Un beau jour

Ah.. today is so insanely beautiful and warm (my dashboard reads 72 degrees baby) i want to nestle my face in the grass on the main green and breathe in the freshness of spring soil. but i can only wish because I have this book review to write. in fact, I have yet to read the book. 222 pages, vomit please. I'm hoping as hell that I'll finish it tonight. Yes. Right.

Today is the last day of the week-long Ivy Film Festival, which is claimed by the organisers to be the world's largest student film festival. As with the previous years, I have attended some of the screenings (3 days so far) in earnest. This year seems like a Sundance parade. Starting with "The Linguists", a film documentary about two linguists who globe-trotted to India, Siberia, and Bolivia (?) in pursuit of dying languages. Very beautifully and genuinely rendered, the film doesn't lose any of the essence of a documentary, yet doesn't bore the viewer with techy details.

On Wednesday, I went to see "Son of Rambo", a retro story of two kids growing up and cinematographically coming of age. The story revolves around the kids' film-making project, but there are a few other stories smoothly running in parallel. It was refreshing, funny, and purely pleasurable. Something that reminds an aspiring film student of why film always gives him joy and why he wants to make film in the first place.


Last night, I saw the pre-release screening of "Adventures of Power", which was followed by Q&A with writer/director/actor Ari Gold. After 15 minutes, I expected Napoleon Dynamite (which many hyped it up to be). 45 minutes later, I was disappointed. It was witty and funny at first and waxed cheesy and, may I, nonsensical after a while. Below is the blurb I took from the Ivy Film website:

ADVENTURES OF POWER is the epic tale of a rock-n-roll loving mine-worker named Power whose love of the beat--and lack of the drums--has made him the ridiculed “air drummer” of his small town. But after his union-leader father calls a strike at the mine, Power discovers an underground subculture of air-drummers who just might hold the key to changing the world.

The post-screening Q&A is however pretty informative and entertaining. What I noticed about Ari Gold the director is that he fulfilled at least to me the stereotype of the directory of an independent film, awkward, weirdly funny, and spontaneous. He talked about how his film was accepted and declined on various occasions. Filmmaking might be hard, but marketing it is way harder man.