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Movie reviews: Fresno Film Festival 2012

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I greatly look forward to attending the Fresno Film Festival every spring, and this year Fresno Filmworks delivered a terrific and diverse lineup. I’m a bit late on these reviews, but here are my thoughts on three of the festival’s feature films.

“The Fairy”
Directed by: Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, and Bruno Romy
Format: Big screen
Viewed: Friday 4/27/2012 with my wife at the Tower Theatre in Fresno
This romantic comedy made the perfect opening night movie, and it’s one of the best films I’ve ever seen at Filmworks. “The Fairy” follows a hapless hotel clerk as he falls in love with an off-kilter, wish-granting fairy. I remembered the writers/directors/stars of the movie from “L’iceberg,” an excellent Fresno Film Festival choice a few years ago. This fantastical movie was slapstick, charming, and a ton of laughs.

“Pina”
Directed by: Wim Wenders
Format: Big screen
Viewed: Saturday 4/28/2012 with my wife at the Tower Theatre in Fresno
I’ve never seen a film quite like “Pina” and probably never will. Director Wim Wenders and the dancers pay tribute to the late choreographer Pina Bausch. I sat awestruck with the intensity of the dancing and the beauty of the filmmaking, but it was the stories of cast members interwoven throughout that lent an emotional weight to the movie that made it truly breathtaking.

“A Separation”
Directed by: Asghar Farhadi
Format: Big screen
Viewed: Saturday 4/28/2012 with my wife at the Tower Theatre in Fresno
This Iranian drama, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, is one of the best movies I’ve seen in the past year. You wouldn’t think that a character study about a dissolving marriage would keep you on the edge of your seat. But “A Separation” is written with such heart-stopping suspense and intricate cultural nuance that it turns ordinary material into the extraordinary.

Also at the festival: I got a chance to see the gorgeous restoration of the Georges Méliès classic “A Trip to the Moon.” I will blog about that soon in a separate post. I also saw a ton of short films from all over the world. My favorite short was “L’equip petit,” which told the story of a sweetly inept team of 5- and 6-year-old soccer players. The panel discussion with Hmong American filmmakers Abel and Burlee Vang was also inspiring.

One-year website anniversary

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The current JeffersonBeavers.com landing page.

My little website quietly celebrated its one-year anniversary on May 25, 2012. Since I first welcomed readers to my new site, I have posted more than 60 blogs in the past year. Some were reflections on my creative work, some were movie reviews, and some were lists of my favorite music and media. I’ve also posted a modest archive of my current radio stories. The whole site is definitely a work in progress, but I’m happy that I’ve been able to keep everything operating for a whole year.

In the past year, I completed an internship with KQED Public Radio and have slowly but surely gathered experience as an audio producer. I’ve had three feature stories and one sound postcard air on The California Report program, and I’ve contributed field recording and production work to many other stories that have aired on KQED and NPR. I used a portion of my freelance earnings to put together my own multimedia production kit, and I’ve now got enough equipment to call myself a legitimate backpack journalist. My first year as a freelancer hasn’t been easy, but I’m still working at it.

I spent a lot of time at Fresno City College in the past year, both teaching and taking classes. I taught one section of Journ 1 in each the fall and spring semesters. I also took three photography classes and one graphics class as a student, where I learned enough to get myself started with using a digital camera, Photoshop, and Illustrator. This fall, I’ll again teach one section of Journ 1 at Fresno City and I’ll also teach one section of Engl 1 at the Willow International campus in Clovis. It’s unlikely that I’ll have time to take photo classes in the next year, but I hope to continue taking photo walks.

Thank you to my wife and to the many friends and colleagues who have given me unending support in the past year. For fear of temporarily forgetting someone, I won’t try to list everyone here who has encouraged me and inspired me. You know who you are! And I want you to know that your help means the world to me.

Instagram challenge: #photoadaymay

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For all 31 days in the month of May 2012, I participated in the “Photo a Day” challenge on Instagram. Several friends had previously done the monthly challenges, and I thought I’d try it because it would be a good way to force myself to mindfully set out to make a photograph every single day. I’m proud to say that I didn’t miss a single day, but more than half of the photos I made were quite far from being “art” or anything like it. I’m still glad that I did it!

The gallery above features my 10 favorite photographs from the full set of 31. I mostly stuck with my favorite IG filter, the lo-fi filter, which imitates the dark, saturated look of classic lomography. Some of the early photos felt to me like they were among the best, and I thought the very last photograph of my wife at the beach turned out the best of all.

In addition to the test of one month’s commitment, the whole exercise got me thinking about composition in a different way: for a square frame, as opposed to the horizontal or vertical frame for most cameras. Composing the photograph for a different view made me re-evaluate some of my assumptions about balance and direction within an image.

You can follow me @jeffresno on Instagram if you’ve got the smart phone app. I’ll be happy to get back to making random photo art for a while now.

Movie reviews: Spring Break movie binge

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I went on a serious movie binge during Spring Break this past April, watching six films in eight days. I missed one night to attend a friend’s birthday party and one night to watch Kentucky beat Kansas in this year’s college basketball championship game. But I dedicated the rest of my evenings to movies. Here are some short reviews:

“50/50”
Directed by: Jonathan Levine
Format: DVD from Redbox
Viewed: Thursday 4/05/2012 by myself at home
Seth Rogen always equals “dude flick.” But I like Joseph Gordon-Levitt a lot, and I’m happy that I gave this little film about a young man trying to beat cancer a chance. While the overall plot was predictable, I felt unexpectedly moved by the many gestures of true friendship between the two stars. And several sequences between Gordon-Levitt and his mom, played by Anjelica Huston, broke my heart with their quietness.

