Crockhead Report: I Survived Ebertfest

Some day soon, I will blog about my experiences at the 12th annual Roger Ebert Film Festival in our town last weekend. I promise. I'm still recovering from sleep deprivation. In the meantime, if you are a fan of JACK Quartet, or are wondering what they sound like,WNYC is streaming them live this afternoon at 2:30 EDT, 1:30 CDT. Unfortunately, I will be on the road and unable to listen. Let me know if you listened and what you think.

Ebertfest Report: A Strange Winnipeg

The movie I have most enjoyed at this year's Ebertfest, although it certainly is not to everyone's taste, is the quirky My Winnipeg. It was written and directed by Guy Madden, who has lived all his life in Winnipeg and has a normal day job as a professor in film studies at the University of Winnipeg. He specializes in making quirky movies, and he makes what he wants to make, how he wants to make them without regard to movie conventions. Everything in My Winnipeg was done in one take, and if a scene was slightly out of focus, so be it.

The movie was commissioned by by the city fathers and was supposed to be a documentary about Winnipeg, designed to attract tourists. It turned out to be a docu-fantasy, with real events being told in a warped mixture of fact and fiction (all of it true, however, since "fact" and "truth" are not the same.) Madden explained that when he was young, his aunt would take him to see travelogues. She would say, "We're going to Morocco tonight," and he would interpret it and report it at school as that they were actually going to Morocco. He would often fall asleep during the travelogue, and would experience those documentaries n a half-dreaming state. The dream-like movie he made is often just plain weird. For example, in the early 20th century, there was actually an incident in which a herd of horses, stampeding from a burning stable, fled into a river and froze to death, with the horse heads sticking above the ice until the spring thaw. Madden takes some archival footage of the dead horses and transforms it into a gruesome comedy, with the people from Winnipeg coming out to picnic on the horse heads. (For a hilarious account of the making of this part of the film, see his "documentary diariest" at this blog.)

Roger Ebert, as always, said it best. In his published remarks in the program booklet, he said,

"His (Madden's) imagination frees the lurid possibilities of the banal. He rewrites history; when that fails, he creates it.

Aside from Ebert himself, Madden is one of the funniest people ever to appear on the stage at Eberfest. His lack of pretense was refreshing. He quipped his way through the question and answer session, at one point telling people that if they felt like sleeping through his movie, he didn't blame them, he got 45 good minutes of shut-eye during the showing Thursday himself. When asked how the city fathers of Winnipeg reacted to his product, there was a long pregnant pause, during which the audience started laughing, topped off by Madden saying, "They're okay with it now."

I have to warn readers, however, that not everyone is going to like this movie. It is shot in black and white, and the dreaminess of the film, is going to be off-putting to some people. What is refreshing, however, is that Madden doesn't really give a damn whether you like it or not. I gave it five stars.

Ebertfest Report: Days of Peace and Music

The 11th Annual Roger Ebert's Film Festival kicked off last night with a showing of an almost 40-year-old movie, Woodstock. Watching the movie at the historic Virginia Theater is much better than being at Woodstock. There is just as much peace and music, but with plenty of food, toilet facilities and no rain and mud.

Roger is back for this festival, after missing the last two years because of health problems. His face contorted because cancer has eaten away part of his jaw, unable to speak because he lost part of his tongue, he was nevertheless his usual ebullient self, still able to say on his blog earlier this week, "I was born at the center of the universe, and have had good fortune for all of my days." I don't think he was putting on a good front; he really means it.

But for the faithful Ebertfest attenders (I have been taking vacation to attend all of the films for all but the first couple of years,) we do not consider Roger's state of health fortunate. He is the heart and soul of the festival, adding much more than just his name and selection of films, but also his witty introductions and commentary to the movies, and his interviews of directors, actors, and producers. One of the highlights of my life is sitting at the Virginia Theater five years ago after the showing of Werner Herzog's movie, Invincible and listening to Ebert and Herzog talk about movies until two o'clock in the morning with the audience sitting there, no one leaving, absolutely entertained and enchanted.

For the last two years, and now this year, other people have introduced the films, and hosted the conversations, but no one has the knowledge and the wit to inform and entertain like Ebert.

