Tribeca Film Festival - 1st weekend

I haven't been keeping up with writing every day, so I'm going to sum up my first half of the festival in one post. Last weekend I saw the following films:

My Last Five Girlfriends was a British movie about one guy's perspective on his recent love affairs. It's a very stylized film, with some fantastical storytelling elements. Most of them work pretty well, but there's a carnival metaphor that gets stretched a little thin by the end. His take on the relationships feels very authentic, such that I left feeling it was kind of in the vein of High Fidelity, without being so winkingly clever. 

I saw two NYC documentaries which had some interesting overlaps. Burning Down the House: The Story of CBGB gave a historical perspective on the infamous music venue, but also covered the recent attempts to save the place from being shut down. Blank City was about the independent film scene of New York in the late '70s and early '80s. Because the filmmakers in those movements (primarily No Wave and Cinema of Transgression) tended to also be artists and musicians, and also tended to have no money, they converged at downtown hangouts like CBGB. Jim Jarmusch, Debbie Harry, Fab 5 Freddy & Thurston Moore appeared prominently in both movies. Even some of the same footage was used - in Burning Down the House it was used to show one of the bands who would frequently play at CBGB, and it was used in Blank City because it was filmed by one of the filmmakers being discussed. It was really interesting to see these two aspects of NYC history, side-by-side. 

I saw a pair of narrative movies - Stay Cool and Serious Moonlight - that are difficult for me to assess objectively because both of these stories had odd overlaps with some things going on in my life, or in the life of someone close to me. I've probably already said too much, but let's just say I was very distracted by thoughts like, "Oh, that's not how it would happen." Ha! 

In Stay Cool, a guy goes back to his home town after 20 years to give a commencement speech, and his interactions with friends, family and the principal and a teacher from his high school take place as if he was still a high school kid, despite the fact that he's 37. This is not a magical realism thing, like the Zac Efron movie. It's more like an acknowledgment of the way we fall back into old patterns of behavior when we get in those situations. I like that. But the way the film references the '80s, it feels like an attempt to preserve the decade in some kind of pristine pop culture museum exhibit. (Even the casting, which includes a bunch of '80s icons, like Dee Wallace, Michael Gross, Chevy Chase, Winona Ryder and Jon Cryer.) 

I saw Serious Moonlight mainly because it was written by Adrienne Shelly. This dark comedy was entertaining, but a lot more disturbing than I think it was meant to be. In part, this is because I found it impossible not to draw some eerie parallels between the story and Shelly's tragic demise. I was also disappointed in the choice of Meg Ryan as the lead. I don't normally enjoy her performances because she tends to play such simpering, cloying characters. At the beginning of the film I was optimistic because she seemed to be playing a very different kind of role. But just a few minutes into the plot she completely reverted to type.

The last film I saw on the first weekend was TiMER - a sort of science fiction romantic comedy. I loved the characters and the performances, and what the story was trying to do. It felt like a very well put together movie. There were some issues with the script, and as people asked about them during the Q&A, director Jac Schaeffer would laugh and say, "I had nightmares that someone would ask me that. Thank you." But the movie was so good spirited, and she was so good spirited about it, I would still recommend it, despite these minor flaws in the story.

Many more movies to come this weekend...

Sundance - Sunday, January 18

Hot Tub
Originally uploaded by Mirka23

I decided to take a relaxation day, and spent the day hanging around the townhouse. This included catching up on some stuff, and then taking a dip in the hot tub while looking at the snow covered mountains. Fantastic!

In the evening we went to theater right nearby that's also playing Sundance films. We saw Spring Breakdown, starring Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch and Parker Posey. It was pretty funny - I started giggling in the very first scene and kept going pretty much through the whole film. None of the stars were there for the Q&A, and the Director left pretty quick when no one asked him anything. But it was still a fun time, and it was nice to be so close to home when we got out of the screening.

Sundance - Saturday, January 17

Charlyne Yi
Originally uploaded by Mirka23

My second attempt to get into a movie by way of the waitlist was successful. I went to the World Premiere of Paper Heart, a movie by Nick Jasenovec and Chalyne Yi.

It's sort of a documentary, sort of a narrative. The lines are blurred by the structure, which includes portions where Yi is interviewing real people and experts about the notion of what love is, intermixed with narrative scenes in which Charlyne Yi and Michael Cera play versions of themselves, forming and developing a relationship. (To further complicate things, the two are dating in real life.)

