" bkkiff 2006: day two "

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reminder to self - you are not always right:

today went a little smoother in terms of lines. i started to realize that i become sort of a frustrated near-angry person on a hair. my body starts to heat up, my face starts to contort all weird, and i notice that people that i'm talking to start to react in an almost fearful state.

so i am going to stop being a dick if i am not fully understood the first time i try to explain something to someone. deep breaths, calm, focus. it is all going to be okay.

i think that i made this girl employee at the counter today think that i am a pushy angerball, and i will have to try and be either better at explaining myself in thai, or more patient with the thai version of collective confusion.

i also get cranky when i am hungry. so yeah, i guess i need to snack up when attending the festival, or else i might go crazy in between shows.

other than me finding out about how at times the state of my temper is acutely connected to my inability to speak my thai well enough and the state of my hunger at the time, i had a great day.

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mini reviews:

04. february 19th - dark horse, denmark/iceland, 11:00am ***

this is the second film that i have seen of the icelandic director dagur kari. i give it a three-star rating not for lack of content, but because i was so impressed with his previous work, noi albinoi, that i was expecting similar themes.

instead of a thoughtful dreamery icelandic landscape-mirroring-human-nature drama, i feasted on a playalong adventure through the denmark version of the gen-xers and their daily ways of getting by.

it is a beautifully grainy experimental-at-times black and white prose which develops its quirky nordic comedy stylings episodically. i think however, that we might've received a workprint version of the film, as there were definite work-in-progress moments with the sense of editing, sound, and story content (including a late in the making new subplot involving a minor character which draws heavy exploration but goes nowhere near the protagonists).

also, i think i saw a few china marker edit smears at the head and tails of some of the shots. whether or not this is meant to happen or not, it did take me out of some of the better sequences of the film. but fun without trying to be overly something that it's not.

in spite of those things, there is a brilliantly simple deconstruction of an example that involves why a son should give all of his potential modeling earnings to his parents using the color green as the basis. fun.

05. february 19th - don't come knocking, germany/usa, 2:00pm ****

a tale of an aging cowboy actor playboy seeking out a former flame and the son he never knew he fathered.

wim wenders again is a master of weaving those dialogue-less moments into passages of cinema that astound and capture the sense of a person's entire being in one shot.

i had some problems with the story at times and also wanted the peripheral characters to stop being sucky, but in the end, a nice road trip exploration into the breakdown of the cowboy mentality of a man nearing the next stage in his life.

sam shepard gives a performance that is believable and achingly good stuff. he also reminded me of jack lemmon at times. it was nice to see character like that again and how regret of past and present actions can evolve into realizations that forward rather than provide more room for misinterpretation and a further sense of chaos and loss.

i remember how in wender's segment in ten minutes older, he managed to have something completely serious also have a flair of the silly, and this film is a great piece which incorporates that energy throughout.

go for sarah polley being a little too mysterious but soft lit enough to be worth it. go for tim roth as a bond stooge bounty hunteresque man accept an offer of a cookie. go for the strange opening band, it's musical arrangements, and fairuza balk being stranger. go for the setting, go for the oddity of real life.

just go.

06. february 19th - africa united, iceland, 4:00pm **

i remember in the beginning of the fall 2002, visiting my friend petur in iceland for a month. the complete sense of being in a different country-island that had so much confidence in itself, it took discovery in a new direction every minute of every day.

i remember the swimming pools. i remember the hotdogs. i remember the people and their endless energy for life. i remember the spirit and the want for something better. this is what energy is shared in the documentary africa united.

this silly compilation of shots is a great little saturday afternoon piece on the fledgling third division amateur football (soccer) team in iceland, comprised of immigrants from africa and abroad, and local icelandic football enthusiasts.

you so want them to play well and win games, but most of the time it's more a documentary about the opportunity for a better life, a better chance, and the day ahead. it's about failure and remaining true to your ambitions. it's about being a foreigner and not caring about it.

i thought that the people on the creation end of the team were eager and that was 50% of the success; just the thought of getting the team together was a sign that they were meant to play. this sense of blind ambition is hard to shake, even when they fight and lose and are defeated on and off the field.

07. february 19th - press conference with christopher lee, 7:00pm *****

it's true. he was here to be praised for being not only a great acting legend, but to share with us a brief moment of his long and celebrated life in a q&a format.

- counting television, he has been in about 280 films to date, and is continuing to work.

- he is the coolest old school nerd still working.

- his favorite director is tim burton and his favorite actor is johnny depp.

- he praises the lord of the rings as one of the most important literary works ever written, and even met J.R.R. Tolkein in a pub called the bird and the baby.

- does pose for photos doing what is beautifully described as "the claw."

- played golf with sir ian fleming and was considered for the role of dr. no, but when ready to go for the role, found that it was already cast. later he played the man with the golden gun in another classic bond film.

he is so cool, that i had to not watch a film so that i could listen to this session. it was worth it just to be near someone who defends middle earth so passionately, that he felt the need to describe its importance to humanity. that, and he gave the interpreter enough time and pauses with which to translate properly. now that's class.

see you tomorrow.

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