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I'm sitting here in my room at the Hotel Montgomery listening to a band play out on the patio. I think it's funny that the desk clerk said "We have a nice quiet room in back for you," and then I end up facing right out onto the band. Personally, I don't care, I'm not here for quiet, I'm here for movies. But why say I have a "nice quiet room" when I clearly do not?

So I saw The Silence Before Bach... and I left halfway through it. It's not terrible, it just... doesn't really have a plot... and not a lot of excitement... and is just a lot of people playing Bach, and a lot of watching a single person walk down the stairs, or watching him brush his teeth, or watching the train go by, or the river... So there's nothing wrong with that, I've seen much worse movies, but I'd probably like it better on a rainy Saturday afternoon with a bag of popcorn when I had nothing else in the world to do, or maybe just playing on my TV at home while I did housework. It's hard for me to grade this one because it is what it is, which is just not what I want to watch when I need to stay awake for two more movies. But that's not necessarily a bad movie, you know what I mean?

So I left the theater and got some chinese food (oh gosh, the Asian Buffet is just not very good!) and came up here to eat it and listen to the band. I leave in 30 minutes to see my next movie.

Cinequest - Day 3

Today is going to be a flurry of trying to check in to the Montgomery Hotel in time to run across the street and get to my first movie at 4:30. Then sometime after his date Spike will arrive to watch some really late movies and Buffy will be dropped off after her school dance. Hopefully this weekend will run smoother.

Tonight's plan is:
The Silence Before Bach
Sherman's Way
El Camino

I was going to watch Commit instead of "Silence" but the Cinequesting review pushed me away. Also I didn't realize Silence was a movie from Spain, so I'm looking forward to it now.

Reviews up late tonight or tomorrow morning!

It's almost midnight and I need to get some sleep, but before I do I want to let everyone know that Disfigured is one of the best films I've seen at Cinequest, Ever. It was nothing like what I thought it was going to be, and the audience was completely wowed. To quote one of the viewers, "This is only the second movie of the festival, and I'm not sure how anything else is going to beat this."

You can still see it on these two dates, and if you can make it, I definitely recommend it:
February 29 9:30pm
March 2 1:30pm

I took 16 year old Buffy and her male friend, thinking this was going to be a "comedy" (I don't know why I thought that since the description clearly states "drama"). Once it began I thought they were going to be bored to tears - except for around halfway through when the very nekkid sex scene began... I was pretty sure they were going to kill me after that, or at the very least blame me for all their future psychological problems. But at the end, as we left the theater (after Buffy took a photo of me with star Deirdra Edwards), the friend said: "That was a really good movie. It almost got me at the end. I had a little tear. It didn't fall though, I caught myself... but it almost got me."

We also saw about ten of the student shorts, and as usual, they are more awesome than the regular shorts. So I recommend those too. I'll write more about all of them tomorrow.

Food ate: One tomato mozarella ciabatta sandwich from Starbucks with a small vanilla frapucchino, some popcorn with parmesan garlic powder, and a diet coke.

Buffy attracting attention all over the place with her bag again, even getting notice from the manager of the Camera Theaters himself. It really is a cool bag though.

Opening Night Movie and Party

Hangover is finally abating, so let’s get the reviews going:

Movie: Eden Court
Goodness. Why start off the festival in this way, making me go back on my word of loving all the movies when this movie really was pretty bad??? I hope this is not a sign of things to come with this year’s festival, because it certainly did not get the festival off on the right foot. Usually the opening and closing movies are the very best films of the festival, and most of them make it to the mass market big screen. This movie, though the writer/director seemed like a really nice guy… it is not going to make it to a theater near you, no way no how. The funniest thing about the movie was that it actually was set in Nebraska, so just like my earlier post, I sat and started thinking that maybe this movie really would be better set in New York with explosions and Angelina Jolie. Certainly couldn’t have hurt it.

I mean, the problems with this movie were countless. If you have a comedy and want to stick in a drunken best friend, you can’t make her a drunken, slutty loser friend who is also a bad mother. There’s not much comedy in that. And I don’t know if Kimberley Williams-Paisley was acting the part of the wife in the way the writer had envisioned, but if so, dude needs to go interact with more women. She constantly slipped back and forth between ditzy and intelligent, loving and hateful, irresponsible and yet the only responsible member of the family. The whole movie was all over the place, and like the character of the wife, the storyline slipped too many times between comedy and tragedy, heart warming and disgusting.

Review: Thumbs Down.

