cinevegas2009 Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A womanizing cad doesn't believe in true love, even though he makes his living writing novels about it. He sleeps with one beautiful woman after another, never getting attached, always pleased when the women leave before he wakes up in the morning. But his whole world is turned upside-down when, out of nowhere, he actually falls in love with one of them.

Yes, it's the ol' "education of a douchebag" story, going by the title Mercy this time around and starring Scott Caan, who also wrote the screenplay. (It's actually his third script; he directed the other two himself, and the first, Dallas 362, won the jury prize at CineVegas in 2003.) One is tempted to find autobiographical elements in Caan's swaggering character, especially since his real-life father, James Caan, plays his dad in the movie, but I don't know if that's accurate. But it might be the more charitable interpretation, since without a personal connection there's no reason to tell a story this generic.

It's at the release party for his third novel that Johnny Ryan (Scott Caan) meets Mercy (Wendy Glenn), a gorgeous, slender brunette who, unlike most heterosexual women (or so we're led to understand), is not instantly bowled over by Johnny's smooth cocky charm. Nor, it turns out, does she like his writing. This wouldn't normally bother Johnny -- he prefers women who can barely read anyway -- but in this case it's troubling because she's a New York Times book critic. Now with two reasons to pursue her (the usual one, and her negative opinion of his work), Johnny redoubles his efforts to get close to her.

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.)

In the past, the CineVegas Film Festival has spanned nine days, starting on a Thursday night and running through the following Saturday. This year, though, the fest has been compressed -- streamlined, really -- so that it started Wednesday and will run through Monday. The number of films has decreased only slightly, meaning we're essentially getting the same amount of content in six days rather than nine.

It's hard to overstate how much this decision, which was partly due to economic concerns, has improved things. Screenings start earlier in the day and run later into the night. Where you used to have only two movie options in a particular time slot, now there are three, which means less downtime if you've already seen (or really don't want to see) something. The overall energy is higher. There's more hustle, not to mention bustle.

I've noticed a lot more Sundance-style promotions, too. There's a zombie film on the docket, called The Revenant, and several beautiful, scantily clad women have been all over the place handing out fliers to remind people about it. And when I say scantily clad, I mean they're in tiny little tops and tiny little shorts, both parts very tight-fitting. They are practically nude. In Vegas, no one notices. This is how people dress to go to church.

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!

One of the titles at the upcoming CineVegas Film Festival that has piqued my interest is Easier with Practice, about a man who falls in love with a woman he knows only over the phone. The limitations of telephone communication notwithstanding, their relationship is sexual in nature, as suggested by the film's slightly NSFW trailer.

We also have a brief clip from the film, showing the inevitable conversation that the main character, Davy, must have with his brother, Sean. The two (played by Brian Geraghty and Kel O'Neill) are driving around the country to promote Davy's novel. Sean, needless to say, is skeptical about Davy's new "girlfriend." (There's a little PG-13-rated language.)

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.