Dr. T and His Woman was a fitting film to open the festival and gauging by audience reaction, they loved it. Of course, part of the audience reaction is impacted by knowing that Gere and Altman are in the house. If there ever was a chick flick film, this is it. Gere plays the role of a gynecologist serving a well to do clientele in Dallas. He's the perfect husband who takes care of his family in every way he can think of. In so doing, neither he, his wife, patients nor daughters are better off for it. If anything, it's just the opposite. The movie addresses a wide range of values using the classic ensemble style of casting by Robert Altman. A powerful ending closes the film as Gere is literally blown into reality as he experiences a wedding and the birth of a child. The film will be released on October 13th.

Oct 6: Seeing a lot of films in a short period of time can be work. At a film festival you must arrive early or risk the chance of not getting in. Some movies have specific tickets sold but most are open seating and can be used if you are a pass holder. With the ticket printing problems of this year, the lines are moving slow for pre orders and tempers are flaring. Even with these problems, the staff and volunteers are making it bearable. Rory Rice, the Operations Manager in particular was helpful to others and me. It's nice to have people really follow up on resolving issues on their own rather than you having to initiate it. Sometimes you have to work hard to have fun.

This AARP love story has the emotional power of the Clint Eastwood/Myrle Streep film Bridge At Madison County. It's a love story about mature adults who make very difficult decisions regarding the family to which they are currently committed. In a very quite way, Innocence takes the emotions of Streep to the next logical level. That is, when do you really lay it all on the line and put it out into the open for all to see?

If you are still not sure you want to see Innocence, consider the fact that when it was first introduced in Cannes, Roger Ebert selected it as his best film. It was also the People's Choice (most popular) at Montreal and was # 2 of almost 300 films at the Toronto film festival. A Jury Prize was awarded at Toronto which is the stamp of approval from the professionals and the People's Choice is what it implies, the ticket paying movie goers.

Clearly we all go through phases in life where the way we see and react to things changes. When we mature (a continuing process), should we continue to fight life with the vibrancy of our youth or should we just "weather the storm in our relationships and just go on" because it's comfortable? If you are on emotional cruise control and need a wake up call, Innocence may bring you to a much-needed reality.

Roger Ebert hosted the film as it was selected as a Critic's Choice. These are films shown at the festival, which are selected and hosted by a well-known film critic. After the film, Paul Cox did a Q&A with the audience. Ebert regards him as a great filmmaker and considering the source, that tells you a lot about the quality of films that Cox makes. While he does entertain you, that is a secondary objective. His first objective, mission and passion is to use the medium of film to enlighten you in some new way about life. My first reaction to the film was that I liked it very much and would give it three stars. By the time I got home, it was to 3 ½ and when I started writing about it the next morning, it went to 4 stars. It made me think about my life so far and what I plan to do in the future.

Oct 7: Ticket woes continued with long lines. Many people were late getting into the film The Day I Became A Woman. At 600 N. Michigan, there is no stadium seating although the construction is new. With land at a premium, to provide reasonable seating capacity, this was not possible. It does make a difference when late comers enter a film, which is in subtitles. This Iranian film was in Farsi. As they enter the isles looking for seats and taking a little longer because it's crowded and the subtitles are at the bottom of the screen, it certainly qualifies as a minor irritant.

The eight-year-old has as her best friend a boy that she plays with. She is told that when she become nine, she is a woman. As such she must then cover her face and hair in addition to wearing long dresses. As a child, she looks western (modernism) while woman must dress in the traditional style. Her mother and grandmother (not the older woman from part three of the film) point out that it's only eleven AM and she was born at noon. Therefore, she has one more hour in life as a girl. During that time she can go play with her friend. By the time she gets to his house, he must stay in to do his homework. Although he looks at her through security bars on his window at her standing in sand at the open ocean, it is she that is imprisoned. They have a very bright and child like interchange during her last hour which is gripping. It's as if this vibrant young child is arbitrarily snatched from life and put in a cage not very much different from the victims in the movie The Cell.

The second story deals with freedom of expression of a young married adult woman with the feel of Run Lola Run. The young woman is in full conservative dress in what looks like an Oceanside fund raising bike event. She is among a large group of similarly dressed woman riding what are clearly state of the art bikes. The camera focuses on one woman who does not speak but just keeps riding at an aggressive pace. First her unshaven husband comes along on a horse dressed in an undershirt looking like a slob telling her she must stop riding. He says it's because of her weak legs but clearly she is as healthy as the horse he is riding. His fundamentalist views are such that he does not want his wife riding a bike. She continues and after a while he leaves. Things get progressively worse with the message being that for a woman to follow the traditions in Iran, she has no freedom of expression. Seeing this made me think of Kadosh, one of the best films this year. This film is based upon Moslem beliefs and Kadosh on Judaism. In both, the woman find themselves oppressed by the men's conservative religious beliefs. With the stress this causes in the immediate family, it's no wonder the people in Israel, on both sides, may be recalling the words of Rodney King…."why can't we all get along".

