40th Annual Chicago International Film Festival Journal

CIFF Journal #6: Verdict's In...

The CIFF posted the fest award winners, and it's all a little surprising:

The Gold Hugo went to:
Kontroll (Hungary), directed by Nimród Antal

The Silver Hugo – Special Jury Prize went to:
Turtles Can Fly, directed by Bahman Ghobadi
Day and Night, directed by Simon Staho
Whisky, Directed by Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll

A Gold Plaque is awarded to:
The Harvest Time, directed by Marina Razbezhkina
Nobody Knows, directed by Kore-eda Hirokazu

The Audience Choice Award went to:
Les Choristes, directed by Christophe Barratier

I was particularly enamored with Dealer, an eery, heavily nuanced film from new director Benedek Fliegauf and was thoroughly disappointed to see it got not so much as an Honorable Mention from the festival. Another film that got little notice in the fest but that I was excited about was Imaginary Heroes, a subtle, well written drama from screenwriter/director Dan Harris, who is currently writing the new Superman film.

For the whole list of award winners, hit up the fest's site at http://www.chicagofilmfestival.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/CIFFSite.woa/wa/pages/2004Winners.

Last time we blogged at ya, we promised you a halfway wrapup from our filmmaking friend Fil Rymsza. Well, insightful and verbose as he can be, we decided to instead offer you up a full-fledged fest round-up instead of an easily digestible blogbite. Check out Fil's fest roundup, including some hearty criticism, in our latest issue.

And that's our blog. Thanks for reading and we'll see you next year.

CIFF Journal #5: Primer, Whisky, Shouf Shouf Habibi

As the fest goes on into week two, it gets a little easier to wade through the vast quantities of cinema that populate the CIFF. I'm looking forward to seeing Moolade, the Cannes prize-winning offering from Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene, as well as Dealer, from Hungarian director Benedek Fliegauf. Both films have been selling exceptionally well, particularly Moolade, which is sold out across the board.

The past couple of days were a little slow in the film-going due to women problems on the homefront, so I drowned my sorrows in Whisky (both the liquid and the film). The film version was well-received at Cannes this year for its slow-paced examination of a sock factory owner who persuades his homely assistant to pose as his wife for the sake of a visiting brother. It's a fascinating close-up of a seemingly emotionless man and the woman he takes for granted. The emotions eventually get the best of everyone involved. Whisky takes a while to get where it's going, but it's well worth the ride.

Director Albert ter Heerdt did quite well at the box office in Holland with Shouf Shouf Habibi (Hush Hush Baby), a bland if occassionally funny star vehicle for Morrocan actor Mimoun Oaïssa. The director introduced the film last eve to a packed, mainly European audience. While Oaissa's performance is solid throughout, the film is ridden with crime movie cliches (the bumblin' buddies, the slow-mo criminal walk, etc.) and doesn't leave you with anything too terribly memorable. If rehashed crime comedies are your forte, however, there's reportedly a sequel in the works.

This morning was spent talking to Primer director Shane Carruth, whose Grand Jury Prize winning film put him on the map based mainly on it's no-budget aesthetics ($7k for the initial production, non-paid cast). Carruth was iminently likable, and seemed pretty deadset on continuing to direct pieces he writes, which is a good sign from a guy with so much natural talent. We'll post the full interview this month and stay tuned for passes to the flick when it plays widely in Chicago at the end of the month.

Next up - a halfway mark fest roundup from Chicago area filmmaker and cineaste Fil Rymsza.

CIFF Journal #4: Walken's Punctuation; Molesting Kevin Bacon; Akerman's Absurdity

A wacky weekend at the film fest.

Woke up early on Saturday and sprinted over to the Park Hyatt for an interview with Christopher Walken, who was in town to promote his latest film "Around the Bend," with Michael Caine and Josh Lucas, as part of the festival.

Talking to a few friends about the interview, everbody seemed to think Walken would be way too intimidating to talk to in person. Totally the opposite. He proved to be funny, self-deprecating and completely willing to indulge the roundtable of press with some pretty hilarious discussions about his patented staggered speech pattern.

Seems he never much cared for the idea of traditional punctuation and credits his unusual vocal patterns to a insistence on placing pauses and periods wherever he damn well chooses. I also got him to talk about spending a summer as a teen working as a lion tamer for a circus. It was worth the effort just to see Walken do his scary lion impersonation. I'll have the full interview posted later this month, but ultimately, one of the funniest discussions I've ever had.

The weekend's reviews:

The Woodsman: Kevin Bacon as a convicted, acknowledged child molester struggling with his ongoing desire to have 10-12 year old girls sit on his lap. Gulp. This movie from director Nicole Kassell is well shot and fraught with all kinds of unspeakable tension, with quite a few moments that far exceeded my comfort threshhold. In the past week I've seen feet sawed off, kids murdered, and all manners of supposedly shocking sex acts, but nothing makes me squirm more than sexual abuse of children. It's not like you ever really see it happen, but man do you sure have to spend a while thinking about it.

