kidchamp dot net

04.29.10

101 in 1001 {II}: 089 attend a screening at the tribeca film festival [completed 04.26.10]



a mere seven years after moving to new york city, we got our shit together for tribeca. at last, we're real new yorkers film festival action for me! after a bit of ticket scrambling (which has convinced me to cave in and hook up with american express, i think; their cardholder-only presale events are all over the place lately) and rainy-night-taxi-and-umbrella-dancing, we presented ourselves at village east cinema for dream home. our theater (which was rather small to begin with) was rather sparsely populated; our little hong-kong-slasher-that-could had a lot of competition on monday night, and a big chunk of seats were reserved for filmmakers and voters. on the former, a festival staffer popped in four or five times before the movie started to let us know that the director and his translator, godot-like, were indeed on their way to the theater (but didn't need their seats, so we could go ahead and take them). the festival voters' seats, on the other hand, needed to stay empty: "they can come in whenever they want," the staffer continued. "someone like jessica alba could get mad at you." i kind of want her to get mad at me," said the guy in front of us in a tone of erotic awe (which made me giggle through the festival previews). another staffer popped in just before the curtains rose to tell us that the film had "some of the most creative violence we've seen this year," and the reels rolled.

dream home is a...squelchy movie, let's say. gambling heiress josie ho, its star and co-producer, hoped it would "shock the hell out of hong kong;" how it's affecting overseas audiences is anyone's guess (its release in hong kong was stalled a number of times this past fall), but the gal sitting beside me lurched out the door with half a dozen other people during a particularly noisome space bag death scene twenty minutes in. it was pretty...squelchy, yes, but what'd they think guignol horror (as the tribeca blurb called dream home) was?

i enjoyed parts of the screening; my filmic hong kong is the smooth, upmarket city in infernal affairs (remade as the departed), and i'd known next to nothing about its gentrification process. dream home's take on the real estate market is a bit extreme (girl murders twelve for an apartment with a harbor view!), of course, but...it's a decent premise, one that somehow gives me a stronger stomach than the one i bring to american horror (i'm still sick about the awful, awful 2006 the hills have eyes remake). we didn't stay to find out if the director did indeed turn up for his Q&A; joe was ready to go home, and i was afraid we'd get stuck by ourselves making small talk with the translator about space bags. our next screening, james franco's saturday night, is this sunday afternoon.

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 would you want jessica alba to be mad at you?

02 have you ever walked out of a movie?

03 is gore-horror any more or less tolerable for you than the bloodless kind?