Sunday, June 12, 2005
Atlanta Film Festival
While the big events on the town this weekend were "Music Midtown" and the "VIBEfest"... the event that I ended up taking in was the "Atlanta Film Festival". Although I did want to see Tom Petty... I hear the thing was a wash out and even he wasn't particularly thrilled.
Granted, my interest in films (particularly small independent releases) drove me, but let's not discount the very important reason being shelter from the raindrops while remnants of Tropical Depression Arlene spewed about metro Atlanta in a very teasing and menacing way.
My friend Sean also made the trek down from Manhattan to the Dirty South (why do they call it that? It doesn’t appear very dirty… at least not by my house, of course we pay for sanitation service there… maybe they mean a different type of dirty… like naughty dirty… oh those kids). Sean produces films himself… or just started… he worked on a few larger features in random capacity and has been since working on his own feature-length written & directed by a fellow graduate at Columbia.
As with any film festival, there are many selections, but I have little knowledge of the movies… that makes Sean's attendance key… that and he prevented me from loudly and badly belting out 90’s love songs while driving down 85… it really is a terrible disease that I have and must be stopped.
The first night selection was “Hustle & Flow”, a comedy of sorts focusing on a small-time Memphis pimp who between lecturing his “hoe” about life and “hustling” up business wanted to get into the music business because another local by the name of Skinny Bones (played by Ludicrus) had made it. The pimp, cleverly named Djay, get it… because he has sudden aspirations to be a… nevermind… I guess it was obvious enough that I could have spared you the crayon illustration next to it!
Aside from the packed house at Georgia State’s Rialto Theater for opening night, the afterparty that included free Stella Artois beer and a very worthwhile Q&A session with the director/writer Craig Brewer and one of the actresses in the film, Elise Neal, the film was good as well.
A few highlights… Djay runs into an old junior high school buddy, who has obviously taken a different path in life than Djay… but ironically, just as burnt out and bored with his gig of doing sound for local churches, etc. Djay and his band of hoes abandon the streets of Memphis one night and knock on his former friend’s door to try to talk him into helping him lay down some rap tracks just as Mr. conservative and his wife are saying grace before dinner. As Djay tries to talk Mr. conservative into this wild and crazy idea, conservative’s equally conservative missus is left in the living room to make small talk with the two hoes. All does not go well in the conversation but it provides comedy!
Another fine highlight occurs when Djay finally gets the “hook” to the song… and has a completed track. Lately, hooks have been laid down as female vocals in R&B fashion, so they get one of the hoes… a pregnant one at that… to belt out a line that is laid down. In a moment of self-importance and empowerment, the hoe performs soulfully and solidly… the end result is played and even the theater of 1500 is swaying to the "flow", ironically enough we are all swaying to a song called, “Pimp that Trick” with equally degrading and honest lyrics.
The final highlight comes after Djay spends an evening hustling up Skinny Bones – Ludicrus remember… (who is in town for a friend’s birthday or something) to listen to his song. Djay goes to the restroom late late late into the evening to find Skinny Bones passed out in front of a stall. As he is coming to Skinny’s aid, he notices that the demo tape he offered up to Skinny is laying in the unflushed toilet. Djay fishes the cassette out of the "soiled" water, then takes his aggressions out gangsta-style on Skinny, who pulls a gun, Djay disarms him, but then one of Skinny’s BOYZ shows up and shots are fired.
The thing about this film, is that people will actually have a pretty good shot of seeing it… it was picked up at Sundance (the same way Napoleon Dynamite was last year) for a tidy $9million by MTV.
Saturday night’s film was a Steve Buscemi directed flick called “Lonesome Jim” with Casey Affleck and the hot, pouty lipped Liv Tyler starring. Affleck plays a depressed and avid reader of Hemingway who walks dogs in NYC but has run out of money so he must return home to a small town in Indiana… no not the John Mellencamp small town… another one. His mother, father and 30 year old divorced father of two brother run a local factory and have equally as detached lives. The sarcastic and biting look at Jim (Affleck) dealing with his return home, his family being torn by their oldest son’s suicide/accident, their mother’s arrest for alledgedly using the family business to front a drug business and the spawning of a new relationship (Tyler) – (they hook up on the first night after meeting in a bar… who does that anymore?!? ) provides enough moments to get you through the movie… ultimately everything gets relatively tied back together (as much as this story can be). My friend Sean despised the film and called it a production travesty, but I enjoy this kind of film in the same vein as “The Good Girl” with Jennifer Aniston and “Buffalo 66” with Vincent Gallo and Christina Ricci.
The final film was Sean’s own, “In the Blood”… although this film wasn’t part of the “official” program and was screened at an off-location (my living room) and was sparsely attended (two)… it was still a hit… one because my friend of 27 years, Sean, produced it and two, because it actually is quite good. The premise is a senior in college trying to find himself sexually through male experimentation and all the while realizing that he has crazy visions of people dying when he is aroused. To further the mess… a series of campus killings are occurring, all them being young, blonde females, which his freshman sister fits the profile of. This is my second go-round with this film which has added a musical score and continues to receive tighter editing as they try to raise one more round of financing to complete it and it has vastly improved on the initial cut that I saw in January.
That is the film fest review… more fun that standing in the Atlanta slosh watching someone’s favorite band play at volumes too loud for me to make out the lyrics…
Oh... I received my official, "Welcome to Atlanta"... Before the Friday night film opening, I ran into this cute little beagle being walked on Forsyth... As I pointed out to its owner/walker this fact... he replied in a similar light but friendly way... I realized that it was Ted Turner.
