The 3rd Annual Saint Louis Qfest

One of the things I have been working on these past two months in assisting in putting together the local gay and lesbian film festival, otherwise known as Qfest which is now in its third year. Qfest picked up where the Saint Louis International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival left off when it ended in 1999. This year's program will feature eleven features (8 features, 3 docs) and four shorts, one of which, Heartland Transplant, was directed by my friend Cody Stokes and played at this year's Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. The festival runs from 28-31 March at the Landmark Tivoli Theatre.

While I haven't seen all of the films screening this year, I can safely recommend three of the ones I have watched. Leo's Room [El cuarto de Leo], the feature debut from Enrique Buchichio, is a compelling, often quite beautiful portrait of two former primary school classmates, who run into one another in their mid-twenties. Leo (Martín Rodríguez), dumped by his "beard," cruises online chat rooms for men; Caro (Cecilia Cósero) spends most of her day in bed, downing anti-depressants. While it doesn't break a whole lot of new ground, Leo's Room does have a number of rich, expressive moments that set it apart from your average coming-out/coming-of-age tale. Leo's Room is part of the 2010 Global Lens Collection.

Haim Tabakman's exceptional Eyes Wide Open, which premiered at Cannes last year in the Un Certain Regard section, follows a taboo love/lust affair between two Orthodox Jews (Zohar Shtrauss, Ran Danker) in Jerusalem. Ella Lemhagen's Patrik, Age 1.5 [Patrik 1,5] takes a farcical premise (a gay couple looking to adopt a baby get stuck with a fifteen-year-old homophobe due to a clerical error) and gives it dramatic weight, aided by two outstanding performances from Gustaf Skarsgård (Stellan's son, Eric from True Blood's brother) and Torkel Petersson (Old Men in New Cars) as the daddies-to-be. Tickets for all the films are now available; check the Cinema Saint Louis website for more information. Hopefully, if you're in the area, I'll see you there. I'll also be posting longer reviews of the three films mentioned above (and maybe a few of the others) closer to the festival date.

Super Scary

I sort of forgot, until I wasted my time watching the movie Trick 'r Treat, which came highly recommended to me by at least three people, that I co-wrote a Halloween-themed short a couple of years ago, with my friends Stewart Copeland and Chris Drummond. It was called Plastic Skeletons, and you can watch it below if you're so inclined. We made it as part of the 48 Hour Film Project. I don't think I particularly like it, but then again, I don't like most of the stuff I've done, film or otherwise. Ha. A self-deprecating plug. It does have at least three references to Bette Midler; but some of it is, as expected, cringe-worthy.

Announcing... The 18th Annual Saint Louis International Film Festival

Cinema Saint Louis has officially unveiled the line-up for the 18th annual Saint Louis International Film Festival today. I've known about all this for a while, as I did some assisting this year, but now that everything's set in stone (at least, as much as it can be) I can discuss some of the highlights this year. The four best films we're screening: Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman [La mujer sin cabeza], Lisandro Alonso's Liverpool, Claire Denis' 35 Shots of Rum [35 rhums] and Andrew Bujalski's Beeswax. All four will make their local debuts at the festival, which begins 12 November 2009, opening with Lone Scherfig's An Education, with Peter Sarsgaard, who hails from the Saint Louis area, in attendance. Sadly, I was so focused on the features this year I haven't had a chance to see any of the documentaries yet.

Bujalski will be in attendance at the Beeswax screening on 13 November at Webster University. Lee Daniels is coming with Precious (I tried to get Mariah, but y'know, she's busy) on 14 November. Director Kirk Jones will also be present for Everybody's Fine, a remake of Giuseppe Tornatore's Stanno tutti bene with Robert DeNiro, Drew Barrymore, Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale. Jason Reitman is coming with Up in the Air, followed by a Q&A, on 14 November at the Tivoli Theatre. Other appearances include Kevin Willmott with his The Only Good Indian; author Daniel Woodrell for the Director's Cut of Ang Lee's Ride with the Devil; Connie Stevens for Saving Grace B. Jones as well as co-stars Penelope Ann Miller, Rylee Fansler, Evie Louise Thompson and Tricia Leigh Fisher; Faruk Sabanovoc, co-writer and art director of Snow [Snijeg]; David Lowery with his excellent feature debut St. Nick; Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, with The Young Victoria which she co-produced with Martin Scorsese; AJ Schnack with his Convention; Joel Hodgson and the original crew of Mystery Science Theater 3000; Joe Berlinger with his latest film Crude; and Ry Russo-Young, writer/director of You Wont Miss Me, another film that comes highly recommended.

