But Lynn, I hear you say, I kind of hate basketball.  What about this film festival?  Don’t you have some films to crow about?  Well, blog faithful who are probably just my parents, let me forcefully recommend the following:

Four Lions
This was easily my most anticipated film of the festival.  I’ve been a big fan of writer/director Chris Morris since uni, when I discovered his short-lived TV series Brasseye.  The film follows a group of would-be jihadists as they plan a suicide bombing in London.  And it’s a comedy.  It’s a grim subject, and I was impressed by how successfully he balanced the funny with the devastating.  He used a similar structure to Hitchcock (the whole Cinema of Attractions thing), making you laugh really hard and punishing you a second later with something sobering.  The result is an intensely dark comedy which I can’t recommend enough.

A Town Called Panic
This film wasn’t on my radar going in to the festival – I only saw it because a spare usher shift was available and a friend at work had mentioned it.  But wow, talk about a movie after my own heart.  It’s a claymation film from Belgium, ostensibly for children, with a cracked-out sense of humor.  If you enjoy horses with purses and drunkenness and upside-down undersea worlds and robotic penguins and millions of bricks, this movie is for you!  Apparently it’s on Netflix Streaming right now, so you all really have no excuse not to check this one out.

I Am Love
Just a gorgeous film, this one.  Tilda Swinton (the lady, not the cat, may he rest in peace) plays a wealthy Russian socialite married into an Italian family.  And for a couple hours we get to watch them find various truths for themselves via some beautiful cinematography and excellent sound editing.  It was a joy to watch.  If that’s not enough to get you to see it, consider it the cinematic equivalent of pouring out a 40 for Michael’s dearly departed cat.

Wah Do Dem
A Brooklyn hipster goes on a cruise to Jamaica alone thanks to an ill-timed breakup, ends up stranded in the country with no wallet, shirt or shoes, and makes his way to the US Embassy in Kingston via misadventures.  This film should have been insufferable (it was made for like $50k with handheld cameras and non-actors) but it was actually rather wonderful.  It captured the whole range of foreign travel experiences, from the horrible to the sublime, and really just made me happy to be out in the world, misadventures and all.

The Room
Let’s face it, we all knew I was going to love the shit out of this movie.  I am a big fan of terrible movies, and The Room was one of  the best/worst I’ve seen.  A must-see – and don’t forget to watch for the spoons…

So there you have it!  And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some homemade focaccia (rosemary + grape) to check on…

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent the past few days in New Plymouth playing for team Wellington in the first of three national Women’s Basketball Championship tournaments.  We ended up in seventh place (out of ten), which wasn’t a bad result considering we’d only put the team together a week before.  It took us a few games to find our feet and we lost our first three before winning the final two.  I came away from the tournament fairly pleased; five games in three days was brutal for someone as old and lazy as myself, but I pushed through and ended up having a great final game, nabbing 12 points and a few blocks.

Not many of you knew me when I was last a competitive basketball player.  I stopped playing in 2001 at age 17 after years of serious training, games, tournaments, summer camps, fall ball, ice buckets, and creaky knees.  By the end of it I was burned out, just another okay player from a string of underachieving teams.  I never really looked back.  Even at the UW, where a basketball band spot was pretty coveted, I didn’t bother to audition.

So you can imagine how strange and wonderful it is, ten years on, to be playing at a national level.  I’m not sure how long this will last – I am not the player I used to be – but it is certainly fun to get a second chance at all this.  Even if I do have to deal with an annoyingly over-sized key and things like the above photo, which I can only assume is an elaborate So D-Vine reference!