The final press screening for this year's NY Film Festival: Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette". Sofia Coppola is such a squirrelly filmmaker: she's always nibbling at the edges of sensibility. It's all peripheral: impeccable compositions, exquisite lighting, costumes and settings to die for, and an emptiness at the center. Is this emptiness supposed to be evocative? At times, the movie was like dress-up, with Coppola dragging friends and relatives into costumes. It's hard to say what Kristen Dunst and Jason Schwartzman are doing in this movie: it's not quite acting, it's more like... posing? But i can see why people are going for it, just as i can see why people are annoyed with it. One cute touch: the press kit was printed on pink paper!

But that was it! It's finally over, and i'm glad... somehow, this turned out to be a flattened-out, deflated festival. Just before the screening, there was an announcement by Jeanne Berney, saying that comments were welsome. Ha! I think not! For example: on the days when they had back-to-back screenings, if they were going to make such a to-do about checking people in and making you stand there waiting on line, they should at least have had all the press materials available once you were through with the check-in. But NO! I'm missing press kits for about seven of the films, and i was THERE. And when i asked, no one had a clue as to what i was talking about. A bunch of idiots working there.

But the Film Society doesn't give a shit, which is why everything is a mess there. (How could they have screenings at Alice Tully Hall, when the current renovations did away with half the restrooms? Did they consider how... not even inconsiderate, how difficult this made the screenings, especially for people who paid for their tickets to be then inconvenienced by having restrooms on only one side of the hall? I'm surprised that Film Society members, who are getting on in years, didn't complain.)