After Party: YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
I had the most fun at this Opening Night party than I’ve had at any previous ones, but it could be because my son has had his drivers license for a year now so I was able to have a few drinks. It definitely was less crowded than previous years, possibly there were less people or maybe the good weather just allowed a lot of us to mingle outside.

As soon as we walked through the doors we were presented with table after table with drinks set out just asking to be drank. I had to oblige, they were too pretty! I passed the table of pink vodka and went straight to the table of a dark colored liquid with cherries in them. I figured, Must be some kind of cherry drink! *BZZZZ* Wrong! From what we could tell, it was straight whiskey. Not really my thing, but… it was free and there were cherries waiting for me at the bottom! So, drink number one: check!

My daughter hung out at the chocolate fountain, and my son and his friend wandered around waiting for real food to appear. I’m not entirely sure if they found any – I know Spike had some toast with mushrooms on it, and we were all served many chicken shishkebobs, and I did manage to find a table with sandwich fixings but the bread was gone…

But I do know I decided to try one of the pink vodka drinks when the whiskey was gone. Now that drink I can get behind. I wish I knew exactly what drinks these were so I could give them a shout-out, but I have no idea. I just know that pink vodka = good. Drink number two: Check!
So the two boys and my daughter and I all hung out on the patio, chatting with various filmmakers and Nathan Louie, and the well-known Jason. Pictures will come soon - I did get some good ones this time! And eventually my pink drink was gone and I wanted another. Drink number three: Check! And mom gives up the car keys.

So of course the party seemed awfully fun, to ME, but the kids were also having fun and so were the boys, and so were a lot of people I talked to that night. It was really nice not being packed in like sardines, the music was nice, and it was just a pretty fun night.

Buffy was actually quickly becoming the star of the party as she brought along the purse I had bought her for her 16th birthday. Every time I turned around she was surrounded by men who were just fascinated by her and her purse, and she carried herself very well talking to them. For the record, they weren’t skeevy lecherous men, they were just various filmmakers and recognizable Cinequest attendees who were fascinated by the bag. I was just surprised that she had enough poise to handle conversations with so many strangers.

Finally we all walked back to the parking garage and Spike drove us home. It was a good night – until I woke up this morning with a raging hangover. Heh.

Tonight Buffy and I will be seeing Disfigured and possibly Commit.

The only drinks drunk tonight will be Starbucks and Diet Coke.

Great Night

Awesome party last night leads to massive hangover this morning, and also having to delete drunken after-party posts from this blog. heh. I'll just say there were free drinks: I had one whiskey with cherries and two of some pink vodka. They were delish. Not so much this morning.

I'll post more later.

We interrupt Cinequest coverage to bring you the following message:

Congratulations!

Dean's Office
College of Humanities and the Arts

OMIGODOMIGODOMIGOD!!! YAYYYYYY!!!!

Cinequest - Today's the day

So I have to remember to eat fresh, crunchy vegetables, drink Tang for vitamin C, try not to over-do the parmesan powder on my popcorn – and take some walks in the sunshine for Gawd’s sake.

I remember last year at Cinequest, I think it was the final weekend and I decided to finally skip a movie; the day was beautiful, we were staying downtown, and I decided to go for a walk. It’s amazing how the lack of sun can affect you, you don’t really realize it until you’re crammed into a dark theatre for all waking hours for 12 days straight.

This year, I’m going to make sure I get some walks in the sun. Because there are a lot of movies I want to see.

I was thinking this morning about why I love Cinequest so much, even when I see a crappy movie, or even when I see a few crappy movies in a row. Even if only 2-3 out of the 20 I watch are good, I still feel like I had a great time, and I still want to pay the money next year. Why is that? If I go to the theater to watch a Hollywood movie and it’s crappy, I’m pissed. I want my money back and I want the hours of my life back. But it’s different with Cinequest. And I think that’s because of exactly what it stands for.

The movies you see at Cinequest were not funded by Hollywood studios – the filmmaker had to bust his ass raising money to make this movie, or max out the credit cards, or take out loans. All to make this movie he believed in. These filmmakers aren’t (usually) making money back on the films, and most know they never will. This is all money spent on a single love. Additionally, there is no Hollywood studio head poking their nose into the project: “Let’s take it out of Nebraska and set it in New York! And instead of farmers we’ll have... giant talking robots! That explode! And we need a love interest! Try to write in Angelina Jolie and I’ll call her agent right now!” So what you get at Cinequest is the single pure essence of what the filmmaker had in his head, and not an amalgamation of what “The Industry” wants you to see.

