Olympia Awesome Film Festival lives up to its name

The Rundown
Last night's Olympia Awesome Film Festival, the first ever, showcased the talents of twenty filmmakers from all over the U.S., with 24 low-budget short films in 5 hours--sci-fi, action-adventure, music videos, slasher parodies, documentaries, mockumentaries.

The festival's producers and attendees clearly loved all things cinema, bringing great energy to the evening. The event's sponsors also played a huge role in the festival's success, giving away hundreds of dollars in gift certificates, from pub fare to oil changes. (I'm not even mad that I didn't win one.)


The Subjectively Chosen Highlights
The audience favorite, Daniel Klockenkemper's Deathwalker, shot on Super 8 stock for an especially Carpenteresque look, had some of the best moments of visual humor. Apparently a foldable walker + a shotgun = comedy gold. (Couldn't find it on YouTube, sorry.)  Accepting his award, Klockenkemper noted that the short was ten years in the making. Here's hoping the sequel comes out a little faster.

For its composition and overall excellence, the judges chose--and chose well--Never Been Used, a simple premise neatly executed, short and sweet. Unsurprisingly, it was 1st runner up at the Seattle 24 Hour Film Race in 2010.

Documentaries deserved their own award, but since there wasn't one, I'd pick Hamilton: Town at the Tipping Point, a thought-provoking look at "FEMA welfare."

The animation Asteraceae and the mockumentary (at least, I think it's a mockumentary) Rats also entertained.

The two biggest "WTF" moments* were the slasher Waffle, perhaps the festival's riskiest entry, and My Brother's Dog Helen, a documentary that, in a few painful and surprisingly poignant minutes, deconstructs notions of family and forgiveness.


The Suggestion Box
The following suggestions are offered in love, as I'd really like to see the festival become an Olympia tradition.

Speed it up a bit. The festival started close to six, and wasn't over until 11:00. A good chunk of the audience left early, missing out on the final raffle and the prize announcements, probably because that's a lot of seat time (in a fairly stuffy venue, which, to be fair, wasn't the organizers' first choice). Cut a few films (see below), shorten up the breaks, and count votes while the raffle's going.

Quality over quantity.
A small festival, starting out, is in a tricky spot. You want to attract a wide variety of talents, and you want to attract and retain an audience. You want your films to be good, but you don't want to be so picky that you entirely shut out amateur auteurs.

Limiting to one film per director might help--did we really need two "instructional" films, Let's Shoplift and Save and Hot Wiring Made Easy, where the joke and the execution were nearly identical?

Also, to keep quality high while simultaneously building buzz, why not include your potential audience in the selection process? Choose, say, five flicks you're not sure will make the cut, put 'em on the website, and let the Internet vote for their faves. The top choice makes it into the festival, while the other four at least get some exposure, without slowing down the action. Everybody wins.

The order matters.
Selection and arrangement are critical. The festival had great variety in tone and style, but ended, I thought, on a bit of an anticlimax, an actioner with great production values (and lots of fight sequences) but a thin storyline--and only Part 2 of a 3-part series.

Concessions
It's small, but important: if this is a film festival, let's have film-quality popcorn. Butter it up.


In Summary
The Olympia Awesome Film Festival has great potential. I hope there's another next year--and I hope to see you there.




*And I should point out that this is meant as a term of endearment.

The Finland Phenomenon

Near the Arctic Circle, Finland is ice cold. In educational circles, though, Finland is smoking hot, recently lauded by pundits as a model for reform in the United States. How did it get that way?

Harvard's Tony Wagner attempts to answer the question in an hourlong documentary titled The Finland Phenomenon. Weaving together interviews, classroom observations, and provocative factoids, Wagner tries to tease out the complex strands of cultural values, teacher training, and governmental initiatives that have made Finland a global educational vanguard.

In my favorite moments, Wagner sits down with with Finnish students, who are just as gangly, bright-eyed, and emo as their American counterparts, and listens as they share their hopes for the future.  He sits in on lectures by accomplished and rookie teachers, and holds court with educational leaders who sound like a lot of people I've been working with lately: realistic and optimistic, theoretically solid and practically focused.

