AIFF and Un-Earthly Phenomena

Well, I didn't actually see the alien ship arrive or depart, but I know that they've been here, because Himself is...

Tweeting.

Yes, Tweeting.

So until the batteries run out on the mind-control implant, you can read his Tweets at @steveinashland.

And, more traditionally, he's blogging away at bloggingashland.wordpress.com, because we are once again attending the Ashland Independent Film Festival, snatching pastry-based foods in frantic moments between films, and saying, "What the... what was that?!" or "That was great!" More of the second than the first, though I suppose the very best experience is when you express both thoughts at the very same time.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

AIFF: The Recovery Phase

Today is the fifth and last day of the Ashland Independent Film Festival. For most of those days, we attended all five screening slots, starting around 9:30 in the morning and ending around 11:00 in the evening.

We're running out of clean laundry.

We're running out of snack food.

I think that my left leg may have abandoned the effort to maintain full blood circulation to itself, and will need re-education.

We've learned that we can get a slice and a drink from Martolli's and be back to the Varsity in a twenty minute break.

We re-learned the vital information that some of the classic theater seats at the Armory are an inch or two wider than some of the others.

Today I started using the thirty-second gap between the end of one short and the beginning of another as an opportunity to nap.

We're done. We bailed on the 6:00 screening today (a tradition for us, when we don't also bail on the 3:00) and went home, where we are collapsed on thickly upholstered furniture consuming sugared beverages.

I'm glad to be done. And I'm already looking forward to next year.

Oh, the films? Himself covers that. Go read his blog. Really. Go now.

Image: By Streifengrasmaus. Wikimedia Commons.

Link: AIFF Coverage by Himself!

So we're attending the Ashland Independent Film Festival. Five days, five screenings a day (OK, four the first day), often more than one film per screening, wheeeee!

So I wanted to point you to Himself's site, Blogging Ashland, where he is blogging away about the films in a timely and highly entertaining manner.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Rambling: Lazy Sundays and Zombies

Damn it, Valentine, you never plan ahead, you never take the long view, I mean here it is Monday and I'm already thinking of Wednesday.
It is Monday, right?
Earl Basset, Tremors

I slacked off on the decluttering today. And I didn't bake any squash or do any laundry or any cleaning or gardening. And I'm only 250 words into NaNoWriMo for the day, at ten o'clock at night.

I have a zillion things that I want to do. NaNoWriMo. Decluttering. Planting a whole lot of garlic and potato onions and tulips and daffodils and a small number of medium expensive lily bulbs. Cleaning up the portion of the Farm that some cat has recently claimed as its litter box and putting bird netting over it to prevent recurrences. Reading another 23 books to make the 100+. Buying Christmas presents.

I'm not so much doing them. Well, writing this counts as NaNoWriMo, but mostly I'm just sitting here staring blankly at The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead isn't a happy show. You might have guessed that from the title. Most of humanity is dead and most of the rest wants to eat you. Whee!

And I'm enjoying it. A while ago, while reading Flood by Stephen Baxter, Himself commented on the way that certain works of fiction can make you feel better about real life, because real life at least isn't as bad as that. The same apparently goes for The Walking Dead. Also, as zombie disasters go, it's a lot more fun than 28 Days Later. The cast of characters that survives for more than twenty minutes is a good deal larger, and there's a little bit of soap-opera-style bedhopping.  When people have to kill their friends because said friends have been infected by zombies, they get a little more time to think about it. What more could you want?

But it's not nearly as much fun as Night of the Comet, one of my favorite movies. A friend once asked for clarification on that point, I suspect hoping for reassurance that I meant one of my favorite junk movies or eighties teen movies or some other category that would make my disastrous taste lapse smaller. Nope. One of my favorites, without disclaimers.

Have you ever seen it? Two teenage girls survive a comet shower that turns most of the rest of the world into zombies. Then they go shopping. "Daddy would've gotten us Uzis" is one of the classic lines. How could you not love that? Or this photo?

All righty, I'm off to watch more zombies.

Image: By Marteen64. Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: About to be submerged

So, just as the flurry and chaos settles down, it's time for the Ashland Independent Film Festival!

We attend every year, and while I might be inclined to a fairly low-key level of attendance, Himself is firmly in favor of attending every single time slot. Five days, five time slots a day, minus tomorrow morning. (So what's going on tomorrow morning, huh? That's what we want to know. Are there more important people than us getting special private screenings, huh, huh?) And usually more than one film per time slot.

I'm looking forward to dozens of films washing all of my personal fuss and flurry out of my head. We'll see if I blog madly about them, or vanish entirely until Tuesday. (And which blog to blog in? Last year all my AIFF posts were in The Other Blog. Is this becoming my general blog again? Is the daily Scent Of The Day gone forever? What's the deal here? If I don't know, who does? Do these blogs get good gas mileage?)

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Self Link: Marwencol

The film festival is over. And one of the last films that I saw, Marwencol, was one of the most amazing. It doesn't have a single thing to do with perfume, but I'm going to link to my own post anyway.

Image: By Mattia Luigi Nappi. Wikimedia Commons.

Movie: Up In The Air

Summary: In "Up In The Air", a Termination Facilitator encounters threatened change to his job, his personal philosophy, and his lack of relationships. And does a whole lot of flying.

Rapid Fire: Eppley Airfield. Undershirts. Crop circle. Admiral Club. Miami-Dade. Graphite. That necktie. Card key. O'Hare. TSA. Bridesmaids. Cold feet. Lambert.

Score: 4/5

Recommendation: Very good. George Clooney at his best, without the cartoon coating that some movies wrap around him. The other leads are similarly compelling. It's all good; I can't think of a single weak spot to point to. The only reason not to go see this now is if you save your big-screen money for special effects blockbusters.

