Day by Day cartoon

Friday, March 02, 2007

FourSite Film Festival update

Opening night of the festival was a packed house at Ogden's Egyptian Theater and Carol has written a fine post about the feature show Pirates of the Great Salt Lake. I can't improve on what she has already written so make sure to check out her review. I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed Pirates. Its entertaining and funny and played with such earnestness in spite of its silly premise that it really made me laugh. Watching these two nefarious pirates sailing the high seas of the "Great Salt Sea" in just 2 or 3 feet of water, walking the plank off of their rowboat and falling into the mud and racing across 300 yards of beach to try to rob food from a woman only to happy to serve them a plateful was just funny.

It was also very fun to watch a film that was made right here in my neighborhood. If you can manage a chance to see Pirates you will get a great introduction to the scenery here in Utah that I like so much. I also couln't help enjoying how much fun this motley cast and crew must have entertained in the making of the movie. While they play it completely straight, it was obvious to me that it must have been lots of fun to make this film. I have to say that the BSU did not love Pirates very much but she has had a broken funny bone forever and so her opinions about what's funny are pretty skewed. She's not one to love a movie that revels in its silliness or absurdity and that's too bad for her.

Last night's movie was the world premier of The Mini. The crowd was (much) smaller than opening night and some of the reduced attendance needs to be blamed on the weather and traffic conditions because it was very ferocious outside all evening. But it was a world premier and I was determined not to miss it, even if the BSU opted to stay at home and Carol chose the wiser option of avoiding the lousy driving conditions.

The Mini's a terrific story of living with perenial low expectations. The hero, Fran is frustrated by his job- he's restricted to just selling futons in the mattress store where he works and resents Stan the manager's preferential treatment of the only other employee, creepy Rick Boushard, Fran's nemesis since high school. When Stan announces that the winner of the local mini-marathon will get the assistant manager position in the mattress store, Fran goes to work, enlisting his best friend Dale's help to train for the big race. In the mean time he is dealing with a broken down junk car, a budding romance with Carmen and continual difficulty keeping AM and PM straight on his bedside alarm clock.

Hijinks, high drama and bowling ensue. And because this is a feel-good movie, in the end Fran perseveres to get the race win, with help from his many-years-departed Dad, the hot girl and a much better job than he imagined possible. Stan and Rick get their just rewards and Dale learns to drive.

This is a terrific film! I really loved it and I wish the entire cast and crew, most of whom served in multiple aspects of making the film a multi-screen release in the near future. This movie deserves to be seen by many more folks than will attend the festivals where it might be shown. Right now some of the music score is pending usage contracts but once that circumstance is complete I expect, and the crew is hoping, to see this released at the local cineplex. If it comes to your neighborhood, go see it. It’s a great story.

Tonight- extreme snowboarding films!

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