Visual Arts » Theatre Intangible

The Emerging Genre of Cinema Anima

Jul 132010

I recently began writing film articles for the film podcast/blog The Film Talk. From time to time, I’ll cross post one of those articles here. The following article is about the experimental genre of filmmaking I call Cinema Anima.

In the 90′s and 00′s, a group of international directors began to shape a new genre of cinema . . . unaware of each other or the art form they were fumbling towards. They were filmmakers from cinematically-marginalized countries such as Vietnam, Hungary, South Korea, Iran, Taiwan, Mexico, and Thailand. They admired the plot-light, mood-heavy cinema of directors such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Michelangelo Antonioni, Eric Rohmer, Carl Theodor Dreyer, and Robert Bresson. Their films were in turn ethereal, tangential, lazily-paced, contemplative, spiritual. The camera would often loiter over a seemingly-insignificant detail — a ball of smoke, blowing leaves, or a reflection in a pool. The works can leave us lost, puzzled, and unsure of the overall meaning. But like a great piece of classical music, the beauty lies not in a tightly-plotted story, but in rhythm, color, and composition. The category is so hard to rope that there is no agreed-upon genre name and not much scholarly study. Perhaps Gary Tooze in his writings on DVDBeaver in the early 00′s was the first to draw attention to the commonalities of the films. Unspoken Cinema casts the net a bit wider than I do under the moniker Contemporary Contemplative Cinema. Through an excellent Unspoken Cinema article by Harry Tuttle (go read it), I learned critic Matthew Flanagan names this type of work the “Aesthetics of Slow.” Check out Matthew’s original article on the blog 16-9. All the directors I’m discussing would certainly fall under the category of Contemporary Contemplative Cinema (CCC), but I would narrow the net by adding this distinction: the filmmakers discussed here share a preoccupation with life in the minute details, a nostalgia for natural processes. We see this in the extreme closeups of sewing needles, moles, frogs, and more in Gyorgy Palfi’s Hukkle; tiny cars driving down vast blowing landscapes in Abbass Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us; closeups of vegetables being sliced, diced, and prepared in Tran Anh Hung’s Vertical Ray of the Sun; and characters/spaces as a single organism in the works of Hou Hsiao Hsien. For the purpose of this article, I will refer to the films by coining a placeholder phrase I hope evokes life, ineffability, and vitality: Cinema Anima.

: Weeds under water in Solaris, courtesy of DearCinema.com

E024 Writing Home 06/20/2010

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Jun 202010

"French soldier in World War I preparing his correspondence " (Soissons. Aisne. France. 1917). Courtesy of http://www.worldwaronecolorphotos.com

For podcast 24, we bring you Writing Home, a solo set I performed live in front of an audience at Scarritt Bennett Center Gallery F in Nashville on May 29th, 2010. My set was part of an art installation called Writing Home, featuring hand-written responses to the prompt, “Write a letter home.” (Find out more at our previous post here.)

For my set, I continued experimenting with my Scoop & Loop project (see podcast #8 Pit of Roar). I recorded samples of the other musicians playing that night, sounds of nature, and short interviews with audience members answering the question, “What do you miss about home?” The result is a pretty decent start to a live project I want to continue perfecting. For the next iteration, I’d like to break up repetitive word samples by adding in pauses, take unmusical phrases and build melodies out of them, and make things generally flow better.

I did the live mixing and editing. Writing Home features recorded samples of Gallery F. curator Sabine Schlunk, Maya Moore, Charlie Rauh, Ezzy Harrold, The Human Snowglobe JJ Jones, Brandon Donahue, Mike Hiegemann, Matt Christy, and Robert G. White Esq. Thanks to Sabine Schlunk for inviting me to play, to the other performers, and to the very patient audience.

Before the show, hear a never-before-re-aired Theatre Intangible promo made during the WRVU-era improv Blind Strings, an episode made entirely with de-tuned string instruments. Look for the full episode in the near future.