Link Roundup: Wikipedia and Roger Ebert and IMDB.

Photo: By Joadl. Wikimedia Commons.

Movie: Gigi

(Yes, we did spend a lot of time at Stanford Theatre this weekend.)

Long, long ago, in junior high, we did a drama exercise.

The class was divided into groups, each group to select a scene from a pile of classic plays to act out for the rest of the class. We selected a nice little scene about a teenage girl and table manners and marriage and jewelry.  I remember being puzzled by our teacher's uneasy face at the lines

"Marriage is not forbidden to us.
But instead of getting married at once...
...it sometimes happens we get married...
...at last."

(Or, well, the equivalent in the play - those exact lines are, admittedly, from the movie.)

I suspect that the copy of Gigi that we had chosen was stashed away before the next class. Discussion of the training of young courtesans was certainly not intended as part of the teaching points for the day.

When I see Gigi, I always find myself similarly startled that the Hollywood of the 1940's would film this particular theme. Young schoolgirl graduating to a life as a kept woman? Goodness gracious.

But it is, of course a lovely movie. Leslie Caron, Louis Jourdan, Hermione Gingold, Maurice Chevalier, wonderful music, glorious sets and costumes; what more could you want? Leslie Caron, particularly, is impossibly but convincingly charming.

The plot, while it could be seen as terribly predictable, is somehow very satisfying - the movie resists the temptation to labor over explanations or excuses, and instead turns on the emotional decisions of the characters. Musical or no musical, I'll be happy to see this next time it comes up in the Stanford Theatre rotation.

Photo of Leslie Caron (in Lili). Wikimedia Commons.

Movie: An American In Paris

I never saw this before.

Is that illegal?

I've seen many of the musical numbers, of course, on those television specials celebrating Hollywood. I suppose that those left me with the impression that I'd actually seen the movie. So when we got to Stanford Theatre and got into the first few minutes, I was startled to realize that I hadn't. And as the movie went on, I was more startled to realize, hey, this thing has a plot!

Yes, yes, I'm sure that all of you knew that. But I didn't. I tend to assume that musicals have no plot. And even as the contrary data points pile up (most recently, South Pacific), I continue to make that assumption.

But indeed, there is a plot. The artist. The pretty girl. The competition for the pretty girl's affections. The competition for the artist's affections. The misunderstandings.

It's all very nice, and I did of course root for the right romance, but I have something to confess: My favorite character is Adam Cook, the grumpy pianist, played by Oscar Levant, the grumpy (and very famous) pianist. When Oscar Levant was on the screen - he's in the center in that photo up there - he was the one I watched, no matter how sparkling everyone else's repartee or footwork.

So it's a big, grand, classic movie, but now I just want to see more of Oscar Levant.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Movie: The Reluctant Debutante

We just saw this 1958 Vincente Minnelli classic at the splendid Stanford Theatre. It's a fine funny movie, starring Rex Harrison as Lord Broadbent, Kay Kendall as his new wife, and Sandra Dee as his daughter.

But I'm going to remember it for one primary reason: It has a likable Thin Lady.

Thin Ladies were defined for me by Lora Brody, the author of Growing Up On The Chocolate Diet. Thin Ladies are, of course, thin. And perfectly coiffed and manicured. Their clothes are fashionable, new, and free of chocolate splatters. (Lora Brody gets her chocolate splatters by cooking; I get mine by going to the coffee shop with the Best Hot Chocolate In The World and then being clumsy on the way home.) Thin Ladies don't eat, they just consume enough calories to keep moving.

I generally don't like Thin Ladies. A taste for fried chicken and a propensity for chocolate spatters will do that to a person.

This movie has a Thin Lady. She's utterly fashionable. She rejects cups of tea from her husband's devoted secretary, pouring them into plants while the secretary's not looking. She speculates about whether her stepdaughter will be sufficiently attractive and stylish. She traps said stepdaughter into doing the London debutante season, and then encourages and thwarts the wrong romances, based largely on snobbish criteria. And she wears feather boas. Without the irony.

I ought to heartily dislike her. And I don't.

I consider this a triumph of acting by Kay Kendall, who plays the snobbish Thin Lady stepmother. She plays the role with such a convincing air of well-meaning Siamese-cat bewilderment and doesn't-know-any-better that you're willing to forgive her, even as you wish that Rex Harrison and Sandra Dee would just shove her into a closet until the action is resolved.

Photo of Kay Kendall. Wikimedia Commons

Movie: Night Of The Comet

I don't naturally gravitate toward thoughtful, serious, high-quality movies.  I like the movie equivalent of GooGoo Clusters or Andy Capp Hot Fries. That is to say, weird, a little hard to find, and not at all good for you.

So, of course I love Night Of The Comet. This Eighties horror-scifi-comedy-zombie-romance-spoof is the story of two teenage girls trying to survive zombie attacks at the end of the world ("Daddy would've gotten us Uzis"), and getting in some mall time while they're at it.

The teenage girls in question, Sam and Reggie (Catherine Mary Stewart and  Kelli Maroney) aren't your traditional screaming movie victims - they can take care of themselves, and other survivors while they're at it. They get a little help from truck driver Hector (Robert Beltran), but they could clearly have handled the whole thing themselves.

I find myself imagining the scriptwriters, having learned their characters inside out, delightedly thinking up one situation after the other - dangerous, exciting, funny scenes - to put them in. The red light. The mall. The stock boys. Santa Claus. The bunny. The red light again. It all combines into an absurd but highly satisfying plot.  It's fun, lots of fun. I recommend seeing it before it goes out of print again.

Link Roundup: Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB and Wikipedia and NightOfTheComet.info.

Photo: By Mattia Luigi Nappi. Wikimedia Commons.