Maryland Film Festival '07 Wrapup

It's Wednesday night, but I'm still reeling from the excitement of this past weekend's Maryland Film Festival here in Baltimore. It was, in my opinion, their best festival in their 9-year history. The festival organizers, lead by Jed Dietz, should be commended for the new additions to the festival such as the 'Tent City', a mini-complex of tents set up outside The Charles theater venue which hosted filmmaking workshops and panels thru the whole weekend.

But I want to talk about the rest of the films I saw at the festival. Jot my thoughts down quickly and critically about what I saw:

On Saturday, I caught a film called Syndromes And A Century, by a Thai filmmaker named Apitchatpong Weerasethakul (try to say it outloud. Yikes!). This film was essentially an experimental, two-hour 'film poem' centered around a series of Thai medical professionals working at a Thai hospital. The film's not about any of these people specifically, neither does it have a resolved narrative. It floats from one character to another, then it floats around the Thai hospital, and finally simply floats around the Thai country for a bit before ending without a resolution. Very fascinating, and at times beautiful, but definetely not for folks who don't appreciate artsy films. This film is very much in the same echelon as film by Italian filmmaker Michaelangelo Antonioni (La Aventura, La Notte, L' Eclisse).

After a delicious classic Spanish Paella at Tapas Teatro, I moved over to the MICA Brown Center to catch a documentary called Maxed Out, hosted by none other than Punk music legend Henry Rollins. This docu by James Scurlock explored the less than benevolent workings of the credit card industry and the grand repercusions of credit card debt in American society. It was deeply thought-provoking: Do you know there's an entire subset of the credit card industry where investors simply buy 'debt' from different sectors then set out to make a profit by aggresively trying to collect said debt? I had no idea. Anyone dealing with credit card debt (like yours truly) and anyone considering starting to accumulate some debt should watch this great documentary (or read the book of the same name which spurred it) That, and Henry Rollins is a really cool guy. He did a great job hosting and was very humble, and to the point. Too bad Comcast in Balto Co. doesn't carry the IFC Channel, which runs Rollins' talk show.

Saturday night was a double treat of well-made indie horror pieces: Murder Party and Blood Car. Murder Party, by a new filmmaker named Jeremy Saulnier, is a wicked horror-comedy about art students who decide to kill a poor schlub as a work of art. I will be talking more this film, and about Blood Car as well, at Horror-101 in the days ahead, so what I'll say here is that it was very well-done. Gory, funny, and well-shot. The film won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at Slamdance this year.

Blood Car, by a Atlanta-based filmmaker Alex Orr, is an inspired B-movie horror-comedy about a car that runs on blood. The premise, in my opinion, is genius. The film itself was very low-budget, but the filmmakers milk it for all they could afford. The film's sense of humor is highly irreverent, but the film, in general, works. It's sorta like An Inconvenient Truth for horror fans. I will be talking about it more at Horror-101 soon. Oh, and remember Ana Chlumsky from My Girl 1 and 2? She's in this film, and she was there at the screening. I got to speak to her a bit; she's grown up to be a very charming, friendly young woman.

By Sunday, the festival started to wind down. I really needed to work on my short script for ripper (which I finished a first draft of just on Monday night!), so I decided to end my MFF '07 experience by catching John Paul Kinhart's documentary, Blood, Boobs, And Beast. This delightful, remarkable piece documents the life of Baltimore B-movie filmmaker Don Dohler, who made many B-movies which managed to be distributed worlwide as well as influence folks such as J.J. Abrams (creator of 'Lost') and Special Effects legend Tom Savini. I'll also be talking more about this docu at Horror-101 very soon, so I'll just say that John Kinhart really batted it out of the park with this docu, and this piece deserves theatrical and DVD distribution. I hope it finds it very soon.

There was so much good stuff at MFF this year. I wish I could have caught a couple more screenings. But, my scriptwriting is important, and finishing 'ripper' for class was a big priority for me. I hope that Jed Dietz and crew keep up this level of top programming selection and overall festival dynamicism at next year's festival.

