Film Fest 2010

Now that the Milwaukee Film Festival is in hibernation for another season, I’m on the prowl for film activities to keep me celluloid saturated week to week. Luckily, within 48 hours of the film fest’s end, I received an e-mail about this Sunday’s Cinema Club meeting! The Cinema Club is one of the Milwaukee film scene’s best-kept secrets — surprise 10 a.m. screenings of films that often don’t play Milwaukee again — and if they do, sometimes not for months. Audiences arrive with no prior knowledge of what they’ll see. Will it be a bipolar romance? A coming-of-age story? A…

“I believe that it’s better to be looked over than it is to be overlooked.”  –Mae West Dear Milwaukee Film, I loved your Film Festival! Really couldn’t have had a better time! Since the film fest is more of a celebration for me than Christmas is (and since Santa no longer responds to my letters), I thought I’d send you my Christmas list instead. 1. Oriental Theater: We love you, too! We also don’t mind paying for food instead of sneaking it in. Could you throw us a bone during these two weeks and stock something mildly nutritious? Maybe partner…

“I’m a minor player in my own life story.” –24 Hour Party People The film festival has been over for three days now, and I’m going through serious withdrawal. Sunday night after I dropped off Derek Waters and Jeremy Konner, a.k.a. the Drunk History guys, at the airport, I almost returned to the Oriental just to hang out until Buried ended. Instead, I texted film fest hospitality director Angela Catalano: “I already don’t know what to do with myself.” I went home, made a sane dinner involving no popcorn, returned e-mails I’d ignored for two weeks and thought, “Goddamn that…

“No good fish goes anywhere without a porpoise.”  –Lewis Carroll I’m currently at the Bayshore Mall, writing from the Alterra, while the delightful His & Hers director, Ken Wardrop, shirt shops. I think I’m crashing. I ate a real meal at lunchtime, and my body seems unprepared. Caffeine is no longer working, and I have a big night ahead of me! I know you don’t want to hear me whine about the tireds, though, so I’ll get to the good stuff: my last TWO days!!! What was two days ago, anyway? Wednesday. Wednesday was supposed to be a four-movie day,…

“Junkies man… Junkies.”  —Blood Junkie Rarely does breaking into a building turn into a film distribution deal, but that, in a nutshell, is the story of Drew Rosas’ film Blood Junkie (formerly Rocky Trails). Drew is a Milwaukeean turned Los Angelean whose first feature, a low-budget, 1980s-inspired horror film shot in Wisconsin, plays Saturday, Oct. 2, at the Oriental as part of the film fest. I saw the film several months ago when Drew premiered it (it has since been picked up by Troma films), so I asked him and actress Sarah Gail Luther some questions about the film, its…

  I wanted to write a quick bit about My Way Home, the doc|UWM film showing during the festival this Saturday and Sunday. If you don’t know, doc|UWM is a program run by filmmakers Ryan Sarnowski and Jenny Plevin in which student filmmakers work on very real documentary projects. Their films often receive airtime on PBS, and the program is beginning to garner national attention. They currently are at work on a series of water documentaries and a series on the Milwaukee Striders running group. They also are in talks with the Pabst Theater about creating film shorts with visiting…

“For her, all seven deadly sins!”  —Metropolis I slept for 10 hours Tuesday night (likely more than the entire weekend altogether), have averaged only one film per day (how is that possible?) and already lost three pounds. Apparently I’m on the Film Fest diet. Nevertheless, I felt recharged and ready to see at least three movies Wednesday night though I’m confident none of them will top the screening of Metropolis with the Alloy Orchestra. The new print of Metropolis includes far more discovered footage than I anticipated! The Thin Man character had been almost entirely eliminated from the film, and…

It’s late Sunday morning. I’m alternating drinks of coffee and water, feeling a bit more like a Kris Kristofferson song than is comfortable, when the phone rings. It’s Jonathan Jackson. Jonathan: “Have you heard about the ‘Waiting for Superman’ screening?” Me: “I’m getting ready for it now.” (Total lie.) Jonathan: “People are already lining up for rush tickets!” It was 11:30 a.m., and the pressure was on. The sold-out screening was set to begin at 2 p.m., and I had planned to attend. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten one detail of the post-screening panel on the state of education in Milwaukee and…

“Do you really have to be the ice queen intellectual or the slut whore? Isn’t there some way to be both?”  – Susan Sarandon Wow am I tired. I’m missing like 98 percent of the films I want to see, in part because Saturday was hijacked by Susan Sarandon. I’ve admired Sarandon and her career for years. Pretty Baby is a fantastic film (troubling as it was for Brooke Shields), and as a former goth girl, I’ll always have a special place in my heart for The Hunger. I even was affected by her breakup with Tim Robbins in a…

“I make films to rid myself of pain, like ridding yourself of a nightmare.” –Werner Herzog I had a delightful day two, but I’m beginning this blog with a somber quote from Werner Herzog because of a film I saw yesterday: A Film Unfinished. Films about WWII seem to be an increasingly difficult sell, possibly because everyone has seen so many of them. I always wonder what another representation can do for my understanding of that time period or of human suffering. Yesterday, watching A Film Unfinished, I thought of Herzog’s quote as I watched Jewish people who lived through…