Monday 7th July
MIFF. Even the acronym sounds kinda adorable, but don't be fooled - it's a freaking juggernaut of a film festival, and it's can be overwhelming. So here is ThreeThousand's preview of the program, now only days away from appearing in The Age on July 11.
(Notice the word ‘preview': we haven't seen most of these yet, so please, keep any revenge plans as friendly as possible.)
See below for an auteur section we'd call ‘Awesome Welles!' if we weren't so averse to puns; new art-inspired docos covering sex, god, and ‘80s teen-queen stalking; and art-trash horror to prove festival films aren't all tragic, subtitled fisherman movies.
If nothing else, MIFF 2008 asks: do you prefer the gay zombies of Bruce La Bruce's Otto or the Swedish vampires of Tomas Alfredson's Let The Right One In? Don't worry. We won't make you choose.
ThreeThousand - we heart MIFF
Cover image: still from Not Quote Hollywood, dir. Mark Hartley, 2008.
George A. Romero
Cinephiles en masse
Stranger talk in queues
Johnny Mad Dog
The element of surprise
Bars between screenings
Waltz with Bashir
The weather of course
Compiled by MIFF Director Richard Moore
Tell us what's cool
cool@twothousand.com.au
George W. Bush
Cinephiles at mass
Losing when you snooze
Johnny come latelys
The ads of Kinder Surprise
Screenings behind bars
Running with wolves
Those who are pitied by Mr T
Compiled by ThreeThousand
Tell us what's fool
fool@twothousand.com.au
MIFF Auteur Picks
What:
MIFF Auteur Picks
Where:
Check the program from July 11
When:
Uh. Check the program
How much:
Tickets here from July 11
Let's start with some of the festival regulars who show up each year with a new film and a friendly wave. You're already familiar with their work, so they make comforting first choices if the program's heft is freaking you out.
The new MIFF program 'Free Radicals' has the strangely sweet Guy Maddin front and centre. In My Winnipeg, he takes the least compelling premise in film history - "Hey, let me explain my childhood in Winnipeg! It'll be awesome!" - and uses his impressionistic fireworks to transform it into the unmissable.
We've called the mad Takashi Miike "synopsis-proof" before. Does he think that making his first English-language film will help? That's Sukiyaki Western Django, a Japanese concoction of Leone-inspired madness. It features a cameo by Quentin Tarantino, but please, don't hold that against it.
Remember trying to find every digit buried, Where's Wally-style, in Drowning By Numbers? Peter Greenaway combines his interests in film and fine art for the period piece Nightwatching. Even his numerous failures are intriguing - but are audiences ready to see Rembrandt played by Martin Freeman from The Office?
Format: Festival
Mood: Smarts
Keywords: Peter Greenaway, Takashi Miike, Guy Maddin, MIFF
MIFF - Artist Docos
What:
MIFF - Artist Docos
Where:
Check the program from July 11
When:
Uh. Check the program
How much:
Tickets here from July 11
The popularity of the music documentary section of MIFF may lead many - like your idiot housemate - to assume that this is all the doco program has to offer. Not so! If he proves difficult to convince, take him to see these; if he refuses, get a new housemate.
Surely there is nothing less foreboding than the saccharin pop of ‘80s sweetheart, Tiffany. But I Think We're Alone Now hurls us into the abyss of two stalkers, both obsessed with America's favourite ex-teen queen.
Bad-ass feminist punk icon Kathy Acker may be dead, but her furious intelligence lives on in every gloriously foul-mouthed, angry woman around. When director Barbara Casper asks Who's Afraid of Kathy Acker?, the answer is we all are, and we should bloody well celebrate it.
Following his visit to MIFF last year to present his Joe Strummer doco, Julien Temple works closer to home in this adaptation of the opera The Eternity Man. The tale of reformed metho-drinker Arthur Stace, famed for writing the word "eternity" in chalk on Sydney streets for 40 years, it is tagging taken to an ethereal plane.
Format: Festival
Mood: Rad
Keywords: Kathy Acker, MIFF
MIFF Random Play
What:
MIFF Random Play
Where:
Check the program from July 11
When:
Uh. Check the program
How much:
Tickets here from July 11
With seventeen days of films on offer, some of your choices will come down to guesswork - even if you fine-tooth through the program with IMDB bookmarks and a magnifying glass. We roll the dice with some random, synopsis-selected, will-they-or-won't-they picks.