Oh, Woodstock? It still holds up after 40 years. Seeing and listening to Joan Baez sing "Sweet Low, Sweet Chariot," with no accompaniment as 400,000 people listen, without a sound, sends chills up my spine. (I saw Baez later that summer in Chicago, a little more pregnant, standing up on stage barefooted and absolutely stealing the heart of this Amish farmboy.)

I gave the movie four stars. Have to run; another movie to see.

Update: To clarify, I was not at the original Woodstock, although I did see the movie when it first came out in 1970. I don't think I would have enjoyed actually being at Woodstock. I have never been a fan of rain, mud and anarchy. I would have bought my ticket in advance and been outraged that people were coming in over the fence without paying. I would have gone home after it started raining and the site turned into a field of mud. The director's cut, which we saw Wednesday night, was nearly four hours long, at least an hour too long, in my opinion. The story of what happened was told in the original movie. The best musical performances -- Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Crosby Stills and Nash, Arlo Guthrie, Joe Cocker, Santana, Sha Na Na and Jimi Hendrix were already in the movie. The director's cut added a lot of music, but had me fidgeting by 11 o'clock p.m. approached, with no end in sight.

Ebertfest: A Hilarious "Delirious"

Movies like Delirious is why I take a couple of vacation days every year to attend Ebertfest. It is a movie about which I had never heard, and would probably have never seen had it not been shown at the festival. It stars Steve Buscemi, the bug-eyed character actor who became famous as one of the bumbling hit men in Fargo, although he has had many great roles since then.

The movie is very funny, but it is also sweet and poignant. Buscemi plays the aptly-named, "Les," a paparazzi who wishes he were "more." Les is all chutzpah, but has very little to show for his attempted intrusions into the lives of the rich and famous. A good hearted, and good looking homeless kid,(who has to keep denying that he is gay,) Toby, played by Michael Pitt, attaches himself to Les, and then gets a lucky break when a Britney Spears type spots him and picks him up. That sounds like a typical Hollywood formula movie, but it's not.

The movie really is about the need for approval. Les has a crappy apartment, is doing crappy work and has disapproving parents. When he meets Toby, he finally has someone to whom he can feel superior. Toby's lucky break leads Les to homicidal rage.

Tom DiCillo, the director was overcome with emotion when he started talking, after the showing, about the problems he had with the distributors of the movies, and how Roger Ebert helped him out by answering questions and giving him a good review. DiCillo, describing both the movie and his own encounter with Ebert said, "All your life, you sit around waiting for someone to say, 'you're okay.'"

I gave this movie five plus stars, which is darned good for a rating system that only goes to five stars.

Ebertfest Report: "Hamlet ", The Endurance Test

The 10th Annual Ebertfest, opened Wednesday night with Kenneth Branagh's marathon version of Hamlet. Sadly, Roger Ebert, could not make his own film festival this year, having fallen and broken his hip while undergoing rehabilitation from his previous multiple cancer surgeries. (Although Roger's wife, Chaz, who is acting as master of ceremonies this year, said last night that he might still show up for part of it if he can get the okay from his doctors.)

The movie is visually stunning. Part of it is the 70mm format and the large screen at the Virginia Theater, show detail and richness that is lacking in the 35mm and digital formats to which we have grown accustomed. But, I am sure the movie looks good in any format. No unhappy family or troubled kingdom ever looked as good as Hamlet's or Denmark. Movies are supposed to show, as well as tell the story, and the beauty of this version demonstrates one of Shakespeare's most famous quotes, "There is something rotten in Denmark."

The "A" list cast, including even Charlton Heston, who in 1996 was only a few years away from Reaganesque dottering senility, does a fine job. Julie Christie came out of retirement, looking as lovely as ever, to play Hamlet's mother, Gertrude. Other well-known actors who appear include Richard Attenborough, Judi Dench, Gerard Depardieu, John Gilgeud, and Kate Winslet. Surprisingly, even American comics like Jack Lemmon, Billy Crystal and Robin Williams are in the movie and do very creditable jobs.

The problem with the movie is that it is just too friggin' long. We got there at 6:00 p.m. for the 7:00 p.m. showing, and with the customary late start, and the opening remarks, the movie didn't start running until 7:30. We didn't get an intermission until 10:00 p.m. and after a half hour break, we still had 1-1/2 hours to go, so we didn't get out of there until midnight, six hours after we had arrived. That's too long for any movie, no matter how good.

