×
Fin. Though the last reels have rolled at this year's Wisconsin Film Festival, more reviews and reports about the four-day event continue to make their way online.
Blogging about the festival follows below.
One very dedicated festival-goer and -reviewer offers thoughts on TDPF about two more movies:
- Up first is a review of Everything's Gone Green, the Canadian comedy returning to Madison shortly.
- The reviewer also checked out the screening featuring the best of the British Television Advertising Awards. The verdict?
There is amazing talent across the pond. Some ads (mostly public service announcements) were very in-your-face to make their point. Heck, the ones about poverty, child abuse, and landmines brought tears to my eyes. Yep, I admit that a commercial (albeit a PSA) did that to me.
Many more reviews -- brief and detailed -- continue to make their way online:
- Brad Vogel kicked off his festival on Saturday afternoon, starting out with Gypsy Caravan: "The musical performances were astounding," he wrote, "and the film peeked adeptly into the lives and hometowns of the performers, creating deeply emotional connections."
Vogel was unable to see It's Happiness: A Polka Documentary, but was just able to make it to Tim's Island instead. He concluded:
Chock full of firsthand footage of New Orleans during and after the flood, some shot from a boat cruising the drowned streets, the picture presented me with a much better sense of Katrina. It was comical, eerie, very human. Definitely worth seeing.
- John Benninghouse went to Cinemaphotographer Style on Saturday, and subsequently offered a detailed review of this work about the craft of film photography. "Perhaps the most important thing a non-film geek can get from the film is that cinematographers have a huge role in making what audiences see on the screens at their local multiplex," he explained. "The relationship between the director and cinematographer is described as a marriage by one person."
- Jeff Kuykendall also has very positive comments about one film on Saturday, recommending Son of Man as "great." He wrote:
Set in "Judea, Afrika," this exhilarating film squeezes the life of Jesus into one 90-minute film set in a contemporary African landscape. The screenplay pretty much sticks to the source material, to the point of often using King James poetry, but what transports the film into a higher sphere is the clever way it tells its overly-familiar story?
- On Dane101, Jesse Russell reviewed the Hurricane Katrina documentary Tim's Island. " I thought I would find it hard to sympathize with individuals who could leave, but chose not to," he wrote. "Instead I was absorbed by the story that was never intended to be captured."
- Russell also had high praise for the drama Red Road, concluding that it "is not to be missed."
- Adam Schabow had mixed thoughts about Fay Grim in his review on Dane101. He wrote:
With Hal Hartley films, you always get top notch writing, but as for his directing, I am not huge fan. He definitely makes some interesting choices, but I could have done with less camera tilted angles (my neck got stiff) and with the movie being trimmed down a bit more (I got tired).
- Finally, Erik Weiss offers brief thoughts about short.times.ten, Jim and Joe's Animated Shorts, and Retribution.
More blogging about the 2007 Wisconsin Film Festival can be found in Madison Miscellany. If you have any online writing or photos from the fest, please send a message.