The last story relates to an elderly woman who has her grandson take her on a shopping spree after getting off of an airplane. She has accumulated some wealth and decides to go buy the things she did not have as a younger woman such as a refrigerator and vacuum cleaner. Of the three sections this is by far the most surreal as she set up house on at the beach and then sails away. The point is that by the time she has the freedom to get the things she wants, she is too old to fully utilize them.

The director did not speak English and at the end of the film, the interpretation left something to be desired. One gentleman asked what percentage of the population in Iran represented the modern versus traditional views and no answer was given. This would have helped understand the degree to which the restrictive things viewed in the film applied to the population as a whole. She did however say that these things did not affect her so one would conclude that if the men in the family hold modernistic views, the woman are given more freedom.

The big event of the festival so far is One Week, the first movie to sell out a day before it was scheduled to be shown. This frustrated many festival pass holders because they could not get in. When you've already spent $200 or more for a hotel room because you are seeing more than one film in the day with the last one not letting out until 11:30 PM or so, not being able to see the film is more than a little frustrating. Although this is the 36th anniversary of the festival, it's manned with volunteers. It seems that each year the ticketing process is modified to make it better. Some time it works and at others it does not. This was a "not" year. Passholders must get in line to have the ticket punch and exchanged for tickets. And as a general rule, the passholders are dues paying members of the Chicago Film Festival organization that they are trying the hardest to accommodate. What happened was that the general public bought all the tickets via Ticketmaster. As it turned out, I was able to see One Week but only because an additional show was added. Grace Vega worked long hours at the ticket window and in spite of dealing with many disappointed movie goers, she maintained her cool and had the presence of mind to suggest that I might be able to get in the second showing. I was and it too became a sold out show. Suffice it to say that security was tighter for getting in there than on opening night with Richard Gere. When you left the theater to go to the concession stand or the restroom, the ushers signed your ticket before you left so that they would know to let you back in.

Now although One Week did win as Best Film at the Acapulco Black Film Festival, in no way did I think it would be a harder ticket to see than something like Yi Yi which won best director at Cannes. The secret was that the director, Carl Seaton and key actor in the film, Kenny Young, are Chicago natives. They graduated from a local college as film students and shot the entire movie on the south side. Everybody they meet since before birth was there to cheer them on. It became a mini black film festival in and of itself with a battle cry of the need to support films of this nature.

I too support the cause but think that many in the audience miss the point. First, while shot on the south side with an all black cast, it's not a black film per se. It has a universal message just like The Day I Became A Woman, or Innocence. While the former dealt with woman's rights and the latter with love and honesty in old age, One Week deals with how one handles the possibility of living with HIV.

One week before the wedding, the man is contacted by a health care worker asking that he come to the clinic for a consultation. When he finally goes, he learns that a prior sexual partner who has HIV, who by law cannot be identified, has placed his name on sexual contact list. He decides to tell his fiancée but seeks out who may have given him the potentially fatal virus. His stress level continues to rise and eventually his bride to be learns that he had an affair after they became engaged. Like in Meet The Parents, this transgression, places him outside of the "circle of trust" with her and her parents.

Currently the distribution plan for the film is to show it in theaters that cater primarily to a black audience. I'd like to see them create a marketing focus on dealing with both the possibility of and living with HIV with a universal message whose characters who happen to be African-American. There are a number of people who need to think outside the box who live on the south side. While family and friends took the mike after the showing of One Week and emphasized the importance of "black folk" coming out to support it, where were they at the filming of The Visit and George Washington?

Oct 8: The Visit has been the best surprise of the festival so far. It's got an all star cast of Billy Dee Williams, Marla Gibbs, Rae Dawn Chong , Phylicia Rashad, and the hot new star, Hill Harper. You may have seen Hill as a Dr. on the TV show, City of Angels. He was good there and is truly outstanding here. This up and coming actor has the dramatic range of last years should have been awarded nominee, Denzel Washington. Hill plays a wayward son who is convicted of a rape he alleges he did not commit. He is sentenced to 25 years in jail and is eligible for parole after five. His transgressions before being convicted have caused a family rift with his older brother in general and his father in particular. They and others come to visit and a number of powerful messages are conveyed. How does a family treat someone who has shamed them? If you are innoencent of one thing but guilty of many others, can you find redemption in prison? If you have AIDS, how do you deal with it? Using dream sequences and flashbacks, The Visit is some ways similar to Hurricane yet even more powerful. While not meaning to take anything away from Denzel Washington or Rubin Hurricane Carter or the film, there are far too many black men in jail today for all the wrong reasons. The Visit touches the lives of many families in American many of whom are not black but far too many that are. A study of who get arrested for and sent to jail for drug related crimes may be the closest thing to slavery we've seen since the late 1800's.

It's a very arty oriented movie with its exaggerations to make points or encourage you to think. Any redeeming value of the film to me may lay in the fact that I can see how kids who are raised in that environment might relate to and enjoy rap music. Heck, it would give them the material to because a hip-hop star and act up at an awards show!