It so happened that I watched the documentary after a day of leading Powerful Teaching and Learning observations in a local school, and I was struck by the similar approaches, both philosophically and pedagogically, between PTL and the Finnish system of teacher preparation. Roughly 10% of the Finnish university students who apply for training programs will make the cut; once they're in, they're entrusted with tenure in a relatively rapid timeframe, and given a large measure of control over their classrooms.

And that's where I think the strength of the Finnish system lies. It's culturally established that teachers are professionals ("knowledge workers," in trendy/clunky edu-jargon) who are academic leaders committed to continuous improvement. The best American reform initiatives-- among which I'd include the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, the Common Core Standards movement, Powerful Teaching and Learning, Professional Learning Communities, and Teach for America--share that reflective, collaborative focus. They bring teachers together, but their impact is fragmented, at least for now, because none is comprehensive in its adoption or reach.

And none is a cure-all.  Any successful educational reform has to change the culture of schools, which, in turn, changes the wider culture of the community. Our policymakers seem addicted to quick fixes and instant results, but in Finland, Wagner reports, the process has taken 25 years.

As Wagner points out, some of Finland's success may be due to its smaller schools and classes, its emphasis on vocational education (and concomitantly low dropout rate), and its curricular flexibility. There's at least one strand missing from Wagner's analysis, though: Finland's income equality. Socioeconomic status is a strong predictor of educational attainment, so, in my estimation, general equality in SES would not only reflect and influence a wider cultural consensus that education is valuable, but its opposite would reflect and influence a divergent value structure in which outcomes are similarly divergent.

For instance, Wagner compares Minnesota to Finland because of its similar population and demographics, noting that the Land of a Thousand Lakes, 17th globally in math, ranks well below Finland in achievement--but without mentioning the vast difference in, say, their Gini coefficients (mid-40s for Minnesota; mid-to-high 20s for Finland). The relationship between income inequality and educational attainment may be a mere correlation, but it's worth investigating.

My complaints about the film's production values are few and minor. A couple shots (especially of Wagner's "talking head" moments) look cheaply lit, while some action shots have annoying digital artifacts. However, for the most part, the film is well-paced, smoothly edited, and deftly scored.

The Finland Phenomenon premiered in D.C. back in April. At a time when education reform is both critical and in critical condition, its thought-provoking observations deserve wide viewing.


Full disclosure: Dittoe Public Relations sent me a free copy of the film for review. If you're interested in something similar, just send me an email.

gift-off: The Suburbs vs. The 'Burbs

Arcade Fire, The Suburbs
"...a generously paced collection of meditations on familial responsibility, private disappointments, and fleeting youth..."

Availability: Everywhere melancholy indie rock is sold. Which is pretty much everywhere.

Price: $9.99ish

Coolness Factor: Medium. when one of your songs is featured in an ad for the NFL, you've lost significant chunks of your hipster cred. Even if you donate all the proceeds to Haiti.

Warnings: "Rococo rococo rococo rococo. Rococo rococo rococo rococo."

Joe Dante's The 'Burbs
`The 'burbs" tries to position itself somewhere between "Beetlejuice" and "The Twilight Zone..."

Availability: On DVD, or, for the impatient, on Netflix Instant View.

Price: Depends on if you want it sullied or unsullied. Unsullied is gonna cost you about $12.99

Coolness Factor: Low. The late 80s comedy aesthetic has aged about as well as the late 80s fashion aesthetic.

Warning: Tom Hanks.

The Fighter

If I was a little road-ragey on the drive home yesterday afternoon, it wasn't just because the freeway was clogged by idiots (58 in the left lane! Merging at the last possible second! Random brake-slamming!), but because I had just seen The Fighter, and was a little caught up in the testosterone.

