What’s the difference between Sarah Palin and George W. Bush?
Lipstick.
I know. That has nothing to do with the subject at hand, or even with cinema, but it occurred to me this afternoon and I had to share it.
The 31st annual Mill Valley Film Festival runs October 2 through 12 in San Rafael, Corte Madera, and yes, Mill Valley. They’ll run 210 films (although I don’t know how many of those are shorts), including 27 world, North American, or US premieres.
The festival will open with two movies on the same night. At the Rafael, they’ll screen comedian Bill Maher’s anti-religion documentary Religulous, which I suspect will be considerably more entertaining than Richard Dawkins’ Root of All Evil, and hopefully not quite as narrow-minded. At the Sequoia Theatre, they’ll screen The Secret Life of Bees. Their official closing films for October 12 are American Violet at the Rafael (as part of a tribute to Alfre Woodard), and Lemon Tree at the Sequoia. But that’s a little confusing, because according to their schedule, they have other films showing in both venues after those.
Woodward is one of three actresses the festival will honor with special presentations, and the only one not associated with one particular director. The others are Bergman’s muse (well, one of them) Harriet Andersson, who will appear Friday, October 10 with a screening of Bergman’s great Through a Glass Darkly. The other actress honoree is Mike Leigh regular Sally Hawkins, who will appear Tuesday, October 7 for the US premiere of Leigh’s latest, Happy-Go-Lucky. Also to be honored are writer/director Paul Schrader, with screenings of both his newest film, Adam Resurrected, and a new print of an older one, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. Also filmmaker Eric Roth.
What’s going on beside the big names?
A new focus called Active Cinema will attempt to help audience members moved by some of the more socially- or politically-oriented films do something about the issues involved. The films involved, mostly documentaries, include Burning the Future: Coal in America, Children of the Amazon, and the very local (especially if you live in Marin) Call It Home: Searching for Truth on Bolinas Lagoon. One film not on the Active Cinema list: The Lost Skeleton Returns Again.
International films come from Poland (Katyn, Tricks, Hania), southern Africa (Zimbabwe, Jerusalema), Asia (Fujian Blue, The Amazing Osamu Tezuka, God Man Dog), and a whole lot of other places. There are children’s films, musical documentaries, and two pictures directed by relatives of Walt Disney (none of them animated).
I do wish, however, that someone would check a Jewish calendar before setting the festival’s dates. The festival opens just after Rosh Hashana and runs through Shabbat Shuva and Yom Kippur.
Bayflicks 