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Aaron Hoke Doenges, the Theatre Intangible Interview

Concerts, Visual Arts No Responses »

May 172010

This is part two of a two-part article. Part one covered the Chihuly art exhibition in Nashville.

On Friday, May 21st at 6pm, Aaron Hoke Doenges will perform his sound installation “SeaSounds and Other Forms” at the Frist in response to the glass sculptures of Dale Chihuly. There will be a second performance at 7pm. Aaron is the founder and co-director of SoundCrawl: Nashville, an artist in residence at the Downtown Presbyterian Church, and a graduate in Music Composition at Belmont University. You can listen to some of his fascinating compositions and sign up for his mailing here. Last year’s premiere SoundCrawl event at the downtown ArtCrawl was an ingenious method to showcase new experimental works. Attendees visit various galleries to sample alternating sound art pieces, curated by Aaron and Kyle Baker.

In the Theatre Intangible interview, I talk with Aaron about the Chihuly performance, SoundCrawl: Nashville 2010, and the state of music in Music City.

T: How did the Chihuly concert come about?

A: The Chihuly show came by invitation from the Frist. I had originally contacted them as a potential host for SoundCrawl:Nashville last year and, though they weren’t able to host that event, they were interested in having something at some point. Having heard some of my work, they felt that it would coincide well with the Chihuly exhibit because of the ambient nature of the audio I use and produce.

T: The concert is described as a sound installation and performance. Can you elaborate?

A: My main interest is primarily sound installation (though I am still looking for my first extended public installation). Unfortunately the major installation portion of this show probably won’t work out. I was working with a local artist to create a sculptural backdrop made out of scrap metal and speakers to incorporate into the show. We just ran out of time for this one, though we are hoping to work on something for one of the galleries in town for sometime in the future (I love the cross pollination between the sonic and visual arts). I’m still trying to figure out an alternative. The majority of my creative work comes in the studio, so there really isn’t much that is technically performance-oriented. It’s mostly monitoring the mix to make it appropriate for the space, throwing in a few effects here and there, and maybe panning things for a specific speaker set-up. Other shows I have done have leaned a little more heavily on the performance side of things because they included live acoustic instruments as well as electronics.

T: Will the Chihuly sculptures around you inform your piece in its composition or performance? How so?

A: A while ago Chihuly started a project titled “Sea Forms” – a series of pieces that were reminiscent of under-water landscapes that were installed in various locations. They are very organic pieces – incredibly vibrant and layered. This was my first introduction to Chihuly (several years ago in Columbus, Ohio) and has been the main informant in my new piece “SeaSounds” that will be premiered Friday. The Sea Forms projects help highlight the beauty of parts of this world I rarely get to see – I hope to be able to do that with sound. It seems especially important to me now in light of the oil spill in the Gulf – we can often seem so removed from such things, and I want to make it a little more tangible. I think that’s what art should do – highlight things in our every day worlds in a way that helps us see them.

T: There is a great range in your work, and you seem to enjoy experimenting with form. In your piece “Lude: To War,” you take a narrative track of an Iraqi war veteran and provide a soundtrack to it made entirely with the narrative itself (Do I hear a Casio SK1?). In “The Suicide of Freddie Mac,” you tell a story with carefully-arranged non-vocal field recordings. A piece like “Divergence” finds room for melody, structure, and composition. But I get the sense that even your most experimental pieces are carefully structured and composed. Your thoughts on this?

A: Good ear! I tend to think of myself more as “composer” than anything – I’ve been trained classically in both piano and composition which gives me a lot to draw from. Even in contemporary experimental work, where the idea of “form” is often rejected or based on alternative foundations, there is a deep history of theoretical ideas to pull from. Range, texture, volume, rhythm, line, counterpoint, theme, etc. The great thing about digital work is that we get to add things to it – space (both size of space and movement within that space) is, for the first time, a function of sound as we play with speaker placement, surround sound, reverb manipulation, etc.