Granted, my interest in films (particularly small independent releases) drove me, but let's not discount the very important reason being shelter from the raindrops while remnants of Tropical Depression Arlene spewed about metro Atlanta in a very teasing and menacing way.
My friend Sean also made the trek down from Manhattan to the Dirty South (why do they call it that? It doesn’t appear very dirty… at least not by my house, of course we pay for sanitation service there… maybe they mean a different type of dirty… like naughty dirty… oh those kids). Sean produces films himself… or just started… he worked on a few larger features in random capacity and has been since working on his own feature-length written & directed by a fellow graduate at Columbia.
As with any film festival, there are many selections, but I have little knowledge of the movies… that makes Sean's attendance key… that and he prevented me from loudly and badly belting out 90’s love songs while driving down 85… it really is a terrible disease that I have and must be stopped.
The first night selection was “Hustle & Flow”, a comedy of sorts focusing on a small-time Memphis pimp who between lecturing his “hoe” about life and “hustling” up business wanted to get into the music business because another local by the name of Skinny Bones (played by Ludicrus) had made it. The pimp, cleverly named Djay, get it… because he has sudden aspirations to be a… nevermind… I guess it was obvious enough that I could have spared you the crayon illustration next to it!
Aside from the packed house at Georgia State’s Rialto Theater for opening night, the afterparty that included free Stella Artois beer and a very worthwhile Q&A session with the director/writer Craig Brewer and one of the actresses in the film, Elise Neal, the film was good as well.
A few highlights… Djay runs into an old junior high school buddy, who has obviously taken a different path in life than Djay… but ironically, just as burnt out and bored with his gig of doing sound for local churches, etc. Djay and his band of hoes abandon the streets of Memphis one night and knock on his former friend’s door to try to talk him into helping him lay down some rap tracks just as Mr. conservative and his wife are saying grace before dinner. As Djay tries to talk Mr. conservative into this wild and crazy idea, conservative’s equally conservative missus is left in the living room to make small talk with the two hoes. All does not go well in the conversation but it provides comedy!
Another fine highlight occurs when Djay finally gets the “hook” to the song… and has a completed track. Lately, hooks have been laid down as female vocals in R&B fashion, so they get one of the hoes… a pregnant one at that… to belt out a line that is laid down. In a moment of self-importance and empowerment, the hoe performs soulfully and solidly… the end result is played and even the theater of 1500 is swaying to the "flow", ironically enough we are all swaying to a song called, “Pimp that Trick” with equally degrading and honest lyrics.
The final highlight comes after Djay spends an evening hustling up Skinny Bones – Ludicrus remember… (who is in town for a friend’s birthday or something) to listen to his song. Djay goes to the restroom late late late into the evening to find Skinny Bones passed out in front of a stall. As he is coming to Skinny’s aid, he notices that the demo tape he offered up to Skinny is laying in the unflushed toilet. Djay fishes the cassette out of the "soiled" water, then takes his aggressions out gangsta-style on Skinny, who pulls a gun, Djay disarms him, but then one of Skinny’s BOYZ shows up and shots are fired.
The thing about this film, is that people will actually have a pretty good shot of seeing it… it was picked up at Sundance (the same way Napoleon Dynamite was last year) for a tidy $9million by MTV.
Saturday night’s film was a Steve Buscemi directed flick called “Lonesome Jim” with Casey Affleck and the hot, pouty lipped Liv Tyler starring. Affleck plays a depressed and avid reader of Hemingway who walks dogs in NYC but has run out of money so he must return home to a small town in Indiana… no not the John Mellencamp small town… another one. His mother, father and 30 year old divorced father of two brother run a local factory and have equally as detached lives. The sarcastic and biting look at Jim (Affleck) dealing with his return home, his family being torn by their oldest son’s suicide/accident, their mother’s arrest for alledgedly using the family business to front a drug business and the spawning of a new relationship (Tyler) – (they hook up on the first night after meeting in a bar… who does that anymore?!? ) provides enough moments to get you through the movie… ultimately everything gets relatively tied back together (as much as this story can be). My friend Sean despised the film and called it a production travesty, but I enjoy this kind of film in the same vein as “The Good Girl” with Jennifer Aniston and “Buffalo 66” with Vincent Gallo and Christina Ricci.
The final film was Sean’s own, “In the Blood”… although this film wasn’t part of the “official” program and was screened at an off-location (my living room) and was sparsely attended (two)… it was still a hit… one because my friend of 27 years, Sean, produced it and two, because it actually is quite good. The premise is a senior in college trying to find himself sexually through male experimentation and all the while realizing that he has crazy visions of people dying when he is aroused. To further the mess… a series of campus killings are occurring, all them being young, blonde females, which his freshman sister fits the profile of. This is my second go-round with this film which has added a musical score and continues to receive tighter editing as they try to raise one more round of financing to complete it and it has vastly improved on the initial cut that I saw in January.
That is the film fest review… more fun that standing in the Atlanta slosh watching someone’s favorite band play at volumes too loud for me to make out the lyrics…
Oh... I received my official, "Welcome to Atlanta"... Before the Friday night film opening, I ran into this cute little beagle being walked on Forsyth... As I pointed out to its owner/walker this fact... he replied in a similar light but friendly way... I realized that it was Ted Turner.
