9-11-2002: DAY SIX

Hallelujah! The heat is gone! The heat is FINALLY gone! In fact, it was downright chilly today... mid-afternoon temperatures having gone from 97F to 67F in one day. And windy! It made strolling and celeb spotting a little difficult, since neither the famous folks nor me wanted to be blown to pieces in the out of doors.

Despite initial reluctance this morning, I decided to actually attend the screening of The Emperor’s Club, the new Kevin Kline boys’-school drama. In my gut I felt like the movie would likely be a disappointment and play like an updated version of Dead Poets’ Society. I was mostly right. Kline stars as Mr. Hundert, a man who teaches ancient history at St. Benedict’s School For Boys and bears the distinction of being the fictional character with the most needlessly difficult-to-pronounce name. For the first half-hour of the movie I thought they were calling him "Mr. Hundred." Anyway, Mr. Hundert is loved by his students, save for one - Sedgewick Bell (Emile Hirsh), an arrogant young man who slides by based on his heritage (his dad’s a big-shot senator) and his knack for cheating. The movie tracks the turbulent friendship/mentorship/whatevership between the two, but it never really got off the ground for me. The relationships between characters seemed forced and superficial, there were some choice cliché moments that had many audience members rolling their eyes, and both Embeth Davidtz and Patrick Dempsey were horribly underused.

Little did I know how good I had it at that screening, though, because up next was Blue, a Japanese drama about two high school girls who, I think, fall in love. See, I’m not really sure because I was so incredibly, unbelievably bored by this movie that I actually walked out halfway through. Yep, I had my first "walk out" of this year’s fest! And it was such a tedious film that at least a dozen people walked out before I did. One by one, seats could be heard flipping up as their occupants vacated the premises. The film was from a first-time director who, admittedly, had some nice cinematography... but each shot in the movie was about 30 seconds too long. The director left *everything* in, in every scene, from the moment he must have yelled "action" to the moment (far too late) he finally yelled "cut." To illustrate: here we have a lovely shot of an empty street. It’s pretty. Nothing’s happening. No one’s there. We wait. Still nothing. Camera’s still rolling. We wait some more. Oh, look, here comes a bus. It drives through the frame and out the other side. Now the street is empty again. More nothing. We wait. Ah, we’re moving to the next scene. Oh, crap. Same thing again. I started to nod off at one point, so I knew it was time to leave. Did I mention the dialogue was very sparse (the woman who introduced the film actually warned us about that in advance) and there was virtually no musical score? So, not only was it an excrutiatingly slow-moving film, but it was also very s-i-l-e-n-t.

From there, I headed to Reno: Rebel Without a Pause, a concert film from director Nancy Savoca. Its star, Reno, is a brash and funny New Yorker who tackles the facts, falsities, foibles and f**ked-up nature (a key aspect of the film) of Sept. 11th and post-Sept. 11th life in America. It was a fitting way to recognize the day, and the film proved to be a very smart, emotional, honest and laugh-out-loud funny examination of the American psyche and one woman’s quest to wrap her mind around what happened in New York last year. Reno was in attendance (with her fluffy black dog) for a lively Q&A after the film.

And then... I called it a day. Shocking, I know. Only three movies! I probably could have lasted through another one later in the evening, but the tedium of Blue coupled with my recent sleep-deprived nights and early mornings had me craving a quiet night at home to regroup and recharge.

‘Night.

:-)

— Vickie

CELEBRITY SIGHTINGS:

Robert Duvall, Sam Neill, Gabriel Byrne, Anthony LaPaglia, Reno and Jane Siberry (whom I’m including for my friend Lisa).

ROGER EBERT SIGHTINGS:

None.