June 30, 2007

MIFF Musings

So, the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF for short) starts towards the end of July and runs through to August over 19 days. I'm getting myself one of the mini-passes which allows me into 10 sessions but some other stuff. I dunno. I guess I'll discover what I really get when I actually get tickets, hey? Well, the full list is available on July 13, apparently, and that's the day tickets go on sale so I'll most definitely be getting in there straight away merely so I can get to see David Lynch's Inland Empire, which y'all know I wanna see right this second. It will definitely sell out, so eep. I hope I get in.

Anyway. The official list goes up on July 13 as I said, but Paul from the great resourceful Melbourne Film Blog got his hand on a near-full list (it is missing something like 40 titles from a total of 280 or some number like that). Some of the titles I am thinking about trying to get tickets for are:

Inland Empire for obvious reasons.

Syndromes of a Century, because this film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul has gotten some amazing reviews and as of right now my interest is piqued so might as well.

Savage Grace isn't on the list by Paul mentioned it as a likely candidate so, omg!

Still Life is the controversial Chinese film about the Three Gorges dam project. It won the Golden Lion at Venice two years ago as well and doesn't have a release plan.

The Boss of it All is Lars Von Trier's latest. It's a comedy set in an office, hilariously. It doesn't have a distributer and considering Von Trier's Manderlay took freakin' ages to get a release I'll definitely try and seek it out.

Brand Upon the Brain. A new film by Guy Maddin is always an interesting beast and if it has the live orchestra and the other features it's had around the world at festivals then it's an opportunity to be missed!

The Man From London played at Cannes and even though it apparently wasn't much good, the cinematography looked flatout amazing (all black and white noir) and I decided I wanted to see this theatrically so I hope I can.

I really want to see Once, but I know my friends Hannah and Georgie will love it so I'll wait until it's released (September apparently) and see it then. As for the other 200+ titles, well a lot of them I've never heard of and have yet to IMDb them, but I'm sure there's some good titles in there worth seeking out. Plenty of Aussie features too. Can't wait!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh my god...you have to see Once. it's the best movie I've seen in theatres in ages.

Oh, and the fact the new Von Trier doesn't have a distributor pleases me.

Anonymous said...

Hahaha, it's so funny how the festival circuit is really A festival circuit all around the world.

The same films showing over and over. hehe.

Good choices!

Emma said...

Hey, you've been tagged!

Paul Martin said...

Savage Grace is now on the updated list, Glenn, and I'm leaving a link to it at the top of my blog until the festival is over. I'm going to continue to update this link as information comes to hand.

I'm avoiding any film at MIFF with a commercial release except for Inland Empire which I'll probably seen when it gets a commercial release, and Syndromes as well, for the same reasons. Matt at Last Night With Riviera ranked it highly in his Sydney Film Festival wrap up. Many of those films will be at MIFF.