Oh, I gotta say a couple of things about Spider-Man 3, but I think I'll wait until tommorrow.

Maryland Film Festival -- Day One

I spent the whole day yesterday (friday, May 4th) at the Maryland Film Festival and I had a blast. Ran into many friends and watched some good films. Here are the highlights:

Orphans is a first-feature drama by a female director named Ry Russo-Young. It's about two orphaned sisters in their mid-twenties who attempt to spend a weekend together in celebration of one of the sister's birthdays. I thought it was good, dramatic, well-directed and acted. The director was very influenced by Ingmar Bergman. And she achieved what she was hoping to accomplish--To create a compelling film with just two characters in it. On a sad note, one of the young actresses in the film passed away very recently--although I didn't get to find out which one--which makes the film strange to watch (knowing that one of those two young woman is now dead is kinda strange to me). Good film!

I watched several shorts on the Epic CGI Shorts program. The first one was a trippy, 'spiritual' pieces named Beyond Invisible. I thought it was interesting, although the miniDV tape which was used to screen the film had issues (the sound kept popping, and the film kept skipping). Half the audience walked out because of these issues. I still watched the film. I thought it was fascinating, with its 'far out' images of cosmic travels and 'battles in heaven and hell'. Ultimately though, the film's a tad too long. And since it had no narration or plot for most of its half-hour running time, the film just feels like some weird epic moving painting instead of a coherent piece.

The other two shorts were also decent. Dirt Nap was a comic piece about a stoner who dies of an overdose and goes to heaven, only to be recruited by Death and a maniacal clown named Mobile to do some dirty deeds in the after-life. Funny shit, although the CGI animation was very crude. It looked like something circa 1995 in terms of its animation. It's script was much better and funnier. Last on that program, I watched something called Saul Goodman. Now this short tried to be a very labyrinthine thriller about an older guy describing a conspiracy to a younger stranger at a train station. For the most it was interesting, but it had to much information to follow, and the level of its animation was something on par with a compute game cutscene circa 2000, so those things made it a bit lacking. Still, good effort.

After lunch, I watched the John Waters-hosted screening, Sleeping Dogs Lie. This is a feature-length directed by none other than Bobcat Goldwaith. It premiered at the Sundance Film Fest back in 2005, but it was never released wide across the states. The reason why it was never widely-released is because it's an edgy comedy about a young, engaged woman who confesses to his fiance... that she once blew a dog! This confession causes all sorts of wreck on her life. Now, the movie is very, very, very funny, and not graphic in the least. So it's a shame it didn't do better on its release. Bobcat was supposed to have been there for the screening, but he couldn't make it because he pulled his back; he stayed back in L.A. The young lead actress of the film, though, was there. She read a 'thank you' email from Bobcat. The Q&A was outstanding (as it has always been with John Waters hosting). The audience loved this edgy comedy, and you should track it down and watch it on DVD.

To cap my first night, I watched something called Viva. This film is by an auteur named Anne Biller. She wrote, directed, produced, and did most of the art, set and costume design on this very unique film. Viva is a two-hour satire about the sensous lifestyle of a young housewife in the early 70's. The film's a throwback homage to pieces such as Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls (although the filmmaker fervently denied that wasn't her intent). Viva's a very racy film--It has a lot of nudity, most of it 'good' nudity (Anne Biller plays the lead character, and she's very easy on the eyes with her large breasts and curvy butt). Now, the film's *never* pornographic. Sure, it's very titillating, but all the erotic scenarios in the film stop before the film crosses the line into porn. Biller's intent was to do a feminist satire about the roles of women back in that time. What I think she has accomplished better is in making an unique, inspired sexy comedy (I think Biller was a bit annoyed last night that most people took her film as a 'parody comedy' instead of a the satirical piece she worked on for 4 years). The audience seemed to have largely enjoyed the film due to its sexy scenes and very-funny, campy situations, characters, and set design. I would reccomend you rent Viva if it's eventually released on DVD.

Gotta go... I got a second day of films to attend to.