Awesome (Extended) Weekend

This weekend was all about entertainment and real estate. The Independent Film Festival of Boston is going on, and coco_b  and I hit up a bunch of screenings:

  • Fay Grim – This sequel to the 1997 film Henry Fool, which I have never seen, opened the festival. I really liked this film… Corinna and Audra have raved for a long time about HF, but I’ve never had a chance to see it. After seeing FG, it’s at the top of my Netflix queue. The story was well crafted, the characters were really interesting, and the actors did a fantastic job.
  • The King of Kong – A documentary about the Donkey Kong world record. Obviously, I had to see this film, but my expectations weren’t high. This might have been the best movie of the festival. The documentary was fantastically paced, the subjects were fascinating, and the film made the trivial consequences seem like the most important things in the world. I knew a bit about Billy Mitchell and Twin Galaxies through nerd osmosis, but I couldn’t even begin to imagine the dirty dealings and shenanigans… Even Corinna, who isn’t a gamer by any stretch of the imagination, loved this film.
  • Rabbit – A short film set in a kindergarten “learning to read” book, where all objects have their names printed next to them. It looked like illustrations from a Dick and Jane book, but with a far more surrealist premise. It was very enjoyable.
  • Fido – I really wanted to love this one.. The basic premise is this: A idyllic world, stuck in the 50s, where Zombies have been domesticated and are effectively pets/slaves to humans. And that sentence makes it sound like a winner, but it was an idea that just shouldn’t have been stretched to feature length. The movie was effectively Lassie but with a Zombie instead of a dog. Lassie episodes were only 30 minutes, this film was 90, and the stretching was evident. I really loved almost everything about this film; The concept, the characters, the acting, the cinematography, etc. was all great, it the story just couldn’t support a feature length film. I think this would have been an awesome 45 minute short…
  • Death Trike – A funny little short about a homicidal tricycle.  I don’t feel I need to elaborate much more..  Very fun…  From the director of Forest of the Dead.
  • Black Sheep  – Another huge highlight of the festival..  Genetically engineered sheep with a thirst for blood.  Very much in the spirit of Peter Jackson’s early films like Bad Taste and Dead Alive.  Very well paced, very funny, and properly gory.  Those Kiwis sure do know how to make a horror flick.
  • Monster Camp – I was afraid this documentary about Live Action Role-Playing (LARPing) would be a bit to exploitative..  I mean, I think LARPing is hilarious, but I laugh in private..  My fear for this film would be a theatre full of people laughing at the people dressed up as lizards..   But thankfully the film was very delicate and well crafted..  The filmmakers weren’t playing for laughs even if there were plenty of them in there, and when people were laughing, it didn’t seem cruel..  That could be because it was a theatre full of Boston-area nerds, though, so I’m not sure…  But I had the feeling that the subjects would have been able to laugh along with the crowd and not be terribly embarrassed..    It was a very fun film, and really provided insight into the LARPing scene..  I also think it made me a bit more sympathetic to LARPers in general…  I think playing helps many of these people in a similar way I think Computer Science House helps people;  A sort of “social primer” to help not-terribly-social people develop those skills they need in the real world.

To further Xtremeify this weekend of entertainment, Corinna and I went out to Providence on Saturday to see Stephen Lynch at Lupo’s.  Before the show, we met up with Omar, an old friend from the Rovia days…  He’s getting his Ph.D at Brown, but I hadn’t seen him in a few years, so we grabbed dinner and caught up a bit.  The show was fantastic!  Our seats were pretty good, and Lynch (who’s been on Broadway for a year as The Wedding Singer) was on his game completely…  He seemed to have really missed being on his own…  He had some verbal sparring with a heckler, but he seemed to have the upper hand..  It was a great show…  Unfortunately, Corinna’s mysterious food allergy reared it’s head again, but she took enough Benadryl to keep it somewhat in check in order to enjoy the show.  The Benadryl put her on her ass, though, so she slept the whole ride home and missed out on Black Sheep that night…  She woke up with the flu, so fate is apparently not smiling upon her.. =(

On Sunday, even though Corinna was feeling shitty, we managed to squeeze in 5 open houses…  Out of the 5, 3 weren’t even really worth considering, one was OK,but the last one turned out to be really cool.  We haven’t made an offer yet, we’re hoping to have a few more viewings in the next day or two before we make our decision, but we’re both rather excited about this place…

Independent Film Festival of Boston 2007

So here are the films I’m interested in seeing at the Independent Film Festival.  Buy tickets if you’re interested in joining me..