Stewart Copeland's Jennifer, which I discussed twice before, will screen as part of the Documentary Short collection "Individuals." Another friend of mine Mike Steinberg, director of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, will premiere two documentaries: Old Dog, New Trick and The Pride of St. Louis (co-directed by Thomas Crone). The screenings, on 20 November, will be followed by a concert from the subjects of the docs, local musicians Steve Scorfina and the band Mama's Pride (one of my father's favorites, actually).

Closing on Sunday, 22 November, you have your pick between Agnès Varda's The Beaches of Agnès [Les plages d'Agnès], Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles, Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus or Jean-Marc Vallée's The Young Victoria.

A few other films screening this year that I quite admire: Nancy Kissam's Drool; two films from Christian Petzold, Yella and Jerichow; Lucía Puenzo's XXY; and Noah Buschel's The Missing Person. And a couple I have yet to see: Jia Zhang-ke's 24 City; Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys [Üç maymun]; Ondi Timoner's We Live in Public; and Hans-Christian Schmid's Storm [Sturm]. Check out the full schedule and descriptions (many of which were written by yours truly) at Cinema Saint Louis' website. I'll have more updates closer to the fest itself.

Attention Saint Louis Area Cine- and/or Francophiles

Cinema St. Louis and Washington University's Program in Film and Media Studies are presenting their first French Film Festival this coming weekend, 28-30 August. Screening this year are Rialto's restored prints of Jean-Luc Godard's Made in U.S.A. and Max Ophüls' Lola Montès, as well as a trio of contemporary films: Phlippe Ramos' Captain Ahab [Capitaine Achab], with Denis Lavant, Jacques Bonnaffé, Dominique Blanc, Jean-François Stévenin and Lou Castel; Serge Bozon's La France, with Sylvie Testud and Pascal Greggory; and Pascal Thomas' Towards Zero [L'heure zéro], with François Morel, Danielle Darrieux, Chiara Mastroianni, Melvil Poupaud and Laura Smet. For full descriptions of the films, as well as screening times (they will all play at Washington University's Brown Hall Auditorium), check out Cinema St. Louis' website.

More Awards, Lists

I'm holding back a lot of behind-the-scenes complaints I have for the St. Louis Film Critics Circle, but I feel pretty strongly embarrassed by not just the special categories but their winners too. Having an award for "Best Comedy" is silly enough, but awarding it to Burn After Reading is just shameful. "Most Original, Innovative or Creative Film?" Please. But Slumdog Millionaire as the best foreign language film?!?? I'm really going to keep my mouth shut until I've officially said goodbye to this city. You can see the full winners here. In other awards news, San Francisco went (predictably) with Milk; San Diego favored Slumdog Millionaire.

Slant Magazine also published four lists of the best films of 2008, from Ed Gonzalez (Rachel Getting Married), Nick Schager (Synecdoche, New York), Bill Weber (Still Life) and Andrew Schenker (The Duchess of Langeais). In the City of Sylvia made three of their lists, and I'm oh-so-pleased to see I won't be the only one with Olivier Assayas' Boarding Gate on mine.

The Saint Louis International Film Festival 2008

For all of those living in the ‘Lou, the 17th Annual Saint Louis International Film Festival line-up has been announced for the dates of Nov. 13-23. Although you can check out the schedule in pdf form here, I thought I might point out some of the more exciting inclusions this year. SLIFF will be awarding writer/director Paul Schrader a Lifetime Achievement Award and will screen his latest film Adam Resurrected, starring Jeff Goldbum, Willem Dafoe, Moritz Bleibtreu and Derek Jacobi, as well as a restored print of Mishima: A Life in Four Parts. Following the screening of Adam Resurrected, LA Weekly film editor Scott Foundas will have a Q&A with the director.