Highlights in the film include the acting of Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, who has taken on some gutsy roles as of late (Rebecca Miller's Personal Velocity in particular) and master MC Mos Def who plays an justifiably outraged copper. The house was packed for this high-profile Indiewood offering (the film did well at Sundance and is being released by NewMarket) and it seemed to be particularly well-received by the audience. I was a little unimpressed by a somewhat compromising ending, but a solid film nonetheless.

I Like to Work (Mobbing)
As a former fictional workplace advice columnist (don't ask), I have a weird interest in films that take on the oppressive environs of the hyper-corporate workplace and the ways they make us behave. In I Like to Work (Mobbing), Italian director Francesca Comencini explores a post-merger company culture that drives employees to viciously attack one another in the name of efficiency, productivity and self-protection.

Nicoletta Braschi (Roberto Begnini's wife and co-star in Life is Beautiful and Down By Law ) gets pushed around from office to office, position to position, as company managment attempts to get her to quit a job she's had for years. It's a little bit like the stapler guy from Office Space, but nowhere near as lighthearted. A thought-provoking film that ends up being just as much about the plight of single mothers as it does the reprehensible practices of inhumane corporations.

Tomorrow We Move
Belgian director Chantal Akerman tells a whimsical tale of a sloppy, absent-minded erotic novel writer and her piano teaching mother, who constantly seem to be in the middle of moving into or out of their shared living spaces. The film is chockful of Beckett-like circular, absurd dialogue, and Sylvie Testud's writer is played outlandish and physically comical - like some bizarre feminine mix of Charlie Chaplin and Jerry Lewis.

Akerman's art sensibilities and off-kilter comic leanings make for a wild, weird film that left me scratching my head. A little long maybe, but unlike anything I'd quite seen before, which seems a victory in and of itself. When the lights came up for this one, the post-film walkout conversations were louder and more animated than any film in the fest. If that means anything.

Tomorrow: David Gordon Green and horny drunken rabbits...

CIFF Journal #3: Bale's Bony Bod; Harvest Time

Indie geeks everywhere have been talking about Christian Bale's massive physical transformation for Brad Anderson's new flick The Machinist. He lost over sixty pounds (a 1/3 of his body weight) and slept as little as two hours a night to play a malnourished insomniac who is slowly losing his gourd.

Screening at 11:45 at the Landmark last eve, the film was a hard ticket to get, even with a press pass, but boy was it worth it. Andersen's spooky, noir-influenced tale of penitence and insanity is a suitable vehicle for Bale's disturbingly gaunt appearance (he literally looks like a Holocaust victim) and riveting performance. The director appeared briefly afterwards, talking about the film's links to Hitchcock and the literary influence of Dostoevsky. His most interesting comments revolved around how the film's DP Xavi Gimenez used extremely minimal lighting to emphasize the sharp angles of Bale's jutting bones and how the soundtrack included pieces from the world's leading theremin player, flown in just for the occassion.

Overall, a bizarre, richly textured film that should garner Bale some awards nominations. A definite fest highlight.

Before the film, I ran into IFP Chicago head Elizabeth Donius, who had just checked out Tarnation and spoke highly of The Wooden Camera.

Preceding all of that, I caught Harvest Time, from Russian director Vremya Zhatbiy.

The slow-moving film tells a simple tale of a poor farm family with a crippled patriarch and an increasingly unstable mother. The mother shows an obsessive work ethic toward her combine-driving and the father keeps the children entertained with circus tricks and music.

The visual composition was outstanding, with Zhatbiy focusing on some maginificent threads of the rural fabric, but ultimately the film serves more as a sort of cinematic tone poem than a story-telling vehicle.

Tomorrow: Christopher Walken the lion tamer...

CIFF Journal #2: Opening Night: Ebert Spins a Yarn, Liam Plays it Pimp

The fest opened officially last night with all of the fanfare and hullabaloo befitting a 40th anniversary celebration. The opening screening was Bill Condon's Kinsey, starring Liam Neeson, Laura Linney and the always stellar Peter Sarsgaard (as opposed to the sometimes impressive Stellan Skarsgard).

Roger Ebert opened the night by telling tales of early festival special guests like Gloria Swanson, who took a train to Chicago aiming for grand style for her fest appearance. Apparently she claimed the Amtrak experience "made a flyer out of her."

Festival founder Michel Kutza brought his key staff on stage, including programming director Helen Gramates (featured in the latest ChicagoFilm), and talked about the fest judges, which included critical heavyweights of a thoroughly global nature.

"Gods and Monsters" director and scribe Bill Condon then intro'd the film and segued into a warm welcome for marquee guest Liam Neeson. Ebert chimed in with a hearty recommendation for Neeson as an Oscar nominee for his work in the film.

While that struck me as quite a stretch, Neeson did make one hell of an impression. In his short speech, he mentioned that unlike other previous stars, he took a plane to the event. A Lear jet, actually. And he was the only one on it.