Part of the story of the movie is about the making of the documentary, which is impacting the blossoming (fictional) relationship between Yi and Cera. In these scenes, the director, Jasenovec, is played by actor Jake Johnson, adding another level of abstraction.

Though more straightforward than On the Road with Judas, which I saw at Sundance a few years ago, the layers of reality and fiction could prove to be a little mind boggling if you think about them too hard. But, it's not necessary to unravel that mystery in order to enjoy the film.

Yi, Cera and Johnson are all interesting, sweet likable people/characters. The documentary parts take a very ambitious topic - defining love - and shed just enough light on it to be thought provoking, without trapping themselves in an impossible task. The narrative parts are entertaining, and woven in so seemlessly, many people will probably not even realize it's not entirely documentary. They play with this conceit in some lovely, subtle ways, such as when, at the end of their first date, Cera asks if the camera crew wants their microphone back.

During the Q&A everyone came up on stage. Most of the questions were directed at Jesenovec and Yi, with a couple directed at Cera. When asked how they came up with this structure, Jesenovec said that Charlyne wanted to make a documentary about love, and he felt that she should be in it because her unique perspective (she doesn't really believe she's capable of falling in love) puts the interviews in context. But they also knew she would need an arc - to somehow develop and change her view over the course of the movie - and at the same time, he knew she was too stubborn to actually change. So they scripted an arc for her! Charlyne didn't disagree with this description.

Cera was asked when he became involved in the project. He said that he became involved with it at the beginning, and stayed involved right up until today. He concluded by joking, "And now I never want to talk about it again." I don't know what it is about him, but he can say the most straightforward things and it just comes out hilarious.

LBP crew at Sundance

LBP crew
Originally uploaded by Mirka23

Ok, so the reason I'm here at Sundance is to hang out with my friends from Low Budget Pictures, who are here to meet folks and spread the word about LBP. Officially I should be helping them, but my help has mostly taken the form of having been here once before, so I could show them where things are and how to get around. They're the ones that are really working it, though.

In this photo you can see Chris "the Seavage" Seaver, Meredith Host, and Jesse Ames putting together press kits to hand out to important people. Casey Bowker, star of Ski Wolf and other LBP flicks, was elsewhere in our amazing townhouse at the time.

Sundance 2009

Ok, it's been a long time since I've posted here, and I'm not going to bother playing catch up. But now I'm at the Sundance Film Festival for the next week, and some interesting things are bound to happen. I'll post about them here when they do.

20 Years in a Nutshell

I recently connected up with an old friend from high school on Facebook. After a couple reintroductory messages back and forth, he posed this question: "Take me on a brief tour of your life these past 20 years?" What follows is my attempt to answer that question...

OK, let's see. What's salient and interesting from the past 20 years of my life?

In 1988, without a lot of forethought, I went off to college in Binghamton. That place was suitably depressing and boring to ensure that I focused on studies and entertained myself with recreational drugs and just generally acting crazy. They had no photography classes, which was disappointing, but I found myself drawn to film and video classes, where we did all kinds of weird experimental art projects with film, video, and computers and learned almost NO skills that might be useful in the "film industry". By my third year of college I was already sick of being there, so I spent the first semester of my fourth year studying in Prague, then I graduated early, and then spent another 5 months living in a suburb of Paris.

Coming back to the US in the summer of 1992 I determined that the last thing I wanted to do was be in New York, in the part of the country where I had lived all my life (albeit, moving around the NY metro area a lot). So, I went to Albuquerque, New Mexico with a friend who was going to grad school there. The friendship only lasted about a year after that, but I stayed in New Mexico for 7 years.

Hmm, what did I do in NM? Worked some crappy jobs; realized I had to go back to school if I didn't want to continue doing that; dated an immature manic-depressive guy for waaaaay too long (6+ years); got a Master's degree in, essentially, interactive media; worked for DoD contractors; went to massage therapy school in the evenings for a year; took a lot more recreational drugs (thanks to the BF, who was big into self-medicating); explored a bit of the new age thing going on out there (determined that some of it is sincerely spiritual, and a lot of it is just another market used to exploit people's neediness); made some life-long friends of the very creative, very nerdy type; and then ultimately realized that the only way to end this back-and-forth no-future relationship with the crappy boyfriend was to just leave New Mexico (which I had always planned to do anyway). So in the summer of 1999 I moved back to New York.

