Tribcea Film Fest - Friday, May 4

West 32nd poster
Originally uploaded by Mirka23.

Tonight I saw two tense movies. The first was West 32nd, a Korean-American crime drama starring John Cho and Grace Park. John plays a a young lawyer who's trying to help out a family whose teenage boy seems to be wrapped up in a gang-related murder. Grace plays the sister of the boy. There was a wide range of Korean-American experiences on display in the story, and apparently most of the actors - aside from John, Grace, and a third main character played by Jun Sung Kim, from Seoul - are local actors.

I was happy to see that, even at the fifth screening, the director, some of the crew, and a whole bunch of actors showed up. It probably helped that most people involved in the film live around here, but I was still happy to see so many people who were excited about the project they had helped make. Here's a photo I took of Dante Han and Lanny Joon, two of the actors in the film.

Later I saw Rise: Blood Hunter, a sort of vampire thriller film. It was a lot scarier than I expected it to be. Lucy Liu plays a reporter who stumbles onto the wrong lead. She gets turned into a vampire and then seeks revenge on the people that did this to her. Some parts of the story don't make any sense, but it's loud, dark, gory and exciting, and Lucy Liu is half naked several times during the movie, so I'm sure it will do alright.

Tribeca Film Fest - Wednesday, May 2

Saw Kevin Connelly's film Gardener of Eden last night. Lukas Haas plays a New Jersey slacker who inadvertently becomes a local hero and decides that it's his mission in life. It's like the anti-spiderman.

I'm not even sure if this was a comedy or a drama, a dark comedy, maybe a funny drama? It's kind of different and interesting, but sometimes the pacing was way too slow.

Tomorrow I'm taking a day off from the film festival.

The Blackberry Effect

This morning I remembered something odd from the Suburban Girl screening last night. There's a theme about Blackberries running through the movie. The communications device, not the fruit. At the risk of making it sound deeper than it is, I would say that there are some key points in the script where the device symbolizes both the large age gap between Alec Baldwin's character and the young women in his life AND his attempts to bridge that gap.

This significant device seemed to trigger something in the audience, because when the lights came up, people on all sides couldn't even wait to get out of their seats before they fired up their own blackberries and started texting. This reminded me of when I saw a midnight screening Dazed and Confused, many years ago, and nearly everyone in the audience lit up a cigarette as soon as they exited the theater door. At 2am, the streets were completely deserted except for a group of about a hundred people standing outside a theater entrance, smoking.

Tribeca Film Fest - Tuesday, May 1

Watching The Detectives Q&A
Originally uploaded by Mirka23.

Tonight I saw two films. The first was Watching the Detectives, a quirky, wonderful comedy written and directed by Paul Soter (sitting on the left in the photo). It stars Cillian Murphy as a video store owner and movie enthusiast, and Lucy Liu (standing on the far right in the photo) as his eccentric love interest. I'm not even sure what to say about this film, because you should really just see it.

It's weird and adorable, and even though the characters are kind of off-the-wall, I never had the feeling (like I so often do with comedies described as "quirky") that the screenwriter was trying too hard, that the characters are all just a little too wacky and interesting. I think this is because their personalities are unusual, but at different volumes. Like real people. The mistake so many movies make is that everyone is equally weird. This film has some people that are mildly strange, some that seem interesting but very normal, and some that seem completely absurd. But they all interact like it's totally normal, and it seems somehow kind of realistic, at the same time that it's clearly a complete fantasy.

Since it was the premiere, Paul Soter and much of the cast were there to talk about the film and answer questions. Man, Lucy Liu is stunning! Some celebs not in the movie were also in attendance, including Ajay Naidu (Office Space) and Rachel Dratch.

I almost forgot to mention the second film I saw, Suburban Girl. I think the fact that I just saw it a couple hours ago and I've pretty much already forgotten about it kind of says it all. On the surface it's like a cross between Devil Wears Prada and Shopgirl, with more literary aspirations. On a deeper level, well, there is no deeper level. The chemistry between Alec Baldwin and Sarah Michelle Gellar alternates between not that interesting and kind of creepy. Even more than Baldwin's performance in last year's Mini's First Time, which I think was supposed to be creepy. (Alec Baldwin, you are hilarious, but please stop playing guys who are dating girls in their teens and early 20s!)

Plus, I think it's going to be hard for people to put aside what's going on in Baldwin's personal life at the moment. His character in the film has some similar issues with his daughter, which, in the screening I saw, resulted in a lot of laughter at scenes which were definitely not meant to be funny.

Tribeca Film Fest - Monday, April 30

Saw Zak Penn's movie The Grand and I loved it. It's a mockumentary in the world of professional poker. Woody Harrelson plays a guy who has to win a major winner-take-all tournament in order to save his grandfather's casino. The cast of the improvised film includes actors and comedians (some of whom are well known for playing poker in real life), some popular professional poker players, and some acting turns by directors. Werner Herzog is brilliant as "The German."

I'm not sure if this movie will be entertaining to people who don't already enjoy watching professional poker on TV. But if you do, you will probably LOVE it. I would buy this movie on DVD right now if I could.

Tribeca Film Fest - Sunday, April 29

Saw three films. Blue State was the first narrative that I've seen this year. It's about a liberal guy, played by Breckin Meyer, who moves to Canada when GWB wins the 2004 election. Anna Paquin joins him on his road trip, and they proceed to have a wacky romantic-comedy adventure, with politics. Now, I wouldn't have minded that so much, if the politics were expressed through the course of the story. Instead, it kind of feels like there are things going on, and every once in a while we take a break from the romance and the comedy so that the characters can sit there and discuss their political views. Interesting premise, great performances, even a lot of funny situations, but the script needed better integration of action and ideas.

Then I saw a program of shorts called Taken to Extremes. These were all documentaries, mostly about people who have kind of extreme interests or lifestyles. One of the highlights was Piece by Piece, about "speedcubers" - several of whom describe their hobby of solving the rubik's cube as an addiction! There were 5 other short films, and actually all of them were really interesting and well done.

Last I saw A Slim Peace, a documentary about a weight loss group in Jerusalem that included women who were Israeli, Palestinian, Jewish American settlers, Bedouin. Some were secular some were religious, and of course they had conflicting politics. I think the idea was to see whether they would overcome these differences and find a common ground. And to some degree they did, but the premise still makes me sort of uncomfortable. Are our personal insecurities the key to transcending deeply-rooted, seemingly insurmountable religious, national, and cultural conflicts? (Well, the answer seems to be No.)

Tribeca Film Fest - Saturday, April 28

Pez
Originally uploaded by Bomb It - The Movie.

Tonight I saw a film called Bomb It, a documentary about international graffiti art.

It started out with Philadelphia and New York, but the most interesting parts were about graffiti artists around the world. Some people do street art primarily because it's dangerous and illegal, but a lot of people do it because they have something to express, and they want/need to do it in a public way. It's a very social, political, and personal art form. So, in different countries you find that people are driven to make different social and political statements. Plus the cultural attitude towards public spaces and street art varies, and that also contributes to different dynamics around the globe.

My only complaint about the film is that some really interesting topics were touched on so briefly - I wish I could have seen more. Apparently they had many hundreds of hours of footage, but of course in editing it down to a feature length doc, there's only so much they can include. I think this would actually work really well as a series, so I hope they get to do more with it!