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Brazilian Film Festival


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Today was the begining of the Brazilian Film festival down here in Miami Beach.  I went to the opening, which wasn't too great.  It was this odd open air thing where you sat on the sand in front of a huge screen.  It was fine if the movie would have started when I got there, but they started an hour late, a shitty brazilian band played for an hour for no apparent reason, and then we had to wait some more for the actual movie.  The movie was actually pretty cool, very funny, but I had to leave because it started too late and someone had to go home.   :angry:  

 

Thankfully, the rest of the festival takes place at the Colony theater on lincoln road.  That's a regular movie theater, so things will start on time from now on.  I plan on going to at least one or two movies from the list, I'm looking at descriptions I got at the opening and trying to pick a couple to go to.  Generally they will show at least one short film, then the feature.  A lot of these actually sound pretty cool, and looked promising when they showed clips today.  I really wouldn't mind going to a bunch of them.  Right now, the one's I'm looking at to watch are "Bellini & the Sphinx" a sort of film noir, detective movie, which is at 7pm on Friday june 7, ""The Trespasser", which is about business, power, ambition, betrayal etc, on saturday, june 8 at 9:15pm, "Dead in the Water", also on sat. june 8, but at 7, before "The tresspasser", that one is "a film about the moral values of a generation told in the form of a thriller".  I'm hoping to see at least those three, but there's lots more, I also might go at 11:30 on Friday also  because they're showing a mix of all the best short films from past years... that's bound to be good.  There's plenty of stuff, romantic comedies, plain old comedies, thrillers, dramas, artsy fartsy stuff, shorts, has to be something that intrigues you.  So I say if you feel like checking out something a bit different and feeling a bit cultured, go on a random day and check it out, these are the best movies brazil has to offer, if the hour or so of the movie I saw today was any indication, it's gonna be cool as hell.

 

Schedule - Click on the days up top for info on whats playing when, and descriptions of each movie.

 

 

The movies - A straight up list of the movies, kind of jumbled, the american names are written righter after the portuguese names, I suggest you click on a few features and read the descriptions, see if anything interests you at all.

 

So, that's about it, if anybody wants to see any of these, I'll gladly come along, I'm most likely going to the ones I listed as well, so I suggest you guys try those out, at least check out the best short films on friday.  It costs as much as a regular movie, just try something different. From the looks of it, the movies seem to be pretty cool.

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Hmm, now that I looked up a little info on the movies, I think I'm gonna switch the ones I'm definately seeing.

 

Now I'm most likely gonna watch "Window of the Soul", a documentary where 19 blind people talk about their experiences, and "Copacabana," a comedy about an old guy remembering his life, I read really good things about that one, both on Thursday, june 6th, the Window of the soul starts at 7, and copacabana starts at 9:15.  

That's the major change, I'm prolly not gonna bother with "Bellini and the sphynx" and I'll just watch the mix of best short films at 11:30 on friday, and on Saturday I'm gonna skip dead in the water and just go see "the tresspasser", which seems really good too.  Um, again, anyone feels like seeing any of these, even if they're not my picks, just say so.

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Guest Yahve

I can tag along on friday for a flick or two if they aren't horribly expensive.

 

Can I bum a ride?  :wary:

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i woulda replied to say it sounded ool (but obviously I can't go unless someone can give me a ride from Ireland! :D ), glad to see some people taking up your offer (if you pimp it, they will come), the best thing about foreign film is you usually get the best of a country's output.

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Very cool, I'm glad that you guys are comin'  Go ahead and hitch a ride with me on Friday Yahve, no problem, I'm guessing that firday will cost what your average movie costs.  It'll be a mix of short films from previous years starting at 11:30.  