The film is just that good. Perfect casting, a tight script, and great camerawork keep it from veering too close to cliché or caricature. Mark Wahlberg is solid as Micky Ward, a boxer who has to escape his family in order to chase his title dreams. His older brother Dicky, played by Christian Bale, has a boxing philosophy that sums up how the film affects the viewer: "Head Body Head." I'd rate it my second favorite boxing flick of all time, right after Body and Soul.

Let's hope it boosts tourism in industrial Lowell, Mass.


Added 12/20: Sports Illustrated interviews the real Micky Ward about the film. A snippet:

On his family's reaction to the film's often unflattering portrayal
"I'm sure it's hard for Dicky to look at it and see the way he was. He'll never go back [to that life] again. I don't know how my sisters and mother are going to feel, either. I'm not sitting next to them when they see it!"

the most disappointing trailer of all time

In lieu of The AV Club's recent list of trailers that function as art (and, in some cases, are superior to the films they advertise), I offer you the most disappointing trailer of all time: The Omen (2006).

I still remember my cautious excitement upon seeing it in the theater. The simplicity, the lack of narration, the reliance on a dread-inducing squeaky swing, and, of course, the delightfully silly reference to 666, set me up to believe that the world had a chance to see a remake superior to the rather ham-fisted original--overcoming my inherent skepticism of remakes.

Alas, we got Liev Schreiber in mope-mode, and a movie that plummeted from the rooftops of possibility to a lawn of mediocrity. (I tend to think that Damien would not approve.)

It's been four years, and I'm still angry about it.


Added: So of course my feelings are in a blender about this.

all hail Jackie Chan

In advance of the opening of another why-are-they-remaking-it, two Jackie Chan appreciations. The first, a compilation of the 10 best Chan films.
Time to load up the Netflix queue.

The next, a defense of the genius of Jackie Chan, an artist on par with Keaton or Lloyd. (If you don't know their first names, it's time you learned.)

apocalypse when?

If you're not ready for the coming apocalypse--no matter which form it takes--maybe you don't watch enough movies.

Gomorrah: a cinematic emetic

If you've ever found yourself nauseated by your own attraction to cinema's morally abhorrent mob figures like Michael Corleone or Tony Soprano, then Gomorrah--freshly out on DVD--is your emetic of choice. It starts with the setting, as Scott Tobias explains:

The first and most striking impressions in Gomorrah are the locations: Bombed-out apartment slums, infested by roving bands of criminals and connected through a vast network of bridges and secret tunnels. Prosperity isn’t spread around; whatever financial gains a law-abiding citizen might make are skimmed away in protection money and nothing goes back into the community. Gomorrah takes place in a world where decency can’t take root and we can only watch in horror as crime overwhelms society’s most vulnerable— women, children, law-abiding citizens, and the conscientious few who want to get out of the game.

It's an urban wasteland as apocalyptic as that depicted in Children of Men. And, as commentator robozot argues, the multiple narrative strands--which only loosely tie together--keep us from sympathizing too deeply with the bad guys.

Scott says the film lacks a magnetic central figure - but it doesn't lack one, it rejects one. Without exception (tell me if I'm wrong) gangster stories have somewhere at their centre a charismatic hero, who remains attractive regardless of their personal morality - which is pretty much essential in order to make these stories palatable to a large paying audience, who expect one by convention.

That's essentially an invitation to the viewer to fantasise about a mode of behaviour, regardless of any consequences in the story world, realistic or not. Gomorrah's aesthetic is aimed at stripping away the male romance trappings of US gangster films, and it works brilliantly.

Early in the film, one of the young protagonists says--loosely translated--"If this is what the bosses are like, we could rule this place." As the we in question are impulsive, cowardly, and foolishly immature, his assessment is spot on.

Gomorrah is not the best film of 2009, but it might be the most essential.

the day the cell phone died

Via Cory Doctorow, a clever little video highlighting the cell phone failures that angst up the modern thriller. (Warning: salty language and excessive horror cheesiness.)

There's an element of verisimilitude to the cliché; in the summer of '08 my wife and I found ourselves stranded in the Olympic mountains, no cell signal. And there's nothing more frightening than mountains.

the modest films of a modest woman

Maybe Meryl Streep's too modest.

