Day 4: Mellodrama, Monogamy, The Screen Gems Logo

Admit it. This is the weirdest movie poster you've ever seen.

It's also hanging in one of the film theatres here - the Little 1 - and whenever I'm waiting for the movie to start, my attention wanders over there every 30 seconds. "Stop it!" I think. "Don't look!" But it's just so friggin' weird, and I can't help but love it.

In the morning, I took a quick sprint up to Syracuse to see Kathy. By mid-afternoon I was back in the movie theatre.

The first movie I saw was "Monogamy," and my guess is if you'll see any of the movies I'm describing here, this will be it. And you won't be disappointed. The movie centers around a newly-engaged couple. The guy, a wedding photographer, gets an off-hours job to shoot voyeuristic photos of a woman. He gets a little bit crazy in the process (there's obsession again! It's all over this festival), and we watch his relationship start to disintegrate. It's all handled with great humor, style, and a killer original soundtrack. And it feels a bit claustrophobic, which makes for a great relationship movie.

And while I'm here, I'm going to give my personal Best Actress award to Rashida Jones. (wow, what an honor). You probably know her from The Office and Parks and Recreation on TV. She's extremely good in "Monogamy." She works in the screwball comedy tradition, I suppose, but there's a kind of gravity to her performances. When she takes the world on her shoulders, you really feel it. I think she's going to have a great career, if not a big one. You heard it here first.

And now we come to "I Am Love." What does the word "melodrama" mean to you? Snidely Whiplash tying Nell to the railroad track? Me too. Actually I always thought the formulaic story made it a melodrama ... but in fact, it's the music that defines it. It's that barelhouse piano you hear when Snidely is tying her up.

"I Am Love" is real melodrama with a classical music score. And you know me - I hate classical. But the soundtrack here might change my mind. The music is by the modern American composer John Adams. What's cool is the minimalism in it. He wouldn't admit it, I'm sure, but he's got a James Brown vibe - find the groove, establish it, repeat it until your neighbor stares at 'cha. If you have the right groove, it becomes a living, breathing entity.

Granted, the plot isn't very compelling - a rich wife has an affair with a poor-but-talented chef - but they don't make too much of it. What they do make a lot of is ... food! Oh man, glorious stuff! Prawns on a bed of grilled ratatouille practically give the wife an orgasm. (A lesser blogger would say "I'll have what she's having." Good thing I'm above that). But the food shots are part of a larger plan to maul your senses. There are shots of insects on flowers that make you shiver. And all of it in the midst of this grand but slightly off-kilter music.

And the ending. WOW! If you've ever sat through the closing movie credits thinking, "I can't move. My mind is blown." you know what a cool feeling that is.

The last movie of the day, "The S From Hell," was really a bunch of short films commenting on popular culture. It was a mixed bag, but one of the segments on Screen Gems was very satisfying to me personally.

So you know the Screen Gems logo which appears at the end of Bewitched and the Flintstones, right? And that music that appears in the background? (If you don't know offhand, here's an example: http://www.milanofamily.org/scrngems/ScreenGemsColor.avi). Well that logo and music gave me nightmares as a kid. It was so creepy, it was worse than werewolves or the bogeyman or any of that crap. I still find it totally unsettling.

I thought I was the only one who felt that way. But no! It gave lots of kids the creeps! And in this segment, he talks to some of them (all grown up now, like me) and they describe their Screen Gems-induced nightmares in lurid detail. Then the film-maker actually stages and films some of those nightmares.

The next time you rattle off some half-arsed piece of work, think of this. The writer of that jingle (it's done on a Moog synthesizer, by the way) and designer of that logo rattled this off too. They probably finished it before a three-martini lunch. But look at the psychological damage it caused! Be careful, people! The mind is a weird thing.

Finding my psychological burden lighter, I walked up the street at midnight in the snow. (In May? Man. What a screwed up part of the country this is.) It was midnight, and I caught the last set of the Michael Stuart dance. Wicked salsa! My friend Kerri was instrumental in putting in together, and she milled around the place in a stylish black dress, the belle of the ball. (Those who know Kerri know how rare it is for her to wear dresses. And how wonderful it might look. And yup, it was all that!) About 2 AM the band packed up and I headed back to the hotel.

"Sunday," I say to myself, "I'm gonna take it easy." But that probably won't happen.