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Features
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Westwood Goes Kabluey
The sullen faces of UCLA students mourning the elimination of their basketball team have been replaced by the caffeinated, hollowed out stares of marathon film fans.
Monday, June 25, 2007 at 2:45 PM
By Telly Davidson
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Jesse Grant/WireImage.com
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Cheadle, at the LAFF opening night party with Cuba Gooding Jr.
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Unless you’re an action movie or a reality TV blockbuster – neither genre of which have been doing very well this summer – the last two weeks in June seem deader than an over baked sunbather lying flat on his back at Malibu Shores. The exception to that rule is fittingly in outer Hollywood’s UCLA district and new Landmark Theater, where Film Independent’s Los Angeles Film Festival (LAFF) is currently making its annual stand, running through Sunday, July 1st in Westwood Village. Over 233 shorts, documentaries and features will be screened, with the festival having taken over much of the Westwood arts and shops district, with satellite events and panels going on at the famed Hammer Museum, and hotel poolside chats with various stars and filmmakers.
After two weeks of press-only and VIP screenings, LAFF opened in earnest on June 21 with a screening of the highly anticipated Don Cheadle showcase, Talk to Me. Directed by Kasi Lemmons (whose husband Vondie Curtis-Hall appears in the film) and produced by Mark Gordon and Sidney Kimmel, the fact-based film tells the story of Washington disc jockey Petey Greene, the late ex-convict who became radio’s “voice” of the civil rights movement and impresario for black comics and musicians in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Cheadle, Lemmons and Hall appeared in person at the opening screening event, and held court at the outdoor reception for Opening Night, which was followed on Friday by a cocktail party for industry vets and critics at sponsor Target’s “Red Room” reception hall.
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Lalo Yasky/WireImage.com
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Sunshine director Danny Boyle
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Besides the usual coterie of strangers pretending to be friends, friends acting like strangers and hundreds of the well-dressed and well-coiffed milling around without managing to make eye contact, the Friday party boasted a sort-of “awards ceremony” for Target’s media-tie in to the upcoming Spider-Man 3 DVD. Director Sam Raimi was on hand to congratulate the winners and runners-up of Target’s Spider-Man “Webisode” contest – a sort of America’s Funniest Home Videos take on Spidey’s off-hours adventures, featuring both amateur live-action and animated submissions.
Several other filmmakers were present on Friday, most notably indie auteur Larry Fessenden, who scored a trifecta of films at the festival. Fessenden co-produced the black comedy The Liberty Kid, about the misadventures of two young men who are laid off from their jobs at the Statue of Liberty following 9/11. He followed that up by taking an acting role in the character-driven hunting thriller Trigger Man, and then did all three – writing, directing, and producing – for the bleak corporate-greed chiller, The Last Winter.
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Jesse Grant/WireImage.com
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Kudrow with "Coffee Talks" panel-mates Virginia Madsen and Elizabeth Peña
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The festival’s “Centerpiece Premiere” meanwhile, screening Tuesday, June 26th at 7pm, is the quirkily suspenseful black comedy Joshua, starring youngster Jacob Kogan as ‘the scariest movie kid in recent memory.’ Through this possibly borderline-autistic, self-contained young piano prodigy who otherwise lives in his private world of imagination and increasingly bizarre behavior, the film posits whether he might be the one causing strange and ever-more-serious “accidents” to befall his upper-middle-class, suburban family following the birth of his little sister. The film stars Sam Rockwell, Vera Farmiga, and Celia Weston, and was co-written and directed by George Ratliff. Closing night, July 1st, will wrap up with a screening of the ominously uplifting sci-fi thriller Sunshine, starring Cillian Murphy, directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, with a VIP ‘wrap party’ immediately following.
While the emphasis is rightfully and clearly on brand new films, there are also several ghosts of cinematic past, including Harry and Tonto, Earthquake!, Them, Escape from L.A., The Princess Bride, Straight Time, Old Yeller, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. There are also some tribute screenings to late movie-biz vets like: Bob Clark, whose Yuletide classic A Christmas Story runs for a free outdoor event on June 30; Halloween godfather Moustapha Akkad, with his 1976 Islamic epic The Message; and Freddie Francis, whose cinematography will be paid tribute via a July 1st showing of The Elephant Man.
After last year’s panel with A-list reviewers and critics from Variety and the Los Angeles Times alongside producers and theatre-chain owners dealing with the lack of distribution for foreign films, the festival seems to be continuing a conscious effort to reach outside the US and Canada for its showcases. Several Asian and Middle Eastern films will be featured, and there will be panels addressing the issues of diversity and cultural tolerance in films and TV.
Other notable films include ER hunk Shane West’s bravura performance as ultra hard-living, bisexual punk rock legend Darby Crash (who committed suicide by overdose in 1980 while in his early 20s) in What We Do Is Secret; the touching Lisa Kudrow comedy Kabluey; and the hip coming-of-age chick flick The Beautiful Ordinary. The documentary submissions are also of particular strength, ranging from the ghetto high school basketball champ haunted by the memories of his brother (killed in a drive-by) in Second Chance Season, to the radical-right cult expose Join Us!, to the lacerating documentary The Town That Was, about the decline of a lower-middle-class coal mining town following corporate cutbacks and a devastating fire (think a Michael Moore movie without the agitprop and black comedy.)
| Likely the best doc though is Billy the Kid, a true-to-life JT LeRoy story (if JT LeRoy had been true-to-life) that follows the progress of ‘Billy P.,’ a young man from Maine whose short life has already included mental hospitalization, schizoid breakdowns and deep-seated behavioral problems, all of which he became determined to overcome to lead a “normal” life. |
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