“Casa de Mi Padre”
Directed by: Matt Piedmont
Format: Big screen
Viewed: Tuesday 4/03/2012 with my wife at the Regal Manchester
Will Ferrell movies usually mean brain candy, and this one is no exception. I would describe “Casa de Mi Padre” as a shameless mashup of every B-movie western you’ve ever seen. But this version adds indie-style sequences that intentionally linger way too long, deliberate editing mistakes designed as punch lines, a bizarre apology involving an animatronic white tiger, and an extended homage to “Scarface” that truly baffled me.

“Drive”
Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn
Format: DVD from Redbox
Viewed: Sunday 4/01/2012 with my wife at home
I’ve seen “Lars and the Real Girl” and I know the Internet memes, but I don’t know a lot about Ryan Gosling. So I decided to see what the hubbub was about and watch “Drive,” where Gosling plays a Hollywood stuntman and getaway driver who becomes an unlikely killing machine. While it wasn’t my usual type of film, I appreciated the filmmaking and the ambiguous storylines. Plus, my wife and I enjoyed spotting “Hey, girl” moments throughout.

“Exporting Raymond”
Directed by: Philip Rosenthal
Format: DVD from Redbox
Viewed: Wednesday 4/04/2012 by myself at home
I’m not a big sitcom watcher, and I’ve never seen a full episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond.” But this documentary about the writer of the hit U.S. TV show traveling to Russia to oversee the making of an international spinoff resulted in many painfully awkward moments. The writer’s eccentricities and anxieties are hard to love, but any movie like this one about small moments of real cultural understanding are ultimately essential.

“Take Shelter”
Directed by: Jeff Nichols
Format: DVD from Redbox
Viewed: Friday 4/06/2012 with my wife at home
My wife and I missed seeing this highly acclaimed drama when Fresno Filmworks screened it late last year, so we were happy to see it available through Redbox. Michael Shannon plays a small-town father with a growing mental illness quite flawlessly. But we were most taken with the performance of Jessica Chastain as his wife, as she delivers a portrait of marital strength and fortitude unlike anything we’ve seen in a long time.

“The Rum Diary”
Directed by: Bruce Robinson
Format: DVD from Redbox
Viewed: Friday 3/30/2012 with my wife at home
I’ve always thought that Johnny Depp plays Hunter Thompson better than Hunter Thompson ever played Hunter Thompson. So even though “The Rum Diary” is an uneven and under-developed movie to go with the uneven and under-developed script from Thompson’s early unpublished novel, I didn’t mind. Watching Johnny Depp romp through 1950s Puerto Rico as a drug-addled “journalist” was well worth it.

Radio story: Hunger plays

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The first Valley Storytellers Project focused on stories of hunger in the state's breadbasket.

My third freelance radio story for The California Report aired on Friday, March 16, 2012. I reported on the unique collaboration between Central Valley community storytellers and the L.A.-based Cornerstone Theater Company. Their project yielded two original plays about the important topic of hunger, created out of the shared stories of my Central Valley neighbors.

I first spent a whole day with the participants inside the Sanger High School multipurpose room in early January. The first-day workshop, facilitated by performance artist and self-described “farm apprentice” Nikiko Masumoto, provided the raw material for the plays. Fifteen community members, many of whom had never been involved in a theater type project before, connected with three local screenwriters and a handful of theater pros from L.A. Three weeks later, in early February, I spent a second full day with the storytellers, as they raced through rehearsals in the morning and then presented their work publicly to about 150 audience members in the afternoon. The process was fast and furious, but the results were both fun and profound.

My favorite part of covering the story was watching Nikiko facilitate the workshop. Her energy was infectious, and her thoughtful questions and creative activities prompted the group in unexpected ways to express what hunger meant to them. There was a full-group discussion about each person’s “best last meal.” There was a speed-dating style activity in two concentric circles, where people rotated to talk one-on-one with each other, surrounded by the voices of their peers. And there was a small-group activity where people grouped themselves by their food and eating preferences for a series about inclusion and exclusion. Each of the activities really showed the participants how similar they all were, while emphasizing and embracing the big range of individual differences.

Nikiko’s master stroke as a facilitator, though, was the “kitchen sounds choir.” In a large circle, she asked each person one-by-one to re-create a familiar sound from their kitchen with their bodies. People scratched their heads a bit at first. But then they stomped their feet, made hissing and buzzing and clanking sounds with their mouths, started flailing their arms, and generally began making all sorts of kitchen-inspired racket. Nikiko then gradually combined all the people’s kitchen sounds into one grand cacophony, standing at the center of the circle (with me at her feet, with my shotgun mic) and assuming the role of orchestra conductor to direct a swirling crescendo of homemade “music.” It was a glorious creation of sound– and it was perfect for the radio. As you’ll hear, I decided to lead my story with it.

Here’s a link to my final radio story. Here’s also another story on the event from my colleague Joe Moore at Valley Public Radio.