“Lude: To War” is one of my earliest pieces that I have posted and probably ignores most of the traditional ideas of music in favor of the more conceptual ideas I was using with at the time. (It comes in the later part of a period of my work that I lovingly refer to as the “John Cage Phase” because of a heavy focus on concept more than sound.) The story that Zach recorded lends the entire piece its form. It seemed to have three distinctive parts of the plot, each one treated metaphorically with the background audio. In “Operation,” the audio in the background works to “prepare” for the upcoming movements by a sort of gathering. The highlighted terms and phrases, and especially the word “war”, repeat successively until it’s just utter chaos at the end of the movement. In “Strategy,” the word “war” makes this sort of “Left, Left, Left Right Left” form, mimicking the trudging of the soldiers in Zach’s story – movement without engagement. The final movement, “Engagement,” uses the word “war” in a way that imitates the patterns of machine guns and bombs, as if the word war were the weapon itself. Toward the end of the movement it all fades away, as does Zach’s story, to focus on one of the really intense experiences he faced on the front line…it sort of drifts into his mind.

“Freddie Mac” and “Divergence” are much more based in traditional forms and theories than “Lude,” and it highlights my growth as a composer over the years. Moving from purely conceptual ideas, like those in “Lude,” to a combination of concept and craft (hopefully somewhat improved craft!) allows me to tell stories and create pieces that, even if they are pretty intense, are less daunting to listen to. “Divergence” is actually a piece composed for vibraphones and electronics – one of the rare occasions when I actually use notes. It’s probably one of the pieces in my portfolio that people are easily ready to label “music”, though the form on that one kind of melts away at the end.

I don’t think that makes “Lude” unimportant. I think the intensity of Zach’s autobiography needed an equally intense treatment and I didn’t want to take away from it with pretty sounds. I think it gets the point across pretty well, which has been evidenced by several responses I have gotten from a few veterans and family members of those currently serving. My only wish is that there were some way to get the piece out there to more people, but I don’t think many would be willing to listen all the way through. I also don’t think that makes my current work any less experimental – it just gives the experiment a better chance at succeeding. The process is often “hey I wonder what THIS button will do to this sample!?…huh, that’s interesting. Let’s put it here and see what happens,” and then I respond to it. It’s a process of trial, failure, success and response. If I feel the experiment fails, I try to turn it a different direction and see what happens. Fortunately I have an undo button if it just falls on its face and fails miserably!

T: Dale Chihuly’s glass sculptures feel ethereal, frozen in time; yet each piece takes many hours of careful design and painstaking glasswork, involving whole teams of specialists. Do you identify with Chihuly’s method of working? How so?

A: The many hours I definitely identify with! I am slow and methodical in my work (and am often slowed down even further by my nearly four year old processor trying to run too many effects). I do have a dedicated studio space that I spend most of my writing time in, but working on a laptop lets me go just about anywhere. It’s both a blessing and a curse. Sometimes (like those times getting ready for a show) it can become consuming. I also identify with his influence from the natural world. I am an avid outdoorsmen, and that is reflected by the natural sounds used as the foundation of many of my pieces (I also like socio-political influences as heard in Freddie Mac and a few others). That’s probably the extent of my ability to relate, though. I’m not even sure how having a team of specialists would help create my work, though I know there are composers who do have teams of people for various reasons. Maybe I’m just a control freak.

T: You are the founder and co-director of SoundCrawl:Nashville, which premiered in October at the downtown Arcade Artcrawl. What really worked about last year’s SoundCrawl, and what would you like to do differently this year?

A: SC:N got a lot of great attention from both the local community and the global sound-art community last year. Hearing the responses from the the people I met made it a really fun event to be a part of. I think Nashville, being an industry town, was and is thirsty to hear something new and, fortunately, sound-artists are always looking for a place to share their work. It’s a genre that’s really coming into it’s own in both the music and art worlds and I’m excited to see and be a part of that. Those responses and the submissions all worked really well for us – we were overwhelmed with over 300 contributions from around the world. The spaces really worked well for us, too – the two rooms at Downtown Presbyterian Church were the most popular and the gallery’s were anxious to try something new and really worked with us to get some good installations.

