The VA Film Festival: I finally went, and I enjoyed it.

I've been in Charlottesville for all but one of the past seven Autumns, and yet this is the first year I actually attended the Virginia Film Festival. There is absolutely no excuse for this. While somehow constantly off my radar, a coincidental office conversation this past Tuesday reminded me the festival started on Thursday. This year's theme was "Kin Flicks". I scrutinized the schedule and chose to get tickets for the following:

Thursday, November 1: Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten (directed by Julien Temple) Friday, November 2nd: My Brother's Wedding (with writer/director Charles Burnett) Saturday, November 3rd: Family Remains and Slums of Beverly Hills (with writer/director Tamara Jenkins) Romance & Cigarettes (with writer/director John Turturro) Sunday, November 4th: Mac (with writer/director John Turturro) The Volvo Adrenaline Film Project (presented by Jeff Wadlow)

I made my choices based upon time (no movies during working hours on Thursday and Friday), uniqueness of opportunity (i.e., if the director would be present) and whether or not the feature is/would be available on DVD. Persepolis looks *amazing*, for example, but I thought it smart to see My Brother's Wedding during the same time slot as the director Charles Burnett would be there. I think this was a fairly reasonable decision, even though it kind of backfired. Turns out that, as much as I wanted to, I didn't really like My Brother's Wedding and Burnett's Q&A following his film felt a lot like a discussion section I suffered through in college where my TA *never* seemed prepared. He answered many questions with a long pause and, ". . . I hadn't really thought about that" and he went off on weird, unrelated tangents. Given the unique nature of the release of this film -- it had been shelved since 1983 and has only recently found distribution in 2007 -- Burnett admitted even he isn't entirely satisfied with the final product. Most of the extra footage had been scrapped and he was only left with crude reels with which to edit. He said this felt more like trimming than editing. Some of the people in the audience were a bit vulture-like when they realized just how demure Burnett is, snapping at him for being off topic or not answering the question. I ended up feeling a bit sorry for him until he talked about his most recent project on the history of Namibia, Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation, which sounds exactly like the kind of film making he has been meant to do. Despite Wedding's disappointment, I am still interested in seeing his films (I am sad I did not see his other festival offering, Killer of Sheep.) The Joe Strummer documentary was very, very good, but I'm not sure I agree with such reviews as XFM's “the best music film ever”. The Future is Unwritten is very informative, revealing and comprehensive, but I found myself annoyed with talking heads from the likes of Bono, Johnny Depp, and John Cusack -- they just felt like filler. Otherwise, the interviews with former 101ers and The Clash band mates, friends and family were absolutely spot-on perfect (Terry Chimes' recount of his exit from The Clash is heartbreaking and Joe's brother made me cry [at least, I think that was his brother; there was never any text to reveal who was being interviewed]). I will say that the interwoven audio from Strummer's "London Calling" BBC World Service radio programme (<-- ha, ha I wish I was British) recordings as part of the film's actual soundtrack was executed perfectly. For that integration, breadth of historical information on Strummer and excellent footage, I give this one five stars. I was pleasantly surprised by Tamara Jenkins. Equally surprising is that I had not heard more acclaim for Slums of Beverly Hills. The performances given by Natasha Lyonne, Alan Arkin, and Marisa Tomei were very, very good (it also featured Jessica Walter, Carl Reiner and Rita Moreno whose tough personas are always a treat). There was also a screening of Jenkins' short film, Family Remains which I really enjoyed; it appealed to all of my weird and morbid sensibilities. Its very twisted and surreal narrative depicted a seemingly loving mother-daughter relationship that quickly reveals its scathing, raw, unhealthy underbelly. And yet it was devilishly funny. A tip of the hat, Tamara. I am sad I missed her other festival film, The Savages, to be released nationwide by the end of November. Saturday night I joined several hundred other John Turturro/Cohen Brothers fans at the Paramount Theatre for Romance & Cigarettes. It was, in a word, excellent. I won't say much but, when it hits theaters nationwide in the coming weeks, go see it if you can. The audience had extraordinary energy and I'm not quite sure I would have enjoyed it as much without them. Here's the New York Times review and, notice it says "2005". This article (also from NYTimes) explains the struggle for finally getting this film released. And, here's an interview with Turturro from Filmmaker Magazine. After the film, David Edelstein of New York Magazine conducted an interview with Turturro. I was at once struck by his humility and thoughtfulness. He also revealed his puzzlement with the lack of women in film in non-traditional roles. And he even disclosed his reluctance to accept his more widely recognized roles as the quirky, weird, excitable goon or as a Jewish stereotype (after all, as far as he knows of his families' Italian ancestry, he is not Jewish [but he is open to more research on the matter]). By the conclusion of the interview, I had decided I now want to see any film in which Turturro has had a hand and that I would like to read Charles Bukowski. For all of my praise, this interview with Turturro had a downside. While his questions were very poignant and smart, I was disappointed by David Edelstein. He interrupted Turturro more than once, and offered antecdotes that didn't belong in the conversation. During Turturro's explanation of his surprise of the popularity of his cult favorite, The Big Lebowski character "Jesus Quintana", Edelstein blurted out, "I always tell people the best way to see The Big Lebowski is to be stoned out of your mind the third time you watch it!". While I don't actually believe he would do this, I kept imagining Edelstein ribbing some of his old frat buddies: "I asked him about Lebowski! I told him it's better stoned!" Turturro, meanwhile, tried to slough off the comment as best he could. That kind of awkward tension lasted throughout the rest of the interview. Not that Lebowski is a bad film, but given the breadth of Turturro's career, and the opportunity to speak with him about anything, it just seemed like a waste of time. This morning I saw Turturro again for a screening of Mac, the first film he ever directed. It embodied the festival's theme of kin, being a practical biography about his father and his family. When I was first acquainting myself with this year's offerings for the festival -- reading synopses of films I had not yet seen -- I was struck by one reoccurring theme: dissonance and heartbreak. Which is to say, no truly compelling film about family depicts a gratuitously happy one (Turturro asserted that to portray a content, happy family is a lie). While this is not surprising in any way, it is really rather depressing when you get right down to it. In fact, I spent the better part of this afternoon feeling melancholy: it is a tough thing to reconcile what a family once was, is, and what you hoped it would be. I found Mac very touching, and maybe I'm reading into this, but Turturro seemed to be affected by it, too. He was not so jovial or generous this morning and seemed a bit more nostalgic and introspective. Given that he his currently touring and pushing Romance & Cigarettes, it makes sense that watching Mac today (which he claimed he had not watched in a long time) may have surprised him a bit. Or maybe he was just tired. I ended the festival with the The Adrenaline Film Project. The project asks local filmmakers (seemingly all students; I'm still not sure if that's part of the criteria) to think-up, produce, edit and submit a film during the first 72 hours of the festival. Each team is assigned a genre, and they are required to use one specified prop and one specified line of dialogue. This year's prop was a carton of eggs and the line was "You don't know me". While some of the submissions were crude and choppy, others were smart and really fun to see. Oh, and while the audience ballot was being counted, they showed the trailer for what looks to be an abomination of a movie coming out next spring, Get Some. It's about a high school with an underground fight club. It looks to be mostly about testosterone, sex and violence without anything possibly redeeming. I suppose they made up for that by following the trailer with a short film called "American Storage", (briefly) starring Steve Carell. Apparently, Paramount bought the pitch and the film is projected for 2009. While the short was okay, I have a hard time seeing how the broader idea of storage units as apartments could get any steam on camera. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.