Weekend Roundup

Well team, we're approaching the half-way mark - my apartment is strewn with ticket stubs and dirty socks, my purse is filled with granola bar wrappers, and my eyes have taken on a permanent glaze which makes me look slightly less sober than I actually am. Seems like as good a time as any to take stock of the movies that I saw this weekend.

El Bulli - Cooking in Progress: Foodies and Top Chef fans will enjoy this one, but i found its "observational cinema" style to be sleep inducing. Do not go see this movie hungry.

Mothers of Bedford: A touching film about mothers in a maximum security prison in New York who are trying to raise their children from behind bars. Many of them are serving murder sentences; I loved hearing about the offences that they were sentenced for.

Weibo's War: I skipped the Tribe Called Quest movie to see Weibo's War based on a tip from Now Magazine that Weibo was going to be there - all lies. But a good movie nonetheless, although the storyline felt unresolved at the end. If you like exploding gaslines, Christian compounds, and murder mysteries, then this is the movie for you!

The National Parks Project: See post below. I can't get into it again, it will make me angry.

Jig: This actually might be my favorite of the festival so far, though its appeal is probably limited to viewers with an interest in the wild world of competitive dance. It was a solid doc with a big budget and cute kids in funny costumes. It also got the most enthusiastic audience reception of any movie that I have seen so far, but that was probably because 90% of the audience was comprised of little girls who are Irish dancers. If the audience at Pirate Tapes was 90% pirates, I'm sure that would have raucous reception too.

Battle for Brooklyn: I wish I could say that this movie about eminent domain was inspiring, but instead it was one of the David vs. Goliath stories where David gets schooled, and I was only inspired never to bother standing up to the man. Or to take the money and run.

Becoming Chaz: A nice enough movie, about Chastity Bono transitioning into Chaz. This movie would appeal to anyone with an interest in gender issues, or any kind of personal identity issues. The most interesting part for me was learning about a support group for pre-pubescent transgendered children.

The Pirate Tapes: This movie was fraught with technical and stylistic problems - most notably the sound mixing. The music was louder than the voice-overs and it was difficult to hear what the narrator was saying. I don't understand how issues like this make it past all of the editing stages. Then there were all these weird diagrams and graphics that were impossible to follow - was it just me? But the biggest problem with the movie was Mohammed, the young Somali Canadian who took a camera to Somalia to infiltrate the pirate networks, assuming that he could come under no harm because his father was a former Minister there. Bad assumption. I'll let you find out the rest. The footage of the pirates was fascinating, but Mohammed's cockiness was maddening, and during the q & a, he actually referred to himself as a martyr. No joke.