  • Friday:
    • The King of Kong – Coolidge – 10pm    (Donkey Kong Record Holder documentary)
    • Fido (w/ Rabbit) – Coolidge – Midnight (Zombie pet flick)
  • Saturday (in Providence during the day):
    • Black Sheep (w/ Death Trike) – Coolidge – Midnight (Zombie Sheep flick)
  • Sunday:
    • Monster Camp – Somerville – 5:45pm (probably the film club movie) (Live Action Role Playing documentary)

What a Birthday!

On Saturday, I turned 30, and thanks to my lovely girlfriend, my family, and my friends, it was a great weekend!  On Friday we hung out out with friends at

‘s place…  We played all kinds of board games and snacked on delicious food prepared by Adam..  As board games can be, it was tense at times, but I hope everyone had a good time.. :P 

bought me a Cake Batter flavored ice cream cake from J.P. Lick’s which everyone enjoyed, especially me!

Saturday morning, Corinna woke up early and made me brunch!  I usually wake up several hours before her on Saturday’s, and I sure as hell don’t usually get treated to awesome bacon and french toast!  It was really awesome being able to just kick back and relax while someone else did the cooking for a change!   I also opened some gifts and cards I received in the mail..  My parents got me the Talking Heads Brick, which is badass!  I also got another season of South Park from

 which rules…  Then, for dinner, Corinna had another ace up her sleeve, taking me to the wonderful Grill 23 for dinner, which was fantastic…  What is better than the gift of meat?  Nothing.    After we got home we enjoyed the first episode of the new season of Doctor Who, and all was right in the world…

Sunday we just hung out and caught Les Ordres with the film club, which was pretty good…  Thanks to everyone for such a great birthday!

Tonight,

  and I met up with the film club to see a special preview screening of “Hot Fuzz” at the Brattle. “Hot Fuzz” is the latest film from the guys who created “Shaun of the Dead”. “Fuzz” is officially released here in the states in about a month, but the guys (Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost) are going around the US doing some screenings to build up buzz.

The screening was at 5:30pm, but our passes were first-come, first-served, so I figured we’d get into Harvard Square around 3pm, grab some lunch, and then buzz by the Brattle occasionally until we saw a line starting to form…  Well, we stuck to plan until the “buzzing” part;  After lunch, we did our first pass by the theatre and there was already a line 100+ people long..  So we got on line a bit after 3pm, and stood there until 5:15ish when the doors opened.    The show started about 10 minutes late, but Edgar, Simon, and Nick came out, introduced the movie, and then we were rolling..

Sweet Jesus is this a funny film..  It is every bit as clever as “Shaun of the Dead”, but from filmmakers that show a bit more confidence (and a bit more budget).  The film never really felt slow for me, and when I wasn’t laughing hysterically, I had a broad smile on my face…   There was a point towards the end where I thought I might be really disappointed by the ending, but then it took a fantastic right turn…  In fact, I think the actual ending was funnier in light of where I thought it was going…

I don’t want to spoil it too much, so I’ll just say that this movie is great, and you need to see it.

After the flick, the guys did a lengthy Q&A session, which was quite enjoyable…   They mentioned future projects they are all working on together, but didn’t give any details…  They mentioned they announced “Hot Fuzz” 9 months before they started writing the script, and wanted to avoid announcing anything too early again…  Whatever it ends up being, based on their first two films (and what I’ve seen of the BBC series, “Spaced”), I’ll be at the third on opening weekend!  

Busy Weekend!

This was a pretty crazy weekend!  On Friday night I went to Symphony Hall to see Artie Lange, from the Howard Stern Show (and formerly of MadTV).  It was a great time, Jim Florentine and Greg Fitzsimmons opened, both of whom I’ve enjoyed for some time, so it was great to see them live.  The MC was some local guy, who wasn’t that good and got pretty heavily booed, but he handled it well and probably knew what he was in store for… 

