CineVegas »

You couldn't turn a corner in Telluride this year without hearing a festival manager or volunteer gushing thanks to the festival's many sponsors for continuing to support Telluride despite, to quote Charlie Kaufman, today's wintry economic climate. Telluride, a posh film industry mainstay, appeared to weather the storm: the $680 "Festival Passes" -- the most common, middle-of-the-road choice for Telluride pass-holders (passes run from around $300 to over $3000) -- didn't sell out for the first time in recent memory, but the festival was well-attended, the movies plentiful, and apart from the speech-making, the only sign of trouble was that Omaha Steaks provided flatiron instead of sirloin for the event's annual Labor Day picnic.

Some of the less entrenched film events apparently are not so lucky. The increasingly popular CineVegas, for example, recently announced a hiatus for 2010, so that regular attendees -- of whom Cinematical is one (or more) -- had better make other plans for next June. Part of the problem, as The Hollywood Reporter notes, is that unlike Telluride and a great many other film festivals, CineVegas is not a non-profit, which makes sponsorships harder to come by.

Still, though CineVegas may have been minor compared to Toronto, Sundance, etc., it was certainly a major regional player. Several of the lower-profile events with which I'm familiar -- the San Francisco International Film Festival, the Mill Valley Film Festival, the Philadelphia Film Festival -- have gone ahead as planned this year. (The latter was affected by a feud among two major Philly film scene heavyweights, but that's neither here nor there.) The Hollywood Reporter article linked above notes a number of other events that have felt the pinch, though it only cites one other one -- the Jackson Hole Film Festival -- that was canceled entirely for budgetary reasons. How have festivals, repertory venues, and indie art houses fared in your neck of the woods?

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A womanizing cad doesn't believe in true love, even though he makes his living writing novels about it. He sleeps with one beautiful woman after another, never getting attached, always pleased when the women leave before he wakes up in the morning. But his whole world is turned upside-down when, out of nowhere, he actually falls in love with one of them.

Yes, it's the ol' "education of a douchebag" story, going by the title Mercy this time around and starring Scott Caan, who also wrote the screenplay. (It's actually his third script; he directed the other two himself, and the first, Dallas 362, won the jury prize at CineVegas in 2003.) One is tempted to find autobiographical elements in Caan's swaggering character, especially since his real-life father, James Caan, plays his dad in the movie, but I don't know if that's accurate. But it might be the more charitable interpretation, since without a personal connection there's no reason to tell a story this generic.

It's at the release party for his third novel that Johnny Ryan (Scott Caan) meets Mercy (Wendy Glenn), a gorgeous, slender brunette who, unlike most heterosexual women (or so we're led to understand), is not instantly bowled over by Johnny's smooth cocky charm. Nor, it turns out, does she like his writing. This wouldn't normally bother Johnny -- he prefers women who can barely read anyway -- but in this case it's troubling because she's a New York Times book critic. Now with two reasons to pursue her (the usual one, and her negative opinion of his work), Johnny redoubles his efforts to get close to her.

The Twitters were abuzz a few nights ago, when the CineVegas Film Festival hosted an event at the Sapphire Gentlemen's Club and people saw Jack Nicholson there. It seemed reasonable. Nicholson's old pal Dennis Hopper is the fest's honorary chair, so it was plausible that Jack would be in town. No one had a problem believing he'd turn up at a strip club, either.

But it wasn't him. It was a guy who looks a lot like him, a guy whose shtick seems to be dressing and grooming himself to look like Nicholson and hanging around CineVegas. He's been everywhere: at festival headquarters, at the post-screening parties, in the theater lobby, everywhere. He really does bear a striking resemblance to Nicholson, at least until you look closely. Then you realize the suit is kind of shabby, the hair is unkempt, and the general air is that of Homeless Guy, not Jack Nicholson. Who knew the line between Nicholson and Hobo was so thin?

Turns out his name is Norman Deesing, an actor who appears in a CineVegas documentary called Youth Knows No Pain, about plastic surgery. When he's not dressing up as Nicholson, he looks only vaguely like him, and doesn't resemble a bum at all. Again, it's alarming to realize that you could see the real Nicholson and mistake him for a vagrant. Do you suppose that ever happens to Jack? Like maybe he shows up at the VIP entrance for a Lakers game, and the security guard says, "Hey, buddy, the free scraps of food are around back, in the alley. Oh! I beg your pardon, Mr. Nicholson!"

