4-19-2008
Before I begin today’s recap, a little leftover housekeeping from
yesterday...
First, in my discussion of Anvil! The Story of Anvil, I
completely forgot to mention that the entire band actually attended the
screening—along with an audience packed with metalheads—and came
onstage after the film to field questions from the crowd... who gave the
guys a standing ovation. (It really is fascinating to watch the
demographic of the audiences change from film to film.)
Secondly, I wanted to clarify that I am not saying I’m a big weeping
mess when I say that some of these films make me cry. I realized last
night that I should probably distinguish between what happens to me
when I watch a moving or particularly beautiful movie/scene/moment in
public (i.e., my eyes tear up a lot, sniffles kick in, maybe a stray
tear drifts down my cheek) and what Oprah describes as the "ugly cry"
(i.e., sobbing and heaving and gasping breaths). When I’m out at a
movie, I prefer to stifle my emotions as much as possible... so the
"crying" is done internally more than externally. Just so’s you know.
Oh, and one more thing: whyyy must people smoke in line? I think
I’ve mentioned this in every fest-related diary I’ve ever written for
the 'Pie... but, seriously, why? Step out of line if you must have a
cigarette. We’re all standing shoulder to shoulder, and the rest of us
don’t need to smoke right along with you. Many thanks.
Okay, moving on... day two!
Now, when I say the words "prison beauty pageant," what sort of images
spring to mind? I’d be willing to bet whatever you just conjured up in
your imagination bears no resemblance to what was featured in my first
film of the day, La Corona (The Crown) (6/8), which was
the first half of a double-bill screening. Shot at a women’s prison in
Colombia, the film showcases the annual beauty pageant that pits
cellblock against cellblock. But lest you think the catwalk is packed
with beefy butch women in crew cuts and muscle Ts, the inmates
competing are stunningly beautiful. Yes, they’ve been convicted of
murder or armed robbery or what have you, but... wow. Directors Amanda
Micheli and Isabel Vega do a nice job of profiling the key competitors,
and the proceedings have a decidedly upbeat vibe, but it did feel like
it went on about four scenes too long—that they didn’t end it when
they should. Instead, a coda involving one woman’s release seems
unnecessarily added on, especially since updates on the post-pageant
status of her rivals is never addressed. Just a very minor sticking
point for me, though.
Part
two of the double bill was Searching for Sandeep (6/8), a
kind of cross-continental lesbian love story about Poppy and Sandeep,
two gay women who meet online, fall in love and try to overcome the
physical and cultural differences that separate them. Poppy is an out,
gay, white woman in Australia; Sandeep is a closeted, gay, Indian
woman, who still lives with her parents and sisters in England. What
follows is a tumultuous, and often frustrating, tale of a long-distance
relationship peppered with tender moments, honest revelations and
Sandeep’s wonderfully sharp and entertaining quartet of younger
sisters, who seem like they fell right out of a Gurinder Chadha film.
I followed these two with Nursery University (7/8), which
would make for an excellent companion film to yesterday’s Kids +
Money... only this time it’s the parents with the money and a
preschool system in Manhattan more than eager to take it off their
hands. The ratio of children to available preschool slots in NYC is
staggering, making it (seemingly) virtually impossible to get your kid
into your preschool of choice. The rationale for this insanity—where
a year’s "tuition" can run you around $20,000—is explained by one
parent, who outlines the "feeder school" system, where the right
preschool gets you into the right kindergarten, which gets you into the
right middle school, which gets you into the right high school, which
gets you into an Ivy League college and the best. life. ever. The
lengths the parents go to are simultaneously hilarious and shocking,
and I hope co-directors Marc H. Simon and Matthew Makar are prepared to
make a mint off the thousands of desperate New Yorkers who will no
doubt snatch up every copy of the DVD of this film in the hopes of
getting an inside edge.
Last
up was Beautiful Losers (6/8), a film profiling a group
of 10 young visual artists, who all came together in NYC in the early
1990s. United by their passion for making art, their do-it-yourself
anywhere and with anything initiative, and their collective position on
the fringes of the art world—having come from backgrounds of graffiti
art, skateboarding and punk rock—they blazed a trail and influenced
all manner of popular art thereafter, from advertising to filmmaking.
Among those artists featured in the film (for anyone keeping score) are
Mike Mills, Harmony Korine, Margaret Kilgallen and Jo Jackson. Their
work is exactly the kind of stuff I love—wild, colorful, cartoonish
(some) and BIG—and the doc was, as my film-going friend put it after
the screening, a really interesting look at a largely unknown chapter
in art history. (This same friend has warned me that one of my picks
for tomorrow, Song Sung Blue, is depressing... so I’m bringing
Kleenex, just in case.)