Why not embrace the proud ThreeThousand tradition of choosing a flick based solely on its title? This year it's debut feature with French New Wave tendencies The Pleasure of Being Robbed. The word ‘whimsical' appears alarmingly often in the synopsis, but a girl stealing from strangers and expecting their thanks sounds perfectly charming.
"A typical Icelandic murder," says the cop in police procedural Jar City. "Messy and pointless." Warmly embraced by Icelandic audiences, this noirish murder-mystery promises to be so bleak that Melbourne's winter will seem like long-lost track from Pet Sounds.
Royston Tan fought a long war with censors over his first film, 15, a compelling story of Singaporean street kids that swung between grimy realism and ADHD fireworks. In 881, he puts his excess style in service of one of the most difficult cinematic genres of all - the musical. Fingers crossed.
Format: Festival
Mood: Whimsical
Keywords: MIFF, Film, Musical, murder-mystery
MIFF Trash Horror
What:
MIFF Trash Horror
Where:
Check the program from July 11
When:
Uh. Check the program
How much:
Tickets here from July 11
Film festivals occasionally throw a few obscure horror gems into their programs to up their cool quotient, but MIFF takes it a step further this year by gleefully embracing the long, trashy and often bizarre history that spawned the contemporary genre.
1968's Spider Baby is one of the most hilarious and fundamentally doomed cult film productions of all time, thus a hands-down festival highlight. Alternatively known as ‘The Liver Eaters', ‘Cannibal Orgy' and ‘The Maddest Story Ever Told', it will convert even the most earnest cinephile to the joys of trash.
Superstar MIFF guest this year George Romero's Martin is not only his strangest and most perverse film, but also one of his lesser known. Bringing him together with cult hero and special effects artist Tom Savini for the first time, Martin twists vampiric clichés into something freshly disturbing.
Four out of five films in the Ozploitation program are horror, and the most exciting in terms of big-screen spectacle is the rock video psychedelia of Razorback. Tarantino calls Russell Mulcahy a poor man's Ridley Scott, but with Razorback's nonsensical plot and hyperactive visuals, he's more a Melbourne-born Dario Argento.
Format: Festival
Mood: Make a therapy appointment now
Keywords: MIFF, George Romero, Spider Baby, Horror
MIFF First in Line
What:
MIFF First in Line
Where:
Check the program from July 11
When:
Uh. Check the program
Howmuch:
Tickets here from July 11
And finally, without rhyme or reason, a wildly non-exhaustive list of some films that made our cinematic spider-sense tingle on first flip through the program.
The eternally-underrated Terrence Davies' first film in eight years, Of Time and The City, is described as "both a love song and a eulogy" to his birthplace of Liverpool. A sensation at Cannes - and the perfect bizarro-twin to My Winnipeg (above) - it's a mediation on memory that will leave new fractures through your heart.
Triangle is a collaboration by three infamous Hong Kong actioneers: Johnnie To, Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam. The plot sounds like it'll just get in the way - ancient treasure, heist gone wrong, whatever - but spotting the signature style of each director is an irresistible fanboy treat.
The films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder are the crack cocaine of cinema: once hooked, there's no turning back. The task of choosing a favourite from this year's Cannes Director's Fortnight series is tricksy indeed, but the gay melodrama Fox and His Friends - starring the totally-gorgeous-but-really-shouldn't-be Fassbinder himself - wins hands down.
Format: Festival
Mood: Epic
Keywords: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Action, Terrence Davies, MIFF
MIFF - the screens
What:
MIFF - the screens
Where:
RMIT Capitol Theatre, 113 Swanston St (opp. Melbourne Town Hall)
ACMI Cinemas, Federation Square, Flinders St
Greater Union, 131 Russell St
Forum Theatre, 154 Flinders St (cnr Russell St)
Kino, 45 Collins St
Travelling the MIFF screens is like boarding The Magical School Bus for a history lesson on butt-comfort through the ages.
The Forum's gargoyle-guarded architecture is pant-wettingly grand but - suckishly - their rickety old seats are well known for bruising asses. Meanwhile, at The Capitol, you can ogle the famously mathematical ceiling and walk away hernia-free. The iconic Regent has been hijacked by musical types this year, much to the dismay of MIFFers, so expect more screenings at the adored-by-cinephiles- Melbourne-wide Kino and the garish Greater Union.
And then the magical school bus stops at Fed Square and the beloved ACMI. Good screens, good sound, and size-24-friendly seats. It's the cinema you'd like to introduce to your parents one day.
