September/October was an incredible time for film-related feasting, starting with the Screenwriting Expo in LA, continuing at the Vancouver Film and TV Forum, and ending with the Vancouver International Film Festival.
Through all three, my personal highlight was attending Michael Arndt’s seminar Endings: The Good, The Bad, and The Insanely Great, because he’s insanely great and even autographed my DVD of Little Miss Sunshine.
Here’s a quick overview of what I saw at VIFF:
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My Top Five:
–Michel Petrucciani (you must be able to tolerate 102 mins of free-form jazz)
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These films were also very good:
–First Position
–Planet Yoga
–Happy Happy
–Journey on the Wild Coast
–How to Die in Oregon (amazing, I bawled beginning to end.)
–To Make a Farm
–People of a Feather
–Family Portrait in Black and White
–Wish Me Away
–How Much Does Your Building Weigh Mr. Foster?
–There Once was an Island
–Footnote (better than it sounds but still a lot of academia)
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Good:
–Like Crazy
–Andrew Bird: Fever Year
–My Piece of the Pie (though I wanted a bit of a different ending)
–Las Acacias (slow but lovely)
–Dendera (gave me terrors after)
–You’ve Been Trumped (infuriating)
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Perfectly Fine:
–Mama Africa
–Black Bread (disturbing but interesting moral conflict)
–Crazy Horse
–Nuit #1 (incredible acting, intensely miserable characters)
–Burning Ice (sounds better than it is)
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And in a category of its own (bizarre french surrealist nonsense with interesting modern dance numbers):
