Kevin Sheridan wakes up in “Leaving Barstow.” 

Hi folks, are you still out there?
Thanks for coming back to the 2008 Newport Beach Film Festival blog.

This just in: The festival has announced Audience Award winners!

And the winners are….

“Leaving Barstow,” the Audience Award winner for feature;
“Red Like the Sky,” the Audience Award winner for foreign feature; 

“Trying to Get Good,” in a TIE for the audience’s favorite documentary;
“Sliding Liberia,” the other Audience Winner for documentary;
and “A Father Taken,” Audience Winner for favorite short.

Congratulations to all the winners!

See you at next year’s film festival!

A scene from “Captain Abu Raed,” the closing film of the Newport Beach Film Festival. The man in the pilot’s cap is Nadim Sawalha, who won best actor in the fest.  

Well, hello friends! Thank you for coming back here to read my silly comments about the 2008 Newport Beach Film Festival. 

Whew. I’m still conscious after a dense week’s worth of movies, receptions, panels, parties and what not. I think I’ll hibernate for a week.

So yesterday (Thursday, 5/1) I went to the Lido Theater to attend the closing night film and festivities. I got there a bit early, so I had a deli sandwich from Pavilion’s next door. Roasted turkey on wheat bread… not bad.

The closing movie, “Captain Abu Raed,” attracted a sizable crowd, but it wasn’t sold out. That’s because there were a few other big films playing at the same time — “The Tracey Fragments,” “Inside the Circle” and “Beautiful Losers.”

“Captain Abu Raed” — shot in Jordan and spoken in Arabic, with subtitles — is a relatively slow-paced movie, but it builds and has a very touching conclusion. Overall, the movie is excellent. I totally recommend it.

Writer and director Amin Matalqa was present, and he provided some comments before the screening. After the movie, numerous people approached him and showered him with compliments.

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A scene from “Fugitive Pieces.” Rade Serbedzija is on the right.

Hi folks. “Fugitive Pieces” was the big winner at this year’s Newport Beach Film Festival, winning jury awards for best film, best director (Jeremy Podeswa), best cinematographer (Gregory Middleton) and best screenplay (Podeswa).

“Captain Abu Raed,” which screened Thursday night (5/1) at the Lido Theater, won best actor and actress, for Nadim Sawalha and Rana Sultan.

Click here for more award winners.

 

A scene from “Timecrimes.” Guest review by Lindsey Hastings, 17.  

After getting a bucket of buttery popcorn and settling into a seat, I was both excited and intrigued to see my first feature at the Newport Beach Film Festival. “Timecrimes” had caught my eye because of a movie still exhibiting an eerie, bandaged man and the fact that I can’t pass up a good thriller.

After the film was introduced and sponsor commercials were run, the lights dimmed to play “Timecrimes’” opening credits. Yet just then, the lights came up again and the screen turned black. The audience giggled and looked around. I remembered that all of the staff I saw at the festival wore “Volunteer” shirts and were probably not too accustomed with reel equipment. After a few moments darkness returned and the credits continued.

Lush, green landscaping is shown and then the view comes to focus on a quaint home surrounded by forest. A husband, whom we will soon come to know as Hector (Karra Elejalde), brings groceries to his wife, Clara (Candela Fernández), as she tidies up their new house. Hector greets his wife in Spanish and the audience groans as the subtitles are located, conveniently, out of the frame. The film continues like this for a minute or so and I struggled to make out the words. Luckily, a “Volunteer” discovers this and rolls the subtitles back into view. So much for an eerie movie, I think. Yet the film continues without any further technical difficulties.

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Left: Roy Disney at the Newport Beach Film Festival. Right: Don Hahn and Dave Bossert at the Newport film fest. Photos by Jim Collins.

OK folks, it’s late as I’m typing this … close to 2 a.m.

I just got back from Muldoon’s Irish Pub, where the post-party was held after the Irish Spotlight, “Garage.”

No, I’m not buzzed with multiple pints of Guinness. I just had water tonight. H20 with a little squirt of lime, me lovelies.

So instead of the Irish flick, I attended the special evening of Disney Animation Rarities with Roy Disney, producer Don Hahn and creative director Dave Rossert. That program was at the Lido Theater, and it attracted a full audience.

