VIFF

Vancouver International Film Festival

Tina's letter to the Vancouver International Film Festival
"Maybe you can forgive me, and one day I'll come creeping furtively back into your arms, when my children are grown and I need a way of filling my empty days."
Trevor Boddy reviews One Way Street on a Turntable, playing at the Vancouver International Film Festival
"Hong Kong's New Territories are Burnaby, Surrey and Richmond all rolled into one, but at extreme housing densities and with a frenzy of street-side shops."
Karen reviews How to Cook Your Life
Relating Buddhism to cooking, she watched the movie in the newly refurbished Ridge Theatre as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival.

Review: I, Curmudgeon

Watched I, Curmudgeon at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

An excellent, if imperfect film—and intentionally imperfect, I believe, as we see shots of the director Alan Zweig setting up the camera and people in the top-left corner of the frame at different points. Not so much a documentary as a set of interviews with self-described negative people, people whom their friends would label curmudgeons. Zweig answered the question on everybody's mind after the show by saying that he did not put name labels on each of the interviewees, although they are named in the credits, because while some were famous, it was more important to show that they were people instead of famous people. I saw myself in a lot of those people, like Harvey Pekar, who said that the only time he enjoys life is when he's exhausted, because he's not nervous then (same here), and especially (my being a 26-year-old and all) the guy in his late twenties who remarked how fucked up it is that he didn't get laid in college (same here). I saw this film alone, despite asking publicly if anybody would have liked to join me. Not enough lead time, I was told by one, but even still, I made a small effort to do something with someone and nobody says they want to come do it with me. Bah humbug. I'm a 26-year-old grump, but this movie will hopefully make me reconsider the costs and the payoffs of being a grump.

I've written about this movie (or linked to quotes about it) a few times since seeing it: