The cast of Altar Boyz at Jacksonville’s Stanton CollegePreparatory School, from Thespians.
By Hap Erstein
Cut down to five days, and minus the glitzy gala that always seemed more important to its organizers than the movies themselves, the Palm Beach International Film Festival at 15 is reportedly on its last legs.
After a decade and a half, the event never really caught on with the local public and has become a financial drain on the county as recession-strapped corporate sponsors have fallen away.
I would like to report that there are plenty of worthy films to be seen, but executive director Randi Emerman remains stingy about showing movies in advance to the press, perhaps because she does not want reviews out that would only discourage attendance. According to a festival publicist, Emerman insists that no major film events outside of South Florida hold advance screenings, an assertion that will come as a surprise to festivals in Toronto and Tribeca, to name a couple.
Ultimately, screenings were held for four films, which the publicist insisted were the only four available to be shown. That is awfully hard to believe, but then these four were certainly not selected for their quality, so maybe it is true. It would be a mistake to extrapolate the quality of the entire festival based on these four films, but feel free to jump to your own conclusions. (By the way, the best of the films reviewed below, Thespians, was not made available by the festival staff, but by its director.)
For more information, call (561) 362-0003 or go to www.pbifilmfest.org.
Dennis Sims, theater instructor at the Dreyfoos School,with student Jeremy Daniels, from Thespians.
* Thespians (Saturday, 2:30 p.m., Cobb Theatres Downtown 16) – Competitions as a subject matter often make for strong documentaries in which moviegoers can become emotionally invested. Think of Spellbound, Wordplay and Mad Hot Ballroom. Now comes Thespians by Jacksonville-based Warren Skeels, a look at the Florida statewide high school drama festival, as seen through the aspiring actors of four schools, including West Palm’s Dreyfoos School of the Arts. Skeels, a former thespian himself, got unusual access to the preliminary work and rehearsals within the schools, has a good eye for capturing the backstage tensions and he edited it all down to a tight hour and a half.
There is commercial potential in the film because of its timing, coming just as High School Musical and TV’s Glee are hot. Skeels digs for the personal stories of the performers, and is particularly successful with a couple of best friends from an Orlando school who tackle an intimate scene from John Patrick Shanley’s Danny and the Deep Blue Sea and the geeky, rhythm-challenged guys of a Jacksonville prep school who get whipped into shape for a highly choreographed number from Altar Boyz. Dreyfoos’s Jeremy Michaels gets a nice showcase, but otherwise the school is a bit shortchanged.
A scene from Exam.* Exam (Monday, 7 p.m., Cobb Theatres Downtown 16) – So you think you’ve got a hard time landing a job? It is nothing compared to what the applicants for an unspecified position at a major biotech company do through in Stuart Hazeldine’s Exam. Those who suffer from claustrophobia can pass on this yarn, which all takes place entirely inside a sterile, windowless room where the test is administered. For that matter, those who insist on applying logic to their viewing experience and crave a satisfying wrap-up will want to pass as well.
Still, the premise does tantalize. Eight employee candidates, most of them young, attractive and well-dressed, are read the stringent guidelines for the exam before them on their desks and are then left alone, with only a silent guard to toss out those who break the rules. Then the stakes are quickly raised when they realize that their test papers are blank.
So they have to work together, or at least seem to, to learn first what the exam question is, then how to solve it. In this psychological puzzle, Luke Mably takes control of the group dynamic, and the movie. Hazeldine handles the harder job – executing the camerawork so the film’s inert quality is minimized – but he eventually writes himself into a too-obvious corner.
Adham, an Egyptian recycling worker, from Garbage Dreams. * Garbage Dreams (Friday, 4:45 p.m., Muvico Parisian; Sunday, 11 a.m., Movies of Delray) – As we learn in the opening titles, Cairo, Egypt, is a city of 18 million people, yet it has no municipal waste disposal system. What it does have is the Zaballeen, a sub-culture that has been eking out a meager living picking up the city’s garbage and recycling it for what value they can derive. It is, as you can imagine, an enormously unsanitary occupation, yet these people are shown diligently rummaging through the refuse for the hidden worth – mostly metal cans and scraps – within.
Director/producer Mai Iskander rubs the viewer’s nose in the garbage and does what he can to delineate characters for us to follow, but it is a narrow subject with little to add once the eye-opening existence of the Zaballeen is established. The film cries out for narration, for we learn almost everything from the profiled individuals, who prove not to have much to say.
Paris Hilton and the paparazzi, from Giving It Up. * Giving It Up (Friday, 7:15 p.m., Cobb Theatres Downtown 16; Sunday, 9:15 p.m. Movies of Delray) One does not need to like the subjects of a documentary, but this look beneath the surface of Hollywood’s paparazzi culture is a particularly shallow look at gang wars fought with cameras. Our national obsession with celebrity should probably come as no surprise, so nor should the exponential increase of these stake-out artists who live off the grab shots of the Paris Hiltons, Britney Spears and Angelina Jolies of the world that they then sell to the tabloids and other photo services.
Director-writer Frank Ruy follows along on a few high-speed pursuits, as the photographers race across L.A. to gain position outside tony restaurants, and wait for the A-list stars to emerge and make their payday. Understandably, Giving It Up includes only those celebs that the paparazzi are able to find and cajole into cooperating long enough for a saleable shot, so one wonders if what Ruy is up to is just as annoying, being the paparazzo to the paparazzi. Yes, these guerrilla photographers get their own 15 minutes of fame in the film, but it is time you will want back.
Tovah Feldshuh in Ten Stories Tall.* Ten Stories Tall (Saturday, 7:15 p.m., Muvico Parisian; Sunday, 8 p.m., Lake Worth Playhouse) – Writer-director David Garrett wades into familiar territory with this dramatic tale of death, grief and dysfunctional family tensions, but succeeds with it thanks to an unblinking touch and a first-rate cast, led by Tovah Feldshuh as a guilt-wielding mother who comes unhinged at the funeral of a lifelong friend. Garrett’s dialogue is well-honed, and even the minor characters feel fleshed out and multi-dimensional. Ally Sheedy gives an impressive performance as the dead woman’s daughter, trying to keep a level of civility to the proceedings, bringing her own career back from the dead. Theater fans will appreciate seeing Emily Skinner in a small, crucial role.