The Grand Cinema Brings a Landmark Independent Film Event to Tacoma

23 comments

• L lostinlosangeles August 11, 2010

  Awww..its like the line up of the special olympics of nobudgets.

  New Low: Cliches and poor casting. A few funny lines.

  The New Year: Poor casting. Dunn, you are not the new Marianna Palka. Nowhere close.

  Bilal’s Stand: Just more salt in the wound, no art. No examination of the Horatio Alger myth. No captivating scenes. Cliche storyline.

  The House of the Devil: They’re still making horror films?

  Nolan made Following in 1999 for 4000 pounds. And most of it went to film stock. Today, you can set your Canon 7D to superflat, hire a good sound guy, and shoot it Dogme 95 style (assuming you know what that is), read a book on color grading, bypass the festivals, and sell your film to Oscilloscope. Nolan also studied literature. I suggest before one makes a film, one reads a few good books too. Thanks!

• N not lost in Tacoma August 12, 2010

  Interesting take on it lostinlosangeles. It is too bad you dislike indy filmmakers so much because what one can find in this film series include a film with a 4-out-of-4 star review from Roger Ebert (Matt Porterfield), a filmmaker who played his film at the key festivals in Berlin, SXSW, SIFF and now Tacoma (Sharrief), an actress about which the NY Times calls in this very film “Highest praise goes to Trieste Kelly Dunn, as Sunny: not too smug or gorgeous, but smart and attractive, she steadily, wordlessly conveys her character’s internal struggle”. Most played at least one of Sundance, Tribica, SIFF, SXSW, etc…and I think these festivals likely knew what they were doing when they picked them.

  Tacoma is lucky to have this. In fact Tacoma is the only city to get these filmmakers together in one place. Not everyone likes any film, no matter how good it is. But these are ones that most people will indeed enjoy and find worth with.

• L lostinlosangeles August 12, 2010

  I think Putty Hill is good, also Scrap Vessel and all the Robert Machoian & Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck shorts (even though shorts are pointless, for the same reason you don’t have novels that are only one chapter either. So learn how to write and then make a film. Because all the mistakes you make in a film are PERMANENT, like a tattoo that film history has to wear forever, get it?)

  No, Tacoma isn’t lucky, the film makers are, because curators in major festivals are a lot pickier. Thats just an industry fact. Don’t really know the last time I saw TFF laurels on a DVD case, do you? Thanks.

• L lostinlosangeles August 12, 2010

  And I do not dislike indie film makers, I dislike film makers who don’t know the difference between a good script, and a great script, as well as a good face (casting) and a great face.

  And if you are suggesting that I believe only major motion picture studios know how to do it, I don’t. But I also don’t discredit the fact that a company like Warner Brothers has been doing this thing as a day job for close to a century, and they say practice makes perfect right?

  Granted you are right, not everyone likes any film no matter how good it is. But I think what is also true is not everyone know what the hell it is they are looking at and why what they are looking at is or is not working for them.

  I just want TFF laurels to mean something, like SXSW’s do now. There is no good goddamn reason why Austin, Texas is anymore of a film town than Tacoma, Washington can be.

• C captiveyak August 12, 2010

  I don’t think we should criticize the Daffodil Parade for not being the Macy’s parade. The Grand Cinema is doing something good and constructive and historic here. The Tacoma arts community should rally behind it. Who knows where it could go from here? This is a superb jumping-off point. I’m pretty excited about what it could mean for the future of the Grand.

• L lostinlosangeles August 12, 2010

  Here’s what I am saying yak,

  “Who knows where it could go from here”

  Thats the point, you CAN know. Because you can MAKE it go. You can make something go, grow, attract, capture, hold, sustain, only if you take the right steps and bring in the right material. Programming.

  If you, year after, festival after festival, only attract the fringe film makers who are out on the fringes because their sht simply sucks, then suck is all Tacoma gets to see.

  So how do you attract the film makers who think if they pay the money, and submit the films, that TFF laurels are going to mean something for the buzz they are trying generate?

  Because two things happen at a film festival, the first is what I the curator would be concerned with. Which is feeding my flock. As a TFF curator, living in the NW, I would feel it imperative to make sure my audience gets the goods. I mean, they get the pure columbian lohan candy. I want my flock, when the lights go down in the Grand, to be stargated to another place in the galaxy, fluffed by exotic aliens Captain Kirk style, happy-ended, clutching kleenexes and walking wrong for a week. I want them to see films that have them walking out of the Grand, jello-legged, like the very first time seeing Saving Private Ryan.