A “Micro-Budget Filmmaking Seminar” will be conducted on the 15th at 11 am at the Tivoli. Mary Bronstein, who co-starred in Ronald Bronstein’s Frownland and whose directorial debut Yeast will be screened during the fest, is going to be one of the participants, as well as Missouri native Blake Eckard (Sinner Come Home) and St. Louisan Aaron Coffmann (Texas Snow). In addition to Bronstein’s Yeast, another mumblecore flick, Nights and Weekends, written, directed and starring Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig will also be screening at this year’s fest.

Humboldt County co-directors Darren Grodsky and Danny Jacobs, both hailing from Saint Louis, are also making an appearance this year with a Q&A and after-party which opens the festival. The film, which premiered at this year’s SXSW fest and was just recently distributed theatrically by Magnolia, stars Fairuza Balk, Peter Bogdanovich, Frances Conroy, Brad Dourif and Chris Messina.

Steven Soderbergh’s absent-on-DVD King of the Hill, which was set and shot in Saint Louis, will be featured in a panel discussion about the translation from the book to film. There’s also going to be a film noir seminar, following a screening of Joseph Losey’s The Prowler (his last film shot in the US and also unavailable on DVD in the US). The panel will include noir expert Eddie Muller and actress Marsha Hunt, who was blacklisted from Hollywood. And rounding up the special events is a Q&A with Michael Apted (the Up! series), recipient of this year’s Maysles Brothers Lifetime Achievement Award in Documentary, conducted by Cinema Saint Louis executive director Cliff Froehlich. His latest film, The Power of the Game, will also screen this year.

And onto the big gals of this year’s fest. Darren Aronofsky’s Venice and Toronto winner The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood and Judah Friedlander, will close the fest before the film makes its theatrical run in the middle of December. Palme d’Or winner The Class (Entre les murs), from writer/director Laurent Cantet, is also screening on the 22nd.

Philippe Claudel’s I’ve Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t’aime), starring Kristin Scott-Thomas and Elsa Zylberstein as sisters, will also screen on closing night before it hits local theatres soon. Bent Hamer’s O’ Horten is also showing, after receiving a number of praises when it played at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Danny Boyle’s crowd-pleaser of a film, Slumdog Millionaire, will play on the 15th.

Kelly Reichardt’s much anticipated follow-up to Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, which stars Michelle Williams, is also set for the 17th. I should mention that Wendy and Lucy is probably my most anticipated film to premiere at SLIFF this year. The new film from Rian Johnson (Brick), The Brothers Bloom, is playing on the 22nd. The film, which will make its limited theatrical run beginning 19 December from Summit Entertainment, stars Rachel Weisz, Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Robbie Coltrane and Rinko Kikuchi, whom you should remember as the jumper-lifting deaf girl from Babel.

As for the hot docs, Terence Davies’ Of Time and the City will screen on the 15th. I wish I could remember who exactly said it, but someone, via GreenCine Daily, called the film the real masterpiece of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir, which also premiered at Cannes and will be Israel’s official submission for next year’s foreign language Oscar, will also be spotlighted on the closing day of the festival.

As for a few smaller films to pay attention to, I’ve read some wonderful things about Aditya Assarat’s Wonderful Town, from Thailand, which will play on the 18th. Marco Bellocchio’s The Wedding Director (Il regista di matrimoni), which stars Sergio Castellitto of Va savoir, The Last Kiss and Mostly Martha, screens on the 20th and 22nd. Beloved director Giuseppe Tornatore (whom, as you should know, I quite despise) has his most recent film, The Unknown Woman (La sconsciuta), set for the 14th and 15th. Reha Erdem’s Times and Winds, which is one of two films I’ve seen prior to the fest, is playing on the 15th. Nic Balthazar’s Ben X, the other film I’ve already seen, is playing on the 21st and 22nd. It should be mentioned that I much preferred Times and Winds to Ben X.

Director John Boorman’s (The General, Deliverance) The Tiger’s Tail, which stars Brendan Gleeson, Kim Cattrall, Ciarán Hinds and Sinéad Cusack, will screen on both the 19th and 20th. Nacho Vigalondo’s sci-fi/horror film Timecrimes (Los cronocrímenes) will screen on the 19th, before Magnolia’s Magnet Releasing puts it in theatres sometime in December. According to the schedule, David Cronenberg is set to return to his horror roots and remake the film. The schedule also reports that Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in), which screens on the 15th and is also going to be released by Magnet, is also getting a Hollywood remake (although much less exciting as it's to be directed by the asshole who made Cloverfield).