Back in New York there was an internet bubble expanding, so I took my background in interactive media and got a job at EW.com (website of Entertainment Weekly) right before the bubble burst. It worked out ok tho, because we had a lean staff that was part of a huge multimedia conglomerate, so they had enough resources to keep us on, and they didn't care what we did. It was like working at a little startup with the resources of a media giant. I got to play with web pages, build metadata systems, and write comic book reviews and articles about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Do you remember our fellow classmate Rohanna? I lived with her for 3 years and then moved into my own place in the East Village.

Eventually the internet industry started to recover and then people (mainly AOL) did start to care about what we did at EW.com, and then it got kind of bureaucratic and boring. I stuck around for a couple more years, and then eventually moved on to being a consultant at [web consulting company]. This was a funny turn of events because when I first heard about that company, it was in 1999, in a Wired article about the two guys who ran the company, and I thought they kind of sounded like douchebags. Of course, a lot had changed since then, but I still never would have expected I'd someday be an employee of that company. Anyway, that's what I've been doing for the past 2+ years.

Hmm, that's a lot about work. My career has been pretty interesting, though. I've been writing and speaking about the Semantic Web for a while, and despite not being a particularly technical person I've built sort of a reputation and I've got the ear of some of the major people in the field, when I want it. So that's pretty fun.

I'd say that my life since moving back to NYC has been characterized by working and doing lots and lots of cultural things. In addition to the web and digital whatnot, I love to experience film festivals, comic conventions, museums, theater, live comedy, public art and mischief. This is why I can't see myself being in any place other than NYC. I also used to go see a lot of live music, but I kind of lost interest in that a couple years ago. Believe it or not, it's a lot of work to keep up with what's going on in the music scene.

Well, that's a lot of words, but I think that's about as brief as I can make a 20 year synopsis, and still have it make sense and be entertaining. How did I do?

Tribeca Film Festival - Wednesday, April 30

Tonight's film was Milky Way Liberation Front. I was super tired, and I don't feel like I can say that much about this odd Korean movie. There were definitely some funny moments, but I guess I expected it to be more absurd wackiness, and less surreal romantic comedy.

Tribeca Film Festival - Tuesday, April 29

I saw a single film on Tuesday - Guest of Cindy Sherman. The thing that it's important to know about this documentary is that it's not primarily about Cindy Sherman. It's mainly about a guy named Paul H-O (also the co-director) who used to have a public access TV show about the NY art scene. He met Cindy and for some reason the notoriously private and press-shy artist agreed to let him tape a series of interviews as she worked on her next show.

They end up dating, and even live together for several years. By all accounts she seems to be a fabulous girlfriend, but she becomes more and more famous and the art world took on a sort of celebrity and fame aspect, and his ego couldn't handle being the accessory to her growing success. His frustration culminates in an event (a dinner in her honor, if I remember correctly) where he is shunted off to a distant table, with a name card that simply says "Guest of Cindy Sherman."

It's sort of interesting and sort of disheartening. Paul wants to be in the art world, more than he wants to be an artist. And above all he seems to want attention. You get the sense that the relationship couldn't survive because he couldn't tolerate living in her shadow. But the title of the film, ostensibly a reference to the offending name card, is also an admission that the thing Paul H-O is most famous for is having been Cindy Sherman's boyfriend, and if he doesn't invoke her name, a lot fewer people would go see it.

Tribeca Film Festival - Sunday, April 27 (part 1)

This was my most ambitious day at the film fest. I saw 4 films!

The first film I saw was Chevolution, a documentary about the iconography of Che Guevara. The first section was about Che himself, and the events in Cuba leading up to the taking of the photo, perhaps the most widely recognized portrait in the world. Next there was some discussion of how the culture, politics, and aesthetics of the times helped make it into such an iconic image. With the lack of copyright on the image, and Che's untimely death, the image essentially became the logo of revolution. The next section was about how the image became co-opted and inevitably exploited by capitalism. Oddly enough, the photographer (Alberto Korda) later reclaimed the copyright in the '90s. His desire, which is now upheld by his daughter, was to protect the integrity of the image (and Che's memory) by putting constraints on the way the "Che brand" can be used.

It's a pretty complex issue. The image means so much to so many different people. The film raises many questions:
* What did Che stand for?
* What does the image of Che stand for? Can the two be separated?
* Is it more true to what Che stands for to let people freely use the image for whatever they want, or to keep it only for things he would believe in?
Really fascinating documentary.

