Rough day on the legs yesterday, a lot of walking. Five films. One of them I will watch on DVD in the luxury of my room tonight, so four that I am running to, but hey, these are films I want to see, which always helps, right?
I scanned the local papers for reaction to Thursday’s Gala of “Passchendaele” first thing yesterday. The reviews seem to be fair in their honesty; no one thinks the film is a masterpiece but no one is tearing it apart either. The real news seems to be the demonstrators outside of Roy Thomson Hall protesting our government’s recent announcement of massive funding cuts to the arts.
Dumb, dumb, dumb. When will they learn that a culture without art ceases to be a culture?
Anyway, I arrived at the first screening and took my seat only to overhear a distressing conversation (a dangerous part of this job) between two American film critics. One said the festival had lost its identity this year because its programmers have not brought in any Oscar contenders, unlike last year when four of the five best picture nominees played here.
I was stunned by his arrogance and ignorance. How could he possibly make that statement? The Oscar nominations…as far as I know…are not announced until January. Perhaps he is forgetting that this festival was created to celebrate the art form. That films that went on to Oscar attention was just icing on the cake. And who is to say many of the films here may not head in Oscar’s direction? And so what…SO WHAT (??!!) if they do not?
Perhaps they have forgotten their own identity as film critics and why they took up the job: to write about great films, big and small, Oscars or not.
(Reviews after the jump.)