Eric Guirado’s The Grocer’s Son (Le fils de l’épicier) is going to play on the 16th and 17th. The film, which stars Nicolas Cazalé and Clotilde Hesme (Love Songs), was reported through IndieWire as being Film Movement’s highest grossing film in their existence. Also from France is Nicolas Klotz’s The Heartbeat Detector (La question humaine), which screens on the 18th and 19th, starring Mathieu Amalric. For those who can’t make it, New Yorker released the DVD back in July. Yang Li’s Blind Mountain, which hits DVD from Kino in January, will play on the 14th. And finally, Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort, which was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Academy Award for Israel this year, will show on the 21st and 23rd (although Kino released the DVD at the end of September).

I should be seeing a number of these films before the festival goes underway, so if any of the films happen to strike me, I’ll be sure to point you in their direction.

Bad News Tennis Shoes

Michael K from Dlisted is reporting that my dear Rose McGowan has been dropped from Robert Rodriguez's Barbarella remake, which pisses me off to no end. The studio apparently wanted a name for the lead and guess who they want to play the role made famous by Jane Fonda: Jessica fucking Alba. She's about as sexy as a hang-nail and about as interesting too, so my well wishes for the unnecessary remake have dissipated. You may know that Alba, alongside Hayden Christensen, makes me want to gouge my eyes out. Boring and talentless have never offended me so much.

On a local note, the Tivoli in the University City Loop has announced their Midnight Movie Fest for this summer/fall. The results are mixed, as usual, appealing to the dorky 80s crowd mainly, but there are a few highlights, which include the uncut version of David Lynch's Wild at Heart, which I believe is just a little more graphic decapitation/head explosion (I can't remember which) near the end, and John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig and the Angry Inch. John Waters' Pink Flamingos will also show it's filthybeautiful head, and, though I might have thought it to soon, the epic Grindhouse will also be showing. And now you can see it with people who knew what the fuck was supposed to be going on. The full list is as follows:

July 18-19 - Alien (Director's Cut)

July 25-26 - American Psycho

Aug 1-2 - Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Aug 8-9 - Wild at Heart (Uncut) - No One Under 18 Admitted

Aug 15-16 - Jurassic Park

Aug 22-23 - The Breakfast Club

Aug 29-30 - Blade Runner (The Final Cut)

Sept 5-6 - The Dark Crystal

Sept 12-13 - Grindhouse

Sept 19-20 - Rear Window

Sept 26-27 - The Crow (new print)

Oct 3-4 - My Neighbor Totoro (in English)

Oct 10-11 - Pink Flamingos - No One Under 18 Admitted

Oct 17-18 - 2001: A Space Odyssey

Oct 24-25, Oct 31-Nov 1 - The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Masturbation

So, here's my chance to do a self-plug. Well, sort of one. A couple of friends of mine and I crafted a web serial called All the Young Dudes, which completed its first "season" with a premiere at Lemmon's this past Saturday. I'm happy with how it turned out overall. So check it out, let me know what you think. We're taking a two month break to best prepare for our second season and subsequent feature. Omg. It'll be just like Twin Peaks. And, yes, that's me playing the role of "Joe."

Check out our official website. Or myspace. Or you can download the podcast via iTunes, but I'm not sure that all of our episodes are available there.

3 to go!

With 3 films to go and five categories to run down, I've got a lot of shit to do before the Oscar ceremony. AND, I'm filming a short this weekend as part of our Fortnight Film Project. So, wish me luck (again), and hope another snowstorm comes through town, so I can get out of my other responsibilities and watch shitloads of cinema.

Scratch my palms, there's blood on my hands

I suppose this could be filed under self-promotion, but I thought I'd share my goings-on as of lately. A few friends of mine and I have formed a project entitled The Fortnight Film Project, originally planned as a bi-monthly way to fuck around with a camera. Well, it's sort of growing into a larger project, hopefully with more people involved, and highly intricate storylines (well, at least, intersecting ones). It's still a work-in-progress as we work out our kinks (for example, the audio is terrible on both films... and we're only now making better efforts in setting up shots and framing and all that jazz). You can check out our first two shorts via the website above. My character will be making his grand entrance this coming weekend, so look for that in the next coming week following. Feedback is always appreciated, help always wanted.

