Oxford Film Festival »

Let's start with the easy one: The people. I know the phrase "Southern Hospitality" gets thrown around a lot, but experiencing it first-hand from the Oxford Film Festival team was just lovely. My colleagues and I were treated like VIPs all weekend, which is both weird (I'm low maintenance) and very flattering, from the opening party at the lovely Donna Ruth Robert's house to the final get-together at ... someone's house that had beer, I was greeted with open arms, open bottles, and lots of adorable women who were way too young for me but way too pretty to ignore. Celeb-wise, this might not be Sundance or Toronto, but I wouldn't trade my laid-back conversations with Jason Ritter or Giancarlo Esposito for a dozen Jennifer Connelly interviews. (Well, not really. I'm not insane.)

And a special mention is due to the dozens of organizers, programmers, and volunteers who sure ACTED like their local film festival was Sundance. I don't mean to sound condescending, but I was honestly surprised at how efficiently this little ship was run. I've been to several well-intentioned and entertaining regional festivals before, and this is easily one of the most organized, enthusiastic, and sincere I've ever seen. (The Oxford squad will probably chuckle when they read that, but it's true.) There's that indomitable "we're putting on a show!" spirit that comes with a festival like this one, and it's something I never get tired of seeing. Especially when good movies are afoot.

Cinematical's Scott Weinberg and I were invited to attend the Oxford Film Festival as panelists this weekend, and while Weinberg will have a more thorough recap of our time in Mississippi later on, I wanted to share this delicious morsel from Saturday night's awards ceremony.

As one of the prepared comedy bits interspersed between the awards, they had clips of local people re-enacting diner scenes from movies. Two were basically just straightforward re-creations of scenes from Back to the Future and Five Easy Pieces, but one was from Pulp Fiction, and it was performed by two little kids. Enjoy.

If you happen to live anywhere near Oxford, Mississippi and you feel a gnawing desire to talk movies with a whole bunch of great flick freaks, you could do a whole lot worse than to trek over to the Oxford Film Festival this weekend. Aside from esteemed colleagues like Lisa Rosman, Jennifer Yamato, John Beifuss, Kim Voynar, and Jeffrey Wells, the festival will also be attended by Eric Snider, James Rocchi, and (yep, me) Scott Weinberg. We'll be there to do all sorts of panels and juries and impromptu arguments and such...

Oh yeah, and we'll be seeing some movies. Festivals are always good for that stuff. Debuting at Oxford before skipping over to SXSW will be two cool-sounding films: Crude Independence and Make-Out with Violence, both of which I'm hearing some really cool things on. Fresh from its Sundance splash is Prom Night in Mississippi, which promises to be a documentary full of pretty young southern women. Sign me up. And of course the genre bin is filled with titles like Night Crawlers, Interplanetary, and Psycho Sleepover -- so you know I'll have a good weekend. (Check out the full Oxford slate at Bside.com.)

And let's give it up to the Oxford Film Festival for their stellar taste in guests. Seriously, though, we're flattered to have several of our staff members earn the invitation. I've never even BEEN to Mississippi before! (Do they have Wendy's there? I just get antsy without a Wendy's nearby.)

Anyone who has been to a film festival has had this experience: You watch a terrific movie, you think, "This film deserves an audience" -- and then the movie is never heard from again. It doesn't get theatrical distribution, and it winds up with a cursory DVD release 18 months later. The end. So sad.

Well, I am happy to report that a movie I feared would suffer that fate has been spared. It's called Kabluey, and Cinematical's Kim Voynar and I saw it at the Oxford (Mississippi) Film Festival back in February, where it won the jury prize. It's a comedy about a directionless man who moves in with his sister to help take care of his hellion nephews, and who subsequently takes a lame job wearing a big dumb mascot suit and handing out fliers advertising available office space. The movie is funny, inventive, and sweet, and a real crowd-pleaser.

Scott Prendergast, who wrote, directed, and stars in the film, told us in Oxford that it had been acquired by some division of some studio and would be released in the summer. But as time passed, I noticed with some concern that no release date was being announced. Now, at last, we have confirmation: July 4 in New York, July 11 in L.A., and Aug. 1 in San Francisco. At the moment, that's it before the film's DVD release in the fall. So it's not a huge theatrical release, but hey, it's something.

Eric Snider and I spent this past weekend in lovely Oxford, Mississippi with our friend Jen Yamato from Rotten Tomatoes, where the three of us participated in a panel on Film and New Media for the Oxford Film Festival. I also served on the documentary features jury for the fest. Scott Weinberg was supposed to have been here with me and Jen, but a serious tooth issue kept him home in Philly. Scott still pulled duty on the dramatic features jury for the fest, and Eric very kindly dropped things on a moment's notice the other day to fly to Oxford in Scott's stead.

The three of us had an absolute blast in Oxford. I love these small town film festivals ... everyone is so nice, the pace is laid-back and mellow -- a nice change coming off the craziness of Sundance. We got into Memphis on Thursday, and Jen and I had some yummy BBQ at Corky's -- Memphis-style "dry" ribs and brisket that was to die for. Mmmm. After Eric got in, we drove the hour or so trip to Oxford.