Next I saw Terra. I have mixed feelings about this one. It's an animated feature about a peaceful alien culture invaded by humans. I have a pet peeve about movies that are ostensibly for children, but in fact are way too disturbing for kids. The thing is, the director said that he wanted it to be a more dramatic animated film - they don't have to all be comedies, and that's fair. Just take a look at Princess Mononoke to see how an animated movie can be serious, dark, and represent complex moral situations. But, the film used several conventions of traditional animated children's movies - heroic children that rise to the occasion, cute/funny sidekick, thick-necked foil that's eventually won over, and an irrationally evil bad guy who never heard of the concept of "diplomacy." And yet a good portion of the film is a huge battle scene. We're talking explosions, destruction of a city, and hundreds of casualties, quietly glossed over. The film felt like a cross between Horton Hears a Who and Battlestar Galactica (the new one), and, beautifully done as it was, I just don't think that's really appropriate for children.

Getting really tired now. I'll write about the other two films tomorrow.

Tribeca Film Fest - Saturday, April 26

I saw three films today, plus some shorts.

First up was Bitter & Twisted - the first film by writer/director Christopher Weekes, who also stars in the film. I had mixed feelings about this one. The film starts with the death of a young man, and picks up three years later to see what impact this has had on his family and ex-girlfriend. It was more of a mood and character study, and it has some really effective performances and scenarios. But the plot itself has a lot of storytelling cliches, since the story mostly serves to move things along so the characters can develop in accordance with the way they handle their grief. It was really well done, and for a debut film I'd say it was excellent. But I'd like to see Weekes direct something with a stronger script next time.

Later I saw Man on Wire - an amazing documentary about Philippe Petit, the man who walked a highwire between the Twin Towers in 1974. This was the NY premiere of the film. I have to admit that my response to it was complicated. At the beginning, I felt an irrational sense of anxiety while hearing the people describe how they repeatedly bypassed security to sneak into the towers to do surveillance, and ultimately to set up the wire and perform the trick (which they figured was probably illegal).

But as the film went on, at least some of that anxiety was replaced with a sense of wonder and beauty. And I was able to, as director James Marsh later put it, "reclaim the memory of those buildings for something else." As an added bonus, Philippe Petit himself was there to answer questions after the screening. He, as much as the film, got a standing ovation.

At the end of the night, I saw a midnight screening of Baghead, the new Duplass brothers film. It's hard to know how to talk about this one without giving too much away. It's sort of a combination of a thing-in-the-woods low budget horror movie, with a more character-driven independent movie. Plus it's about four actors trying to write themselves a script, so it's got some great insider-y self-referential things going on. Quite entertaining.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that earlier today I stumbled across the American Express Insider Center. It provided a quiet place to sit for a while between screenings, and they were also showing some of the festivals shorts. I saw 3 of them - "I Think I Thought" (written by, directed by & starring Matthew Modine), "Irish Twins" (written by, directed by, and starring Shiloh & Rider Storm), and a German genre-bending office-heist short called "Shift." Later, waiting on line to get in to Baghead, Shiloh and Rider and their friends were right in front of me. As we walked in I told Shiloh I had seen the short and enjoyed it, and after the screening I ran into them again and told Rider as well. They seemed kind of tired (it was 1:44am), but they were happy to pose for this photo with me!

Tribeca Film Fest - Friday, April 25

This evening I saw my first film of TFF 2008, Sita Sings the Blues, by Nina Paley. It was a very cool animated feature about the story of Sita and Rama. The story was told in four different ways, with a variety of styles of animation.

The basic story of Sita is that she was kidnapped by an evil king from the forest where she lived with her husband, Rama. She was so tremendously devoted to Rama, and he came to rescue her, but then he decided that maybe her purity had been compromised. She proved her devotion to him, and they returned to the kingdom, but then his people were dubious and he banished her, despite the fact that she was pregnant with his twin sons. Through all this, she remained loving and devoted to her husband.

So, the most traditional telling of the story was told in two styles of animation - one painted, and one a sort of stop-motion looking style done with postcard images of the characters.

This was intertwined with a more casual, improvised discussion of the story by three "shadow puppets", and segments where blues songs from the late 1920s were used to show another side of the story. The fourth element, woven throughout the film, is the tale of the animator herself, who was living in India with her husband when she returned to New York for a business meeting and he dumped her by email.

It was beautiful, funny, and kind of brilliant.

Tribeca Film Festival Plans

Several people have been asking me what I'm going to see at TFF this year, so I figured I should probably just post it one place, with links and all kinds of bloggy goodness. Also, this can serve as a reminder that I'll be posting reviews, photos and other interested tidbits throughout the festival.