Because of budget constraints our gear list kind of struggled and, due to some miscommunication, I think we irritated some of our hosts with the size of most of our PA systems (we went with what we could get and some of them were pretty large and overwhelmed the space). We also didn’t anticipate the volume of the crowd. One of our participants had come down from Chicago for the event and someone saw him literally on the ground with his ear to the speaker because he couldn’t hear at one point. So the sound stations will change this year – probably to include headphones instead of speakers. It’s unfortunate because I like the communal listening experience of such works but it’s not really feasible in the gallery settings and headphones will block out some of the noise from the crowd. We will still have the church spaces, which is good. We have a small entry fee this year (a measly 5 bucks) to help us with costs so we will have some better control over the gear we use. We’re also anticipating an installation space with video components.

T: How can local composers and musicians get involved with this year’s SoundCrawl?

A: Our call for works is at http://soundcrawlnashville.com/call.html and the submission form is all online this year at http://soundcrawlnashville.com/submit.html. Everything is paperless! Spread the word, I would love to get a load of local submissions this year – we just didn’t get the word out to the community soon enough last time. I know there are engineers and tinkerers out there who have a little sonic fun in their downtime (we’ve received a few already)… We may also need some volunteers at some point. They can email us at crawl@soundcrawlnashville.com if they’re interested in helping out.

T: What are you looking for in submissions to the SoundCrawl?

A: Kyle (Baker, my co-director) and I tend to lean more towards the experimental/sound-art stuff than things that are more traditionally based, even if they are electronic in nature. We received some really great electronic music pieces last year but, even though they were really good works, we didn’t end up selecting them for the event. Other than that it really depends on the pool of submissions that we get. We listen to everything and try to group pieces in ways that will make for an interesting evening.

T: What do you like about the local music scene? What puts you off about it?

A: I love the talent that is around Nashville. I’ve been to some pretty amazing shows and have been surprised to see the people who were playing back-up! There are a load of musician’s musicians here and it raises the level quite a bit.

I tend to avoid the things that put me off musically – mostly it’s the people who are out there “networking” for the sake of “networking.” I haven’t run into too many of them, fortunately, but the times that I have I felt like it lacks respect for human dignity and genuinity (is that even a word?). I don’t have the patience for it. You’ll have that in any industry or town, though. I think it’s a plague of my generation.

T: What local composers, musicians, and sound artists really excite you right now?

A: Dave Madeira is probably one of my favorite local composers. His command of the percussion section is strong, and his choral work is just brilliant. We’ve talked a couple of times about the possibility of working together on some sort of choral/electronics piece, which would be sweet. I’ve honestly been listening mostly to americana artists recently – Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet (I love their eclectic, cross-cultural melodies and progressive harmonies), Kane Welch Kaplin (for their rhythm and stories), and a couple others (sometimes I wonder if I’m some sort of Electro-folk artist. Folk-a-tronic?). Most of the electronic stuff I’ve been listening to lately is from the 90′s, and I’m still really personally studying some of our SoundCrawl submissions from last year.

T: Thanks for your time!

This is part two of a two part article. Miss part one? Check it out here.

Frozen in Time: Chihuly in Nashville

Concerts, Off Topic, Visual Arts No Responses »

May 172010

A few years ago, I helped my parents move out of my boyhood home. The attic was our go-to destination for everything we no longer needed but for some reason wanted to keep — outgrown Masters of the Universe toys, mysterious old files of which no one knew the contents, well-stashed 70′s Playboys, and everything in between. While in the attic sorting through what should be moved and what should be thrown away, I found a hand-colored drawing of what I wanted to be when I grew up. The note was signed, “Tony age 7.” The predictable occupations were there: astronaut, fireman, artist, lion tamer. Also present was a less familiar job.

I wanted to be a glass-blower.