And so when you see a movie at Cinequest, or when you see several (because you can’t just go see ONE), you are left with a feeling of magic. You are transported back to the very earliest time of film when it was all new, and everyone was just figuring out what you can do, and it was all done out of a love of the process itself – and getting your idea or your story out there.

And truly the process of filmmaking is again all about figuring out what we can do, because of all the many advances in technology – computers, special effects, new technologies that you or I or most of the film watching public can never even comprehend, but also the many ways of viewing the films now. We can go to the grand California Theater to watch a movie, or you can stay home and watch it on your TV or computer, or you can watch it on your iPod on the bus to work. Most of this technology wasn’t available even five years ago. Cinequest really exemplifies this and even has technology forums, writing forums, and filmmaking forums to share the new and exciting information and get it out to the public.

Magic. The pure essence of cinema. MOVIES!!

And so when I review the movies we will see, these movies I know many of you will never ever see – and who will tune out for the next 12 days wondering why I never have time to write during the other 11-1/2 months but suddenly have all the time in the world for two weeks of the year – *ahem*... When I write my reviews I’m probably a little softer than I would be if I had seen them in a regular setting. It’s not because I know “they tried hard”, or “they made a good effort!” It’s because the magic and the love and the commitment of the filmmaker (and the actors and the crew and everyone else involved) all shine through these movies, even when the point or the story or the message kind of falls flat or just flies right over my head. You still get the feeling that you just watched something very special, and you still know you are one of the lucky few.

I know most of my regular readers will tune out for the next twelve days, but I also know I have local readers who only show up during Cinequest. That’s okay. Opening night is tonight, Wednesday evening, and Spike and friend and Buffy and I will be there bright and early to see the first movie, then we’ll head over to the Paragon Bar for the Opening Night Party (with chocolate fountain!) where we’ll be bumping shoulders with people we won’t come to know until each evening’s movies go by. We’ll be meeting filmmakers, actors, writers, famous people, film students, and many, many people who just love movies.

And like it or not, I’m going to be typing about it.

More news and announcements from Cinequest including a list of some actors expected to appear.

People - if you are going to be anywhere near San Jose in the next two weeks, come to the film festival!!! You will have so much fun!

For Catie:

I will try to post our movie-watching schedule maybe this evening, if I can figure out how to do that. In the meantime, for Catie and anyone else interested in Cinequest, go to the Cinequesting blog for many reviews and previews of the films. Most of the films they have listed are on my list. In fact, most every movie showing is on my list except for any Eastern European film - I'm still traumatized by watching a film of some girl running through the subway while carrying her miscarried fetus. So no matter how good a movie may seems, it was an easy way to cut my list a little shorter. I may miss a good one, but then again, I won't be seeing another movie with a grown man pushing his dead grandmother through the city in a wheel chair covered with a polar bear rug.
I'm just saying.

My priorities this year so far are:
Disfigured
Enlightened Blood (La Sangre Iluminada)
Glory Boy Days (this one has Number One priority)
Its Better If Gabriela Doesnt Die (Mejor Es Que Gabriela No Se Muera)
The Metrosexual
Speed Dating
The Substitute (it's Danish... I'm hoping that's far enough away from Germany that there won't be any dead feti or grandmothers)
The Village Barbershop

Click on the links in each of those pages to see a still from the film and a better description. Those are only 8 of the movies I'm hoping to see - and there's still the opening and closing films, which are usually the best and most often shown in theaters later.

Who needs Sir Philip Sidney

I just spent quite a few hours making our new Cinequest movie-watching schedule for this year. It isn't anywhere close to complete yet. But it so far includes the watching of 29, that's right, 29 movies in 12 days. Now that, my dears, is crazy; Britney-Spears-Insane even. Ding Dang! We got movies to watch Ya'll! I think I finished 20 last year, but I'm not sure - but this year they all look so good!!!!!

In fact, there were so many Super-Good sounding movies to watch, I may not go see Michael Keaton or Danny Glover, as much as I'd like to, I would rather watch movies and seeing them would cut into my movie-watching time.

We have been stocking up on food for Cinequest. 12 days of popcorn and Starbucks can leave you feeling really wierd, as Catie can attest. At the end of those 12 days you start to CRAAAAAVE crunchy vegetables and some vitamin C.