So here's what I'm planning to see (and yes, this schedule is a little bit mad):

Friday Apr 25
8:15PM - Sita Sings the Blues

Saturday Apr 26
1:00PM - Bitter & Twisted
5:30PM - Man On Wire
11:59PM - Baghead

Sunday Apr 27
1:30PM - Chevolution
4:00PM - Terra
6:00PM - Trucker
9:30PM - Idiots and Angels

Wednesday Apr 30
9:00PM - Milky Way Liberation Front

Thursday May 1
10:30PM - Hotel Gramercy Park

Friday May 2
6:00PM - War, Inc.
8:15PM - Let the Right One In

Saturday May 3
12:00PM - Theater of War
6:00PM - Shorts: Identity Crisis

Sunday May 04
1:45PM - "Made in NY" Narrative Competition Award Winner
5:00PM - Playing

Movie Review Haiku: I Am Legend

I was talking with my friend Robert tonight, and his comments about the movie I Am Legend inspired the creation of this Movie Review Haiku:

If you don't believe
in Jesus, then the zombies
have already won.

It's not the best I've ever done, but it's been a while since I wrote many movie review haikus. And besides, it cracked us up.

(Eventually I'll add this haiku to the page with the rest of them, but it's going to take some old school HTML juggling to do that, and I don't have time at the moment. I'll update the page someday!)

Junoverse

Been watching these videos of Jason Bateman and Michael Cera promoting Juno. I love the movie, but seeing the videos really makes me miss Arrested Development!

Evil Review

As I perused the Toronto Film Festival schedule, one of the films I considered seeing was Alan Ball's directorial debut. After reading this review of Nothing is Private from The Reeler, I'm really glad that I didn't.

Don't read the review if you're easily offended. And definitely don't see the movie.

TIFF continued

On Sunday, September 9th, I saw two films. The first was Ang Lee's Lust, Caution. I had been trying to get a ticket to see this ever since tickets went on sale, but they were never available. When I picked up my other tickets the guy advised me to go online at 7am, because any unclaimed industry tickets would become available then. I did, and I got one, which was a huge relief because it meant I didn't have to head out to the Rush line at 7am, in the rain, not knowing whether or not I would actually even get in!

The film was great. Tony Leung (one of the main reasons I wanted to see it) played a truly horrible person, who is somehow really compelling anyway. You can't help but hate him and be fascinated by him at the same time. And that's just how the heroine feels about him, too, so it's very appropriate. While I was watching it I was thinking, "There's no way this film is getting an R rating." Later I found out it's going to be rated NC-17. A little bit of violence, and a lot of graphic sex.

Later that day I saw Nightwatching, by another favorite director, Peter Greenaway. I'm not sure how I felt about this one. There were some things I really liked about it, but it was dense, and I was tired, and I wasn't following it all that well. It was gorgeous, and Martin Freeman was great as Rembrant. But if I want to know what was actually going on with all the intrigue, I'm definitely going to have to see it again.

On Monday morning I saw The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Is that the longest title in movie history? Probably not, but it's considerably longer than it needs to be, I think. The film itself is aslo quite long, and when director Andrew Dominik stepped on stage to greet us before the screening he said he hates introducing the film. He said it's long, it's slow, and he hoped we all had plenty of coffee that morning. Not a real enthusiastic way of introducing your film, I have to say. Or maybe he was just being overly modest, in reaction to the media frenzy surrounding the film's star. (And no, Brad Pitt wasn't there for this early morning screening, making it a much less frenzied event).

Anyway, he needn't have been so apologetic. I thought the movie was great. Yes, it was long (2 hours and 40 minutes), but it was very engaging. I've seen much shorter movies where I was looking at my watch and wondering when it would be over. Brad was great in it, as were Casey Affleck, Sam Shepard, Sam Rockwell, and many others. I'd certainly recommend it to people.

The last film I saw before heading back to NYC was probably my favorite - a film by Jason Reitman called Juno. It stars Ellen Page as the title character, a high school girl who gets pregnant and decides to give the baby up for adoption. She finds a good candidate family in Jennifer Gartner and Jason Bateman. Oh, and her friend/baby daddy is played by Michael Cera. The script by Diablo Cody is excellent - hilarious and very real. I was laughing pretty much the whole way through.

Toronto Film Festival

Today was my second day at TIFF. On Saturday morning I saw Chacun son Cinema - a collection of 3-minute shorts by a range of celebrated directors, on the topic of cinema, originally created to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Cannes.

