A Moveable Fest, Week 1: The Gleaners & I, The Grapes of Wrath, News From the Good Lord

Tim and I saw many films at the Melbourne Film Festival this year, and as you probably know it's unwise to just stop that shit cold turkey, or you'll start having creepy narrative dreams about women who get emailed photographs of increasing numbers of anonymous kidnap victims every day and then THE DOOR OPENS BEHIND HER. Or maybe that's just me.

Because we wanted to keep watching MOAR FILMS, Tim had the idea that we take it in turns programming ourselves a mini-festival of 3 movies each week. (For us to watch at home. We're not made of money and babysitters, you know.)

While Tim is doing a much better job of blogging about the films we watch over at shootthedvdplayer.tumblr.com, I just want to keep a record of what we see (with an additional highly flippant sentence or two).

Week 1 (my choice)

The Gleaners & I

I'm fascinated by the lengths that people go to to live 'more cheaply', whether it be for financial or ethical reasons. Also Agnes Varda is such a self-involved film-maker, which makes this doco So French It Can't Breathe. Not sure about the guy who dumpster dives for raw fish. But heart-shaped spuds are nice.

The Grapes of Wrath

Poverty (especially in the US) is high on my list of "things I'm a bit more interested in than I should be". You thought the grinding poverty of Oklahoma was hard? Come to the grinding poverty of California! We hope you like no potatoes. I've been meaning to read the book for ages, and am re-enthused to get onto that now. This film features some excellent chin-gurning and cardboard backdrops.

The News from the Good Lord

This is an old favourite of mine that I taped off SBS in the 90s and kept because I enjoyed all the absurd existential humour, and the idea that it's "authors all the way down". Unfortunately it's not available on dvd to buy from anywhere, and the subtitles on the copy Tim found had apparently been run through a paper shredder and re-assembled at random, which rather detracted from the original dialogue that I loved. It did make for some neat phrases though: "I'm a specialist in God but I don't know about fucking and stuff."