Post Festival Sightings

Throughout the festival I spent a lot of time reading the program catalog between screenings. The nice thing about this is that I've now got a list of films I'd wanted to see but missed. Thankfully these are starting to come out in theaters.

Over the last few weeks I caught up on a few of them. I'll try to post updates as I continue to catchup

BTW - if you'd like to catch Bickford Smeckler's Cool ideas it'll be showing outside towards the end of August - http://www.cinemaonthelawn.com/

Heart of the Game
Well, I can't really put it down but I don't think it's the greatest documentary ever. It has a great source because the coach is really a character. I feel that maybe they felt they had to have a strong focus on one player and whether or not they won a championship. I suspect they're probably right if they wanted to get a hit on their hands. But afterwards I felt like I wish I'd learned more about some of the other players. It's not really as slick as some better filmed documentaries like MadHot Ballroom. That all said I'm glad I saw it. I'm really, really interested at what point they started filming and why vs. how much was reconstructed opportunistically from video that had been shot for person use. It spans 7 years and no one could have predicted the shape of the final outcome. So overall I think it's worth seeing. :-)

Russian Dolls
Hmmm - how to describe. I was a little dissappointed. I'm glad I saw it, if only becauseit was in SIFF and it made me feel like I was extending the experience. For me the problem was that I couldn't really seem to muster up a lot of positive feelings for the main male character. I didn't walk away thinking it was terrible either. Mainly I'm not feeling bad I saw whatever I saw when I skipped it at SIFF. There were some other really fun characters mixed in. I'm thinking the earlier film (L’Auberge Espagnole) for which this was a sequel is probably worth a rental. I'll let you know.