Now, I know I'm a good actress. I'm Meryl Streep. I've won two Academy Awards, and I have been nominated for 15. That's a record. But what my friends and I figured out is that the name Meryl Streep isn't really synonymous with one truly unforgettable film. It's weird to think about, but it's undeniably true.

Go ahead, try and name a classic movie I've starred in. Not a classic character I've portrayed, mind you, but an overall amazing piece of cinema. You can't. You just can't.

A little help, Lena?

Update: Lena answers the call--and explains why Streep's Casablanca is not The Hours.

MST3K evolves

Clark Stooksbury on the natural history of the greatest television show of all time:

Speaking at the 2008 San Diego Comic Con, the actor Patton Oswalt aptly compared the early fan efforts on behalf of Mystery Science Theater—sending videotapes to friends in areas where the show was not available—to the ways people use YouTube and MySpace today. Now many of the show’s writers and performers are using the Web to directly reach fans old and new without the middleman of cable TV. Neither Cinematic Titanic nor Rifftrax is a rehash of Mystery Science Theater 3000, but both are recognizable descendants. And both continue to transmute cinematic dross into comedy gold.

Any excuse to use the word "transmute."

hope for cinema

The Onion's heading to Cannes this May, and what a fantastic year it could be.

The competition features a murderer’s row of European provocateurs, including new films by Lars Von Trier (Antichrist), Gaspar Noé (Enter The Void), and Michael Haneke (The White Ribbon). Longtime Cannes favorites like Pedro Almodóvar (Broken Embraces), Alain Resnais (Les Herbes Folles), and Ken Loach (Looking For Eric) will also be competing, as well as a diverse selection of Asian masters like Park Chan-wook (Thirst), Tsai Ming-liang (Face), and Johnnie To (Vengeance). There are only two American films in competition, but they’re both doozies: Quentin Tarantino’s WWII epic Inglourious Basterds and Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock. And oh yeah, Jane Campion (Bright Star) and Elia Sulieman (The Time That Remains), too!

I'd put the italics back in, but I'm too dizzy with excitement.

cinematic archaeology

Warner is beginning to release obscure films from its vault, Mark Harris reports.

The recent launch of the Warner Archive Collection could well portend a revolution; it's DVD on demand, a way for Warner (and, one hopes, for every other studio) to make movies available without spending the $75,000 to $100,000 it costs to release an old title into an ominously contracting marketplace. Here's how it works: Go to the archive and browse the titles. Click on the ones you want, and for $19.95 apiece, they'll burn a DVD-R and ship you the movie in a standard plastic case with cover art. There are no extras except the trailer, if it's available; there isn't even scene-by-scene chaptering. But you will get the film, shown in the correct aspect ratio and with a picture and soundtrack of mostly high quality. Virtually none of the movies in this collection has been available on DVD before. Many never even made it to VHS.

Along the way, Harris finds some gems, some bombs, and some revelations:

An Enemy of the People (filmed in 1976 but not released until 1981) is your only shot to see Steve McQueen interpret Ibsen. Having watched the movie, I now know why. Still, I wouldn't have missed a minute.

The archive seems like a marvelous way to imagine cinematic counterfactuals. Perhaps other studios will follow suit.

For a more critical take, read John Falcone's article for CNET.

why Coraline 3D gave me a headache

Coraline 3D gave me a horrible headache. I thought it was the glasses (worn over my glasses), but it turns out that the 3D cinema experience generally leads to dolorous cerebrums.

