CIFF Diary: Elizabethtown Buzz
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Romance, New Releases, Festival Reports, Chicago
Elizabethtown, Camerone Crowe's much maligned latest film, opened the Chicago International Film Festival last Thursday night, and people were still talking about it on Sunday, and Monday, and Tuesday ... but not in a good way. Everyone I talked to who went to the opening night gala, at which Roger Ebert conducted extensive pre-screening on-stage interviews with Susan Sarandon and Cameron Crowe, seemed overwhelmed. A festival staffer – looking both ways to make sure no one was listening – told me that the interviews were part of the problem. "They're up there, talking for hours, about something we haven't even seen!" The same staffer told me that he hadn't seen the Toronto cut, but that the version that opened CIFF (which is presumably the cut that opens wide this Friday) felt long, draggy and aimless. "There are good ideas there," he said. "It just doesn't come together." He also confirmed that the infamous Susan Sarandon in the funeral parlor scene is still there; it is also, in his words, (still?) "uncomfortably tasteless."
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-13-2005 @ 4:01PM
Erik Davis said...
Uncomfortably tasteless? Why are people making it seem as if the woman takes off her clothes and vomits on her family members? Tasteless? How? SPOILER - In an effort to redeem herself in front of a family that feels she snatched her man away from them, she decides to lighten the mood by proving to them how much he really meant to her and her family through some comical storytelling.
I actually enjoyed the scene in question. OH MY GOD - did I just say that out loud?
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10-13-2005 @ 6:36PM
Mike said...
The only thing uncomfortably tasteless about that night was the creepy way the head of the film festival was lecherous towards Susan Sarandon when presenting her with her award. It would have been disgusting if it hadn't been so pathetic.
The film itself was pretty damn wonderful. But the interviews beforehand were dull, lifeless, and made the whole experience seem like it was a podunk production, not an "international film festival." And the career clip retrospective was so amateurish that it was laughable.
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