I have seen many Shakespearean plays over the last 50 years, and countless Hamlets, and I have never watched a four-hour version, so I wondered how this one came to be so long. Part of it, of course, is that Shakespeare only wrote the words, so the length of a play can vary greatly depending on how the words are presented, i.e. what comes between the words. Branagh makes this version longer than it would have to be because of how he presents it. The other part is that this version includes all of the fragments in various scripts and folios that are not always included as part of the text. In this case, more is definitely not better. The movie drags for long stretches of time, and it was a relief when there was a chase or fight scene, even though I am not a fan of action movies.

Besides being too long, the movie had too many British actors whose mush-mouthed diction, I just can't understand. Branagh, I could usually make out, and I could understand the Americans with their fake British accents very well, but at least half the time I only had a vague idea of what was being said by the British actors. This is a problem I have experienced at many British movies, not just this one, and I have said before, I wish they would have subtitles for Americans. I used to think it was a problem with the volume, but the sound in this movie was turned way up, in fact, at the beginning The Wife was complaining that it was too loud.

It has become traditional for the festival to open on Wednesday nights with a 70 mm print, the Virginia Theater, where the festival is held being one of the few venues in the country (and the only one in the Midwest) with a projector capable of showing 70mm. Branagh's Hamlet, released in 1996 is the last film shot in 70mm, and it was the only movie made in that format in England in 25 years.

Hollywood and the film industry have always been about money, so it is not surprising that 70mm films are no longer being made and shown, but it is, nevertheless, inexcusable. If bread customers can be given the choice between a $2 loaf of white bread and a $5.50 multi-grain loaf from Great Harvest, why shouldn't movie watchers have the option of seeing large format films on big screens instead of having to watch digital and digitally enhanced versions on television-sized screens? I think there are many people who would be willing to pay higher ticket prices to see well-made movies, but, unfortunately, theaters don't make their money from ticket prices but from selling popcorn, soft drinks and candy. People are not going to buy bigger tubs of popcorn just because the screen image is better.

If I could give a separate rating for acting, format and visuals, that part of this movie would get five stars, while it would get only two for plot and length. Since, by law, I can give only one rating, I have to give it three out of five stars.

Ebertfest Report: 2008 Lineup is announced

Roger Ebert's annual film festival in our town is always a big event, with me. I usually take vacation days Thursday and Friday and devote myself to watching movies and listening to the panelists discuss them. Last year, I missed most of it (but I'm not complaining, the reason was a trip to New York to hear Son Number Two perform at Carnegie Hall.) One of the highlights has always been to listen to Ebert talk with his guests, but his throat cancer kept him from talking last year, and apparently, will again this year. The schedule for this year was announced Friday.

The movie I am most looking forward to seeing is Kenneth Branagh's four-hour version of Hamlet. This is the last movie made in 70 mm format, and the Virginia Theater, where the festival is held is one of the last, if not the last, theater in the country to have a projector that will show 70 mm movies. The difference between seeing a 70 mm movie projected on a wide screen and seeing a DVD version of the movie on your home television is like the difference between seeing the Grand Canyon through a viewfinder and seeing it in person. Still near the top of my movie viewing experiences is seeing the opening scene of the movie Patton, in 70 mm format a few years ago at Ebertfest. It was breathtaking to watch as Patton' head started ascending, in front of the American flag, and then, finally, a life-sized Patton standing there giving his speech. Hamlet has a laundry list of well-known actors, like John Gielgud, Judi Dench, Richard Attenborough and Julie Harris, Charlton Hesston, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, Kate Winslet and Jack Lemmon. It should be great (at least if they give us a bathroom break.)

The director, Ang Lee will be the most famous guest of the festival. Unfortunately, the Lee movie that Ebert will be showing is Hulk, a movie that I would not ordinarily go see. However, since it is Ebertfest and Ang Lee will be there to defend the movie, I intend to go and see what I can learn.

I have less confidence in Ebert's ability to pick good movies since he foisted Bad Santa off on us several years ago. This film was even worse than Bad Santa since the director, Terry Zwigoff was there with the director's cut version which included scenes too bad to be in the theatrical release. I still haven't figured out what the redeeming quality was in that movie, and suspect it was shown only as a way to get Zwigoff and the movie's star, Billy Bob Thornton to show up at the festival.

The only other movie on the schedule I have heard of is The Band's Visit, an Israeli movie which has won a lot of awards. It happens to be playing in our local art theater this weekend, and I would have gone to see it had it not been on the schedule for Ebertfest.