Something different happens when you're viewing three-dimensional motion projected onto a flat surface. When a helicopter flies off the screen in Monsters vs. Aliens, our eyeballs rotate inward to follow it, as they would in the real world. Reflexively, our eyes want to make a corresponding change in shape, to shift their plane of focus. If that happened, though, we'd be focusing our eyes somewhere in front of the screen, and the movie itself (which is, after all, projected on the screen) would go a little blurry. So we end up making one eye movement but not the other; the illusion forces our eyes to converge without accommodating. (In fact, our eye movements seem to oscillate between their natural inclination and the artificial state demanded by the film.) This inevitable decoupling, spread over 90 minutes in the theater, may well be the cause of 3-D eyestrain. There's nothing new about the idea—an article published in the Atlantic in 1953 refers to the breakdown of the accommodation-convergence ratio as a "difficulty [that] is inherent to the medium." And there's no reason to expect that newfangled RealD technology will solve this basic problem of biomechanics.

e-neo-ough

You are allowed only one neo- per noun.




[via Mark Frauenfelder of BoingBoing]

"Town's full of bright boys."

After sixty-three years, the opening of Robert Siodmak's The Killers still stands as one of the best in cinematic history. The big city menaces the moral order of the small town when two nameless goons descend on a Brentwood diner, looking for "the Swede." They want to kill him. Their intentions are revealed in a dialogue as tense as it is baffling to the locals.

David Cronenberg aimed for the same vibe in the vastly overrated A History of Violence, but failed by, among other things, troweling on the Mystique of Small Town America.

best Oscar speech ever

Thank you, Kunio Kato. (Why does the official transcript lack "Thank you, my pencil?")

Kaplan University: pretentious twaddle

Some people like the ad. (The ad, mind you, not the company behind it).

Me, I can't get past the overwhelming aura of vapid pretentiousness. Compare Billy Madison.


The response is eternally appropriate. "May God have mercy on your soul," Kaplan U.

Coraline: 3D spectacle, 2D story

My wife and I watched Coraline in glorious digital 3D this afternoon. While the visuals are stunning, and nearly worth the ticket price, the story lacks a certain oomph, feeling like a mixture of Alice in Wonderland, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Pan's Labyrinth, and Mirrormask. Which isn't to say it won't entertain the kids--there was scattered applause at the film's conclusion--but that adults might be a teensy bit bored. (Or maybe Wall-E just set the bar too high for me.)

The most thrilling and humorous moment, in fact, came right before the movie started, as the 3D previews began, and one child started screaming with terror as images leaped into his eyeballs. "It's not even scary yet!" his dad complained. I think the tyke eventually quieted and watched the movie.

Update: Some folks are finding this blog by trying to figure out whether it's worth the extra dough to see Coraline in 3D. If money is no object, I'd recommend it, but only if you have naturally good vision or contact lenses. I tried to wear my 3D glasses over regular specs, and ended up with a colossal headache. If the recession has cramped your style, though, or your local theater lacks 3D capability, don't worry; the movie will still be equally enjoyable in 2D.

quick flix picks

Slumdog Millionaire
Sentimental but never maudlin, gritty but never exploitative, dark but redemptive, Danny Boyle's latest is at times predictable, but at all times entertaining. Make sure to stay through the credits for the Bollywood finale. Dev Patel is solid, but the supporting cast truly shines.

The Counterfeiters
I'd write my own thoughts, but Jim Emerson (subbing for Roger Ebert) gets it exactly right:

"The Counterfeiters" is based on a fascinating piece of history, raises some wrenching moral dilemmas about the costs of survival under the Nazis, and was no doubt made with noble intentions beyond the usual commercial ones. The trouble is that the storytelling and filmmaking are routine (surely faux-documentary handheld camerawork is the most overused cliche in modern movies), even when the human drama is not.

Winchester '73
I hadn't seen it in years, and was pleasantly surprised at how well written this Jimmy Stewart oater is. I guess I'm a sucker for any movie that features a shooting contest. (Sergeant York, anyone?) Oh, and don't forget plenty of plot twists and yet-to-be-heralded stars. Watch for Rock Hudson and a young "Anthony" Curtis.

The Big Steal
Speaking of plot twists, none surpass the surprises in this tight little noir about a detective who has to ferry a mob widow across the country so she can testify safely. Today, it'd be made with Jason Statham, and would probably stink. As is, though, it's a fun, fast ride.