One small new development here this year is the change in the audience-award ballot. The old ballot had five ranked numbers that required you to precisely rip the number of your choice. I always had to check which number corresponded to what. Was "one" the highest of the lowest? No matter. Now the ballots are divided into four categories: "fair," "good," "better," "best." This revised format might be easier for the hard-working volunteers to tally. But what does it say about the festival's interest in real audience feedback when the ballot assumes the worst a Sundance film can be is "fair"?

So leaving "Máncora," Ricardo de Montreuil's obnoxious road movie about a depressed 21-year-old hottie, his hot stepsister, and her hot-enough husband on their way to Peru's hottest resort spot, it annoyed me to no end to settle for "fair." Of course, when the 21-year-old has stoned sex with the two party girls (both hot), the three 21-year-oldish Utahan jocks in the row in front of me were sufficiently awed. Presumably, they ripped the "best" corner.

My companion that evening wrote a much more incisive review for his blog.

Incidentally, the ballot pictured above was for Ellen Kuras's "Nerakhoon (The Betrayal)," a movie I wanted to like more than I actually did. Kuras is a terrific cinematographer. She's shot gorgeous movies for Spike Lee and Michel Gondry, and she's been working on her first film as a director for about 23 years. She made "Nerakhoon" with Thavisouk Phrasavath, whose story the film tells.

During the Vietnam War and for years before it, the CIA backed the Royal Lao military, eventually relying on it to help run the United States' long, horrifying covert bombing campaign on the country. Over 10 years, more than 200 million tons of bombs were unloaded on Laos. The country was more or less destroyed, and Thavisouk's family became one of about 750,000 Hmong refugees. Meanwhile, after America's withdrawal, the Laotian government sent his father, who fought for the Laos on the U.S.'s behalf, was sent to a concentration camp under the guise of "reeducation." Thavisouk, his mother, and brothers and sisters emigrated to New York, and the family fell apart.

Kuras essentially became a member of the family, and the movie she and Thavi have made still feels raw and choked on emotional devastation, exchanging the inherent drama of Phrasavaths' collapse for a vague, watery dreaminess, with lots of shots of Thavi and his mother grieving and lamenting to us. (It doesn't always look like a cinematographer's movie.) By the time the official premiere was over, half the audience was sobbing. I understood the empathetic tears. I got how cathartic the movie must have been for Thavi, his family, and for Kuras, too. I recognized the cruel, infrequently articulated human rights quagmire that the U.S. left Laos in. But I should have been reeling. And I wasn't.

Still, all things being relative, I tore the "good" part of my ballot.

Maria Bello was having breakfast where I was this morning. She's unexpectedly petite, kept company with a tall, broad Jake Gyllenhaal-like creature who carried her stuff, and was wearing what looked like a giant yak hide. Maria, forgive me if it was just some synthetic poly-something blend, but it looked yaky. Anyway, she seemed like a lovely young lady, and she's here because she's starring in "Downloading Nancy," a perfectly ridiculous, Susan Hayward-style thriller about a suicidal housewife who goes online and hires her killer (a very fit Jason Patric), only to kind of fall in with him. (Man, I love screenwriting.) The music-video director Johan Renck gives the movie some trashy style, and Bello does enough acting to rip the skin off a yak, which she might have already done.

From Wednesday January 23 up to and including Sunday February 3 the 37th International Film Festival (IFFR) will take place in, well… Rotterdam of course. This year’s program is led by the new director Rutger Wolfson, who replaces Sandra den Hamer. As was the case in the past few years, Choking on Popcorn will cover the festival for the full ten days and will bring impressions as well as (short) reviews on a daily basis. This year’s festival is dominated by films from Brazil, France, India and the rest of Asia, which is part of the festival’s tradition. The focus is on films that would normally not reach the European and American screens. (more…)

Technorati tags: chokingonpopcorn movie News Reviews Specials The International Film Festival Rotterdam 2008