientific knowledge, it would be this: The world is made up of particles that attract each other from a distance but when they get very close they change to repelling each other. LOVE IN A PUFF makes the same statement about humans. It's well made and very funny. It shows how strict laws about no-smoking zones actually bring smokers together when their backgrounds and professions usually wouldn't. However, when everyone has a lit fire a few inches from your mouth, there's only so close you can get without getting burned. Smokers are by nature friendly (at least with each other) but always playing it cool. A parallel is shown with texting--a technology that brings people somewhat together while keeping them at a distance just short of intimacy.

It's in this environment that we meet Johnny and Cheri. There's a pretty immediate attraction, but they're both holding back. Johnny just broke up (his girlfriend was cheating with a French diplomat) and Cheri is in a stale relationship. At one point, she describes how an ex once gave up smoking because he left her for a non-smoker. She explains that she hasn't found a reason to quit, and when you know she's asthmatic you realize that line really means she hasn't found a reason to live. As her and Johnny's friendship grows to the verge of something more, it's clear that he will eventually provide her with a reason. While their ultimate pairing is predictable, the story of how they got there, complete with all the foibles of casual relationships, is a joy to watch unfold.

The next show started with the short PROTOPARTICLES. Our hero is a walking spacesuit. While he goes through the most mundane daily tasks, he explains how he he got that way. An experiment with tachyons turned him into "protomatter" retaining his consciousness but not his physical form. The protomatter was contained I his spacesuit, however. The experiment also sent him 96 years in the past and made him immortal, so he's just biding his time until he can share the greatest secret in the universe with the scientists who did this to him. Regular readers know what a time-travel geek I am, so it's no surprise I loved this smartly simple short.

That short was the lead-in for A USEFUL LIFE, the story of the struggling Cinemateca Uruguaya in Montevideo. Shot in beautiful black and white, reminiscent of the classic old films that play there, it tells the fictional story of Jorge, who has worked there for decades. He programs series, does a radio show, repairs equipment, and chats with the small but loyal group of patrons.But the Cinemateca is a relic--outdated, falling apart, and simply not economically viable. So it's losing its support, and he's losing the thing that brought meaning to his life. It's full of wonderful deadpan humor (the classroom scene alone is brilliant). And despite what the rest of the world might think, it definitely shows a life of viewing, exhibiting, and studying films is useful (so of course it goes over well at a film fest).

Next up was ASLEEP IN THE SUN, which I instantly tweeted might be my favorite of the festival. That's always a very dynamic distinction, and can easily change (I don't really know what sticks with me until a few weeks later), but I will say it impressed me enough that I bought the book it's based on right away.

The story is about Lucio and Diana. He's an unemployed watchmaker, she's his mildly crazy wife. She's had treatments before, but still has episodes, particularly dealing with talking dogs. More or less their life is nice, though, living in a pleasant part of 1950's Buenos Aires. But a family friend recommends a doctor who can really cure her, they go to him and then things get weird. She's taken away for treatment where he can't visit her, and when she returns she's beyond "cured," she's a completely different person. Lucio investigates and his life turns into a surreal nightmare. The hospital and the actor playing the doctor are wonderfully comically creepy (oh yeah, important thing about the movie--it's subtly funny), and the atmosphere builds and builds. Although there are plenty of hints as to what's going on, the mystery is so delicious that it's kind of a letdown when it's explained at the end. Great movie.

Oh yeah, and it barely kept the festival pregnancy theme alive as there's a quick reference to a neighbor who is pregnant. However, the next film, END OF ANIMAL, definitely keeps the theme alive. In fact, the main character is a pregnant teenager, Soon-young. She's taking a taxi to her mother's house, when a strange young man flags down the taxi and hops on board, sharing the ride. He starts talking to her and to the driver, and it becomes clear that he knows everything about them. Not just that he's been stalking them, like he has supernatural knowledge, both of their past and future. A future that will very quickly contain a blinding white flash, followed by darkness and nothing that depends on electricity will work (most importantly cars and cell phones). He predicts it, counts down, and it happens. It's hard to tell if this supernatural man is benevolent, malevolent, or just chaotic. He reappears at convenient times, and at one time he refers to himself as God before saying he's just kidding. What is clear is that Soon-young is in for a torturous night. She eschews advice (both from the taxi driver and the supernatural man) to stay in the car, and things go from bad to worse. First time feature director Jo Sung-hee made this film with a graduate grant from the Korean Academy of Film Arts, and he throws so much in the movie that just when you think you have a handle on what it's about, it slips through your fingers again. I can't tell you what it all amounts to, but I loved it, I'd welcome an opportunity to re-watch it, and I want to see what he makes next.

And then I had to run to the next theater for the late show screening of Takeshi Kitano's highly anticipated return to the gangster genre, OUTRAGE. I couldn't begin to describe the twists and turns in yakuza politics, but it's a brilliantly psychotic story of escalating violence. It all starts when one low-level yakuza family boss becomes friends--in fact, brothers--with a rival while in prison. The chairman doesn't like this, so despite their friendship they have to make a show of hostilities--really just a formality. But the underling sent to do the job, Otomo (Kitano), sends a bit too harsh of a message. He's an effective enforcer, but subtlety is not his style (nor is dentistry, but you have to see the movie to get that). And as the old adage goes, if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Well, for the yakuza everyone has their own angles and their only tool is violence. Fingers are cut off as apologetic tributes, and rivals (who are more often then not former friends) are executed in increasingly creative ways, leaving very few people standing at the end. Pretty awesome.

Total Running Time: 483 minutes
My Total Minutes: 234,248