I remember being fascinated by glass-blowers at parks and fairs who would make unicorns and fairies while we watched. I couldn’t put it into words at the time, but there was something poetic about an art form that wrestled with the extra dimension of time. Unlike other sculpting mediums, you only have seconds to manipulate glass before you have to dip it back into the flame. Certain techniques will ruin the piece if not performed perfectly on the first attempt. Glass-makers have to finesse time just like they finesse pressure, precision, and concept. Just last year, I finally got to take a one-on-one glass-making course with Nashville artist Lewis Cage; and my appreciation grew with my frustration of the medium’s difficulty. (If you’re even mildly interested, I highly recommend you take a class with him.)

If there were a living superstar in glass art, it would be Dale Chihuly, famous for his delicate, flowing, often-abstract glass forms. He even lost an eye to glass — more specifically the glass windshield of his car in a head-on collision.

Chihuly’s work is the subject of a staggering cross-exhibition spanning the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, The Nashville Symphony Orchestra, and Cheekwood. I have never been more excited about an art event in Nashville. I’ve only seen one piece of Chihuly’s work in real life — that being the enormous FIORI DI COMO hanging in the lobby of the Bellagio, Las Vegas. I was a teenager at the time and had no idea who Chihuly was; but I vividly remember being spellbound, unable to take my eyes off the ceiling.

Works of this caliber rarely come to Nashville, and you really need to go out of your way to see these breathtaking pieces.

Nashville sound artist Aaron Hoke Doenges will be performing an original work in response to Chihuly’s work Friday, May 21st at 6pm and again at 7pm. I interview Aaron about the Chihuly performance, his SoundCrawl: Nashville project, and the state of music in Music City in the second half of this article.

Nashville Film Festival – Days 5-8

Visual Arts 1 Response »

Apr 242010

I thought I could keep writing these blog entries nightly, but the Nashville Film Festival proved too formidable an opponent. My daily schedule consisted of: waking up and heading to work at 8am, taking an extended lunch break to engineer The Film Talk podcast at noon, heading back to work until 5, seeing 2 or 3 films at NaFF, sleeping around 1am, and doing it all again the next day. But now it’s Saturday, and I’ve had a full night’s sleep. Here are the festival highlights for days 5 through 8. (Click these links for days 1 – 2, 3, and 4.)

MONDAY – APRIL 19TH

Steve James, co-director of Hoop Dreams and director of Stevie (one of my favorite films of all time), appeared on Monday’s The Film Talk. I was able to keep my composure without geeking out too much. We talked a bit about both being graduates of Southern Illinois University. On the show, James talked about his new film No Crossover: Allen Iverson on Trial.

As luck would have it, No Crossover was my day’s first screening. The documentary explored James and Iverson’s hometown of Hampton, Virginia and it’s reaction to the court case which put the future NBA star behind bars. The sentiments fell largely along racial lines in the town where slave ships first landed on American soil. James reflected on his own possible bias, recalling his own high school basketball days when he fraternized with black players on the court but never invited them into his home. The film is a part of a 30 film series ESPN sponsored to celebrate it’s 30th anniversary. Leave it to James to take an assignment that was supposed to be about profiling a sports icon and turn it into a treatise on bias and identity. 4.5 out of 5.

The Hong Kong action/crime spectacle Bad Blood reminded me again why NaFF is no TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival). Here we have all the ingredients that scream “must-see.” IMDB’s synopsis states: “When the boss of a ruling Hong Kong triad is arrested and executed in China for counterfeiting money, mayhem ensues as the mob’s leading contenders circle the throne.” Sadly, the enthusiasm disappears when the projector rolls. I found the narrative confusing, the direction clunky, and the entire affair lacking. It’s a third-tier Hong Kong crime epic, and that’s what puts a sour taste in my mouth about NaFF. The festival relies too strongly on submissions. During the selection process, NaFF might have taken this as an opportunity: “Bad Blood is adequate, but can we do better?” Why not try for the newest Johnnie To film, for instance? (It’s worth noting that the newest Johnnie To picture Fuk Sau stars Sylvie Testud, the enigmatic star of NaFF highlight Lourdes.) Instead, we get brain-dead schedule filler. 2 out of 5.

