It's not easy. This place can be a grind. Movie after movie. Day after day. The behind-schedule shuttles. The Ugg boots. And Burberry scarves. Publicists pulling you in a dozen directions. Chasing hype. Avoiding hype. Figuring out just how many layers Mary-Kate Olsen is wearing - and how her pocket-size qualifies as adult. After a while, you come close to collapse. I was at that point a little earlier today. I usually lose it in the privacy of my own room - or very discreetly while waiting in line for a tea somewhere.

But I've never lost it in the dark, not here. Today I did. It was somewhere near the beginning of Lance Hammer's "Ballast," a stripped-down drama whose narrative takes about 30 minutes to come into focus. But even the haze sort of broke my heart. The setting is, well, even once the movie's over you're never entirely sure where you are. It's the South. And it seems deep. (The closing credits confirm it's the Mississippi Delta.) The characters - a single mother (Tarra Riggs), her derelict son (JimMyron Ross), and his neglecting father's suicidal twin (Michael J. Smith Sr.) - are all fighting for their lives. Not medically, but dispositionally.

Movies like this have shown up at this festival before (drugs, guns, poverty in African- American lives; from 1994's "Fresh" to 2006's "Half Nelson"), usually from sensitive white directors. "Ballast" is different, closer to the Dardenne brothers than to most American movies. Hammer uses hand-held photography, little dialogue, and jumpy non-rhythmic editing to immerse us in these characters' lives. The prevailing palette is rainy gray. And you could use the plot to lace a shoe, it's so thin. Still, the film has a gathering artistic and emotional force that's hard to shake - even as all the characters are doing is trying to keep on keeping on. None of the three principles are professional actors, but Riggs is a true force of nature - volatile, acutely sensitive, industrious. She earned my tears and all my heart. The movie needs a loving American distributor right now.

One thing I was looking forward to this year was doing some video updates. But since I got here Thursday morning, I've come down with some weird vocal affliction: I can't talk. The peanut gallery might be chuckling, but it's actually miserable. You get on the shuttle and peers and readers want to know what you've seen or are looking forward to seeing, and you just mouth something. It feels rude. I hate opining on the shuttle, it's true, and it's so nice to have an excuse to demur. But I can't even lean over to my neighbors during a screening and be snide. I can't talk to my friends or to publicists or clerks. It has meant, however, that my text-messaging skills are off the hook.

If I could talk I'd say I found Robb Moss and Peter Galison's documentary, "Secrecy," appropriately disturbing. They've given themselves the unenviable assignment of outlining the complicated history of clandestine activity in government intelligence. The film argues both sides of the secrecy debate - that it's un-American and that it's in America's national security interest.

The film's scope reaches from the Manhattan Project to Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, and Moss and Galison, both of whom teach at Harvard, use footage of atomic mushroom clouds, for example, to illustrate what secrecy hath wrought. They also raise a good question about the media's job of forcing transparency. Do exposés make us less safe? The movie has some great interviews with Charles Swift, the military attorney who represented Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's driver. This is a strong, probing essay that asks necessary questions.

Its biggest intellectual shortcoming is that, while the movie has no shortage of proof of how secrecy is corrosive, it provides little positive evidence to support the assertion that more transparency is ultimately better for us. Regardless, it's a movie worth talking about. Everybody's talking about it - everybody but me!

I woke up, had an apple, and watched other people have sex - or, in the case of "Good D***," not have it. This is a Sundance movie like crazy. Video store clerk (Jason Ritter) stalks weird antisocial chick (Marianna Palka) who comes in to rent porn. She has some severe intimacy issues, and the object of the movie - it's a comedy - is for the sexually dysfunctional, psychologically damaged woman to succumb to the weirdo who won't leave her alone.

Palka wrote the movie and directed it (as an actor, she does wonderful things with her sad eyes; so does Ritter, who is best here when exasperated), and she supposes some new ideas about the heterosexual power dynamic (one role-playing scene on her kitchen table is great). But the movie is too conventionally cute to be daring. At some point, an old man walks into the video store and tells Ritter and his co-workers to go fall in love. Sweet, but forced.

Still, it was better that the second-hand sex I had for breakfast. The occasion was "A Good Day to Be Black and Sexy," Dennis Dortch's episode foray into the bedrooms of black men and women. We see different couples doing it, and how the particulars of intercourse slightly undo them. The movie's a little bit misogynistic, a little bit banal. But Dortch, who shot the movie on video, has some visual style. One chapter is like something the Dardennes might do if they wanted to make a sex picture (it's a big might, but still). He also has good taste in quiet-storm slow jams (Teena Marie is on the soundtrack). Otherwise, everything the movie tells us either Alexander O'Neal and Cherrelle have already dueted about or R. Kelly has already shown us. Part of "A Good Day" is "Trapped in the Closet," minus the lascivious brilliance.

Writing a review about Cloverfield, the much anticipated J.J. Abrams (Alias, Lost) project is an impossible task. The only way you could possibly read a review about it is AFTER you’ve seen it. Every discription of the film’s plot would give away too much. Sticking to what is shown in the (teaser) trailers brings the conclusion it is about a group of partying youngsters who get attacked by something big and devastating. And among them the rest of Manhattan. Now hold your horses, because you can proceed, because this is all I will reveal about the story. So hardly any relevant spoilers ahead. (more…)

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Filed under: Animation, Casting, Celebrities and Controversy, Newsstand, Obits, Comic/Superhero/Geek

It's about to get a smidge gossipy in here, but once I read these stories back-to-back, I had to write up these bits for you...

First up: Early Obituaries
There's death pools for the masses, and early obits written up by the press just in case the sometimes-inevitable happens. Why waste time writing it up and losing the scoop if you can just hear the news, grab the story, and click "publish"? Well, that's what the Associate Press thinks about Britney Spears, according to Ace Showbiz. The AP have confirmed that they are preparing a blurb for that possibility, and editor Jesse Washington says: "We are not wishing it, but if Britney passed away, it's easily one of the biggest stories in a long time. I think one would agree that Britney seems at risk right now. Of course, we would never wish any type of misfortune on anybody, and hope that we would never have to use it until 50 years from now ...but if something were to happen, we would have to be prepared." Topping this off, Ace says she has chronic mood disorder and is predicted to die in six months if she doesn't get treatment. Poor Spears. Her problems seem never-ending.

Meanwhile... Morgues!
While some people are waiting for Britney to hit the slab, Yahoo reports that Lindsay Lohan will have to visit one. Still in her first legal drinking year (21), Lohan will have to work at a morgue as part of her misdemeanor drunk driving punishment. She's gone to rehab, done some community service, and now she has to do two 4-hour days at the morgue -- "part of a court-ordered program to show drivers the real-life consequences of drinking and driving." Topping that off, she'll also have to spend two days in a hospital ER. I'm sure that will be all sorts of scary for Lohan, but considering how many damned stars and celebs drink and drive, I think all of them should be put in this program.

But all hope is not lost, Wonder Woman is coming!
Justice League is kaput, and that whole live-action project for the lady with the lasso isn't going anywhere, but that doesn't mean we can't get more Wonder Woman. TV Guide reported recently that their sources say that there's a straight-to-DVD animated Wonder Woman feature on the way, and Keri Russell will be voicing the epic, Amazonian heroine. That leads me to wonder (pun!), should she pull off the voice well (and these rumors are true), could Russell also make it work in a live-action setting? Stay tuned!

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