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Thursday, November 8, 2007

AFI FEST playing second fiddle

 

Everything should feel right about AFI FEST.  A good program, packed screenings, in one of the best theaters in the city, in a city where movies are born.  So why is it not connecting this time?  Talk to regular festers and there is a strange sense of detachment.  Yes they see good movies and yes the Q&As are witty and yes the festival is very "manageable."  But last night a few complained that the event felt distant from its city this year. 

Other cities' palms get sweaty when the film festival comes to town - the celebs! the banners! the booze sponsors!  But it feels LA could care less about AFI FEST this week. 

With awards season kicking into gear in earnest now, LA sees all the pomp and celebration weekly.  When the festival closes on Sunday, another premiere is set to fill the fan bleachers; awards shows are pulling out their own red carpets.  The festival's nightly events competed with the both the "Beowulf" and "No Country For Old Men" premieres and lost.

AFI FEST is stuck so close to statue time.  It can, at times, capture some of that lightning.  Its "Juno" screening, currently a much-discussed contender for a script award, is a good synergistic example. 

But the strike is a one-two punch.  Anything not involving the strike is dropped off the press call-sheets, these days.  Print, web, and bloggers alike are all strike, all the time.  And that's too bad.  Christian Gaines, one of the sharpest fest directors, and his staff deserve more attention for what they're doing. 

But it's a bizarre time; a historical time.  In the season when the industry traditionally kisses itself over and over again, it's also teetering over the edge.  For the AFI FEST, that's a hard act to follow.
 

Posted at 3:47PM in AFI FEST|

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Mike Jones Michael Jones is the film festival editor at Variety.com.

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