confessions of an amateur cineaste

I mentioned on Twitter last night that I had tried to watch A Very Long Engagement, but failed because the subtitles were so awful. Today I provide y’all with pictorial evidentiary support.

First, the italicized subtitles for voiceover:

Second, the only very slightly better regular dialogue subtitles:

Click through for the 1024×575 versions, which might actually be harder to read.

Now, here’s the thing. I get that my wee TV is not exactly the ideal situation for watching any film, let alone a subtitled one, but better there than not at all. And not infrequently subtitles are just small, so I have to watch a film up close on my laptop. But seriously. Bubble letters? The manufacturer could at least make an effort.

If anyone has suggestions as to a version of the film with legible subtitles, I would appreciate it!

1) The leftmost seat in row H at SIFF Cinema is sort of broken, definitely squeaky. Avoid.

2) If you’re getting concessions at an AMC theater, go for a kid’s combo. Manageable sized soda & popcorn, and! Fruit snacks! Plus, a game on your box, all for six bucks. What a deal.

3) There is a lot of awful local film. In fact, if there’s any good local film, please let me know, since I have yet to find it. Maybe I am just really bad at choosing.

4) My favorite theater to attend & volunteer at is the Harvard Exit. Not just because it’s close to both my apartment & Joe Bar, although both of those things help.

5) I have a fondness for the Egyptian (Secret represent!) but I dream of a day where I see a film there and the projection is in no way fucked up. Hey, it could happen. Also, it’s a shitty place to work Will Call.

6) I really like working Will Call. Who knew?

7) I must take all three weeks off next year. Must dooo eeet.

8 ) The Hong Kong Film Office montage makes me desperately want a Tony Leung retrospective. Get on that, people. I’d kill to see In the Mood for Love on the big screen again. And Hard Boiled, which I’ve only seen on video (and a shitty print at that.) Oooh, and Infernal Affairs (which, hey, I saw at SIFF back when it came out, and the projection was fucked up. At the Egyptian, so no surprise there.)

9) There are people who buy popcorn to go. This had never occurred to me. And not that I’d do it now, because hey. Expensive. And I’m not that into theater popcorn anyway. White cheddar, though, that is an entirely different story. Om nom nom.

10) I really cannot handle the sun. 40 minutes standing outside the Egyptian and I thought I was going to throw up or pass out. Or possibly both.

(Sorry to say this is not my last #SIFF10 post. There’s a film at the volunteer appreciation party on Wednesday, and then next weekend I am attending the hell out of the Best of SIFF, so that’ll be another eight films at least. I am so excited about Best of SIFF I can’t even express it properly. Anyway. Fair warning.)

PS EXTRA BONUS LEARNED THING: William Shatner’s amazing linguistic abilities! As displayed in the cinematic masterpiece Incubus! I am choosing to believe the Esperanto is Bill Shatner’s native tongue. Dear SIFF Cinema: I would totally come to a screening of that. No lie.

Something new at the Festival this year is regular showings of trailers before features. It’s been miss more than hit, though. At Prince of Tears one ran for Bodyguards & Assassins (starring the *other* Tony Leung), which I promptly added to my schedule.

However, all the others have been awful: Princess Lillifee (a pink animated monstrosity), The Sentimental Engine Slayer (which just looks messy), & Night Catches Us (wherein everyone speaks in clichés, and I honestly thought it was a parody trailer, except that it has such a fantastic cast. It has a great IMDB score, so maybe it’s just an unfortunate trailer).

Something not new is the spotting of minor Seattle celebrities. At The Penitent Man I saw Sean Nelson & Lynn Shelton. I must admit I did not go up to Shelton and discuss with her how much I disliked the display of straight privilege in Humpday. This has less to do with any desire to be tactful than it does with the fact that I’m a chickenshit. (I do still have huge problems with that movie, though. Just sayin’.)

Also not new at the Festival is projection getting fucked up, particularly at the Egyptian. It took three tries to get the start of The Penitent Man with sound and not just picture (first time ever I was thankful for digital — if it had been on film we’d have just had to deal with it). A bonus is that it gave writer/director Nicholas Gyeney more opportunities to be be charming, including running to concessions & buying candy to distribute to the crowd. No, really. Feel free to let me know the last time that a director handed out candy at your local multiplex.

I’m also starting to compile my list of movies-wot-I-missed out on. Top of the list is Castaway on the Moon, a South Korean sort-of love story which I saw recommended a lot, but none of the times worked out for me. I also missed Alan Tudyk in Tucker & Dale vs Evil, a film about two rednecks who would very much like to relax, if spring breakers would only stop dying on their property. I gave it a pass because it’s the sort of thing where the tone is quite difficult to get right, but I am hearing that it totally works, and that it knows when a joke is finished and doesn’t drag it out. Amazing how rare that is.

I start volunteering this week, so I look forward to eavesdropping on passholders and getting the scoop. It’s almost more exciting than getting film vouchers. Almost!

Perhaps, dear reader, you are a little something like me. Perhaps you enjoy the occasional (or even frequent) bad movie. Perhaps you have a deep-rooted fondness for John Cusack & cheesy 80s movies. Perhaps you generally avoid trailers, which could have warned you off. Perhaps.

Lucky for you, in addition to all of those things, I am also willing to see a potentially terrible movie if I can see it for free. Which is how I wound up seeing the first half of Hot Tub Time Machine.

Yeah. The first half. For the first time that I can remember, I walked out of a movie. I don’t want to hear any bullshit about how we just didn’t get it, or how I am some kind of film snob because come on. I loved Legion! I am first in line for anything Apatovian! I even enjoyed Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and that came with its share of gross-out moments, but you know what it didn’t have? Endless rape jokes, for one thing. Or rampant homophobia. Or an utter lack of any redeeming qualities whatsoever.

I was particularly taken aback by how terrible Hot Tub was, since there were so many free screenings of it. Like, 5 times as many as a typical movie, which had fooled me into thinking it might actually be a fun dumb movie and they were trying harder than usual to drum up word of mouth.

It’s not fun. It’s appalling. It’s one of those movies where you’re sitting there, listening to the audience laugh, and wondering if you’re seeing the same thing. If we were seeing the same thing, I am judging them harshly.

Much to our disappointment, the utter suck of Hot Tub eliminated another terrible movie from our schedule: She’s Out of My League. Same situation: never saw a trailer, Jay Baruchel is adorable (and carries the Apatovian vibe), but the screenwriters? Are the same as for Hot Tub. So, you know. Don’t see that one either. Don’t even put it in your Netflix queue, thinking “It can’t be that bad”. It will be.

It’s a shame, too, because I think I finally learned the title. For a solid week, every time I tried to think of it, I wanted to call it He’s Just Not That Into You. I could never remember if it was My League or Your League. By the end we had morphed it into something like He’s Just Not That Into A League of Your Own.

Which is possibly a movie we’d see, though how someone could *not* be into A League of Their Own is beyond me.

Roger Ebert twittered/tweeted/whatever this addictive Netflix interactive map over the weekend.

It’s kind of fantastic, in the way anything that validates your choices is fantastic.

Because I know you all are fascinated, the top ten in my zip code, and more, after the jump: (more…)