  The second thing that happens, is the film makers win something that means something because they know the audience they came for got it. Here’s your laurels, thank you. See you on the shelf at Stadium.

  Thats basically my whole point to having a NXNW festival in Tacoma, because you get visitors from Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland coming to see what the heck is going on. Sync that with the TFF and you get a Hajj of NW awesomeness that will get you Toronto FF class submissions to TFF.

  Now you can be happy with the Daffodil Parade, thats fine. But then don’t brag like it’s the Macy’s and that the ‘outside’ of Tacoma’s arts community has no clue what they are missing. Because they do.

  The future of the Grand is mailable, thats all I am saying. But you have to ask, who at TFF grew up being really good at play-doh, and who didn’t.

• L lostinlosangeles August 12, 2010

  Correction, the future is malleable. Though mailing in a good indie now and then to TFF also will have a positive effect. Thanks.

• S Squid August 12, 2010

  Jello-legged from seeing Saving Private Ryan? Really?

  Dude, you couldn’t get more than a handful of people from Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland to come to a Tacoma festival if Orson Wells himself rose from the dead and presented the premiere of “Kane II: Citizen Gates.”

  Go Grand Cinema! Thanks for being such a gem.

• L lostinlosangeles August 13, 2010

  More like Grandma Cinema.

  Well, I thought Spielberg did one hell of a job. Private Ryan is probably one of the best films ever made. The stabbing scene in the end? Orson Wells never had skills like that. Then again I maybe more affected by it from actually having served overseas with the 101st and seeing things that would make you sht those big boy pants.

• T Trashtown August 13, 2010

  Hey lost,

  When is the last time you weren’t on the computer? Get a life.

• T Topricin August 13, 2010

  In comparison of truly amazing films, Saving Private Ryan is a lukewarm three out of ten: smaltzy, Hollywood formula. Try “Life and Nothing But” (French), try “The Postman” (Italian). If SPR is your litmus, you are dim and missing a lot of wonderful cinema out there.

• L lostinlosangeles August 13, 2010

  Hey Trashtown, did someone forget to tell you it was the age of information? What are you using to read this blog? A stone tablet? Freaking hypocrite.

  @Toprican, yeah I know saying Private Ryan is one of the greatest is an easy target for cinema snobs. Thats fine. Glad you are inspired by those films. I’ve seen plenty. Schultze Gets the Blues (German), The Piano Teacher (French), Julian Donkey Boy (American), Antichrist (Von Trier). I am not dim, I know more about cinema than you, I am just not a snob about it and I think you are full of sht if you think there is no formula to all those other films. There is formula in everything. Thanks!

• T tom waits August 17, 2010

  reading this thread just gave me obsessive compulsive disorder. i didn’t know it was contagious.

• A Argentius August 18, 2010

  Who IS this guy, anyway?

• F frazzlebee August 19, 2010

  Tacomadyte is becoming one of my most favoritest people.

  Excited about the short films. Would love someday to see a collection of short films grouped together at a mainstream cinema (especially if it were the adult-drink-serving theater in Gig Harbor (nothing like drinking Merlot while watching Sideways)).

  Know what was a great movie? The Princess Bride.

• A Altered Chords August 19, 2010

  Princess Bride – eh. Too improbible. You want a great movie? Watch Predator. Now that’s a movie!

• M Mofo from the Hood August 19, 2010

  “Predator Bride” is a real ballbuster.

• T tom waits August 19, 2010

  Starship Troopers, dude.

• T tom waits August 19, 2010

  I should mention that I served with the Federation’s Roughnecks during the invasion of Klendathu. Which is why I like that movie.

• A Altered Chords August 19, 2010

  I wonder if Inigo Montoya (with sword) could beat up Arnold Schwartzenegger’s character in predator. (no sword needed – he can use logs and stuff)

  Or if Inigo Montoya could beat up the actual predator thing?

  Predator vs. Inigo Montoya?

• M Mofo from the Hood August 20, 2010

  In “Predator Bride 2” the predator bride stalks Arnold and then forces him into a compromising position where he busts a nut.

• L lostinlosangeles August 20, 2010

  OHHHHHH MOFO yeah and then just as arnold is about to sling some gogurt, the sequence cuts away to the face he makes in total recall pulling that tracking device out of his nose.

• M Mofo from the Hood August 20, 2010

  Totally humiliated, Arnold seeks revenge on the Predator Bride by enlisting help from his old friends RoboCop, the Six Million Dollar Man and Ellen Degenerate.