TUESDAY – APRIL 20TH

Tuesday’s The Film Talk featured Gaia helmsman Jason Lehel and Belcourt Theatre programming guru Toby Leonard. During his talk on the show and our conversation at Boscos at the end of the evening, Jason proved himself both thoughtful and sensitive. He certainly has a keen eye for color, composition and movement, which we’ll get back to in a moment.

My first film of the evening was the Peruvian film Undertow (Contracorriente), which won the audience award for World Cinema Dramatic at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. I usually walk into audience-award winning films with some suspicion: As it happens no film I’ve ever voted for won any festival’s audience award. More often than not, the films that win are just slightly better than ok: crowd pleasers with a positive message than inexplicably make fest-goers mark 5′s on their cards. IMDB describes Undertow as, “An unusual ghost story set on the Peruvian seaside; a married fisherman struggles to reconcile his devotion to his male lover within his town’s rigid traditions.” That pretty much says it all, although “ghost story” makes it sound scary or even mildly haunting. Rather, the male lover exists only in the head of the fisherman after he suddenly disappears in the first quarter of the film. Undertow reaffirmed my suspicions of the audience award, and I give it a decent 3 out of 5

It was 8:15 on Tuesday night and Gaia was already 30 minutes late for it’s 7:45 show time. The projectionist was having problems with the HD elements, problems which seemed to have cursed Gaia’s first 5 screenings. However, when the film finally began, all bad vibes went away. Photographed on two Red cameras, Gaia is a stunningly-shot meditation on sexual abuse, marginalized cultures, and the fearlessness one acquires when there’s nothing left to lose. Director Jason Lehel offers this synopsis: “A group of Native Americans discover a young woman, left for dead, in the Arizona desert and take her to their reservation. Through her relationship with American Natives she manages to re-connect with her own innocence, but is forced to make a choice between being reborn out of the chaos of her past or dying in the grips of her darkness.” Having gone through some of the tribes’ rituals himself, Jason was able to gain rare access to highly-protective Native American communities in Southern Arizona. He captured never-before-seen tribal rituals and a disturbing ritual slaughter of a hog that would feed the entire real-life tribe. There is a poetry in Jason’s camera-work that is reminiscent of Terrence Malick and Andrei Tarkovsky. He gleans performances out of his mostly non professional cast that rivals the direction of Robert Bresson and Roberto Rossellini. Newcomer Emily Lape is absolutely explosive in her first feature performance. She’ll be a star if there is any justice in the world. My only real quibble (and it is a minor one) is that Jason uses too many flashbacks of Emily’s abuse-laden childhood. The point would have been much more effective if 90 percent of the flashback scenes were taken out. Even still, Gaia is a near-masterpiece that marks the arrival of its director and lead actress. 4.7 out of 5.

Because Gaia ended late and because the director invited us out for drinks after the screening, I missed Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl. I hear it’s everything I had hoped Bad Blood to be, and in spades. I’ll try to secure a screener copy.

WEDNESDAY – APRIL 21ST

Wednesday 5ish marked my toughest decision: Films Without Borders or Dogtooth? The latter was being praised as a festival highlight and a delightfully bent drama. The former was a collection of experimental shorts, featuring a new film by Syndromes and a Century director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. I thought long and hard about it (and changed my mind several times) and in the end chose the experimental shorts collection curated by the Belcourt’s Jason Shawhan. The program was a mixed bag of good, bad, and ugly. After seeing the Films Without Borders collection for a few years now, I’m beginning to feel that Jason tends to prefer statement-making experimental shorts that work within a narrative structure. I myself lean towards tone poems in the vein of Stan Brakhage or Len Lye. Musical symphonies don’t have to mean anything to be deep and beautiful; why must films? I would tell you the names of the standouts, but NaFF took the schedule off their website. The best film placed a camera inside a person’s mouth facing outward as the person ate, smoked, and kissed. The effect produced surprisingly beautiful images. Another highlight was a Friends-style sitcom scene that kept rewinding and playing again, with each viewing a generational loss in quality and a deja-vu bewilderment on the faces of the actors. Quite enjoyable. Overall, 3 out of 5.