So we have: fresh turkey breast, swiss cheese and tomatoes so we can take sandwiches for dinner. Some good old fashioned, All-American powdered TANG so we can get unlimited vitamin C in the morning, and this year we are adding carrots and celery/peanut butter to our list. One cannot underestimate the intense craving for crunchy fresh veggies that comes upon you after twelve days of popcorn and diet soda. I'm totally serious here, your teeth are there for a reason.

So anyway, hopefully we can get through this year. I have two essays due over the twelve days, and I have one essay mostly completed. I hope to write the other one over the weekend, before the theaters open (heh). One Spanish exam due hours before Opening Night. And of course hundreds of pages of books to read that will be done sitting on the stairs at the Camera 12 Cinemas.

So again - the lady on the stairs with the books and Starbucks, that will be me. I look forward to meeting everyone again!!!

OOH! OOH! I just remembered, I have my new camera now, so I can finally take awesome photos to show you all just how great and exciting Cinequest can be!
Although John Leguizamo has mysteriously disappeared from the Cinequest calendar (bastard!) we'll still be seeing Danny Glover, Michael Keaton, John Ratzenburger and more. This time I'll have good pictures to prove it instead of those far away, dark, fuzzy camera phone pics.

So! So! Excited! Don't want to read Old Arcadia! Don't want to write essay on stupid Queen Elizabeth speeches! Definitely don't want to study for my Spanish exam! Want movies!!!!!!

But remember the SouthPark "Raisins" episode?

And why the hell is there a commercial for Hooters on my TV right now??? There aren't any Hooters around here.

The Oscars

Well there just wasn't much to say about the Oscars last night. Everyone was pretty, everyone who won pretty much deserved it. No drama, no really huge fashion Don'ts. So... not much to say.

Except for Nicole Kidman... I know she supposedly has this flawless white clear skin... but does she really look like a plastic mannequin?? I can't believe that anyone's skin all over their body is that solidly white and smooth, with no wrinkles, creases nor one single mark (not even a freckle??). She must have slathered some body make-up all over her, and that's just as gross as the orange self-tanners.

Of COURSE I'm watching the Academy Awards (while trying to write up an essay)!!!
I just worry that non-Californians watching this show will think that ALL of us Californians are as orange as the people I'm seeing on my television screen. Holy Moly, I don't get the appeal of orange self-tanner. I'd rather be pasty white.

But I am happy to watch this awards this year as I think I have seen every single movie up for an Oscar except for: Juno, Atonement, Transformers and Persepolis. So I absolutely have opinions, and I'm excited to see who wins.

Also, the last couple years the Oscars have been on during Cinequest so I don't always get to see them. This year... Cinequest starts Wednesday!!!! Get ready for movie reviews for films you'll probably never get a chance to see! I know you all are so excited to hear that again!

And now I go back to writing an essay.

Welcome back M'Love!!!

"Bitch is the new black!!"

I love you Tina Fey!!!
I will have to keep my recording of tonight's SNL forever!

That was one of the best Grammys I've ever seen.

Also, I would like to have whatever Tina Turner has been drinking for the last 50 years, because that woman... WOW.

And my sweet Amy Winehouse swept five awards and made me cry during her performance. I love her album like nothing else and was so happy to see her... better. It seems like she has a lot of people close to her who care about her very much, and I hope she can get better. The world will lose an amazing talent if she can't get her act together. Unlike some people whose names rhyme with Spritney Beers.

Anyway, yeah. Those Grammys were great.

Guess where we're going today!

KOOZA!!!

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, champagne in one hand, chocolate covered strawberries in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOOHOO"!
~~unknown

We saw "There Will Be Blood" last night, I loved it. Scott wasn't sure what to think, and there were quite a few unexplained parts, so neither of us is clear about everything that happened, but I definitely loved it.

"I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE! I DRINK IT UP! SLUUUUURRRRRRPPPPPP!!!!!!!"

bwahahahahahahhaaaaaaaaaa Loved it.

Also it had the best last line in a movie, Ever.

Yes, you all should see it.

The best part about going to Scott's house on Super Bowl Sunday is that neither of us care either about the game or who is playing. I have no idea who's playing. All I know is that when we go to lunch on Sunday at the Red Apple Cafe there will be no line to sit down. The restaurant will be empty.

Tonight we are going to dinner at some Scottish restaurant in Felton where a band that Scott likes will be playing. Food and music - combined with sitting! WOOOO! And then the weekend will be spent reading for school.

Everyone have a good one!

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The Silence Before Bach
Cinequest - Day 3
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Opening Night Movie and Party
Great Night
WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Cinequest - Today's the day
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For Catie:
Who needs Sir Philip Sidney

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