04.29.10

101 in 1001 {II}: 089 attend a screening at the tribeca film festival [completed 04.26.10]

day 264: tribeca

a mere seven years after moving to new york city, we got our shit together for tribeca. at last, we're real new yorkers film festival action for me! after a bit of ticket scrambling (which has convinced me to cave in and hook up with american express, i think; their cardholder-only presale events are all over the place lately) and rainy-night-taxi-and-umbrella-dancing, we presented ourselves at village east cinema for dream home. our theater (which was rather small to begin with) was rather sparsely populated; our little hong-kong-slasher-that-could had a lot of competition on monday night, and a big chunk of seats were reserved for filmmakers and voters. on the former, a festival staffer popped in four or five times before the movie started to let us know that the director and his translator, godot-like, were indeed on their way to the theater (but didn't need their seats, so we could go ahead and take them). the festival voters' seats, on the other hand, needed to stay empty: "they can come in whenever they want," the staffer continued. "someone like jessica alba could get mad at you." i kind of want her to get mad at me," said the guy in front of us in a tone of erotic awe (which made me giggle through the festival previews). another staffer popped in just before the curtains rose to tell us that the film had "some of the most creative violence we've seen this year," and the reels rolled.

dream home is a...squelchy movie, let's say. gambling heiress josie ho, its star and co-producer, hoped it would "shock the hell out of hong kong;" how it's affecting overseas audiences is anyone's guess (its release in hong kong was stalled a number of times this past fall), but the gal sitting beside me lurched out the door with half a dozen other people during a particularly noisome space bag death scene twenty minutes in. it was pretty...squelchy, yes, but what'd they think guignol horror (as the tribeca blurb called dream home) was?

i enjoyed parts of the screening; my filmic hong kong is the smooth, upmarket city in infernal affairs (remade as the departed), and i'd known next to nothing about its gentrification process. dream home's take on the real estate market is a bit extreme (girl murders twelve for an apartment with a harbor view!), of course, but...it's a decent premise, one that somehow gives me a stronger stomach than the one i bring to american horror (i'm still sick about the awful, awful 2006 the hills have eyes remake). we didn't stay to find out if the director did indeed turn up for his Q&A; joe was ready to go home, and i was afraid we'd get stuck by ourselves making small talk with the translator about space bags. our next screening, james franco's saturday night, is this sunday afternoon.


imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 would you want jessica alba to be mad at you?

02 have you ever walked out of a movie?

03 is gore-horror any more or less tolerable for you than the bloodless kind?

11 comments:

LPC said...

1. If she's cute when she's mad.
2. Um, probably, but I'm too old to remember.
3. I cannot watch gore at all, while I can peer at scary movies as long as everyone keeps their limbs. I can't even watch all those autopsy-heavy TV shows. I don't like my humans peeled, much.

jacob said...

02 i have not walked out of a movie, but i will take this opportunity to share the worst double-feature i ever saw (and by double-feature, i mean paying for one movie and sticking around for a second). on christmas day, 1994, i saw the live-action macaulay culkin-starring "richie rich" followed by the nora ephron suicide hotline comedy "mixed nuts."

Rachel (heart of light) said...

1. I would prefer that she not exist at all, actually. Maybe that's a little harsh? I don't know. She bugs.
2. No, shockingly. I tend to stick it out, no matter what.
3. No horror of any kind, really. Unless it involves crafty serial killers, which I quite enjoy.

P.S. Good on you for finally making it to a film festival! I'll have to try to do the same.

Amanda said...

01 I'm with Rachel on this.
02 Yes. Pirates of the Caribbean III. And I deeply regret staying for all of Fern Gully.
03 No. But it might be more tolerable if there wasn't any scary music.

jamie said...

01 i am not even 100% sure i could pick her out of a crowd, or tell you exactly what she is famous for (pathetic?)
02 don't think so. but we did walk out of ryan adams last time we saw him play. #baby 
03 i too, am not much for horror. the sillier it is, the more i can handle it. so in some ways, the bloodier the better.

speaking of which. Amanda, buffy is *not scary*. one time i was watching an episode and there was a scene that was so smart, funny, and touching at the same time. i wanted to send you a youtube of it so you could see why you must watch it. but could not find it. if we lived in the same city we could watch it together. then i would have an excuse to re watch the whole series.

not sure why work is letting my see your blog today, and not others.

kidchamp said...

ha! who knew the ladies in my life would react to jessica alba in a way that (for the most part) perfectly counterbalances the men? she was the lead in dark angel, jamie, if that helps; she was also nancy in sin city and one of the fantastic four. i'm neutral, though i will concede that she's pretty good-looking. 

on movies i should've left (i haven't ever actually left one), i think i might still beat all of you for having let myself get peer pressured into seeing titanic three (cough) times. i also let baby jo talk me into biodome, that pauly shore classic, which she had already seen. (oh, jo.)

on ryan adams, jamie, he walked out of the show the time we saw him. mandy moore has her hands full, methinks. 

Milkmaid's dumb friend said...

01:  Can’t she just be nice to me, for once?  (She was great in Into the Blue though, which was itself awesome thanks to the greatest B Movie Actor of our time- Paul “Running Scared/The Fast and the Furious” Walker.  No kidding.)
02: How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days<The Hills Have Eyes remake.  Twenty minutes is all it took; and I sat through a restored version of Erich von Stroheim’s silent classic Greed.
03: A gruesome visual affixed to a foul idea is worse than a gruesome visual alone.
0?: @Amanda: As your Dumb Friend, maybe even your Dumbest Friend, I need you to know that Buffy is for you.

wabes said...

holy shit, murdered by a space bag?!  that just sunk in...

kidchamp said...

@wabes: yeah, on her head. and it was a pregnant woman. "guignol horror" was sort of putting it mildly, actually. 

to bookend jessica alba coverage, our friend tony (king of tribeca) has run into her at two or three screenings and, predictably, the Q&A for the killer inside me, her festival offering. tony report-texts that it, like dream home, was "bruuuuuuuuutal" (actually he said "buuuuuuuuuutal," but those buttons are so very small.)

Amanda said...

Jamie, MDF: So let it be written. So let it be done.

kidchamp said...

so say we all! ::collapses under heap of genre television::