Film festival

Campus MovieFest 2014

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Campus MovieFest 2014

Universal Studios

 

DAY 2: Bloodcast

Clarke Wolfe of Nerdist.com and Ryan Turek of ShockTillYouDrop.com participated in the Bloodcast workshop during the 2014 Campus MovieFest at Universal Studios.

The humorous duo can whip up engaging discussions out of thin air. That fact that they know their stuff, horror-wise, made this one of the best workshop sessions of the festival. Horror topics ran the gamut, from old school flicks to torture porn gross-outs to meta-rrific genre classics like Scream.

Great stuff.

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Clarke Wolfe, left, of Nerdist.com and Ryan Turek of ShockTillYouDrop.com

Up next: Workshops

 

Campus MovieFest 2014

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Me, with Tom Shadyac, director of Ace Ventura, The Nutty Professor, Patch Adams and Bruce Almighty.

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Writer/director/producer Grant Heslov (Argo, The Monuments Men)

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Campus MovieFest 2014

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Film Review
Very Good Girls (2013)
Rated R

vgg

Groundswell Productions

Very Good Girls is an uneven coming-of-age drama featuring Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen (Godzilla, Martha Marcy May Marlene). The ingredients are here—two skilled actors, a summer of sexual awakening, a lovers’ triangle, a sudden death—but the film never gels.

The BloghouseBest friends, college-bound Lily (Fanning) and earth-child Gerry (Olsen), make a pact to lose their virginity before summer’s end. Things get complicated when they fall for the same fellow, David (Boyd Holbrook, looking indistinguishable from actor Charlie Hunnam).

The film immediately engages with an impressive cast, then, strangely, begins to falter, scene by scene. The problem, I think, resides at the screenplay level.

Writer/director Naomi Foner Gyllenhall’s secondary characters are wasted in snapshot scenes. Gerry’s Bohemian parents—Richard Dreyfus and Demi Moore—are the expected hippy-attired, folk-music-playing cutouts. Lily’s folks—Clark Gregg and Ellen Barkin—are standard middle-class, middle-aged, boozy professionals. To be fair, Gregg has a couple of father-daughter scenes he attempts wrangle from cliche.

Every time a scene arrives—a death, an infidelity—it’s blunted by pacing or odd character responses. One exception is a gentle first-time love-making scene that is effective in its use of music, framing, acting and tone.

The film might have held together better, been more impactful, if balance had been brought to the main characters. This is Fanning’s show, and she can act. But Olsen, who can also act, is wasted. If equal measure had been brought to each girl, the conflict—both girls falling for the same artsy bad boy—might have moved us.

blog-skip_it

 

 

 

| Marvin Brown’s Movie Review Archive

Campus MovieFest 2014

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Up first:
Very Good Girls, starring Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen.

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John Brown at Universal Studios Cinema (Credit: Marvin Brown)

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Universal Studios Cinemas

Read review

Next: Day2: Bloodcast

Campus MovieFest 2014

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Campus MovieFest 2014

Universal Studios

 

DAY 1: Galavanting around the parkway

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Next: To the movies

Campus MovieFest 2014

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Campus MovieFest 2014

Universal Studios

 

Day 1: Setting Up

 

The CMF bills itself as the “world’s largest student film and music festival.” In its 13th year of doing what it does best, the event brought together college and university students from around the globe to screen their films, workshop and network with each other, and walk the Red Carpet for the culminating awards ceremony.

The affable cofounder and Vice President ViJay Makar and his skillful team undertook what must have been (but didn’t feel like) a daunting task of corralling hundred of students and managing dozens of workshop hosts, celebrity presenters and an untold number of film screening.

How this thing works: Students at participating colleges and universities are supplied with Apple laptops, Panasonic HD camcorders, and training–all for free. The students are given one week to create their own short movies, with each school hosting red carpet finales to showcase its top movies. The movies must be five minutes or less, and use music created by the students themselves or contributed by independent artists.

This thing can only get bigger by the year.

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Next: Galavanting around the parkway

Campus MovieFest 2014

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Campus MovieFest 2014

Universal Studios

Day 1

The palm trees, Universal Studios, an explosion of billboards and lights promoting coming attractions. Smells like movies out here. The 2014 CMF gets under way.

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Next: Setting up

L.A. Bound

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Off to the Campus MovieFest in Los Angeles.

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Movie Time

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CIFF-cup

Sundance 2011—The Return (1)

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Sundance Film Festival 2011*

Park City, Utah

 

The Main Event

Among Day Three’s assortment of films and stars was a nice diversion to the heart of Park City and the Sundance Film Festival: Main Street. Nestled between the Wasatch Mountains and adorned with quaint and sleek storefronts, the main strip is alive with celebrities, tourists and industry hopefuls.

The Wasatch Mountains surround Park City. (Credit: Marvin Brown)

The Wasatch Mountains surround Park City. (Credit: Marvin Brown)

With mountains peeking over every roof and around every bend, Main Street seems at once an upscale getaway and an inviting hometown. Great shops and eats on every block. Friendly crowds, which is status quo for Park City, never took away from attractive smallness of the Main.

Lunch was had at The Eating Establishment—yes it was—a great restaurant near the top of the ascending Main Street. The breakfast portions are huge and the burgers have to be held with two hands. Interestingly, some store facades are manipulated to hype up the Sundance angle, so you might wonder why your favorite shop suddenly has a new name.

Main Street was great. If you’re going to take a break from screening films, yeah, this will do the trick!

Eccles Theater is one of several theaters around Park City that screen Sundance films. (Credit: John Brown)

Eccles Theater is one of several theaters around Park City that screen Sundance films. (Credit: John Brown)

My brother seems surprised to find a Playboy store on the main strip. It’s either new, or one of those Sundance Surprises.

Snow alert: Up until today it’s been clear skies. But today on Main Street, Sundance got its snow. And snow. And more snow. By the time lunch was done, the sidewalk and streets were covered.

OK, on to the shows.

| Movie reviews from Sundance screenings:

Beats, Rhymes &  Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest

Red State

Meek’s Cutoff

Hobo with a Shotgun

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Win Win

John Brown at Eccles Theater in Park City

John Brown at Eccles Theater in Park City (Credit: Marvin Brown)

| Lights come up. Saying goodbye to Park City.

 

*Note: Since marvincbrown.com had not been created at the time of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, I decided to go back and repost these reviews and festival  items, which were catalogued elsewhere—mainly because I needed to get these reviews into my archives, but also because it was an enjoyable experience I’d like to share.

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