Dressed appropriately smooth and ruffled just right, like he had hopped off the cover of Esquire Neeson was incredibly brief in his comments. You kind of got the impression that the fest had been but a hiccup in his Big Willie jet-setting lifestyle. Arrogant maybe, but also kinda cool. No pretensions here - I'm just fucking Liam Neeson - enjoy the film. Later. Priceless.

Kinsey itself was a mixed bag. The film focuses on the life and work of Alfred Kinsey, the sexual behavior researcher responsible for the infamous "Kinsey Report," which radically transformed common public perception about sexual normality for the better. Condon's film is technically fantastic, but frankly a little lacking in the emotional department. The cast is superb. Neeson is as solid as ever and Linney or Sarsgaard are thoroughly on point, but their characters are so hyper-rational that it's difficult to rustle up a connection to them. Ultimately, the obstacle that Condon can't overcome is the subject matter.

Kinsey and his life were simply not particularly likable and his view of sex was thoroughly clinical. Condon addresses this directly in the film (in a scene that reminded me a little of Mike Figgis TimeCode) when he has Kinsey being interviewed by a reporter about whether he thinks they'll ever make a movie of his life. He says he doesn't think it would be much of a film. While "Kinsey" is vastly superior to most megaplex fare, he may have been partially right.

Tonight the real fun begins. Go out there and see some films.

P.S. We're giving away 50 tix to tomorrow night's screening of locally shot Boricua. Want to check it out? Email me.

Download a festival schedule.

CIFF Journal #1: The Preparatory Flurry; Fest Kicks Off Thursday Night

With less than two days to go until the opening of the Chicago International Film Festival, the pace is quickening. The schedule of screenings, interviews, writing and events has even the most hardened of film writers rubbing their bleary ojos and slurring their words. Perhaps the biggest movie-going maniac of the bunch, local scribe Peter Sobczynksi, mentioned to me at a recent "Saw" viewing (a low-budget gorefest not playing at the fest) that his eyeballs were beginning to bleed. No oozing yet for me, but from the previews I've caught and some of the films I've seen before, this is shaping up to be one hell of a fest.

Some highlights from the preview rush:

Undertow - The latest film from David Gordon Green (George Washington, All the Real Girls) has been by far the best of the screenings I've attended so far. Green's been catching some critical flack from fans of his earlier work seeking the same slow-cooking, dialogue-driven vision. Unlike his other work, Undertow centers on a fairly traditional action-oriented Southern Gothic story-line, but Green manages to infuse the ongoing chase with a sense of playful experimentation.

Perhaps most impressive is the performance of Jamie Bell (aka Billy Elliott), whose struggling, angry adolescent farm boy proves the film's most compelling character. He's joined by Dermot Mulroney and Josh Lucas, who also shows up in Around the Bend at the fest this year. Ultimately, Undertow works because of a hundred memorable details, and Green's unwavering attention to a colorful, realistic Southern milieu. Check out the preview for Undertow.

Kontroll - CIFF Publicity director Andrew Rogers thinks this film's going to go over particularly well with audiences. My enthusiasm didn't match his, but I do think that for sheer entertainment value, Kontroll's a winner. The film centers on a group of inspectors on the Hungarian subway system whose day to day existence consists of checking for passes from customers and making sure that subway regulations are being followed. The Hungarian system is apparently a bit more challenging environment than, say, the Metra (though, if you've ever taken it to Ravinia with a bunch of whiskey-soaked Willie Nelson fans, you might not agree), and the group fights with pranksters, pimps, jumpers and black-cloaked killer. Filmed entirely within the Hungarian subway system, Kontroll presents an appropriately dark, industrial, underground vision with the pre-requisite pulsing electronic soundtrack. Director Nimród Antal leans a little heavy on cliches (slow-mo "buddies walking" shots) but the break-neck pace of the film (and its explanation of "rail-running") kept me interested throughout.

Tarnation - The infamous $218 doc from first-time filmmaker Jonathan Caouette, who used consumer-grade iMovie to put the film together, has been the subject of frequent mention at ChicagoFilm. Marrying years of home video, pop culture sensibility and a powerful soundtrack with a massively dysfunctional family story, it's a radical departure from the documentary form that must be seen. The film garnered huge critical kudos at Cannes and also open October 15th at the Music Box. Check out our interview with Caouette from earlier this year.

Primer - The last time I caught this film was in an abandoned air hangar at the Waterfront Film Festival in Saugatuck, Michigan. The sound was a little off, which was a bit disorienting, but the Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner still came off a well-conceived, well-shot, thoroughly challenging film. Shot for "the price of a used car" by first-time director Shane Carruth, Primer tells the story of a couple of young entrepreneurial engineers using principles of physics to tackle time travel. Like Memento or Donnie Darko, the disjunctive narrative is the film's strength, and Carruth manages to keep the audience confused but engaged throughout. It's certainly not an easy film to watch, but well worth the patience it requires.

Lots more to talk about, but for now, don't forget to check out our interview with Programmming Director Helen Gramates at ChicagoFilm.com and to scope the full schedule at the CIFF. Cheers!