Day Two - Saturday, August 25

Centigrade (short film). Director: Colin Cunningham. Canada (2007). 15 min, English.
A short worthy of a Twilight Zone story. What sort of personal and collective hell awaits those trailer park trash that abuse their blameless children? 19 minutes of collective retribution, in which they are towed, sealed in their trailers, to a dessert, to die of heat exhaustion. Isn’t it so nice that we feel smug in our collective judgment of a deserving punishment.

Kuro-Obi (Black Belt). Director: Shunichi Nagasaki. Japan (2006) 95 min, Japanese with English subtitles.
www.imdb.com/title/tt1084019/
Cinemoo saw this one with us, and offers this review:
Japan's answer to the Chinese kung fu movies .. a karate movie. set in the 1930s .. the disciples of a karate sensei are conscripted into the military police to teach them the martial art .. one explores the "dark side" of his ability, the other continues on the more spiritual route. There is corruption in the military police, there is organized crime, with appropriate caricatures to make it easy for the audience. the film is stylized, almost an animation using real actors. however it is worth seeing .. for the scenery and the choreographed fights .. before the screening, there was a karate demonstration in the theatre .. what's the rasping all about ?

Wonderful word in a subtitle: gormless

After the show, we stopped at the food court on our way to the other theatre (we'd normally, and lazily, take the metro the few blocks east, but it [was] closed because of cracks in an access tunnel infra-structure that have got several downtown blocks sealed off) .. anyway, back to the food court: we noticed the entire cast of the film were sitting near us (and several even got their lunch where i did at Tiki Ming) .. they had a press conference that afternoon because the film is entered in the festival's official competition.


Wind Man. Director: Khuat Akhmetov (this is his first film)
Russia (2007) 95 min, Russian with English subtitles.
Cinemoo saw this one with us and offers this review:
The blurb: during a wind storm, an old man with wings falls from the sky to a small village on the steppe. He is filthy and doesn't speak. Identified as an angel, he is given a "residence" in a young family's chicken coop and is befriended by their son who calls him Grampa Wind. The film looks at how different people react to the presence of this stranger .. My initial reaction at reading the blurb was the Gabriel García Márquez story, a very old man with enormous wings.
Another link on the story. It had its own movie a few years ago .. but this Russian film is even more sinister ... though it has its share of stock comic characters, death itself seems to be wandering around the edges of this microcosm of our larger society …
The story has a moral: some things that fall from the sky are benign; some are not.
See it if you have a chance to.

I second Cinemoo’s review, and would add that the Magic realism, coupled with the Russian central Asian location make for a dreamlike otherworld-ness that works. A wonderful first effort that would shame many a seasoned director’s ability.

How to Survive a Fall From 35,000 Feet (short film). Director: James Ricker. Canada (2007) 3 min, English.
Cynical air travelers and the flying-challenged will both find comfort from this tongue-in-cheek “manual” on how to survive being sucked out of an airliner.

Running with Arnold. Director: Dan Cox (this is his first feature documentary).
United States (2007) 72 min, English.
www.imdb.com/title/tt0386757/
A very unflattering look at “Ahr-Nold” the "Guvernator" ex-Terminator’s climb to political stature as the governor of California. Narrated by actor Alec Baldwin, noted cause-celebre of the Left. If you weren’t scared by Schwarzenegger’s rise to power, fame, and money, culminating in his political ambitions, this film, which shows him even more of a puppet of Right-wing corporate interests than Bush, will scare you silly. Don’t be blindsided by his apparent soft stance on social conservatism (supporting stem-cell research, and gay civil unions). Includes a mini-lesson on the Recall procedure in California, and how it gave Arnold the edge to get in over Gov. Davis. The dirty tricks used to silence women coming forward to complain of his history of sexual abuse are right up there with the best of the Republican Party’s Karl Rove tactics. And, don’t think they haven’t given up on changing the U.S. Constitution so Arnold (Austrian-born) could run for the Presidency. A must see for any political junkie or California resident. Or if you adored his films...*cough*