All
Things
 Video 

by Carol Lane Patterson 
   

Local entrepreneurs, EDC’s CineVegas Film Festival and Blue Sky International Film Festival are our locally grown festivals. All moviegoers are welcome. These festivals are not just for celebrities—the tickets are sold in bulk or separately to the public. They are a lark, an adventure and diverse subject matter is encountered. That said, festivals broaden the fare of cinema simply because they are not all feature-film length, formulaic movies with the Hollywood stamp of approval. Most often this means there are limited budgets and often personally financed. 

The New York Film Festival, on tour, opened for the first time in Las Vegas April 2nd and ran until the 10th. Nearly 150 shorts, documentaries and feature length films were exhibited in this festival. Topping the charts: Jim Langlois’ Em & Me, showcasing a mesmerizing performance by Alan Young (Mister Ed, etc.), supported by an amazing array of unknowns acting their hearts out as the characters Ernie Bigelow encounters on his road trip to be with his late wife on their anniversary. Another romantic comedy with real box office potential was Paul Kinney’s Making Something Up, the smash hit in the sleeper category, masterfully portraying a meticulously anal writer of children’s books whose life is turned slowly—and agreeably—on its heels by the unexpected arrival of a neighbors’ female houseguest—the superlative screenplay was tight, funny and romantic without a kiss, a gratuitous skin scene or crassness served up as humorous interludes. Kudos to the director. The documentary style comedy, What happened? strings together amazingly accurate, insightful interviews of ‘players’ from Silicon alley in New York to Silicon Valley in California, inter-spliced with humorous anime from oddtodd.com and a survey on the pronunciation of .gif. Truly brilliant. 

Another innovative film, Charlie Adler’s 26-minute No Prom For Cindy, an engaging viewpoint of one teen’s quandary, features Charlie Adler in a gentle and genuinely heart-touching performance. Many ‘biggies’ such as Margot Kidder, Tippie Hedren, Tess Harper and Estelle Harris appeared in some of these offerings or others less palatable to the discerning metaphysicist. Liberty Stands Still (Kari Skoglund,) a 90-minute drama/thriller featuring Wesley Snipes and Linda Fiorentino (Men in Black, etc.), as Liberty was the breakout premiere. Penny Simpson and Joanne Hershfield’s Nuestra Communidad: Latino in North Carolina leads the pack in Documentaries, which touched the heart-mind, and educated, as they are wont to do. Interesting, for those of us unaware, that a Hispanic community, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, has been slowly coalescing into a true American community with roots and traditions from elsewhere, rivaling Las Vegas with its 400% growth rate. Who knew? As with all festivals, truly an adventurer, one picks and chooses from this eclectic fare, taking the good with the truly bad and every kind of cinematic storytelling effort in between. 

UPCOMING FESTIVALS: CineVegas opens June 8th through the 15th as our upgraded addition to cultural growth here. About 60 films will screen at Brenden Theatres in The Palms, the new home of CineVegas. Currently ‘in selection,’ this year’s choices are supervised by Trevor Groth, one of the Senior Programmers for the famous Sundance Film Festival—broadening our reach for premieres and high end independent fare. Definitely set aside time to join with other locals, and celebrities alike, for the Festival experience. You won’t regret a single moment.

DIRECT FROM HOLLYWOOD: 
Spider Man, 
Life — or Something Like It, 
and the unexpected hit 
Scorpion King 
are the chart toppers until May 16th when 
Star Wars 
graces the big screen once again.