don’t be a jerk

Well, the Visual Communications Asian Am film fest ends tonight with Americanese, which I’ve already seen. My festival ended last night with Colma: the Musical (more on that soon.)

I’d really love to speak frankly about all these films, but considering how scary easy it is for any director, who may or may not hire me in the future, to google my comments online, I’m going to limit my comments to my highlight picks:

3.) The Motel (dir. Michael Kang)

(’bout some 12 year old kid, just like any other kid, only when he comes home from school, he works the front desk at the sleazy motel his family runs.)

There is apparently a bit of controversy over how this movie was adapted from Ed Lin’s novel, Waylaid, but, regardless, the movie is fantastic. Doesn’t miss a beat in pacing, performance, atmosphere. And it’s funny. Genuinely so.

I’ve only ever seen Sung Kang in BLT, so it was nice to see him do something far different. The fat kid was really good. Dunno…not much I can say. Very good movie.

2.) Eve and the Firehorse (dir. Julia Kwan)

(’bout a guilt-ridden little girl who won’t forgive herself for having disrespected her grandmother before she passed away. She tries to find solace through religion, with hilarious results.)

Let me preface this by saying that, today, Mike G showed me a quirky Canadian cartoon called To Be. The cartoon itself is interesting, but what he found more interesting is the fact that it was funded in part by the National Film Board of Canada. He was amazed in the fact that the NFBC would devote resources to such an odd piece of storytelling.

The Canadian government also helped fund the filming of Eve and the Firehorse. Seriously, socialism kicks ass. The Canadian government kicks ass. The fact that the NFBC would fund a weird ass animation project and a ethnic feature film about religion is a testament to their receptiveness and open-mindedness. The more I learn about other countries that have great systems of government funded arts, the more I’m ashamed at how little importance the US places on it.

Anyhow, director Julia Kwan made excellent use of her funding, and she’s an excellent storyteller. Very funny. Very touching. I cried at the end. So what? You wanna fight about it?

I talked to some people that found it a little slow, and I can see that. The movie gets a *little* Amy Tan at times, but Kwan turns the occasional convention on its ear throughout the movie.

The kids’ performances are great. Vivian Wu is billed as the movie’s star, but you know that rule about acting with children and animals (in a nutshell: you can’t steal the scene from kids and animals.)

It may seem like I have more complaints about “Eve” than about the “Motel”, but the overall heart of “Eve” made it my favorite between the two.

And now my number one pick:

1.) Colma: The Musical (dir. Richard Wong, script/music/lyrics. H.P. Mendoza)

(the first Asian American film musical since Flower Drum Song, and way more rockin, and also about…the city of Colma)

I saw the posters and publicity materials for Colma: The Musical while we were up in SF with The Achievers, and I thought it looked very low-budget, very gay, and didn’t imagine how good the songs could possibly be. The screen stills looked like they were shot on a camcorder so I just wrote it off as an amusing renegade project.

I saw it last night, and 15 minutes into it, it was already my favorite movie of the festival.

Richard Wong, the director, is awesome. He’s just a really good, creative director. I looked him up and he’s paid the bills by being a cinematographer. “Colma” his first directorial feature.

H. P. Mendoza, who wrote the script and lyrics and composed and performed the music on his keyboard, also plays one of the leads, Rodel. This guy is amazing in my book. He’s a hugely entertaining writer and musician, and his performances are varied and instinctually sound. He’s grounded when he needs to be, and knows how to kick up the theatrics when the situation requires.

I could go through the rest of the cast as well, but I’m too lazy. Suffice to say that they’re all uniformly excellent.

Last I heard, this is playing next at a couple of LGBT film festivals here and up north. I’d highly recommend trying to catch it.

Also caught a couple of short film programs. There was one night of decently produced short films that predominantly dealt with crime, the underworld, and the seedier side of human nature.

The other film program that I saw turned out to be the “low-budg” night. Films that were class projects. Films that people did in one day. Films that had no fucking story whatsoever. One filmmaker did catch my eye - some fella named J.P. Chan. I’ve never met him, but his film, “Dry Clean Only”, a 72-hour video project was one of the best short films I saw. I’m going to keep an eye out for him. I’d like to see what he can do when he spends more than 3 days putting a film together.