It was an excellent program, with the three Disney veterans introducing each short film. The films that played were: “How to Hook Up Your Home Theater,” starring Goofy; “One By One,” directed by Pixote Hunt; “Oil Spot and Lipstick” from 1986; “Destino,” the legendary collaboration between Walt Disney and Surrealist painter Salvador Dali; the touching and sad “The Little Matchgirl,” directed by Roger Allers; “Redux Red Riding Hood,” a hilarious short featuring the voices of Michael Richards, Fabio and Garrison Keillor; “Lorenzo,” set to tango music and directed by Mike Gabriel; and “Runaway Brain,” featuring the one and only Mickey Mouse. Oh, Minnie’s in there too.

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The biopic – capturing the chaotic life of punk singer Darby Crash – won an Outstanding Achievement in Filmmaking award at the festival.

We’ll tell you about more award winners as soon as we hear about ‘em. 

To learn more about the Newport Beach Film Festival, click here.

Jazz great Jack Sheldon in a scene from “Trying to Get Good.”  

On Tuesday, Day Six of the festival, jazz great Jack Sheldon came down to the Lido Theater to watch the documentary, “Trying To Get Good — The Jazz Odyssey of Jack Sheldon.” He also spoke and answered questions.

Director and KABC (790 AM) radio talk-show host Doug McIntyre was there, as was veteran Hollywood producer Frank Marshall, who produced all of the Indiana Jones movies, including “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and the most recent installment, in theaters soon.

According to imdb.com, Marshall graduated from Newport Harbor High School, Newport Beach in 1964.

In the evening, the festival presented its French Spotlight, with the North American premiere of “The Vanishing Point.” The movie stars Sylvie Testud as a young art history student who discovers a mystery within French master Jean-Antoine Watteau’s paintings.

The film was OK. I’ve seen better. Even though I thought the symbolism was intriguing, it wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before. Perhaps my boredom was a function of being extremely tired…. this film festival has been a marathon.

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A scene from “Sliding Liberia,” directed by Britton Cailloutte. Review by Matthew Ralston.

“Sliding Liberia”
7:30 p.m. April 29

“Sliding Liberia” was screened before a full house last night (4/29). Though “a surf film at heart” according to first-time filmmaker and Newport Beach native Britton Caillouette, the film also has a social awareness, focusing on the civil war in Liberia, the rebels and those affected by it.

We learn about the recent history of Liberia through archived footage and dialogues by different Liberians. Nicholai Lidow, a friend of Caillouette, had visited the war torn nation for his Ph.D studies. He found good waves and became friends with a Liberian surfer — if not Liberia’s only one — who called it sliding waves. And thus, the film project was sparked.

The surfing is good, featuring a team of four short and longboarders. Although other surf films may have bigger and better waves, the point break featured throughout the film is surprising for a location most know little about. Dan Malloy, who has been in many surf films and has traveled widely, noted that “Sliding Liberia” was different than other surf films and trips. While “Liberia was the poorest country I ever visited,” Malloy said, the crew was well removed from the surf industry, making for a more relaxed and natural environment. He passed up invitations to surf Bali, which offers some of the best waves in the world.

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Best friends become dancing rivals in “Inside the Circle.” 

This just in from the Newport Beach Film Festival:

“Inside the Circle: A B-Boy Chronicle” is the first movie to get picked up for distribution at this year’s fest. The distributor is Cinema Libre Studio. 

The documentary tells the tale of former best friends who become rivals when they join competing dance crews. It stars Romeo Navarro, Omar Davila and Josh Ayers, and was directed, edited and produced by Marcy Garriott.

The movie will screen at 7:30 p.m. Thursday (May 1) at Edwards Island Cinemas, screen 1.

I guess folks in the movie business are catching on to the popularity of street dancing, shows like “America’s Best Dance Crew” and groups like JabbaWockeeZ and Kaba Modern.

Congratulations to “Inside the Circle.”

 

A scene from “Up the Yangtze.” Review by Jit Fong Chin. 

“Up the Yangtze,” one of the three movies in the Asian Showcase on Monday night, documents how the building of the Three Gorges Dam affects a poor family that must move out of the rising waters in the Yangtze delta.

I loved it. The Three Gorges Dam construction project is deeply controversial, and I liked that the filmmakers did not try to cover every aspect of the project, and instead focused on telling the stories of a few people without turning anyone into a political symbol.The filmmakers included Canadians, and the documentary is narrated in English.

The Shui family, evicted from its home to make way for the river’s rising waters, lives on a shack on the river bank. (They’ll have to move again as the river is still rising.) Oldest daughter Shui Yu wants to attend high school, but her illiterate and deeply poor parents are afraid there won’t be any money left for their two younger children’s basic education.

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