Saturday was a hugely busy day for

and I.  After grabbing breakfast, we headed over to the newly-rented storage locker to check it out, and then went across the street and rented a van from U-Haul.  We only really needed the van to move some of the bigger stuff (closet shelves and one of our dressers), but we ended up taking a bunch of other shit that was ready to go over as well.  I think the U-Haul guy was startled when he saw our total mileage was 3 miles in 2 hours, but then again, they are probably used to that in the city.  Moving that big stuff into storage sucked, but not as badly as it could have.  We spent the rest of the day packing away some unnecessary clothes and items..  The goal of all this is to make the apartment look less cluttered when we start showing it (hopefully in April).  This was a good motivator, imho, because the whole house was a mess, so it was hard NOT to be compelled to clean it up.  We ended up getting into a fight, which I guess can be expected when doing something so stressful, but we worked it out.. :)  We took another carload of stuff over Saturday night, and when we got back from that trip,  I turned the car off and realized I could pull up in my spot a bit more.  I went to start the car and it wouldn’t even turn over (even all the instrument lights were working fine).  I’m not entirely sure what’s wrong with it, but I guess I’ll have AAA tow it to my mechanic tonight.  Hopefully it’s just a bad battery, but I guess it could be something far more nefarious…

Sunday was spent cleaning and doing laundry..   I was pretty tired by the end of the day, and was nodding off a little bit on the train ride over to the movie theatre.  The film club saw 300 last night, which was fun…  It was much better than I expected, and while I had some minor criticisms, overall it was a fun flick.

Crispin Glover Could Be at Your House Right Now

Rochestarians and FUMN-philes, please note:

Crispin Glover will be at the Eastman House screening his film What Is It? and giving his Big Slide Show on March 2nd and 3rd.  This is a film I’ve wanted to see for some time (which Crispin is self-distributing and isn’t available on video), and is part of a trilogy, the second part of which was recently screened at Sundance.

2006 Films in Review

Beeeeeeeeewwww

Friday after work,

,

, and I left for Rochester…  We hit the road around 6:45pm and expected to arrive some time near Midnight..  Unfortunately, as soon as we were ready to leave, it started snowing..  Apparently in Boston it quickly turned to rain, but we had white-out conditions until the Mass border, delaying us like crazy…  We were planning on driving directly to Nick’s, but had to bail just because we arrived so late.   But we just revised the plans to hit Dinosaur for lunch on Saturday and grab some Nick’s for dinner just before FUMN started… 

We hit up Dinosaur with some folks as planned, and then headed over to CSH to hang out on floor for awhile…  Unfortunately, almost everyone was at some stupid RIT function that ResLife leaned on the house to attend…   I was pretty much set to go to Nick’s before FUMN, but I got guilted into attending

‘s birthday celebration..  It was a great time, but I really wanted Nick’s…

FUMN seemed to be a great success..  The committee picked a fine selection of flicks this year:

The films seemed to be pretty well received, although each flick had it’s detractors, but that’s to be expected..   We might have shown another film, but we got a late start as it was (after 10pm) and finished things up around 4am…  As it was I was contemplating dropping Oldboy and going out to Nick’s, but I decided to make that sacrifice….  :)

Sunday we swung by DiBella’s on our way out of town, which was as delicious as always.  We had a really nice drive back though…  The TomTom did us right, guiding us directly to Garrett’s for his Super Bowl party..  We watched the boredom of the Super Bowl and hung out with friends I hadn’t seen in awhile..   Finally rolled into Boston at 11pm, and crashed pretty quickly…

See, I told you FUMN was Scholarly!

I did a vanity search today for the phrase “fucked up movie night”, and was astonished to find that FUMN was cited in an academic article!

“Besides video and DVD rentals and purchases, the film is still being shown in theatres around the world. Indeed, in January 2001, the Royal Cinema in Toronto played an Ilsa double feature, presenting Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS at 9:15, and Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks at its 11:30 PM show. Paradise Cinema in Toronto also showed the double feature. It has also been shown on college campuses. For instance, Associated Students of UC Davis advertised it ironically as “the heart-warming, inspirational World War II epic” for a free-screening, Lewis and Clark College played it during its “alternative movie night,” and Rochester Institute of Technology showed it for “fucked up movie night.””

  Rapaport, Lynn – “Holocaust Pornography: Profaning the Sacred in ‘Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS,'” in Shofar, 22, Fall 2003

I’m not sure what pleases me more, the fact that showing “Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S.” was enough to get us into a scholarly journal, or that the credit (blame?) for showing the film was given to RIT as opposed to “The Committee”.  =)

On that subject, tomorrow is FUMN #16 at 9:45pm in the conference room below Kate Gleason Hall.    We’ll be landing in Rochester tonight around midnight, and will likely go directly to Nick’s.  Be there or be somewhere else.