The last few days have been seeing press screenings at the NY Film Festival. The last two days have been loaded: four or five screenings a day. Killer days, because it's not like seeing 5 or 6 screenings a day at some place like Toronto or Montreal, where you go at your own pace, and you pick and choose. For example: today, the screenings started at 10 AM with the South Korean film "Woman on the Beach" then there was the Iranian film "Offside" and then the film from Mali "Bamako" and then Otar Iosseliani's "Gardens in Autumn".... with less than half an hour in between each. Now: how is anyone supposed to eat? Obviously, you're not supposed to.... and then there was the screening of Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" but i just couldn't do it: four in a row (plus shorts... plus - and here's the cute part - they got the time wrong on almost ALL the movies - they initially claimed that "Woman on the Beach" was 110 minutes... plus a 10 minute short... then it turned out that the movie was 127 minutes.... and "Gardens in Autumn" was not 115 minutes, as claimed... it was 121 minutes). When Larry and i go to a festival like Toronto, we average about 6 movies a day... but we do it at a pace where we have time for lunch, we have time for dinner.... this was ridiculous!

Anyway: Saturday, i did get up and got to the 9 AM press screening (!) of Saul Levine's "Notes from the Underground" and the films of Paolo Gioli; Sunday Larry and i went to a special IFP screening of Michel Gondry's "The Science of Sleep" (Larry thought it was forced and cutesy, i thought it was very charming in a precious sort of way). Monday went to press screenings of "August Days", "Mafioso" and "Belle Toujours". The shorts included "Jimmy Blue", "The Caretakers", "Les Matines", "Fourteen", "L'Innocence" and "Alice Sees the Light". An immediate comment on "Fourteen" (little "idyll" about a girl who is being married on her 14th birthday in a polygamous family; it's done without dialogue and is skillfully done) is that Billy and Mark (with their TV series "Big Love") have a lot to answer for....

"August Days" was intriguing... but there was no press notes... instead, there was a little DVD press kit... ok. What i didn't realize is that the movie is about "David" and "Marc", twin brothers (fraternal twins) who are almost incestuously close.... and the movie practically moons over David's body (and he's naked through about half the movie). Well: the writer-director is Marc Recha, who also plays Marc... and David is played by David Recha... that's the kind of information that just creeped me out. But it was a very beautiful movie.