Awww..its like the line up of the special olympics of nobudgets.

New Low: Cliches and poor casting. A few funny lines.

The New Year: Poor casting. Dunn, you are not the new Marianna Palka. Nowhere close.

Bilal’s Stand: Just more salt in the wound, no art. No examination of the Horatio Alger myth. No captivating scenes. Cliche storyline.

The House of the Devil: They’re still making horror films?

Nolan made Following in 1999 for 4000 pounds. And most of it went to film stock. Today, you can set your Canon 7D to superflat, hire a good sound guy, and shoot it Dogme 95 style (assuming you know what that is), read a book on color grading, bypass the festivals, and sell your film to Oscilloscope. Nolan also studied literature. I suggest before one makes a film, one reads a few good books too. Thanks!

I think Putty Hill is good, also Scrap Vessel and all the Robert Machoian & Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck shorts (even though shorts are pointless, for the same reason you don’t have novels that are only one chapter either. So learn how to write and then make a film. Because all the mistakes you make in a film are PERMANENT, like a tattoo that film history has to wear forever, get it?)

No, Tacoma isn’t lucky, the film makers are, because curators in major festivals are a lot pickier. Thats just an industry fact. Don’t really know the last time I saw TFF laurels on a DVD case, do you? Thanks.

One more thing to add, you may be wondering or probably not, why film history is an important thing.

History is important as a means of publication and solidification of ideas for a foundation of knowledge. If scientists weren’t subjected to a buttload of peer review before publishing, there would be no tried and tested empirical material to draw from.

Same thing goes with film publishing. If we are shitty in our peer review of such works from people like Trieste Kelly Dunn (btw never trust anyone who makes it a point to use three names like its important or whatever) who parades around with the most heavily plucked eyebrows I have ever seen in a not so eyebrow raising story about a character she is convinced only she is good enough to play (i mean who the fk does that besides that megalomaniac Vincent Gallo?), then what the hell are we submitting to the testaments of film history?

All I am saying is yes, there is the audience who just watches a movie simply for entertainment and something else to do in Tacoma besides get drunk at a bar, and then there are the peers who figure out if your shit passes the smell test. And those people who are responsible for the public seeing a film festival film are the curators I imagine. Ultimately they are responsible for what you get to see at the Grand.

They are the people who watch something first and judge how big of a punch something packs, how big of an empathy ride you the audience will get to go on. They can give you a great gift to take home, something to move you, to give you a breath of fresh air. These are critical decisions, and just by saying that something passed the smell test at SXSW or Tribecca and should therefor at TFF as well, doesn’t mean jack.

Roger Ebert?

Roger fking Ebert is also the same person who gave Reservoir Dogs a lousy 2 stars saying whatever it is Ebert says.

So now you have to ask yourself TFF goers, did my curator do the very best they could to get the films that are going to change perceptions for me, the films that I am going to walk away with something from??? Because perception of the world, like the Wu Tang Clan, ain’t nothin to fk with.

I look at that list and I say, it could have been a lot better. Especially if someone got paid do it. But if better didn’t submit, then that is all you are gonna get Tacoma.

So grab a bottle of jergens, lock your bathroom door, and have a look at this:

tiff.net/thefestival…

Here’s what I am saying yak,

“Who knows where it could go from here”

Thats the point, you CAN know. Because you can MAKE it go. You can make something go, grow, attract, capture, hold, sustain, only if you take the right steps and bring in the right material. Programming.

If you, year after, festival after festival, only attract the fringe film makers who are out on the fringes because their sht simply sucks, then suck is all Tacoma gets to see.

So how do you attract the film makers who think if they pay the money, and submit the films, that TFF laurels are going to mean something for the buzz they are trying generate?

Because two things happen at a film festival, the first is what I the curator would be concerned with. Which is feeding my flock. As a TFF curator, living in the NW, I would feel it imperative to make sure my audience gets the goods. I mean, they get the pure columbian lohan candy. I want my flock, when the lights go down in the Grand, to be stargated to another place in the galaxy, fluffed by exotic aliens Captain Kirk style, happy-ended, clutching kleenexes and walking wrong for a week. I want them to see films that have them walking out of the Grand, jello-legged, like the very first time seeing Saving Private Ryan.

The second thing that happens, is the film makers win something that means something because they know the audience they came for got it. Here’s your laurels, thank you. See you on the shelf at Stadium.

Thats basically my whole point to having a NXNW festival in Tacoma, because you get visitors from Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland coming to see what the heck is going on. Sync that with the TFF and you get a Hajj of NW awesomeness that will get you Toronto FF class submissions to TFF.

Now you can be happy with the Daffodil Parade, thats fine. But then don’t brag like it’s the Macy’s and that the ‘outside’ of Tacoma’s arts community has no clue what they are missing. Because they do.

The future of the Grand is mailable, thats all I am saying. But you have to ask, who at TFF grew up being really good at play-doh, and who didn’t.

Jello-legged from seeing Saving Private Ryan? Really?

Dude, you couldn’t get more than a handful of people from Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland to come to a Tacoma festival if Orson Wells himself rose from the dead and presented the premiere of “Kane II: Citizen Gates.”

Go Grand Cinema! Thanks for being such a gem.

Hey lost,

When is the last time you weren’t on the computer? Get a life.

Hey Trashtown, did someone forget to tell you it was the age of information? What are you using to read this blog? A stone tablet? Freaking hypocrite.

@Toprican, yeah I know saying Private Ryan is one of the greatest is an easy target for cinema snobs. Thats fine. Glad you are inspired by those films. I’ve seen plenty. Schultze Gets the Blues (German), The Piano Teacher (French), Julian Donkey Boy (American), Antichrist (Von Trier). I am not dim, I know more about cinema than you, I am just not a snob about it and I think you are full of sht if you think there is no formula to all those other films. There is formula in everything. Thanks!

Who IS this guy, anyway?

Princess Bride – eh. Too improbible. You want a great movie? Watch Predator. Now that’s a movie!

Starship Troopers, dude.

I wonder if Inigo Montoya (with sword) could beat up Arnold Schwartzenegger’s character in predator. (no sword needed – he can use logs and stuff)

Or if Inigo Montoya could beat up the actual predator thing?

Predator vs. Inigo Montoya?

OHHHHHH MOFO yeah and then just as arnold is about to sling some gogurt, the sequence cuts away to the face he makes in total recall pulling that tracking device out of his nose.