Saw a bunch of great short films and two features at the
Annecy festival.
Coraline was magnificent, though I think it would be downright irresponsible to bring children along to see it. It's pretty disturbing in a lot of ways. I saw the film in 3D which was an interesting experience though there were some issues with the glasses which caused occasional flickering. I'm not convinced the technology is the next step in cinema.
Also saw
The Story of Mr Sorry which was a highly confusing South Korean film about a young man who works as a professional ear-cleaner and is transformed into a tiny person so that he can fit inside ears and better do his job. He proceeds to get inside people's heads in every sense of the word and ultimately goes quite insane. I picked this film at random and had I known what it was about I don't think I would've gone to see it. Rather would've seen
Mary & Max which I hear was very good.
Short film highlights included
Yulia, Western Spaghetti, Tiny Legs of Fire, The Cat Piano, Slavar (which won the Cristal grand prize),
Jazzed, Codswallop, Runaway and there were a couple like
El Empleo and
L'homme a la Gordini which I didn't get a chance to see but looked really interesting at the awards.
Low-point was the 45-minute long Estonian film
Life without Gabriella Ferrri, which lacked any sense of direction or appeal and upon the credit roll caused one festival attendee to exclaim "
Bravo, c'est fini!".
... but that was an exception to an otherwise excellent festival. Definitely going again next year.
Also got Nick Park to sign a
Wallace & Gromit DVD and a few guys from Pixar to sign a
Partly Cloudy poster, which was kinda cool.
