MIFF Day One.
Films seen:
Smells Like Teen Spirit, 7 min., Capitol Theatre.
Kate Bush - Under Review, 87 min., Capitol Theatre.
Yesterday was the first day of MIFF, which was, is, and continues to be rather exciting. It also started of to be a cold, cold day.
Descriptors of the coldness yesterday morning:
- rather quite
- pretty
- damn
- very fucking
I've been poor the last few months and have been trying not to spend money. As a reward for and also to poke my tongue out at my good behaviour, I bought a season pass to MIFF. Obviously, to justify this, I have to see a lot of films. And that's where THIS comes in.
The line for the screening of the Kate Bush film was quit long. It extended down the block. Luckily for Katie, Pete, and me, I have MIFF membership so I get to skip the line and walk inside where it's warm and the line is only ten people long and so I get to choose good seats, too. After finding said good seats and sitting through the advertisements, Smells Like Teen Spirit started. I'd forgotten that this was on before Kate Bush. About a minute in, I was slightly freaking out because I knew that the woman on screen (Patti Smith) wasn't Kate Bush. I thought we'd gone to the wrong cinema and were seeing the wrong film and what about Kate Bush and there's only one other session of the Kate Bush film and it clashes with something and which am I going to cancel? But it was okay, because when the title came up, it jogged my memory and I wasn't scared anymore. Incidentally, the Patti Smith cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit is rich in banjo and very excellent. The film itself is quite good, too. Beautiful b+w Super 8 footage of she and some guy walking around with their instruments, shots from moving cars, shots of people scratching cats' heads. Lovely.
Kate Bush - Under Review is exactly what its title claims it to be. It is not an in-depth scoop on Kate Bush the person, but a retrospective on her career thus far. Her career is examined in chronological order, looking at her singles, albums, and videos. There are interviews with sixish people (pay special attention to the man with the enormous hair and beard being interviewed on a hill in the rolling English countryside and the Woman who Needs to Get Herself a Fringe,) some of whom are more relevant than others. There are also, at my count, snippets of four different interviews with Kate peppered throughout the documentary. The audience as a whole found the film to be quite funny in parts, but this was mainly due to awkwardness on the part of the interviewees, one of whom in particular kept referring to Kate's sensual and sexual side. It made me cringe a little.
The film shows quite a few segments of her videos, which are full of interpretive dance, wide-open eyes, and Donald Sutherland. Pure gold, I tell you. It also makes special mention of her only tour, The Tour of Life, which took place in 1979. This was the only tour that Kate ever did. She used a wireless headset microphone during this run of dates, making her the first singer to do so, but you probably already knew that. Who I wouldn't kill for a time machine to go back and be present at one of these shows.
It was a very, very enjoyable documentary about the career of one of the most individual songwriters and performers in Western music. Please don't expect any information about where she went between The Red Shoes (1993) and Aerial (2004), because you won't be any the wiser after leaving this film.
Also, there were lots of fags and lesbians at the screening.
Smells Like Teen Spirit, 7 min., Capitol Theatre.
Kate Bush - Under Review, 87 min., Capitol Theatre.
Yesterday was the first day of MIFF, which was, is, and continues to be rather exciting. It also started of to be a cold, cold day.
Descriptors of the coldness yesterday morning:
- rather quite
- pretty
- damn
- very fucking
I've been poor the last few months and have been trying not to spend money. As a reward for and also to poke my tongue out at my good behaviour, I bought a season pass to MIFF. Obviously, to justify this, I have to see a lot of films. And that's where THIS comes in.
The line for the screening of the Kate Bush film was quit long. It extended down the block. Luckily for Katie, Pete, and me, I have MIFF membership so I get to skip the line and walk inside where it's warm and the line is only ten people long and so I get to choose good seats, too. After finding said good seats and sitting through the advertisements, Smells Like Teen Spirit started. I'd forgotten that this was on before Kate Bush. About a minute in, I was slightly freaking out because I knew that the woman on screen (Patti Smith) wasn't Kate Bush. I thought we'd gone to the wrong cinema and were seeing the wrong film and what about Kate Bush and there's only one other session of the Kate Bush film and it clashes with something and which am I going to cancel? But it was okay, because when the title came up, it jogged my memory and I wasn't scared anymore. Incidentally, the Patti Smith cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit is rich in banjo and very excellent. The film itself is quite good, too. Beautiful b+w Super 8 footage of she and some guy walking around with their instruments, shots from moving cars, shots of people scratching cats' heads. Lovely.
Kate Bush - Under Review is exactly what its title claims it to be. It is not an in-depth scoop on Kate Bush the person, but a retrospective on her career thus far. Her career is examined in chronological order, looking at her singles, albums, and videos. There are interviews with sixish people (pay special attention to the man with the enormous hair and beard being interviewed on a hill in the rolling English countryside and the Woman who Needs to Get Herself a Fringe,) some of whom are more relevant than others. There are also, at my count, snippets of four different interviews with Kate peppered throughout the documentary. The audience as a whole found the film to be quite funny in parts, but this was mainly due to awkwardness on the part of the interviewees, one of whom in particular kept referring to Kate's sensual and sexual side. It made me cringe a little.
The film shows quite a few segments of her videos, which are full of interpretive dance, wide-open eyes, and Donald Sutherland. Pure gold, I tell you. It also makes special mention of her only tour, The Tour of Life, which took place in 1979. This was the only tour that Kate ever did. She used a wireless headset microphone during this run of dates, making her the first singer to do so, but you probably already knew that. Who I wouldn't kill for a time machine to go back and be present at one of these shows.
It was a very, very enjoyable documentary about the career of one of the most individual songwriters and performers in Western music. Please don't expect any information about where she went between The Red Shoes (1993) and Aerial (2004), because you won't be any the wiser after leaving this film.
Also, there were lots of fags and lesbians at the screening.