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Redland is an art film in the most literal and complimentary sense. Every frame of it looks like an Impressionist painting or an exquisite photograph, and the dialogue is overheard in snippets, the way you half-hear conversations when you're drifting to sleep. The story is non-linear and dreamlike. The film's substance, its actual content, is good, but its style is nothing short of astonishing.

The setting is a rural, isolated mountain home during the Great Depression. These are not the Waltons, though. The unnamed family is dirt-poor, living in a ramshackle house and barely staying ahead of starvation. They subsist on the few chickens and other animals kept on their property. You know the old cliché about how we were poor but we didn't know it, because we were happy? Not these people. These people are poor and miserable.

Worse, the teenage daughter, Mary-Ann (Lucy Adden), has been having a sexual affair with Charlie Mills (Toben Seymour), a neighbor boy her age ("neighbor" means he lives a few miles away), and has been trying desperately to keep it hidden from her father (Mark Aaron) and mother (Bernadette Murray). Father suspects something is wrong with his daughter and asks her brothers -- older Job (Sean Thomas) and younger Paul (Kathan Fors) -- if they've noticed any visitors lurking around, but they say they haven't.

When the family's plight becomes truly life-threatening, with Mother on the brink of death from malnutrition, Father and Job set off on a dangerous trek across the river in search of wild game. Charlie Mills is invited to accompany them, though Father has already grown suspicious of him. (When you live in desolate isolation, the list of possible secret boyfriends for your daughter is short.)

Hey, speaking of The Hangover (weren't we?), the 11th annual CineVegas Film Festival kicked off last night at Planet Hollywood, on the world-famous, super-classy, not-at-all-gaudy Las Vegas Strip. The setting was a large theater above the casino floor that normally hosts a live production called Peepshow, the posters for which emphasize its primary assets and boobsets.

But the showgirls had the night off, and CineVegas took over. Festival chairman Dennis Hopper kicked off the event in true Vegas style, rising from a trapdoor in the stage to the accompaniment of "Born to Be Wild." I noted that he pronounces the festival's name "sinny-vegas," rather than "sin-uh-vegas." His version sounds more cheerful. Vegas is sinny! Come visit!

The opening-night film, a comedy called Saint John of Las Vegas, was introduced by its writer/director, Hue Rhodes, who reiterated Sinny City's showbiz roots. Good or bad, funny or serious, scary or tame, Las Vegas is all about puttin' on a show. He said that his own film "is not always gonna be a safe ride," but assured us it would be a crazy one.

Which it is. Steve Buscemi (pictured) stars as a former gambler who now works at an insurance agency and must return to Vegas to investigate a possibly fraudulent insurance claim. What's interesting, perhaps, is that the movie is set up as a parallel to Dante's Divine Comedy: Buscemi's character's last name is Alighieri, same as Dante's, and his partner is named Virgil; they encounter people and situations similar to those described in the old Italian poem you were supposed to have read in high school. Buscemi and co-star Romany Malco are good, of course, but the film feels slight and forgettable. I wonder if greater familiarity with Inferno would increase one's enjoyment of it. Curse my inattentiveness in eleventh-grade English!

Next month Cinematical will once again invade the CineVegas Film Festival (check out our post on the fest's premiere slate), and we thought it'd be nice to give these smaller films a plug before their big dance so that you're aware they're coming. That said, we've just received this exclusive image for the film Redland, which will be one of nine world premieres landing in Vegas this year. Click image below to enlarge.



Written and directed by first-timer Asiel Norton, word on the street tells us Redland is a beautifully shot film that calls to mind the work of Terrence Malick. Set in rural America during the Great Depression, the film tells of an isolated family who must deal with their daughter's secret affair. You can check out more of Redland on its official website (also watch a trailer below), and find out all you need to know about CineVegas right over here.

We had a swell time at the CineVegas Film Festival last year -- no surprise, considering it's a party-oriented fest set in the heart of glitzy, glamorous, sweaty Las Vegas. Oh, and they show movies, too, and they've just announced nine world premieres for the 11th edition of CineVegas, to be held June 10-15.

The opening-night gala will center around Saint John of Las Vegas, starring Steve Buscemi as a recovering gambling addict whose job requires him to return to Sin City. Sarah Silverman, Tim Blake Nelson, John Cho, and Peter Dinklage co-star, which means hilarity cannot fail to ensue.

The entire slate has not been announced yet, but the eight other world premieres have been. Here's a brief rundown:

• Asylum Seekers: Six about-to-lose-it individuals check into a mental institution, then find there's only room for one of them.

• Daylight: A pregnant newlywed is taken hostage. I don't know how this ends, but I suspect the message is DO NOT MESS WITH A PREGNANT WOMAN.

• Easier with Practice: A would-be novelist falls in love with a mysterious phone-sex operator. I think we've all been there.

• Etienne!: A man's only friend, a tiny hamster, is diagnosed with cancer, so the guy takes his pal on a bicycle trip to show him the world before he dies. If this movie makes me cry over the death of a hamster, I will cold stab somebody.

(We're re-posting this review from CineVegas now that the film is available to rent or buy through Amazon's VOD service. Check it out.)

