Prescott Film Festival

The Prescott Film Festival was definitely different from what I expected it to be. I was happy to be able to attend for the short amount of time that I could, and very much enjoyed the one film I saw. Unfortunately, I was not able to participate as much as is probably expected for this assignment, but I have my reasons.

I was unable to volunteer my assistance at the Prescott Film Festival, and frankly it is something that I would have loved to help out with. Being a full time college student, as well as working at my job full time, does not give me much free time of my own. I believe in getting my school work done, and I also intend to miss as little time from work as possible. Sadly, my days to work are the days and times I am not at school, which left me with only a few hours on Sunday to even watch one film, just to experience the film festival. Regardless, I chose to keep up with my financial situation, and instead was found working every day of the film festival.

The few hours I was able to devote, I watched the “White Knight” which to my surprise, starred Tom Seizmore. I don't know why I was so shocked to see him in the film, but I guess I have just grown the idea that big stars are found in big movies, even though they all started out somewhere, and they all aren't in ever big film coming out of Hollywood. I thought the movie was fantastic. I did get a different feel from this film, it just felt different from a typical big time movie. I cannot really think of how to describe it, but a comparison might be almost along the lines of “White Knight” being similar to “Napolean Dynamite.” My comparison is not to say that I think “White Knight” is overall as bad of a movie as “Napolean Dynamite” was, which I thought was slightly funny but mostly a joke, but to say watching the film was almost the same feel. It might have been the cinematography, or just the acting. Despite that, I still enjoyed watching the film. The story line was great, and not something I usually see in movies. I would watch it again if I had to.

I think the importance of the film festival to the audience is mostly finding something that is not mainstream. Watching an independent film is pretty much watching a different genre, and I think people like to explore new things from time to time, especially those that are not so out in the public like most movies people view today. There is also more of an attraction to going to a theater to watch an independent film than most movies today. Watching most movies that come out today is more of a thing I do with friends to just get out of the house, but with watching a film at the festival, I got a more relaxed feeling and payed more attention to the overall atmosphere of the theater and purpose of the film. I even grabbed a drink and a bag of popcorn enrich the film experience. I think that is the idea of the film festival, to bring back that old feel of going to the movies to watch a film and enjoy the experience that wasn't so easily found many years ago. For film makers, this is also a huge step to getting their work known. Sadly, I didn't see the community so much in this festival. It seemed as if most of the people were from out of town, and honestly there were not many people at the film I attended. I am sure the festival could bring a lot to the community if they brought in more local films.

I think watching independent films is a neat experience, but it is an experience I would have to explore more. I tend to be picky with my movies, and most of my interests are towards the bigger films being released in the mainstream theaters. I am fortunate enough to have an independent film channel on my satellite tv, so I might end up watching a few more movies when I can find the time. For the most part, I think that unless the film starts to gain some recognition, I probably wont look into it too much unless I am out at another event like the Prescott Film Festival.

Quarantine and [REC]

In the spirit of Halloween I have decided to compare two "scary" movies.  Something I had not known before a couple of nights ago, was that the movie Quarantine was a remake of a Spanish film titled [REC].  With their release dates being roughly a year apart, I figured that the movies would be fairly similar, and I was indeed correct.

Considering that the movies were from two different countries, both versions were based in their respective countries.  Their overall story line was very much the same, except that [REC] was filmed with the Barcelona Fire Department, and the American version was with the Los Angeles Fire Department.  The difference in countries is almost the only difference I saw in the two movies.  I am of course more in favor of the American version, despite it being a copy of the Spanish version, mostly because I didn't have to read subtitles and get a headache from the constant chaos of people yelling in a different language.

Most American films can tend to be filled with blood and gore, so I was actually quite curious to see if the Spanish were just as bad with their films.  After watching [REC], I think the Spanish do add some nasty cosmetics, but I was not quite as disgusted as I was watching Quarantine.  Quarantine had a scene showing  a leg snapped in half with a bone showing, as well as another mans head being drilled into, where as [REC] had some very detailed bite marks.  I found the two movies to be quite similar in blood and gore, and that was something I expected to remain similar.

The story of Quarantine followed [REC] almost spot on.  There were small differences in the beginning at the Fire Houses, the one I noticed the most was the lack of "I bet you I can bang her by the end of the night," as said by one of the Firemen talking about the reporter, which was shown in Quarantine, but not [REC].  Other than that, the characters were all pretty much the same, and all of the events had only minor differences that really don't have much of change in the story or film in general.

In the first scene I knew that the two movies would be very much the same, and it stayed the same throughout both films as well.  I thought that maybe the whole zombie thing would be mostly an American story, and boy was I wrong.  For the most part, it seems that foreign made films tend to stick with the same types of stories, just located in their own countries.  I honestly didn't see any other differences between the two movies other than each being filmed in its own country.  These may have been bad movies to compare, being that the American version is just a buffed up copy of the Spanish, but I enjoyed watching them both.  It has shown me that Spanish audiences are very much similar to Americans, and that we both have an interest in similar types of films.