{"id":5996,"date":"2010-10-16T13:06:10","date_gmt":"2010-10-16T17:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=5996"},"modified":"2010-10-16T13:09:42","modified_gmt":"2010-10-16T17:09:42","slug":"truth-or-friction-film-festivals-part-v","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=5996","title":{"rendered":"Truth or Friction: Film Festivals Part V"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Few things will put you more in a position to question your level of maturity than covering a film festival. Shouldn\u2019t I enjoy my medicine by burying myself in high minded dramas on important subject matter and dry documentaries that detail the struggles of a trendy third world country? What kind of an adult would I be if I didn\u2019t hide my predilection for exploitation films<\/span><\/a>? Shouldn\u2019t I still be meditating on the devastating political commentary that litters the experimental film about deaf Native Americans trying to get competitive whistling approved by the Olympic committee?<\/p>\n

Such dilemmas are of paramount importance to a film critic\u2019s job; if I don\u2019t take the sincere, white-liberal-guilt movies seriously, then who will? Sure, the upcoming 19th<\/sup> Philadelphia Film Festival (Oct 14-24th<\/sup>) should be a dream come true for me, I get to meet the true film fans, those who happily overpay for tickets to a movie that will do no business amongst the general public before it heads directly to DVD.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Weighing the benefits of seeing certain types of low-budget films in the theater becomes that much more important in a struggling economy. The unfortunate fact is that most new documentaries, the majority of which are shot on digital video and don\u2019t often visually impress on a large screen, are inessential. Sure Gerrymandering<\/em> is something we should all know about, but a one-sided, drawn out 80 minute documentary on the titular subject, a movie that maybe<\/em> justifies 30 minutes on PBS, would not be money wisely spent. Neither would acclaimed documentarians D.A. Pennebaker (Don\u2019t Look Back<\/em>, Monterrey Pop<\/em>) and Chris Hegedus\u2019 Kings of Pastry<\/em>, another in a long line of genial documentaries about wholly irrelevant competitions (Wordplay<\/em>, Word Wars<\/em>, Pucker Up: The Fine Art of Whistling<\/em>), but this time buried by a truly irritating score that sounds like a canned version of deleted music from a Woody Allen movie.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>And you\u2019d think that Machete Maidens Unleashed!<\/em>, an enthusiastic documentary (from the director of Not Quite Hollywood<\/em>) about low budget American films made in the Philippines would fit perfectly into my lowbrow criteria, and it would, if it were more than a self-congratulatory clip show. It skirts over the more interesting material, John Landis discussing the bogus feminist read on the women-in-prison genre (he\u2019s right, sometimes a naked lesbian fistfight is just a naked lesbian fistfight) and a moment where producer and self-promoter Sam Sherman brags that he knowingly poisoned the audience at a public screening.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Skimming over the good stuff also annihilates the credibility of Tony Goldwyn\u2019s based-on-a-true-story Oscar bait Conviction<\/em>, a simplistic and dumbed down movie (full review here<\/span><\/a>), drowned in \u201cdramatic license.\u201d Instead of dealing with the more complex and uncomfortable realities of a woman (Hilary Swank) who becomes a lawyer so she can free her brother (Sam Rockwell) from a life sentence in prison, everything is about good, honest people versus evil<\/em> cops and opportunistic politicians.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A simplification would have killed Danny Boyle\u2019s 127 Hours<\/em> completely (full review here<\/span><\/a>), since the \u201ctrue\u201d story is about a guy forced to cut off his own arm when he\u2019s stuck under a rock in the mountains of Utah, and that\u2019s a premise, not a movie. Boyle\u2019s standard visual hyperactivity which he put it to great use in Trainspotting <\/em>and 28 Days Later<\/em>, is the best way to deal with the inherently limited subject matter, but trying to turn a guy who should have turned off The X Games before venturing off by himself, into a hero who seems to express his physical pain only in the first few minutes of his epic, self-imposed torture.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But with all this negativity, where should you go for entertainment and enlightenment? I\u2019d suggest two films the studios have been having trouble with, the broad, gay conman comedy I Love You, Phillip Morris<\/em> with Jim Carrey bringing his elasticity with him and Derek Cianfrance\u2019s gut wrenching drama Blue Valentine<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The brief, silly, gay sex scenes have gotten in the way of the marketing confidence behind Phillip Morris<\/em>, hence it\u2019s been re-edited and has been sitting on the shelf since January of 2009 and gone through several distributors. Blue Valentine <\/em>(full review here<\/span><\/a>) is battling an absolutely baffling NC-17 rating, sexual honesty is always punished by the MPAA (women aren\u2019t allowed to legitimately enjoy themselves), no matter how minimal the nudity. Phillip Morris<\/em> isn\u2019t half the movie Blue Valentine <\/em>is, in the latter, Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling give two truly insightful performances as a couple struggling to stay together, and Phillip Morris<\/em> has a slack and visually unimpressive middle section. But how can you dislike a movie where a character has the line, \u201cif it weren\u2019t for you Jesus, I never would have found that roasted coffee filter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Check Filmadelphia.org for specific showtimes on the above films and the hundred other movies playing the festival.<\/p>\n

This article ran in the Germantown Chronicle<\/span><\/a> and the Mt. Airy Independent<\/span><\/a> on Oct. 14th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Few things will put you more in a position to question your level of maturity than covering a film festival. Shouldn\u2019t I enjoy my medicine by burying myself in high minded dramas on important subject matter and dry documentaries that detail the struggles of a trendy third world country? What kind of an adult would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,17,12],"tags":[4883,7264,7294,1001,1708,7259,1337,8865,7292,1017,277,7291,7289,7248,7290,2241,555,73,6475,7283,1427,7288,621,3406,7293,972,1006,96,6342,309,1802,3516,7286,310,2221,49,7287,7241,1902,781,7242,1167,7285,7284],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5996"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}