By: Eric D. Snider

If a comedy troupe like Broken Lizard or The Whitest Kids U Know had made Lars and the Real Girl, it might have turned out like Happy Birthday Harris Malden, a sweet, funny, and very odd comedy about growing up and accepting reality. It's the work of a Philadelphia filmmaking quintet called Sweaty Robot, and the opening credits are no more specific than that: "Written and directed by Sweaty Robot." I like that. The film is about friendship, and it was made by a group of friends.

Granted, making a movie with a bunch of your friends isn't always a good idea -- Adam Sandler, I'm looking at you -- but Harris Malden benefits from Sweaty Robot's familiarity and camaraderie. While it has some jokes that probably only the guys themselves think are funny, the film is so good-natured and charming, almost innocent, that even when I wasn't laughing I was content. It's a movie that wants to be your pal, and hey, doggone it, what's not to like?

Last week, I did some reporting from the CineVegas Film Festival, where I served as a juror. The winners were announced this weekend, and they have me wishing I had been able to see more stuff. She Unfolds By Day, Rolf Belgum's film about "a frustrated middle-aged son trying to manage his misanthropic 80-year-old mother," took home the Grand Jury Prize. A Special Jury Award went to Dark Streets, which our own Eric D. Snider gave a decent review to here. Bill Pullman took home a Special Jury Award for his performance in Your Name Here, reviewed by Eric here. The documentary jury, which included Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock, selected Beautiful Losers, about "the lives of a loose-knit group of artists in the '80s who created their own art movement outside the mainstream." Hi, My Name is Ryan, focusing on "the clown prince of the downtown Phoenix art scene," picked up a Special Documentary Jury Prize.

Finished with my jury responsibilities, I managed to check out some features. A favorite of mine was Chelsea on the Rocks, by Abel Ferrara (director of Bad Lieutenant and a terrific little mob flick called The Funeral). It's a documentary about the infamous Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan, but it's far from traditional. There are lots of odd transitions and edits, the interviews are beyond casual (Ferrara says something along the lines of "No shit!" every ten seconds while listening to the stories of those living in the building), and there are some utterly ridiculous and unnecessary re-enactments of notorious events in the hotel's past (actors play Sid and Nancy, Janis Joplin, and assorted hangers-on). Truth be told, the whole thing was kind of a mess. But watching it felt a lot like spending a night in the hotel, and it's a ride I'm glad I took. I didn't learn a thing, but it brought me inside a place full of fascinating characters, a place I walked past countless times in Manhattan without a second thought.

There's no way around it: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson owes at least some of his fame to the way his dominating figure fits the blockbuster action stereotype with near-mechanical sleekness. However, he also offers an alternative to that reductive perspective. Looking sharp in a business suit and speaking with the relaxed professional discipline of a CEO, Johnson showed up at a screening of Get Smart on Sunday at the CineVegas Film Festival displaying sheer confidence. The screening took place at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino, where Johnson had recently acted in Race to Witch Mountain ("We just added to the chaos," he said), but on this visit, Johnson got a chance to remind people that he's not just a one-note performer, but someone who plays an active role in the international film community (not to mention the health community, since The Rock Foundation pushes obesity prevention).

Outside of his supremely meta performance in Richard Kelly's Southland Tales, Johnson has made his interests in adventurous cinema increasingly clear, and boldly champions independent artists. You can get a small glimpse of this aspect of his personality in Operation Filmmaker, documentarian Nina Davenport's account of an Iraqi filmmaker named Muthana Mohmed whose aspirations tragically fall short of the expectations surrounding him. Landing the opportunity to work for Liev Schreiber on the set of Everything is Illuminated, the 25-year-old Mohmed grows increasingly frustrated with the boring tasks given to him, and continually blows opportunities as a result of his unbalanced work ethic.

My fellow jurors and I selected our short film winners yesterday, but I can not share any results until the award ceremony next weekend. You likely wouldn't know any of the titles anyway, but I can pretty much guarantee you will see the filmmakers' names again in the coming years -- some big talents in the mix. There's a party every night here, and I've been having a blast. One of my favorite past-times has been playing a game I call "Hooker/Not a Hooker." Pretty self-explanatory, basically you try to decide which gals are on the payroll, and which aren't. Here's a hint: If she's gorgeous, 22- years-old and hanging off the arm of a 400-pound dude with a combover ... she's available.

I checked out Get Smart yesterday, at an event for The Rock, excuse me, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, excuse me, Dwayne Johnson's charity. Johnson introduced the film and told the audience that "Steve Carell has very soft lips," which made a lot more sense once we watched the flick. For the most part, I agree with Eric's review. It was no masterpiece, but it was just funny and entertaining enough to have been worth the time. Steve Carell can elevate just about anything, and Alan Arkin was hilarious. Now that I've got more free time, I hope to pry myself away from the video poker (currently $45 in the red) and the pool (my skin is also "in the red") and check out some of the more indie-leaning films screening here. Abel Ferrara's Go-Go Tales screens tonight, and I don't think I can pass up that title. Right now there's yet another two-hour "happy hour" starting, so ah...talk to you later!

Somehow, I have remembered to take photos on my vice-filled journey through the CineVegas Film Festival, and while a lot of them didn't come out as I planned, you can see a couple (along with a bunch from Getty Images) in the gallery below. You'll find shots of the parties, of the fest in motion, of fire-breathers in bikinis, of naked women covered in paint (ahem, see above), of singing sensation Bijou Phillips, and even a candid shot of the world beer pong champion (I think you'll be able to figure out which one that is). Wish you were here!