In addition to all the filmmaking fun, I've gotten my hands on a surplus of films once painfully unavailable to me: the entire Russ Meyer collection, Abel Ferrara's Mary, Hal Hartley's Trust, and Destricted, to name a few. Expect thoughts on said films in the coming days.

The 2007 Saint Louis International Film Festival

Cinema St. Louis has officially announced their line-up for this year's International Film Festival, to be held November 8th through the 18th. As usual, the line-up is pretty humdrum (not that I should expect any better in Saint Louis), but Peter Greenaway will be present to receive a lifetime achievement award after a screening, on the 18th, of his lovely Drowning by Numbers. Curiously, Drowning by Numbers will be the only of his films to screen at the festival (which will be nice for those who haven't seen the film, as it's still only available on DVD in Australia). Neither his latest, Nightwatching, or any segment of the Tulse Luper Suitcases will be playing at the fest. The only other rather special event will be held on November 10th, at Webster University, where James Gunn (Slither) will present one of his favorites (and mine), The Naked Kiss.

Other features of note screening this year:
Before the Devil Knows Your Dead - dir. Sidney Lumet - with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney - USA - November 11, 7pm, Plaza Frontenac
Bill - dir. Bernie Goldmann, Melisa Wallack - with Aaron Eckhart, Timothy Olyphant, Elizabeth Banks, Jessica Alba - USA - November 13, 9:30, Tivoli [This was filmed partially in Saint Louis]
Crossroads - dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa - Japan - November 10, 7pm, Saint Louis Art Museum
Daisy - dir. Andrew Lau - South Korea/Hong Kong - November 17, 7:15pm, Plaza Frontenac / November 18, 6:30pm, Plaza Frontenac
Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The [Scaphandre et le papillon, Le] - dir. Julian Schnabel - with Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josee Croze, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Marina Hands, Max von Sydow, Isaach De Bankole, Emma de Caunes, Jean-Philippe Ecoffey - France/USA - November 18, 6pm, Saint Louis Art Museum
Honeydripper - dir. John Sayles - with Danny Glover, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Charles S. Dutton, Vondie Curtis-Hall - USA - November 8, 7pm, Tivoli
Iron Horse, The - dir. John Ford - USA - November 16, 7pm, Saint Louis Art Museum
Juno - dir. Jason Reitman - with Michael Cera, Ellen Page - USA - November 14, 7pm, Tivoli
Persepolis - dir. Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi - France - November 17, 7pm, Plaza Frontenac
Ploy - dir. Pen-ek Ratanaruang - Thailand - November 10, 9:45, Plaza Frontenac / November 12, 7:15, Plaza Frontenac
Walker, The - dir. Paul Schrader - with Woody Harrelson, Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ned Beatty, Moritz Bleibtreau, Mary Beth Hurt, Willem Dafoe - USA - November 16, 7pm, Plaza Frontenac / November 17, 9:30pm, Plaza Frontenac

As usual the foreign-language films of the festival look to be socially-conscious, politically-ripe, and downright boring. So, happy festival-going... I will probably go to a few screenings before the fest, hopefully, and have something to say.

Webster University Film Series: Summer 2007

For those of you in Saint Louis, I thought I'd give a heads-up to the films playing at the Webster University Film Series this summer (though you can find the complete listing here). Alexandra Lipsitz's documentary Air Guitar Nation played this past weekend, but coming next weekend is Cam Archer's ambitious Wild Tigers I Have Known, with Fairuza Balk and with nods to Derek Jarman, Kenneth Anger, and Araki's Mysterious Skin. The Ralph Nader documentary, An Unreasonable Man, will be screening the following week. On the 1st of June, the documentary, The Cats of Mirikitani, which Mike Steinberg, director of the series, has been raving about, will be screening all weekend. They will also be showing 35mm prints of Jodorowsky's El topo and The Holy Mountain later that month, as well as the beastiality doc, Zoo (or, better known among my friends, They Fuck Horses, Don't They?). July will show two of Peter Greenaway's early films, The Draughtsman's Contract and (my personal favorite) A Zed and Two Noughts. Expect reviews of most of these films on Playback's website, which I will, naturally, link from this blog.

