You got to hand it to Quentin Tarantino. When the Kill Bill director wants to make a film, it will always be surprising and out of the box thinking. It is widely known that as soon as he’s done filming the WWII action flick Inglorious Bastards he will shortly move on to remaking the cult camp classic Russ Meyer B film Faster Pussycat!Kill!Kill! for mass consumption. Word is getting out on who is actually being considered for one of the Faster roles…none other than that wonderfully gifted thespian… Britney Spears. What?!
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There is an age old mantra: If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again. Considered by many to be a creative yet misunderstood director, and a pain in the neck to studio heads, Terry Gilliam hasn’t given up yet on Man Who Killed Don Quixote . In fact, the controversial director thinks he’s ready to go as soon as Johnny Depp is ready. Aside from Depp - who is currently connected to Tim Burton’s new version of Alice In Wonderland, the only other actor being talked to is Gilliam’s old Python alum, Michael Palin.
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Friday started with You, The Living by the director of the hilarious Swedish Songs from the Second Floor, Roy Andersson. Second was the critically acclaimed pregnancy drama/comedy Juno, starring Ellen Page and Jennifer Garner, that is destined to become the favorite for the KPN audience award that is presented on Friday February 1. This rather modest day (due to some changes in my program) ended with the much anticipated but disappointing Thai horror flick The Unseeable.
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Every year the IFFR places several directors in the spotlight, by tagging them as ‘Filmmaker in Focus’. This year the honor goes to three directors, knowing American director Robert Breer, Russian Svetlana Proskurina and the Japanese director Kobayashi Masahiro. These directors have extensive oeuvres that deserve more international promotion.

The first official day of the festival is filled with four films. I started with the Brazilian Tiger nominee Still Urangutans, followed with my first Kobayashi film ever, Bootleg Film. Then there was the musical/documentary of Talking Heads frontman, True Stories. Last on the list was the documentary The Reinactors about the impersonators on Hollywood Blvd. who try to make a living by having their pictures taken with tourists.
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The opening night of the IFFR started with the premiere of the Argentinean Cordero de Dios (Lamb of God), the second Argentinean opening film in a row in two years. The screening followed the speech of the new director of the festival Rutger Wolfson who emphasized the new media around us that allow us to watch films wherever we want and when we want. It made him wonder if a festival such as the IFFR will have reason to exist in the future. This speech, that lacked true vision and zest, very much coincided with the last speech of the previous director Sandra den Hamer, who was honored by the mayor of Rotterdam with a medal stating ‘Tigers are a girl’s best friend’ (the tiger being the official mascot of the IFFR).
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From Wednesday January 23 up to and including Sunday February 3 the 37th International Film Festival (IFFR) will take place in, well… Rotterdam of course. This year’s program is led by the new director Rutger Wolfson, who replaces Sandra den Hamer. As was the case in the past few years, Choking on Popcorn will cover the festival for the full ten days and will bring impressions as well as (short) reviews on a daily basis. This year’s festival is dominated by films from Brazil, France, India and the rest of Asia, which is part of the festival’s tradition. The focus is on films that would normally not reach the European and American screens.
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As both a film buff and aspiring screenwriter, I have been watching the developments in the Hollywood strike talks, specifically the WGA/writer’s strike, which as of Monday, November 5th, is official. Hopefully it won’t be as long as the 1988 strike, which affected several TV shows and awards programs.
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I can understand it when a sporting event, such as The Olympics or NCAA March Madness commences and films playing in theatres take a pinch. Sometimes what causes films to not doing well is holiday weekends…in fact many years ago in the US, releasing a film on the fourth of July meant the kiss of death, as folks would rather see fireworks and roast marshmellows. Forget all of that now. Just forget it. Because now when a film flops, it isn’t due to a sports event or holiday. It may not even be that the film was bad or poorly marketed. It may not be that audiences wanted to see something else. Now the scapegoat is…a fellow named Master Chief.
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Leonardo DiCaprio is responsible for this new documentary about the environment and what we are doing to the planet. A nice follow-up to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth perhaps? So far I have not been able to find out when this is hitting Europe, but it’s already out in the USA. They are not giving out any review copies, so I look forward to one of our American authors checking this out and letting us know how DiCaprio is at documentary making.

All pictures courtesy of the International Film Festival RotterdamWith things drawing to an end, I still have some amazing films to discuss. I will focus on documentaries this time. Documentaries usually are a small part of the festival’s program. Besides the mockumentary Death of a President I reviewed in an earlier report there are some other docs really worth a ticket. I saw an amazing rough cut of Nina Davenport’s film Operation Filmmaker you should really see just to be amazed at what people are capable of. I also saw a biopic of Mark Chapman, the man who killed John Lennon over 25 years ago. This is not the Jared Leto film that is due for release (and I have heard is terrible) but a film by British director Andrew Piddington.
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