It's a rarity for a director's first film to be as confident and effective as Easier with Practice is. And for any film, let alone a debut, to address difficult subjects with this much insight, humor, and humanity is almost miraculous. There are filmmakers who couldn't produce something this good on their tenth try, and here Kyle Patrick Alvarez has done it right out of the gate.

Alvarez's screenplay is based on a GQ article by Davy Rothbart, and it concerns an introverted 28-year-old writer named Davy Mitchell (Brian Geraghty) who is driving around the southwest United States with his brother, Sean (Kel O'Neill), to promote his book of short stories. This book hasn't actually been published, mind you, but self-produced copies are available after the readings.

While at a hotel in Albuquerque one night, Davy gets a random phone call from a woman named Nicole (Kathryn Aselton) who seductively asks what he's wearing. Nonplussed, he replies, "Clothes, I guess." Apparently quite skilled at this, Nicole soon has Davy engaging in a bit of steamy phone sex with her. She gets his cell number (this first rendezvous was on the hotel phone) and says she'll call again.

It becomes a regular thing. Every night, while Sean sleeps in a hotel bed, Davy stays out in their station wagon and talks to Nicole. It's mostly about the sex, but it becomes a relationship of sorts, too, with post-coital conversations -- the equivalent of cuddling, in Davy's words. Nicole's primary interest is dirty talk, though, and she won't ever give Davy her number, which is blocked from his caller ID. Everything is on her terms. Davy is smitten, and stuck.

Redland is an art film in the most literal and complimentary sense. Every frame of it looks like an Impressionist painting or an exquisite photograph, and the dialogue is overheard in snippets, the way you half-hear conversations when you're drifting to sleep. The story is non-linear and dreamlike. The film's substance, its actual content, is good, but its style is nothing short of astonishing.

The setting is a rural, isolated mountain home during the Great Depression. These are not the Waltons, though. The unnamed family is dirt-poor, living in a ramshackle house and barely staying ahead of starvation. They subsist on the few chickens and other animals kept on their property. You know the old cliché about how we were poor but we didn't know it, because we were happy? Not these people. These people are poor and miserable.

Worse, the teenage daughter, Mary-Ann (Lucy Adden), has been having a sexual affair with Charlie Mills (Toben Seymour), a neighbor boy her age ("neighbor" means he lives a few miles away), and has been trying desperately to keep it hidden from her father (Mark Aaron) and mother (Bernadette Murray). Father suspects something is wrong with his daughter and asks her brothers -- older Job (Sean Thomas) and younger Paul (Kathan Fors) -- if they've noticed any visitors lurking around, but they say they haven't.

When the family's plight becomes truly life-threatening, with Mother on the brink of death from malnutrition, Father and Job set off on a dangerous trek across the river in search of wild game. Charlie Mills is invited to accompany them, though Father has already grown suspicious of him. (When you live in desolate isolation, the list of possible secret boyfriends for your daughter is short.)

Hey, speaking of The Hangover (weren't we?), the 11th annual CineVegas Film Festival kicked off last night at Planet Hollywood, on the world-famous, super-classy, not-at-all-gaudy Las Vegas Strip. The setting was a large theater above the casino floor that normally hosts a live production called Peepshow, the posters for which emphasize its primary assets and boobsets.

But the showgirls had the night off, and CineVegas took over. Festival chairman Dennis Hopper kicked off the event in true Vegas style, rising from a trapdoor in the stage to the accompaniment of "Born to Be Wild." I noted that he pronounces the festival's name "sinny-vegas," rather than "sin-uh-vegas." His version sounds more cheerful. Vegas is sinny! Come visit!

The opening-night film, a comedy called Saint John of Las Vegas, was introduced by its writer/director, Hue Rhodes, who reiterated Sinny City's showbiz roots. Good or bad, funny or serious, scary or tame, Las Vegas is all about puttin' on a show. He said that his own film "is not always gonna be a safe ride," but assured us it would be a crazy one.