Martial Art-less

A couple of weeks ago, I sort of participated in the 48 Hour Film Project -- for those of you who don't know what that is, it's a contest in which groups of people have two days to write, shoot, edit, and score a short film of the chosen genre. Each group is selected a different genre (from musical to silent film to spy), and the group whose film I helped on, the Drunken Butterflies, were given "martial arts," which is, in my opinion, one of the more difficult (we had mockumentary last year). After the films screen, awards are given out, and the Drunken Butterflies (not surprisingly) only walked away with the Best Costume (the cinematographer Chris' brother Michael Drummund did an amazing job, so this was expected). I'm not bitching about this, as I wasn't terribly pleased with the film anyway. However, after the films are screened, the judges give "suggestions for next year," in which they stated, "maybe you should tone down the racism, sexism, homophobia, and violence." Um.....

That statement opens a flood of problems with what's wrong with cinema today. Firstly, have these judges ever seen a martial arts film? If they wanted toned down violence, I don't think the genre would exist. In a recreation of a genre picture (which on a broad level is terribly conflicting, but on a smaller, personal level for a filmmaker, a challenging to one's abilities), wouldn't the application of specific genre traits like sexism and racism be necessary? You wouldn't tell someone who was given a task of making a "blaxploitation" film to tone down the racism. Or for melodrama, to tone down the sexism. Secondly, the "suggestions" are simply a testament to our times. Apparently our way of dealing with pre-existing racism, sexism, homophobia is not simply to act like it doesn't exist, but to also soften it and surround it with fluffy pillows and rainbows (non-"homosexual" ones that is). There's a very specific line that should be drawn when regarding film. I'm going to stay away from the movie vs. film comparison and say that perhaps we should distinguish the difference between media and art. Perhaps sexism, homophobia, and racism shouldn't exist in our forms of media (though it still does), but such rules cannot be thrown onto the drawing table in regards to any sort of art form. You can blame Birth of a Nation for the fashion of the Ku Klux Klan, but you certainly must remember it was probably first successful feature-length narrative in American cinema and a brilliantly composed one at that. We can curse it on idealistic grounds, yet how can we say it's "bad" in regards to "art"? The picture above, from Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor, shows a black mental patient holding up a sign that would likely offend most "modern" folk out of context. The character went crazy after failing to meet the expectations of his racial brotherhood when he became the first black man to be allowed into a white college. As a defense mechanism, he has become the people who scorned him. If a film dealing with this sort of subject matter were made today (by someone likely less talented than Fuller), we'd be given a warm-hearted story of struggle and eventually overcoming the odds... hopefully starring Morgan Freeman. Instead, when Fuller directly calls upon the problem of racism, he's direct, and he doesn't candycoat this issue. I know you've been waiting for it, so here is opportunity number 867 for me to rip on Crash. Where Crash differs is in its blind solving of problems. Even though bad shit happens to our characters (Sandra Bullock falls down the stairs!!!), they all walk away with a powerful lesson about, yep, tolerance and understanding (probably peace and love, too).

Really, isn't one man's sexist another man's feminist? I've been sort of Russ Meyer-wild lately, so here's another opportunity to bring him up. On the DVD for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Roger Ebert briefly discusses Meyer's reputation. On the surface, his films are laced with uncommonly busty ladies. Yet, as Ebert states, in nearly every one of his films, women play the active roles, while men are often just in the background. Women also exert a sexuality, a carnality, that is usually correlated with masculinity. Though perhaps too flip-sided to be considered a successful depiction of feminist theory, it's a helluva lot more progressive than most directors working at the time. Sexism in cinema now exists in the same way racism does. It's still a problem (duh), but we're asked to accept easy answers to a problem that isn't simple.

I must say, the Drunken Butterflies' eight minute martial arts short, entitled Flute Master IV: Spirit of Doom, wasn't meant to combat, critique, or to perpetuate any of these topics (and, I don't know where the judges got that the film was homophobic in any way). It existed simply as an homage to the genre (a genre that perhaps the judges were not terribly familiar with), a genre whose main components consist of violence and sexism. We all know in the days of Kill Bill and Crouching Hero, Hidden Flying Daggers that women have had more active roles in the genre, but this too is a product of our time. Perhaps it's a reflection of the changing times... or perhaps it's an attempt at radicating sexism from the genre (or, if they're feeling really idealistic, society). In any case, thanks for the suggestions for next year, judges. We'll know what to do if we get stuck with the blaxploitation genre!