I'm scared of Sweden!

One thing I love looking for are genre pics for the Dark Horizons section of our festival. It's fun. Last night I saw this scary Swedish vampire movie that totally freaked me out! It's called LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (the title refers to the fact that vampires must be invited inside) and it's about a young female vampire and her much older familiar who move into an apartment next door to a young boy.

The director's introduction was an invitation, setting the tone of his "very very cold" homeland. Also they briefly mentioned that it's kinda becoming a big moment for Swedish film, one reason being that the film THE KING OF PING PONG just won an award at Sundance.

But now I'm scared becasue we have to go up to Sweden for the Goteborg Film Festival tomorrow! I'm gonna be terrified the whole time that the sound of tiny feet crunching in the snow will be following me!

We party with Hester Scheurwater

I got invited by the experimental short filmmaker Hester Shuewater to her home for a dinner party the other night while I'm here at the Rotterdam FF. AFI FEST was lucky enough to have one of Hester's films BABY, at the festival this past November and not only is she crazy talented but also super nice. I got to meet Hester's family and a bunch of other festival people in a private home which is such a nice and different experience especially since I'm going to be jumping through festivals for another 2 weeks

Also at the party was AFI FEST 2006 aulm Eveline Ketterings. Her film WHEN WE ARE BIG was a real high point for our fest 2 years ago and it was nice to see her again, and to hear a local resident's view of the festival.

Hester's place is beautiful and in a fantastic neighborhood right in the center of town. I'm so jealous! Also I'm the lucky programmer who knows that not only can she make fantastic films but she is also a wonderful cook!

Lane meets Rotterdam

So I don't have photo uploading capabilities yet, I'm working on it. But when I do I'll be sure to post photos of the countryside nuclear reactors and the legal drugs. Yes, this place is very strange and very beautiful. The festival so far has been very impressive, while I haven't really seen a single movie that has blown me away, the overall approach to the programming is inspiring. One thing that first impressed me was the festival director's welcome letter, in it he goes on to explain the "Free Radicals" section fo the festival:

"Free Radicals is a term borrowed from chemistry and is used for special molecules or atoms that occasionally provoke fierce reactions. It is striking how many audiovisual makers today do not strive for technical perfection any more, but often seek out a coarse and ragged quality. They prefer creating and distributing a primitive yet pure work above sticking to the enforced formats of the visual industry. During the 37th festival, Free Radicals stand for such an artistic and aesthetic attitude and these can be found at the core of several programme sections: Cameron Jamie, Robert Breer, Paul Sharits, Exploding Cinema and Starting from Scratch."

I'm loving the Cameron Jamie stuff, putting this artist in this context is amazing, in additon to showing a number of his films, they also have much of his visual work on display and are doing a number of live perfomances with his imagery and music by people like The Melvins. Also, they invited him to curate a 12 hour movie marathon of "Strange American cinema that transcends the usual genres and labels." Rad. I'm putting them all on my Netflix list.

I've been seeing about 4-5 films a day with long 12 hour days but I'm loving hauling around this weird city. So I've seen low budget hijacker films, cyborg love story anime and dazzling classic films from America and China. I'll try and post more detialed stuff soon, but the downtime between films is being spent on other work so it's hard to upload. And I promise to add pics soon, to not do so would be VERBOTTEN!

We visited The Bunny Museum

Susan and I went to The Bunny Museum in Pasadena this weekend. It was fun and she got to pet some cute bunnies. I think the statement on their website that you should plan on spending an hour there was a bit of an overestimation. Here is another pic of me appreciating the "garden of broken dreams." (Their term not mine.)

I'm off to Rotterdam

I leave tomorrow for the Rotterdam Film Festival! It's my first time there and I'm SUPER excited. I'll post as many updates and impressions here as time allows. This is the first leg of a multi-festival tour so more updates to come over the next few weeks.

The Terminator show and the Singularity

Last night they mentioned overtly the Singularity on the Terminator show! A good sign of some smart writers not shying away from big concepts, in my humble opinion. Despite the apt complaints about sci fi being too derivative lately, I'm into this show and don't want it to get cancelled too soon!

Outside The Orange Box

I finished playing The Orange Box over the weekend (Thanks MLK!) and I highly recommend it. I've blogged about it before here but I also love the Half-Life games included in the box which I never got a chance to play all the way through before. It's expansive and immersive at once with great writing and clever controls. I also liked the linear nature of the game, having a single path to find and follow was comforting and fun and the open sandbox games can seem a bit draining and exhausting at times, making me lose interest. So I think that's it for me and The Orange Box, I'm not that much into the online multiplayer games like team fortress 2 which is also included (unless someone twists my arm.)

Congrats to Josh Raskin

Oscar noms today and as usual a bunch of AFI FEST films got nominated. I'm especially happy for the animated short I MET THE WALRUS by Josh Raskin. The short section is the most competitive and receiving recognition there is quite spectacular. Also I MET THE WALRUS won an award (pdf link) at our fest this last November. Congratulations Josh!

Watching out for WATCHMEN

So Warner Brothers is finally going to adapt the comic book Watchmen into a film. I'm quite conflicted about this. I still cant believe they are making this, that after all these years and false starts it's actually shooting somewhere on this planet. It's natural I think to be excited about further exploration or promotion of one of my favorite stories. However, I also feel strongly that comic books don't often translate well into film, nor do they need to be. Watchmen in particular is a prime example of a story's strength coming from its use and knowledge of comics grammar. There are dozens of examples that a deep read of the book reveals, from innovative and extraordinary use of a nine panel layout to the overall color layout of the book being a color palindrome.

I hope the film doesn't tarnish the book, it's a project I'll be watching very closely. To that effect, Zach Snyder is keeping a production blog on the project here. I can't wait for comic con this summer to learn more!

On a sad note, DC Comics has screwed the creators of this book out of their promised ownership rights. the deal was that ownership of the property would revert to the creators when DC stopped publishing the book. DC however, is never going to stop publishing the book, and continues to put out copies of the trade paperback every year.

For Your Consideration

Two major Oscar controversies so far this year. And unlike the usual worship of the cult of the celebrity that the Oscars have become these stories actually have a bit of cultural depth to them.

First off is the list of shortlisted documentaries for the Oscars. Documentary filmmaker AJ Schnack teamed up with Indiewire to produce a second curated list, highlighting the serious oversights and deficiencies of the Oscar list. It was an amazing year for docs and it seems like the Academy was a bit asleep at the switch here.

Then the same sort of situation seemed to have occurred with the short list for Foreign Language Oscars. It's not that the films selected aren't good films cause they are but the Academy seems to be seriously missing out on the greater cultural trends. One example is Mexico's official selection being off the list when Mexican film is experiencing a brilliant renaissance. This cultural movement even has a name, La Proxima Ola.

Oscar needs to get its head on straight and realize that these two important directions in filmmaking (docs and international) need more consideration. As the Golden Globes clearly showed this year, the self congratulatory celebrity worship aspect is clearly the least important and shallowest aspect of Oscar.