Here is the complete schedule, with the list of guests:

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23


7:00 pm

Hamlet (238 min)


THURSDAY, APRIL 24


1:00 pm

Delirious (107 min)

Tom DiCillo, Director

4:00 pm

Yes (99 min)

Sally Potter, Director*
Christopher Sheppard, Producer*
8:30 pm Canvas (100 min), preceded by
Citizen Cohl: The Untold Story, a short film tribute to Dusty Cohl Joey Pantoliano, Actor
Adam Hammel, Producer
Lucy Engibarian-Hammel, Producer
Joseph Greco, Director
Barry Avrich, Director (Citizen Cohl)

FRIDAY, APRIL 25


11:30 am

Shotgun Stories (92 min)

Jeff Nichols, Director

2:30 pm

Underworld (80 min)

Alloy Orchestra

7:00 pm

The Real Dirt on Farmer John (83 min)

John Peterson, Himself
Taggart Siegel, Director
10:00 pm

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (121 min)

Paul Schrader, Director

SATURDAY, APRIL 26


11:00 am

Hulk (138 min)

Ang Lee, Director

3:00 pm

The Band's Visit (89 min)

Eran Kolirin, Director

7:30 pm

Housekeeping (117 min)

Bill Forsyth, Director
Christine Lahti, Actor

11:00 pm

The Cell (108 min)

Tarsem Singh, Director

SUNDAY, APRIL 27


Noon

Romance & Cigarettes (115 min)

Aida Turturro, Actor
Tricia Brouk, Choreographer

Ebertfest Report: The Weather Man and Moolaade

I saw two excellent movies today. My favorite was The Weather Man which came out in 2005, starring Nicholas Cage and Michael Caine. Cage plays a weather man on a Chicago television station, who is separated from his wife and has trouble making connections with his father, played by Caine, and his children. People blame him when the weather doesn't turn out as predicted and throw food at him when they encounter him in the street. Although he is making $270,000 a year, he is a loser, and nobody beats Cage, with his natural hangdog expression, at playing a loser. Although there is eventually some sort of resolution, it is not a formulaic Hollywood ending.

Everything about this movie is great. The script is one of the best pieces of writing I have seen. It is intelligent, moving without being mawkish, and knows when to mix in humor to lighten the depression. The cinematography is outstanding. The movie looks good; the pictures are pretty; the blocking is interesting. The acting is great. I have already mentioned Cage and Caine who always give good performances, but the lesser characters, particularly, Gemmenne de la Pena, as the overweight daughter and Nicholas Hoult, as the troubled son, also do fine jobs.

Attending the showing and talking afterwards were the writer of the movie, Steve Conrad, and the actor, Gill Bellows, who does an excellent job as the son's counselor who makes a move on the son. Conrad has the kind of quirky intelligence that makes him the kind of person who would be fun to know. A friend, who attended the morning panel discussion, heard Conrad's young son, who looked to be 7 to 9ish years old ask his father why he couldn't see the movie. His father said it was because it was rated "R" meaning that it had words in that he should not hear. "But, Dad, I've heard you say those words," Conrad's son replied. I gave this movie five stars and would say it is one of the best movies I have seen at the festival the last several years.

The second movie today was Moolaade, a movie set in Senegal about female circumcision (a nice word for genital mutilation.) Ebert touted this as the best movie at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. I don't know what else played at the festival, and although it certainly is a good movie, it is a message movie, although one done very well. It is set in a Muslim village and does an excellent job of depicting the color and the deprivations of poor West African villages. Trouble starts wehn Colle, the second of four wives of a powerful man, who has refused to let her daughter be cut, is asked for protection by four other young girls who do not want to be cut. She invokes "moolaade," a word meaning protection, which involves tying a strand of bright yarn across the entrance to her compound. It is believed that anyone who violates the moolaade will have terrible things happen to them, so the girls are safe as long as they stay inside the compound.

The male elders get fed up with the feminist rebellion, and put their foot down, burning all the radios they women have been listening to and pushing Colle's husband to beat her until she lifts the moolaade. She refuses to submit, despite the public beating and as she stands taking the blows, the other women of the village start cheering for her. Eventually, all of the women unite to prevent their daughters from being cut.

