MADali at the Dubai Int’l Film Festival ’08 – The Day Before

The Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) starts tomorrow (although it officially begins tonight with a gala screening of W.), and I’m in some sort of panic. I have taken a week off from work for, browsed through all the films, and made a schedule for myself for the whole week. The amount of work I have put in making a schedule is almost certainly more than I ever did in making my college schedules.

You see, I love film. But I HATE schedules. A part of me is ridiculously excited that I am going to see many different kinds of films from all over the world about a lot of diverse subjects. The other part of me only sees me waking up everyday, getting stuck in traffic, making sure that I stick to the schedule I kept for myself, coming home, and doing the same thing next day. That sounds…well…like work. I start off the week on Friday, December 12, at 1pm with Momma’s Man.

I kick off the festival with an American movie, and in a multicultured festival such as the DIFF, American movies still play a prominent role. Then I’m watching The Story of Mr. Sorry (Jevbulchalssi Yiyaki). It is an animated South Korean movie called The Story of Mr Sorry, isn’t the title enough to make you want to watch it? Next up is a movie from Iceland called Country Wedding (Sveitabruokaup). I’ve watched Scandinavian movies before. Their humor is as a dry as a naked woman in a hot desert and I couldn’t resist trying to slip one in, like my penis in that naked woman we just talked about in my allegory. Then it is Machan and I finish the day with Iran’s 3 Women (Se Zan). If I know anything about Iranian movies about women, it will be a feminist movie that will kind of make you embarrassed to be the sort of person to use naked women in your allegories.

Saturday, December 13, will also be a day starting off with an American movie, The Wrestler. Directed by Darren Aronosfsky, whose film career started with my favorite Pi (the math formula, not what Ned makes in Pushing Daisies), the overrated Requiem for a Dream, and the ridiculous The Fountain. That’s not a bar chart that has the line going up, so I hope The Wrestler will be good. Wikipedia tells me that Nicolas Cage was initially considered to play the lead role, but he was replaced by Mickey Rourke. Great news or just good news? We then move on to the Wild West with Appaloosa. I was unimpressed with last year’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and 3:10 to Yuma, so I hope this year the western genre would impress me more. My favorite from the post-2000 western movies is still Australia’s The Proposition, and that dirty, rugged movie has set the standard a bit high for me. Moving away from American movies, the next movie in that day’s schedule was supposed to be Mascarades, some Arabic movie, but they rescheduled it, so I had to change it with a feature that consists of several shorts. Usually, the best things about short movies are that, well, they are short. Finally I will be ending the day with an Italian political movie called Il Divo about Italian politican, Giulio Andreotti. Wikipedia has a few quotes by him:

You sin in thinking bad about people—but, often, you guess right.

I recognize my limits but when I look around I realise I am not living exactly in a world of giants.

Charming fellow.

I’ll start off Sunday, December 14, with a late 90′s film called The Blade (Dao). Some reviewer called it action Japanese action anime and that’s enough of a recommendation for me. Then it is Ballast, a movie that Ebert gave 4 stars too and wikipedia says it made Ebert cry, “a rare occurrence for Ebert whilst watching a film.” Maybe he just cries more since he nearly died last year. Idiots and Angels is supposed to be a dark, surreal animated movie, and the words “dark” and “surreal” is usually enough to convince me to watch something. Also, that’s the way I like my coffee. Ending the day with Snow (Snijeg), something I have never seen fall from the sky, so I might as well watch a movie with it in the title.

Monday, Decemeber 15: Aram Bash Va Ta Haft Beshmar is an Iranian film translated as Be Calm and Count to Seven, basically what I always tell myself when I am speaking to idiots, which is every five minutes in my life. Then it is the Mountain Everest of my film festival week, Che, being a massive four hours and thirty minutes long. That’s 270 minutes, and I can almost watch the complete two seasons’ of the British sitcom, The Office, in that time. It better be good. After that monumental task, I still have a movie to watch, but the crime film, Gomorra, probably has enough gun shots and blood to keep me awake and horny.

Now I’m on Tuesday, December 16, and I think finally I am watching an Arabic movie called Salt of the Sea (Milh Hadha Al-Bahr), and then Adhen (Dernier Maquis), a movie I don’t actually remember what it is about and I think I chose it because there was nothing more interesting in that time-slot. It’s then Son of a Lion and finishing off with Tokyo Sonata, which makes Tuesday look like a very underwhelming day. Now that I think about it, I maybe should have kept Tuesday as a day to rest. Too late, I bought my tickets.

Back into action with Hunger on Wednesday, December 17, and then on to A Climate for Crime (Oru Pennum Randaanum). If that wasn’t enough crime for one day, then next movie also has crime in its title, Love and Other Crimes (Ljubav I Drugi Zlocini). The day ends with acclaimed Iranian director, Majid Majidi’s A Song of Sparrows (Avaze Gonjeshk-ha). Majid Majidi made me extremely sad in Children of Heaven and Color of Paradise, so I hope I do not embarrass myself in front of others.

Finally, it is Thursday, December 18, starting off with Genova and moving on to Blindness, probably what I will be experiencing after 12 hours in the cinema everyday for a week. I couldn’t get a ticket for Slumdog Millionaire and I will have to stand in a queue for that, but after a week of constant movie watching, I will probably skip that.

It almost feels that at the end of all that I will probably be HAPPY to get back to work!