 

 Umm, as far as details on the movies go, click on the titles and you'll get some details, and click on the site and go to more titles for more details, you can even see what short film will be playing before each feature we watch.  Other than what's on the site, all I can say is that they showed us a ten minute promotional video about the festival, with clips from movies and interviews from directors, and I just kind of got a feel for what to see.  It seemed like Copacabana and Trespassor are the two most prominently feature flicks, and I checked up on em in imdb just to see if they got completely trashed or something, and those seemed to be pretty good.  Window of the soul is just interesting to me because among the blind people featured are a blind director and a blind photographer.... now I want somebody to tell me how the fuck that works....  And KOS, yeah, that's the cool thing about film festivals, imagine a festival with nothing but movies nominated for our best picture?  It'd be a pretty cool festival, no?  Well, we're getting what brazil selected to show the rest of the world, there's sure to be at least a couple of really cool movies, and the one they showed on monday was great, so I have high hopes.  I'm glad that some perseverance on the board does get you somewhere... of course, the sexual favors to the admin didn't hurt  :D ... wait a minute.... who said that!?  ::runs away::

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First day was pretty cool.  First they showed "Breakthrough," a short film about a guy with a crazy case of writer's blocks, which was really original, stylish, and cool.  Hope the other shorts are that good.

 

The feature was "Copacabana."  It was basically a very honest, very nostalgic movie about an old man looking over his life.  I liked it, I thought it was pretty funny, and had well-fleshed out characters, you felt like you knew them when the movie was over.  It'll certainly change your perception of elderly people.  The only problem I had with it was that it dragged on a bit at times, every once in a while it would just kind of meander and you'd want it to get to the point, but that's not a huge complaint.  There were some laugh out loud funny parts and it was generally a very likeable, fine movie.  Everyone who went seemed to enjoy themselves, so, we're off to a good start.

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Yesterday we went to check out a mix of short films and um...as we suspected/feared, they were all gay films... Part of some sexual diversity thingamajig.... eh well...  Doesn't mean they were bad, they were almost all comedies, and some were pretty good.  There was this 2 minute one that did nothing but fast forward and rewind footage that looked like ultimate fighting or greco-roman wrestling or something with obscene music on, that was pretty damned funny.  Another highlight was the brazilian version of the ambiguously gay duo.  That was my favorite one, it had gay superheroes running around fighting evil needles and making sure that platforms didn't replace heels....  There was also the first gay film noir I've ever seen, pretty funny stuff, and a weird, but cool looking one that they finished with that was chock full of violence.  Of course, there was one that was just wrong, bad, no, we did not need to see it, it was pretty uneccesary... not even a real film!   bleh....  Consisted of two perverted guys watch another guy shower through a blurry window... it wasn't even a scripted movie!  How they picked that shit to show us out of 10 years worth of gay films does not speak well for the gay film industry.  All in all though, it was another succesful day in my eyes, not as good as yesterday though.  I have high hopes for tomorrow, another feature.

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And so it ends.  Today was the last day of the festival, and I think it ended fairly well.  We sadly missed 90% of the short film that seemed pretty funny ??? but the feature was good.  It was a sort of thriller where two business partners hire a hitman on their other partner and end up in conflict because one of them has a bigger conscience than the other.  The movie ("The Tresspasser") was stylish as hell, especially for somethign that was completely handheld.  It had a cool grainy look to it and they'd use weird effects every once in a while that made it look really good.  The story was a bit confusing but I could follow it well enough, the conclusion (or lack thereof) left a little to be desired though.  All in all it was fairly cool, definately enjoyable, but I didn't like it as much as "Copacabana."  I'd say this film festival expedition thing was a success, wanna thank the folks that came with and trusted my random whims, 'specially dinghy, who went all three days.  Hope they do more of these things, it sure as hell beats watching some of the movies out in theaters now, and it was perfect to tide me over till windtalkers, which opens on friday

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Well I think the woman summed it up pretty well, although it ended up sounding cliche at the end of the festival: "your vacation from hollywood". It was a good break from (what I think is) the sea of crap that is scooby doo, austin powers undercover brother and others.  I certainly wouldn't say tht everything I saw was good. As a matter of fact some of it was utter trash really (I refer to most of the gay short film mix) I don't think that they should have compromised their quality by limiting their selection like that, but hey I guess gay awareness and all that.

  In any case I certainly had a good time, the two feature films and breakthrough were pretty good. Plus, their was good music, good coffee and good company

 

:approve:

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