An Italian drama starring Tilda Swinton about the love lives of the bourgeoisie offspring of a wealthy textile manufacturer, I Am Love (Lo Sono L’Amore) was the surest, most elegantly composed, most masterful film I saw at NaFF. I’m still thinking about the densely layered plot, involving class, sexual orientation, ethnicity, power, and the forbidden. 5 out of 5.

Hitoshi Matsumoto’s Big Man Japan was the outrageously-entertaining-if-bum-fuddling monster romp of NaFF 2008. I was a little worried that his new film Symbol would succeed and fail in the same ways BMJ did — that being, an ending that doesn’t live up to it’s innovative premise. Worry not. Symbol is certainly innovative and at times bum-fuddling, but it satisfies; and the ending is thoughtful, touching, and prescient. The film juxtaposes the stories of a Mexican luchador who never takes his mask off and a man (played by the director) trapped in a white room. You’ll wonder what the two stories have to do with each other until a slow-wound punchline intersects them near the end of the film. The man in the white room has to touch levers in the shape of . . . erm . . . cherub penises and testicles . . . in order to activate various deployments, including toothbrushes, sushi, cherub farts, momentary-on doors, etc. The plot could very well be the level design for a video game. I was constantly reminded of Valve’s masterpiece Portal and half-expected a companion cube to drop in. The man subsequently reaches further levels until he faces. . . well, I won’t spoil it for you. Is the cake a lie? You’ll have to watch and see for yourself. 4.5 out of 5.

THURSDAY – APRIL 22ND

Starring John C. Riley, Johah Hill, and Marisa Tomei, the Duplas brothers’ Cyrus was by far the comedy highlight of NaFF. Of course, it was the only comedy I saw at NaFF. IMDB plots it as thus: “A down on his luck divorcée finally meets the woman of his dreams, only to discover she has another man in her life – her son. Before long, the two are locked in a battle of wits for the woman they both love-and it appears only one man can be left standing when it’s over.” The film was quite hilarious, but things resolved a little too easily at the end. 3.8 out of 5.

So there you have it, the 2010 Nashville Film Festival. If you want to read more of my reviews, see my coverage for days 1 – 2, 3, and 4 and check out the Nashville Scene’s NaFF guide. Now back to your regularly-scheduled experimental music blog.

Nashville Film Festival – Day 4

Visual Arts 2 Responses »

Apr 182010

Just when we thought we had a well-oiled machine, things broke down today on the Film Talk Live from the Nashville Film Festival. First, our guest Mario Van Peebles was a no-show. Next, somehow the “continuous” button on my cd player got pressed. After playing the intro music, the first clip began to play over Jett talking. There was a honking car horn and a squeaking dolly playing in the background of some sections. And last but not least, the guy behind the mixer blurted out, “That wasn’t her” when our guest said a certain actress played a certain part in a certain NaFF movie. That guy was me. What can I say? My mom used to call me, “Mr. Correct-All.” I can’t help myself.

My first film of the day may very well be my favorite thus far: Lourdes, a story about a wheelchair-bound woman making a pilgrimage to Lourdes in the Pyrenees Mountains. The filmmakers take no religious position here but simply let the characters speak for themselves. When something possibly-miraculous happens, things get very interesting. Lourdes is an unsentimental film about desire and limitations, hope and reality. 5 out of 5.

The Sound of Insects: Record of a Mummy. I won’t upstage my review in the Nashville Scene but instead will direct your attention to it. 5 out of 5.

The Documentary Showcase: I came in late and had to leave early, so I can’t really review this entire show. Of what I did see, I enjoyed most the film about the Cambodian boy who was poisoned by arsenic in the well water (as was the rest of the village).

Cleanflix: This was on my card to see, but exhaustion got the better of me, and I had to skip it. Alas.

We’ll see you tomorrow when our guest on the Film Talk is none other than the great Steve James who produced two of my favorite documentaries of all time: Hoop Dreams and Stevie. At the fest, I’ll be watching James’ No Crossoever: Allen Iverson on Trial and the Hong Kong crime drama Bad Blood.