LAFF, week 1.

"It's purely coincidental, of course, that this year's Los Angeles Film Festival (June 19 - 29) opens for business as the aftershocks of several seismic events are still reverberating throughout the independent-film community," writes Scott Foundas, mentioning the shutting down of New Line, Warner Independent and Picturehouse, the shrinking of Paramount Vantage and the sluggish market at Cannes.

Updated through 6/24.

"For all the gems that programming director Rachel Rosen and senior programmer Doug Jones have plucked from the past 12 months of new world cinema (and there are many), the LAFF program also offers its share of reminders that documentaries, low-budget American indies and international art-house imports can be infected by the same depressing conformity that plagues mainstream Hollywood cinema.... So, the time may indeed be nigh for a certain pressing of the indie-film reset button, and there are ample indications at LAFF of which filmmakers might be the ones to do it."

Also in the LA Weekly is the "A to Y" guide to the festival, pages and pages of robust blurbage and critics' picks, plus:

• Christoph Huber previews the Shaw Sensation program.

• Ernest Hardy on the Eclectic Mix programs of music videos (1 and 2).

• Adam Nayman on Planet of the Apes and The Makioka Sisters.

• John Tottenham on Nothing But a Man.

• John Patterson: "The Los Angeles Film Festival's annual Films That Got Away sidebar, co-presented by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the UCLA Film & Television Archive, this year features two directors who outwardly could not seem less alike: Robert Kramer, the radical socialist-activist and filmmaker who died in 1999; and Jerry Schatzberg, the 80-year-old former jet-set fashion photographer who directed The Panic in Needle Park and Scarecrow."

In the Los Angeles Times, Lisa Rosen talks with "accidental movie star" Lori Petty about her directorial debut, The Poker House.

Updates, 6/20: "What the rarified realm of movie writers wants is a festival on the order of Cannes, Rotterdam or Toronto and using that yardstick disadvantages the LAFF (or the AFI Film Festival later in the year). In the immortal words of Mark Twain that scenario 'ain't gonna happen.'" Leonard Klady explains why at Movie City News.

"Coming on as a scruffy gadabout in order to mask a deceptively sophisticated structure, Baghead [site] mixes and matches the loose talk of indie comedy with the roundhouse scares of a horror film." Mark Olsen talks with Jay Duplass.

Update, 6/21: "[Seth] Packard, who calls himself a 'questioning Mormon,' freely admits he wrote his debut film, a giddy celebration of teenage nerd love, as a vehicle for his acting career." For the LAT, Michael Ordoña has a quick chat with the director and star of HottieBoombaLottie.

Updates, 6/22: "Following in the archival-confessional mold of such documentaries as Tarnation and Capturing the Friedmans, filmmaker Morgan Dews has created Must Read After My Death [site] - or, rather, assembled it, from decades of photographs and home movies and Dictaphone recordings found in his grandmother's home after her passing," writes James Rocchi. "These recordings - made in quiet contemplation or moments of anger, some heavy with things unsaid, some thick with the sounds of rage and desperation - are the aching heart and wounded soul of the film."

Also at Cinematical, a bit of online listening. James talks with Reeler founder and Defamer senior editor Stu VanAirsdale.

Updates, 6/23: "Watching Paper or Plastic? [site], the new documentary about the regional qualifiers and Las Vegas final of the 2007 National Grocery Bagging Competition, I was surprised to note the presence of something that's hard to come by in 2008: Sincerity." James Rocchi at Cinematical: "I don't mean just that Paper or Plastic? never mocks, knocks or condescends to the seven contestants from every corner of America the finale brings together - although it never does - but more that co-directors Alex D da Silva and Justine Jacob not only found an event to observe but also a spirit to celebrate."

In his dispatch from Los Angeles for indieWIRE, Michael Lerman emphasizes the "extremely diverse slate."

Updates, 6/24: "Largo the movie [site] is a lot like Largo the club. The lighting is low, its attention is 100% on the performers and it doesn't make things easy for its customers," writes Richard Cromelin in the LAT. "No texting, no electronics, no talking - [producer and co-director Mark] Flanagan runs a tight ship in service to the artists and an appreciative community of musicians and comedians - Aimee Mann, Jon Brion, Fiona Apple, Brad Mehldau, Patton Oswalt, Sarah Silverman, et al - made the room a uniquely intimate and spontaneous laboratory for experimentation and expression."

"Boogie Man: The Story of Lee Atwater may seem like another exhumation of the recent political past, another laundry list of bygone wrongs for Democrats to fume about; it's much more than that, though, not only in its portrait of one man's journey from the streets of South Carolina to the halls of power, but also in its portrait of the consultant-driven, dirty-trick laden mess that modern politics has become," writes James Rocchi at Cinematical.

IndieWIRE interviews Paper or Plastic? co-directors Justine Jacob and Alex D da Silva.

Jeffrey Wells has pix from the fest - and captions.

Posted by dwhudson at June 19, 2008 10:16 AM