Ambience: Indoor
Difficulty: Exertion will pay off
MIFF - festival lounges
What:
The Coopers Festival Lounge
The Yalumba Festival Wine Bar
Where:
Forum Theatre, Flinders St (Coopers)
Greater Union, Russell St (Yalumba)
When:
Mon-Fri 2pm-midnight, Sat-Sun 12pm-1am
How much:
Free entry
The Festival Lounges at MIFF are not just comfortable waterholes for movie-talk. They're like life-saving cordial stations for marathon runners - because when a MIFF fiend has exited from their fifth-going-on-sixth movie for the day, a visit to the bar can pull them back from the brink of lunacy. The nervous twitching can sometimes only be eased by social interaction over a quick tipple, so when you visit either of these two venues, tip the bartender for keeping the men in white coats away.
It's not surprising what's available at The Coopers Festival Lounge: lounging and beer. Most people would say this is their favourite combination of things. The Coopers Festival Lounge can be found under the faux-night sky at the Forum Theatre, where there'll be special film-related events throughout the festival. If you've planned your evening of screen-gazing Russell Street-ways, you won't need to travel far for the Yalumba Festival Wine Bar. We dare you to order a chardy in a super-sized coke cup.
Venue: Bar
Meal: Party Time
Keywords: MIFF
Stalking Romero
What:
Stalking Romero
Where:
Locations offering natural undead combat advantages
When:
Jul 25 - Aug 10
Related links:
Homepage of the Dead
Description:
Sure, you've planned for the zombie apocalypse. You know the closest big box retailer that stocks garden supplies and canned food, you have memorised the route to the riot police armoury (reinforced suits, semi-automatics, etc). During MIFF, however, you will have access to the brains trust of a man who knows the undead better than they know braaaains. Merely studying the daily habits of George A. Romero should improve your chances of survival. Where to find him though? We have theorised three likely locations. Church (when there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth - Romero likes a weekly update on the population of hell). Barricade-friendly basement venues such as Minotaur, Fifteen Restaurant and the Hi Fi Bar. Sparsely populated areas with wide land tracts and pot-shot vantage points. *Cough* the Docklands. - PM
Event: Party
Stimulus: A
Keywords: George Romero
The Arthur Russell Paradise Express
What:
ThreeThousand and MIFF present The Arthur Russell Paradise Express
Where:
Roxanne, Lvl 3, 2 Coverlid Pl, Melbourne
When:
Fri Aug 1, doors 11pm
Straight after the 9.30pm MIFF screening of Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell
How much:
$10 on the door
Half price entry if you show a ticket stub from the film
Here at ThreeThousand, we've believed it for a while: disco is the new nu rave. But, as Malcolm Gladwell has said (between trips to the money-counting machine), every trend needs a tipping point. And mark our words, for disco in Melbourne the tipping point will be Wild Combination: A Portrait Of Arthur Russell.
Now, Russell may have been a cellist, but he sure knew how to write a dance tune. This party, co-presented with MIFF, is gonna relive his contributions to Larry Levan's Paradise Garage - ‘Kiss Me Again', ‘Is It All Over My Face' - all that spangly stuff.
We invite you to give your body up to the music in homage of the man who, under the guise of various monikers - Dinosaur L, Loose Joints, Indian Ocean - produced playful and eccentric disco records that were hits of the pre-Studio 54 era. Featuring DJ People, Matt Hurst, Declan Kelly and GLOVES - playing loft classics all night! Dress up, don't mess up.
Ambience: Indoor
Difficulty: Exertion will pay off
Keywords: MIFF, Disco, Paradise Garage
Film festivals really separate the wheat from the chaff. There are the pussies who pretend to be proper film buffs - wearing nerd flack jackets, drinking takeaway coffee with an intense frown, glaring at Jim Schembri in the queue etc. But they only go to, like, one screening, and couldn't even tell you the difference between the French New Wave and the French new rave. Here we provide you with a full armory against film pussy behaviour.
Thanks to MIFF, we have a mini pass (10 films plus a bonus 3 films for weekdays before 5pm), a festival t-shirt, and a MIFF membership (discounts on food and drink in the Coopers Festival Lounge, discounted tickets during the festival, PRIORITY QUEUING and a whole year of special benefits) to give away. You will be hard, fricken, core. To enter, just answer the following question...
This week's question:
George A. Romero's comic series is entitled:
a) When there's no more room in hell, comic artists will walk the earth
b) The Death of Death
c) Dead Reckoning
d) Braaaaains
Send your name, mailing address and phone number to win@threethousand.com.au. Winners will be notified by email. Subscriber-only entry. Not a subscriber? No sweat - sign up here.
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