Which it is. Steve Buscemi (pictured) stars as a former gambler who now works at an insurance agency and must return to Vegas to investigate a possibly fraudulent insurance claim. What's interesting, perhaps, is that the movie is set up as a parallel to Dante's Divine Comedy: Buscemi's character's last name is Alighieri, same as Dante's, and his partner is named Virgil; they encounter people and situations similar to those described in the old Italian poem you were supposed to have read in high school. Buscemi and co-star Romany Malco are good, of course, but the film feels slight and forgettable. I wonder if greater familiarity with Inferno would increase one's enjoyment of it. Curse my inattentiveness in eleventh-grade English!

One of the titles at the upcoming CineVegas Film Festival that has piqued my interest is Easier with Practice, about a man who falls in love with a woman he knows only over the phone. The limitations of telephone communication notwithstanding, their relationship is sexual in nature, as suggested by the film's slightly NSFW trailer.

We also have a brief clip from the film, showing the inevitable conversation that the main character, Davy, must have with his brother, Sean. The two (played by Brian Geraghty and Kel O'Neill) are driving around the country to promote Davy's novel. Sean, needless to say, is skeptical about Davy's new "girlfriend." (There's a little PG-13-rated language.)

We had a swell time at the CineVegas Film Festival last year -- no surprise, considering it's a party-oriented fest set in the heart of glitzy, glamorous, sweaty Las Vegas. Oh, and they show movies, too, and they've just announced nine world premieres for the 11th edition of CineVegas, to be held June 10-15.

The opening-night gala will center around Saint John of Las Vegas, starring Steve Buscemi as a recovering gambling addict whose job requires him to return to Sin City. Sarah Silverman, Tim Blake Nelson, John Cho, and Peter Dinklage co-star, which means hilarity cannot fail to ensue.

The entire slate has not been announced yet, but the eight other world premieres have been. Here's a brief rundown:

• Asylum Seekers: Six about-to-lose-it individuals check into a mental institution, then find there's only room for one of them.

• Daylight: A pregnant newlywed is taken hostage. I don't know how this ends, but I suspect the message is DO NOT MESS WITH A PREGNANT WOMAN.

• Easier with Practice: A would-be novelist falls in love with a mysterious phone-sex operator. I think we've all been there.

• Etienne!: A man's only friend, a tiny hamster, is diagnosed with cancer, so the guy takes his pal on a bicycle trip to show him the world before he dies. If this movie makes me cry over the death of a hamster, I will cold stab somebody.

Twentieth Century Fox has changed the release date on the Rainn Wilson comedy The Rocker again, but I think this move might be for the best. Maybe. We'll see. What do I know?

The flick, in which Wilson plays a former rock drummer who gets a new chance at stardom when he joins his teenage nephew's band, was originally slated for Friday, Aug. 1. Then they decided a Wednesday was better, so it became July 30. But now Fox has announced that it's been pushed back three weeks to Wednesday, Aug. 20.

Why the shuffle? Fox didn't say, but I would guess it's to avoid the raucous comedies Step Brothers (due on July 25), Pineapple Express (Aug. 8), and Tropic Thunder (Aug. 13). A July 30 release would have put it in the middle of a comedy war zone, and The Rocker -- which got so-so reviews (including my own) when it played at CineVegas and doesn't have nearly as much star power as those three -- would have gotten trampled. It would have been a PG-13 David against three R-rated Goliaths.

By Aug. 20, Step Brothers and Pineapple Express will have already done most of their box office damage, leaving Tropic Thunder as the only big-name comedy competing with The Rocker. I think it's smart to stick with a Wednesday, too, as three more comedies -- The House Bunny, Hamlet 2, and The Longshots -- open on Friday, Aug. 22.

What do you think? Is there too much comedy competition between now and Labor Day? Or are the films different enough that they won't be stealing each other's audiences?

Last week, I did some reporting from the CineVegas Film Festival, where I served as a juror. The winners were announced this weekend, and they have me wishing I had been able to see more stuff. She Unfolds By Day, Rolf Belgum's film about "a frustrated middle-aged son trying to manage his misanthropic 80-year-old mother," took home the Grand Jury Prize. A Special Jury Award went to Dark Streets, which our own Eric D. Snider gave a decent review to here. Bill Pullman took home a Special Jury Award for his performance in Your Name Here, reviewed by Eric here. The documentary jury, which included Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock, selected Beautiful Losers, about "the lives of a loose-knit group of artists in the '80s who created their own art movement outside the mainstream." Hi, My Name is Ryan, focusing on "the clown prince of the downtown Phoenix art scene," picked up a Special Documentary Jury Prize.