In some ways George Washington is like a documentary which focuses almost exclusively on dysfunctional or sad behavior by both children and adults. It's similar to Legacy but differs in that there is less hope. I found the movie generally depressing and not particularly enlightening. If you want to see a film about poor kids pulling themselves up by their bootstraps see Legacy.

Oct 9: The ticket issues have been resolved and things are flowing smoothly. The prior confusion with the tickets resulted in us not seeing To and Fro just before seeing Two Family House. Casting for Two Family House was done at the same time as the HBO show, The Soprano's and many of the actors are the same.

Set in the mid 1950's, a young couple buys a two story home in which they want to live in the top apartment and make the bottom into a bar. The husband Buddy (Michael Rispoli) missed his chance to become a hit singer because he married Estelle (Katherine Narducci) and moved in to live with her parents. Over the years of their marriage, Buddy tried various business ventures, all of which failed miserably.

Not long after the mother and baby leave the flat, Buddy decides to help her out when he learns that they are staying in a flophouse for prostitutes. This leads to problems not only with his wife but also with his drinking buddies. Based very loosely on a true story, Two Family House, deals in a refreshing way with race in America today as well as between WWII and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's. The filming style reminds me of Barry Levinson films such as Liberty Heights and Avalon. While race was the spark that the issues revolved around, the bigger subjects are how you make decisions regarding your loved ones and friends. You can live for others and not yourself. Made for only $2M with a very limited marketing budget, hopefully Two Family House will generate a good word of mouth and be supported at the box office.

Oct 10: Yi Yi was the first film we attended at the Music Box, which is walking distance from where the Chicago Cubs play at Wrigley Field. The Music Box shows art house films and is a major supporter of the film festival each year. It's an old time theater that is fun to just walk inside and look around. It's great because there are no stadium seats, cup holders or electric hand dryers in the small bathrooms. Pop corn and sodas are reasonably priced and real butter is available for topping.

Much of the story could have been set in any large American city. Young first love does not survive yet both regret it many years later. They may try to turn back the clock but as they say, you "can't turn back the hands of time". You can change the future but not the past. Yi Yi is a seemingly simple story about one to one relationships. However, it digs much deeper. In one case, a young man first rejects his girlfriend only to go out with her best friend. He later feels shamed because he wants to sleep with her and the mix of feelings sends him on a destructive path. The father of the boys second girlfriend has a sick mother and mixed up wife. He accidentally sees his girlfriend from 30 years ago in a hotel while there for a wedding and spend time with her rethinking the past and contemplating the future. His young son, may have more hope than anyone as he is bright eyed and knows how to deal with everyone. A young girl who is an excellent swimmer scorns him that we did not know he likes until later. We see him holding his head under water for long periods in the bathroom at home and later diving into the pool maybe to be saved by her? Many things in the film come together a scene or two after it has passed. While Yi Yi has it's down moments, it's an uplifting movie about controlling ones destiny in a joyful manner and at the same time, taking a travelogue to Korea, a country we know most about when we see the name printed on a product we've purchased.

Oct 12: The Music Box is a great place to stand in line as long as it's not raining. Tonight there was a sold out show for the career achievement presentation for Laurence Fishburne to commemorate past acting achievements and his first directorial debut, Once In The Life. The evening was hosted by Roger Ebert who regardless of how busy, tired or under the weather he may be, manages to focus on the job at hand. He was not feeling his best but you could not tell once he got on the stage and started the interview. He used the filmography of Fishburne as the means of guiding the conversation from his first film Cornbread, Earl and Me in 1975 to Once In The Life. At the age of only 39, Fishburne has earned the reputation of being in powerful films that critics and audience both seem to like.

The words Dedication, Desire and Determination are the key words that Fishburne says are his guiding force. He also seems to be a grounded person who does not want to get too caught up in being a star. Once way he does that is to do his own grocery shopping. He joked that he doesn't mind being recognized or spoken to but indicated that's not the time to ask for an autograph. He's not being a star, he's not at work; he's just out taking care of business like we do when we go grocery shopping.

Fishburne wrote the play Riff Raff upon which the movie Once In The Life was based. It's purpose is to show life of the people who tend to be low life's and criminals on the fringe of movies. We see the big money crooks in Godfather and The Sopranos but the petty dope dealers and runners are never the focus of the film. Riff Raff is a better name for me than Once In The Life. The first is self-explanatory and the latter means that once you are swimming with the scumbags, you may step out of the pool for awhile, but you will get back in at some point and stay there.

The film is about two half brothers who are reunited during an overnight stay in jail who try to pull a dope heist. An old friend is called upon by Fishburne to help them escape while that same person (Tony) is working for the local dope dealer whose stash has been stolen. Will Tony help his long time trusted friend who is the godfather of his child or will he try to gain his own turf by doing what the dope dealer gang leader say he must "do for the first time" which is to kill Fishburne? In some ways the film is like Menace II Society in that it does present the view from the side of the thugs but with far more character development as you would expect in a Broadway play. It's an impressive first outing for Fishburne as a director and will likely be a moderate hit on the art house circuit.