Headed to Tribeca this week, which comes at a time in my life when I really feel like having a few days away from everything, just as a breather. Watched my first Shane Meadows films last night, which really blew me away and catipulted Somers Town to the top of my list. I think I am going to try to watch a couple more tonight (This is England and another one maybe?).
So now, quick hits for my most anticipated films of Tribeca ‘08:
Somers Town
Quiet Chaos
My Winnipeg
A President to Remember: In the Company of John F. Kennedy
Also very excited about Fermat’s Room, Let the Right One In, Fighter, and This is Not a Robbery.
I think of how films have been there for me, like friends or companions in my life. In an strange way they have always and forever been the great accompaniment to the oddities of living. I remember getting my heart broken in college and discovering Ghostbusters on television and feeling like it had been placed there for me to watch for the hundredth time. When less than ideal things have occurred in my life I have always been able to stumble across something in cinema to make me feel better.
Perhaps that is my crutch, my usage of an art form to stand in for friends I feel a remove from, to supply me with a distanced yet real reaction and comfort to the events of my life. But hey, if I can always turn to a moment in Godard, a joke by Bill Murray, a gesture from Hal Ashby, a sentence from Woody Allen I can know that what I have has been felt before and will be felt again. And in that comfort I find peace.
The new David Gordon Green film, Snow Angels, is all about the juxtaposition. The twin stories are archetypal, aiming to reveal the purest of human joy and the depth of human sorrow. If anything the film can occasionally feel off balance, as though Green needs to have both the tales because he feels that either one alone would be a lie. But the raging changes of polarity come as a part of life itself, and Green takes them all to their furthest conclusions.
I hope that Pineapple Express is the big breakout for Green that opens him to any project he might want to do, but in that success I also hope he never gets away from his intimate stories of the violent turning points of life.
Neo noir with Casey Affleck written by Billy Bob Thornton’s writing partner.
“Story, set in 1930s Los Angeles, centers on an amnesiac who finds himself working for a mobster — a killer given the nickname “the Kind One” — and falling in love with the thug’s girlfriend.”
