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Thursday April 12, 2012
Upcoming film festival screenings and this night's Beverly Hills New York Film Festival
With the
previous day's shoot
having me miss the free screening
(we were signed out at 10:30pm),
I at least had the film festival screening tonight, albeit having to pay for it.
There was talk of advance tickets having a discount, but it turned out to be a bait-and-switch scam:
the $15.00 ticket price was "reduced" to $12.00 online, but to acquire them, they tagged on a $3.75
"service" fee, making the "discounted advance purcase" almost a full dollar higher than the actual ticket price.
Being "too old a fish to be caught in such a net"
(to lift a quote from one of my top favourite
Doctor Who
stories),
I chose to risk tickets being available at the door.
Marcio also emailed us with updated information, about the next big event:
that Drowned had also been selected at the
Newport Beach Film Festival
in Orange County between April 26th and May 3rd.
Drowned would be screened on May 3rd at 4pm at the
Triangle Square Cinemas 1
(1870 Harbor Boulevard in Costa Mesa),
in the block of shorts called
"What She Did for Short,"
and the twelve dollar tickets would be able to be
purchased in advance.
As generally is the case with such film festivals, certainly Newport Beach, it is all but impossible to obtain from their website any actual specific information on any films being screened that aren't the big tent-pole projects.
If the film makers do not promote their own short subjects and/or features... it's highly likely the film won't have much in the way of attendence.
I also noticed that April 26th at the Newport Beach festival they would be premiering
Jewtopia,
a feature film comedy
on which I worked,
though with a $125 opening-night ticket price, I felt it might be more financially prudent to await its release in theatres.
Back at the beginning of 2012 I had moved to Hollywood from Altadena, north of Pasadena, so I was not even two miles from Raleigh Studios.
I walked about 95% of the way there, and only caught a bus the last two stops before my destination as it happened to show up while I was walking.
I got to the building where
Strictly Background
had screened, and found far more people already there than I had anticipated.
As many were taking the opportunity for being Interviewed or photographed at the Film Festival Banner Wall, I managed to subtley circumvent the crowd and head on in.
I obtained my ticket while, based on results, most most likely I could have just gone in.
I went up to the Chaplin Auditorium at which we'd all been told was the venue, and by 7:30pm the auditorium was packed.
But the announced film was called
Mount Rêve,
and as 8pm passed, I began to suspect
this was not
a short
(which later I'd learn was its origins),
the dreadfully "acted," extremely poorly made "film" was its feature version.
As a few people had bailed a few moments before confirming my decision to do so myself, I hastily retreated the auditorium at about 8:10, and as I got downstairs I didn't even have to ask, as there was Marcio and Paola, asking the same questions, having also been misdirected to the wrong auditorium.
We went up to the
(substantially smaller)
Mary Pickford auditorim where the block of shorts had already begun.
The majority of them were sadly pretty bad, some thankfully at least bad enough to be MSTie fodder in my head.
Some had better intentions than others
(e.g., intending not to be as bad as it'd turned out).
The short in on which we walked was the inexplicable
The Flowering of Salvation,
coming across as though the baffling
Meshes of the Afternoon
were directed by Ingmar Bergman.
The program description for
I, Omega
reads as follows: "A man's life is overturned when his eight year old daughter is savagely raped and murdered by a registered sex offender.
Furious with the insignificant judicial system, he launches a violent crusade against those predators as a means of punishment and revelation for their sins."
Seriously, that would have been an awesome short.
Instead, we got
I, Omega,
in which a Jason Stratham'y looking guy in black foot-chases and parcour-pursues a guy in a t-shirt and underwear
(literally billed as Underwear Man).
There is voice-over, but it's barely made clear
(until the end),
that the pursuer is the narrator, who after quite an elaborate if pointless chase, catches up with Underwear Man and strangles him with a dog chain-leash The Man uses to carry his cross... and to strangle sex offenders.
Jeudi 19
(Thursday the 19th)
is continuing evidence that French movies need to Stop Being Made.
The Amazing Charleroux
was a funny, super-dark comedy about a stage magician with whose assistant perfects the perfect Cutting A Woman In Half illusion.
The fantastic descent into madness,
Ethereal Chrysalis
was a colourful mind-eff feast of visualized insanity
(the wtf appearance of a distant cousin of Gamera was awesome, mostly as it elicited considerable, and presumeably unintentional, audience laughter);
the short film's official website however, appears to contain a trojan virus, according to my Firefox browser.
Recompense
(a retelling of The Monkey's Paw),
had some very good acting and as a 1911 period piece, had some extremely high production values, but the scripted adaptation itself fell a bit short, so the actors could only do as they
were Directed to do.
Powerless
was okay... but in my head I MSTie joked the end which turned out to be 100% accurate, which tends to happen.
The Hanging Tree
was an unforgiveable mishmash that couldn't figure out whether it was telling a ghost story or trying to be suspenseful, neither at which it succeeded.
It certainly had no actual actors in it, let alone the lame script.
At one point instead of just recording the environment at a riverside, they'd "foleyed" in someone obviously moving/shloshing water about in a bathtub.
Drowned
was shown "last"... that is, it was reshown, as the last film; it had been the second film in the block, but it'd already been shown and I'd missed it, due to the festival having sent me/us to the wrong auditorium.
Paola and/or Marcio had gone to the back and urged them to reshow it, pointing out we'd been sent to the wrong auditorium, and that I had come all the way from Pasadena, and they consented to do so
(she was not lying as she was as yet aware I'd moved back to Hollywood, close enough to walk to Raleigh Studio).
Amusingly enough, as we went out some other filmmakers Marcio knew indicated their own pleasure it had been rescreened, considering the other shorts through which they too had had to suffer.
Indeed, while I do my utmost to avoid
Music Man Syndrome,
I was quite impressed with the short, and it did help as to its high-end production value/s and Look and Feel as opposed to what shorts we'd just viewed.
Marcio pointed out that indeed all my shots are flopped/mirror imaged
(I'd noticed the reverse type on the newspaper).
At one point after the lead emerges from the water she's so well lit she almost seems to be green-screened in to the shot.
Marcio provided me with my DVD copy of the short and he and Paola offered me a lift, at first thinking they could drop me at the subway, at which point they learned I was more local again, and not as far as I had been when we'd shot it.
Marcio also pointed out I had not really missed a screening the night before; that event was more of a mixer party, so while it may have been a good networking opportunity, I would not have seen the film until the FUBAR-ed Thursday night festival.
We discussed the May 3rd screening at the Newport Beach Film Festival, and it was decided that they we would attend, and they could give me a lift there and back, so I would acquire my ticket for the
"What She Did for Short"
block.
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Marcio thanked all of us very much for our work that made the short possible.
It turned out that Marcio was in Uruguay, so he asked those of us able to attend to take some nice pictures and enjoy ourselves on his behalf.
Marcio also conveyed into which festivals Drowned had either already been shown or would be:
the New York International Independent Film Festival,
Newport Beach Film Festival,
the