AIFF 2009 - Monday Recommendations
We have a lot less to choose from today - just two slots at three venues - but we still have to choose.
I'm headed to the Bear Tooth for the 5:30 World Premiere of Birthday. The Australian director is scheduled be there. This is a feature film that I haven't seen, but the ADN did a review today. I try not to read those reviews because they usually tell the whole story. I'd rather learn it from the movie itself.
The other options at the early slot are From Somewhere to Nowhere. This too looks like an interesting film - a documentary about migrant workers in China. The documentaries give us windows into worlds we often know little about and I'm sure this one will give an atypical view of China. I remember the migrant worker housing at People's University where I taught for 3 months in 2004. It was pretty sketchy. And my students, it turned out, never talked to the migrant workers, even though they shared the same campus, though they were there for very different reasons and they passed each other often. This one is 5:45 at the Alaska Experience Theater.
Then, there's Allusions/Delusions, one of the Shorts programs. This one includes two that are shorts in competition - The Capgrass Tide and Free Lunch. Capgrass has some Alaska like landscapes - particularly the mudflats where people go clamming, and sometimes don't come back. The production values of this short, tight story are terrific. Free Lunch is about a rich kid in LA who rejects the family to run a lunch wagon in the poor sections of LA. I found that in the other shorts programs the other films turned out to all be quite good. I'm tempted to go see this program too. At Out North at 5:30.
Then I'm still undecided about whether I stay at the Bear Tooth for the 8:15 Paddle to Seattle - what looks to be a good kayak movie; head to Out North for Adopt a Sailor, a feature about New York couple that take in a sailor during fleet week at 7:45pm (Birthday's 104 minutes, so I should have enough time); or head for the Alaska Experience Theater to see Prodigal Sons, about a woman going to her high school reunion in Montana at 8:00pm.
I'm leaning toward Sailor, but we'll see.
I'm headed to the Bear Tooth for the 5:30 World Premiere of Birthday. The Australian director is scheduled be there. This is a feature film that I haven't seen, but the ADN did a review today. I try not to read those reviews because they usually tell the whole story. I'd rather learn it from the movie itself.
The other options at the early slot are From Somewhere to Nowhere. This too looks like an interesting film - a documentary about migrant workers in China. The documentaries give us windows into worlds we often know little about and I'm sure this one will give an atypical view of China. I remember the migrant worker housing at People's University where I taught for 3 months in 2004. It was pretty sketchy. And my students, it turned out, never talked to the migrant workers, even though they shared the same campus, though they were there for very different reasons and they passed each other often. This one is 5:45 at the Alaska Experience Theater.
Then, there's Allusions/Delusions, one of the Shorts programs. This one includes two that are shorts in competition - The Capgrass Tide and Free Lunch. Capgrass has some Alaska like landscapes - particularly the mudflats where people go clamming, and sometimes don't come back. The production values of this short, tight story are terrific. Free Lunch is about a rich kid in LA who rejects the family to run a lunch wagon in the poor sections of LA. I found that in the other shorts programs the other films turned out to all be quite good. I'm tempted to go see this program too. At Out North at 5:30.
Then I'm still undecided about whether I stay at the Bear Tooth for the 8:15 Paddle to Seattle - what looks to be a good kayak movie; head to Out North for Adopt a Sailor, a feature about New York couple that take in a sailor during fleet week at 7:45pm (Birthday's 104 minutes, so I should have enough time); or head for the Alaska Experience Theater to see Prodigal Sons, about a woman going to her high school reunion in Montana at 8:00pm.
I'm leaning toward Sailor, but we'll see.