Films that might have fit this putative strand included the charming but overlong Timeless Stories, co-written and directed by Vasilis Raisis (and winner of the Michael Cacoyannis Award for
Best Greek Film), a story that follows a couple (played by different actors at different stages of the characters» lives) across the temporal loop of their will - they, won't - they relationship from childhood to middle age and back again — essentially Julio Medem - lite, or Looper rewritten by Richard Curtis; Michalis Giagkounidis's 4 Days, where the young antiheroine watches reruns of Friends, works in an underpatronized café, freaks out her hairy stalker by coming on to him,
takes photographs and molests invalids as a means of staving off millennial ennui, and causes ripples in the temporal fold, but the film is as dead as she is, so you hardly notice; Bob Byington's Infinity Baby, which may be a «science - fiction comedy» about a company providing foster parents with infants who never grow up, but is essentially the same kind of lame, unambitious, conformist indie comedy that has characterized U.S. independent cinema for way too long — static, meticulously framed
shots in pretentious black and white, amoral yet supposedly lovable characters played deadpan by the usual suspects (Kieran Culkin, Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally, Kevin Corrigan), reciting apparently nihilistic but essentially soft - center dialogue, jangly indie music at the end, and a pretty
good, if belated, Dick Cheney joke; and Petter Lennstrand's loveably lo - fi Up in the Sky, shown in the Youth Screen section, about a young girl abandoned by overworked parents at a sinister recycling plant, who is reluctantly adopted by a reconstituted family of misfits and marginalized (mostly puppets) who are secretly building a rocket — it's for
anyone who has ever loved the Tintin moon adventures, books with resourceful heroines, narratives with oddball gangs, and the legendary episode of Angel where David Boreanaz turned into a Muppet.
With two big BAFTA wins on Sunday for screenplay and lead actor Casey Affleck, a very
good shot at
taking a WGA Original Screenplay award this coming Sunday, a domestic box office gross nearing $ 50 million, and six Academy Award nominations Manchester By The Sea is riding higher than even
anyone expected after its smash Sundance debut over a year ago.
What Blazing Saddles does do
well with regard to satire is a high wire balancing act, at once
taking shots at racism and government politics, as
well as satirizing and sending up the Western genre and the Hollywood industry, what would become a trademark of Brooks» work (Spaceballs,
anyone?)
At the very least they kept things equal and included the guys as
well, although whoever would want to sit down and
take a 3D picture of Bass is most likely just as creepy as
anyone looking for ninja girl upskirt
shots.