Later in the day I saw the new Coen brothers film, No Country for Old Men. Pretty good stuff. Very violent & mysterious. Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem were both pretty amazing. The story, the characters, the dynamic between them, and the rampant brutality reminded me a little of History of Violence. Unfortunately, I was sitting in the balcony, and the sound was kind of crappy, so some of the dialogue went right by me.

At the venue, though, the screening was a little overshadowed by all the hoopla surrounding the imminent arrival of the world's most newsworthy couple, Brad and Angelina. See, Brad Pitt's new movie was premiering in the same theater immediately following No Country, and the festival actually closed off the entire street in front of the theater four hours before the film, in preparation for the red carpet. When we went into the theater for the Coen Bros film, there were already hundreds of people lined up out front, waiting by the barricades. By the time we came out of the theater, the crowd had taken over the entire block.

And, of course the power couple was on the cover of most of the Toronto papers today. I thought the choice of the above image, by the Toronto Star, was kind of odd. Aside from being a really unflattering angle, they both look exhausted and miserable. She looks on the verge of tears! Maybe it's a little hard to tell from the online version of the photo, but blown up bigger on the front of the newspaper, it looks much worse.

More about the other films I saw when I get back to the U.S. in a couple days.

Why I missed out on Newsies

A few years ago I had the thrilling opportunity to conduct a brief interveiw with Joss Whedon. One of the questions I was obliged to ask him was about his favorite pop culture guilty pleasures. He mentioned a musical called Newsies. I couldn't really understand how it could be that I had never heard of this film, but for some reason I didn't look into it any further.

In today's Entertainment Weekly there's a feature article on Christian Bale, which includes a sidebar about his leading role in Newsies. And now I finally understand that the reason I'd never heard of it is that it came out in April, 1992 and I was living in Paris at the time. Here's a clip of one of the musical dance numbers from the film.

I wonder what else I missed that year. I wonder if Joss thought, "What kind of crappy entertainment reporter hasn't heard of Newsies??" (By the way, I still haven't seen it, but I think I have to someday).

Top 10 Movies: 2006

Oh, I just noticed that I posted my top 10 (plus) movies from the 5 previous years, but I forgot to post my favorite films from 2006. So, here they are:

• Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
• Clean
• An Inconvenient Truth
• The Departed
• Stranger Than Fiction
• Casino Royale
• Little Miss Sunshine
• Marie Antoinette
• Brick
• The Queen

Plus a few that deserve honorable mention:

• Half Nelson
• Notes on a Scandal
• Last King of Scotland
• Children of Men

Man - it seems like I saw those films sooooo long ago!

An epic day

What a strange day. It was bound to be a little unusual, if only because I am heading off on vacation tomorrow, and that always means there's a lot to do to get ready.

But this morning started out extra weird when I was woken up by incredibly loud thunder, really close to the apartment. It was one of those feelings where you wake up and you don't really know what just happened. Was it a dream? Did something explode? Oh, there's a rain storm. It was so dramatic that when I left for work, other people from the building were spontaneously talking to each other about it.

The rest of the day went pretty much as expected. I wrapped things up at work, and then met up with my mom who happened to be just finishing up work herself. We wandered around a little and then headed towards Bryant Park. We soon noticed that there was a suspiciously large number of people just kind of hanging around the park, and many of them were on their phones. Clearly we had wandered into something, but I couldn't tell what.

Turned out something had exploded, which immediately put me in mind of the storm this morning. But it was actually caused by an electrical problem under a building at 41st and Lex. Very weird.

So, my mom and I headed downtown, away from the madness. We kept our eye on the news and checked online, and even though every report said "explosion near Grand Central," no one was saying anything about whether or not trains were running. Finally I called 311 and the guy read me the same press release I had been hearing on the news and reading on the web. But then he connected me to Metro North, where a message informed me that trains were running on schedule, but people could only enter on the Northwest side of the terminal.

I walked my mom to the subway so she could go catch a train home, and then stopped at Whole Foods. On my way home, a guy at the corner of the Anthology Film Archives told me that they were showing a free preview screening of Charlie Bartlett. Totally random! I knew I shouldn't go because I still hadn't packed for my trip. But I had been wanting to see it, and it was free, so I went!

It was strange, there were not many people there, and the organizers videotaped us commenting about the movie as we left. I thought it was a pretty decent film, though it seemed to be trying a little too hard at times. I was already thinking that it was definitely going for a sort of Harold & Maude vibe (without the May-December romance) and then they started singing "If you want to sing out, sing out." I'm choosing to view it as an homage.

Several of the actors from Degrassi: Next Generation were playing minor characters. I thought that was pretty cool.