The discussion afterward included the lead actress of the movie, Fatoumata Coulibaly, herself a practicing Muslim living in Mali, who has herself been genitally mutilated. She said it was hard for her to do the movie because it includes a rape scene in which her breasts are exposed, and public nudity of any kind is against her religion and her culture. However, she feels so strongly about the need to stop female circumcision that she felt it necessary to do the movie. She explained that the result of the mutilation, which removes the clitoris, supposedly so the woman will not enjoy intercourse, causes sexual intercourse and childbirth to be extremely painful.

Although Moolaade was made in West Africa and is intended to influence West Africans, it has been shown primarily in the West. It has been shown hundreds of times in Europe and North America and only three times in Africa. Some of the West African governments are outlawing the practice, but individual villages still have to be convinced to stop it and that can only open when real women, like the women in the movie, declare that they won't take it anymore. I gave this movie four stars.

I am sorry that I will miss the remaining movies of the festival, particularly, given the health of Roger Ebert, the future of the festival is in doubt. Hopefully, it will go on, even when he is not able to participate, but we were told that this year's festival was about to be cancelled when Ebert was told that the season passes had all been sold in less than a week, he said that he would make it if humanly possible. Some of the movies still coming up that I would have particularly liked to have seen are Fellini's La Dolce Vita, Paul Cox's Man of Flowers, Werner Herzog's Stroszek, Andrew Douglas's Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus and Russ Meyer's Beyond The Valley of the Dolls. Herzog's movies are always interesting and Herzog himself will be here, although without Ebert to interview him, I don't know that he'll talk until 2 o'clock a.m. with a still-packed house hanging on every word like the last time he was here. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, although I've never seen it, is from what I hear, sleazy, but it was written by Roger Ebert, so it would be fun to see what was coming out of his warped mind 35 years ago.

But we fly out of Midway Airport tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock, without regrets for the Big Apple. Hopefully, there will be other Ebertfests in the future; one's progeny debuts at Carnegie Hall only once.

Ebertfest Report: The Start of the Ninth Annual

Last night was the opening of the 9th annual Roger Ebert Overlooked Film Festival. I am a big fan of Roger Ebert and his festival, usually taking vacation days so that I can attend everything. This year, I will only be able to go to the Wednesday night and Thursday movies because of Chris's concert at Carnegie (see below.)

Ebert displayed a lot of courage, or maybe a fanaticism about movies that exceeds the bounds of reasonable people by showing up Wednesday night. He had warned the public in a Chicago Sun-Times column on Tuesday that he's not a pretty boy anymore. He's not; his face has become misshappen because of multiple cancer surgeries on his jaw; he can't speak because of a tracheotomy and he's walking like a man with a lot of health problems. But his spirit and his love for movies and for his hometown are still there. His wife, Chaz, did the speaking for him last night, with Roger standing at the podium beside her, scribbling notes and making her laugh.
I like Ebert's movie picks, although I don't always agree with his evaluations, because although he has informed opinions, he does not exhibit the distain for ordinary people and pedestrian movie tastes that some self-annointed movie experts show.

I did not like the opening movie last night, Gattaca. I have a prejudice against science fiction; I just cannot suspend my disbelief enough to get into it. This movie features an excellent cast, with Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman in lead roles; Gore Vidal in his last movie, and Alan Arkin and Jude Law in supporting roles. It is set in the "not too distant future" (the movie was made in 1997, so maybe about now.) It envisions a world in which through DNA testing, parents can select nothing but good genes for their children.

Ethan Hawke plays Vincent, a young man who wants to go on a space mission to Saturn, but because he was born the old-fashioned way, cannot get into the space program because of genetic deficits in his eyesight, heart and life expectancy. He devises a way to fool the genetic testers using blood and urine samples from Jude Law's character who has the right genes, but a broken down body from an automobile accident.

For such a technologically-advanced society, the gene testers are ridiculously easy to fool. Improbability is piled on top of improbability, until the whole structure topples over into the mandatory Hollywood chase scene. If chase scenes don't hook you, there is also the formulaic love interest with the beautiful Uma Thurman character, who figures out the scam but doesn't say anything.

Ebert apparently likes this movie because it is science fiction based on "ideas," the idea that a "perfect" world might not be so "perfect." That is all well and good but the "ideas" behind this movie neither educate me nor entertain me. The movie did nothing to change my prejudice against science fiction and I rated it two stars.