by Walter Chaw The silver anniversary of the Denver International Film Festival (hereafter DIFF) came to town with rumours run-rampant and grand, but the reality is a mixture of raised eyebrows, surprise announcements, and last-minute acts of God. Hoping for more innovative programming in its key slots, I was disappointed to learn that White Oleander, the star-studded adaptation of Janet Fitch's "Oprah Book Club" selection, would occupy the opening-night stage with a gala presentation at the lovely Temple Buell Theater in the Performing Arts Complex. Premiering just a few hours before its regular theatrical run begins on October 11th, the film is a mainstream Oscar-grab vying amongst the glut of mainstream pictures for the increasingly devalued top honours during the fall and holiday "awards season" and, for my sensibilities, a poor choice to headline the 25th anniversary of the fest. Last year's darkly-hued Lantana was a far more daring and appropriate pick to commence festivities. A rule of thumb has been ignored: bigger is not always better–in fact, in the case of modern film, it's almost never better.
Closing night brings Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, a film that, if anywhere, is tailor-made first-night material in the Mile High City. Regardless, the appearance of Moore's look at the gun culture, screening just minutes from Columbine High School in Denver's Littleton suburb, should prove an interesting experience. Julie Taymor's Frida (sans Taymor in person, the victim of a late-scheduling snafu) occupies the centrepiece position. Other favourites of the festival season making their way to the DIFF roster include Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love, Paul Greengrass's Bloody Sunday, Neil Burger's neo-Blair Witch experiment Interview with the Assassin, Fulton and Pepe's Lost in La Mancha, Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar, Alan Rudolph's Investigating Sex, Philip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence, and Ken Loach's Sweet Sixteen. A solid line-up, indeed, though the surprise hit of the festival is almost sure to be Shinsuke Sato's indescribable arthouse chopsocky flick The Princess Blade.
In celebration of DIFF's 25th anniversary, a quarter-century that's seen such guests as the Coen Brothers and Claire Denis and such debuts as Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense, several mini-festivals run parallel to the festival proper. A tribute to Chinese cinema brings Chen Kaige and his new film Together (along with retrospective screenings of Farewell My Concubine and Yellow Earth), as well as Chen Pei-pei and a new print of the 1965 King Hu/Shaw Brothers classic that made her a star, Come Drink with Me. The martial arts focus of this portion of the programming introduces a surprisingly well-done documentary called The Art of Action in addition to the mad classic 36 Chambers of Shaolin. (The program's highlight, however, is almost indisputably Tian Zhuangzhuang doomed Springtime in a Small Town.) An unofficial look at school violence inspired by Bowling for Columbine brings Alan Jacob's American Gun along with misfires Zero Day and Home Room, while a "best-of" of the last twenty five years sees the return of such past favourites as The Sweet Hereafter, Blood Simple, Blue, and Jim Jarmusch's amazing Down by Law.
Check back to these pages regularly as FILM FREAK CENTRAL provides the most exhaustive coverage of DIFF, hands down. Interviews, capsule and full-length reviews, and occasional sleep-deprived, hunger-inspired rants about C-grade special interest documentaries, maudlin foreign independents, and that dehydrated idiot sitting behind you who, not content to have slurped the wax coating off the inside of their paper cup, has now proceeded to carefully crunch every mother-scratching piece of sticky brown ice left in the bottom. Ah, the life of the movie reviewer. I ain't complaining, but…okay, yeah, I'm complaining.
