2002-05-11 - 6:27 p.m. �those eyes have always left me dry� I�m grounded. No playing in the sunshine for me today. No exploring the Skulls exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences. No taking pictures of the DeYoung demolition. I�ve grounded myself until I clean the apartment. So far, I�m not exactly staying on task with that as you might guess by the existence of this entry�I�m even daydreaming about going to the grocery store. Not a good sign. The highlight of my week was seeing a screening of Hotel, the new Mike Figgis film, as part of SFMOMA�s �7th Art� film series. Shot on DV, the slowed-down frames of Saffron Burrows running in the faux Dogme film were poetic, beautiful. The shots of Venice and her waterways at night were lovely and scary. Best of all, it was really very funny. I love going to an intelligent, well-shot film that makes me laugh hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. I went with one of my Italy travel companions from last year, which made certain parts of the film so much more amusing than they would have been otherwise. You just don�t laugh as hard about the damn pigeons in St, Marks Square until you�ve had them swarming about your feet and wished you had a really big stick to chase after them with� ...and Julian Sands, announcing to a tourist that he�s the hotel�s tour guide, giving details about one of his long tours, then noting ��and I also do a flora and fauna tour. It�s much shorter.� That line nearly killed me. It provoked one of those really loud, surprised laughs. You see, the only flora in Venice (that I saw at least) consists of Ivy or potted plants; the fauna consists of tourists and house pets. So funny. And delivered in such a droll manner. Salma Hayek was another highlight. Who knew she was so funny? Figgis was there and sat with the audience through the screening, then answered questions (including one of mine) for quite a while afterwards. He had a pocketful of anecdotes, so horribly funny, that he shared. One of the best was regarding a certain film distributor that wanted to re-edit one of his films to fit it better into cable broadcast mode�they actually suggested speeding up the film to cut its run time by 3 minutes. It was so absurd as to be funny. I am grateful that filmmakers such as Figgis continue to pursue their passion for filmmaking with all the hassles and road blocks that pop up in front of them. I would be less happy in a world full of mainstream, or even �mainstream arthouse� film (did Figgis coin that phrase?) Given the cannibalism and graphic male body parts in full view (I can�t say more or I�ll ruin it for you), it�s going to be hard for this film to find a distributor in the States, so be on the lookout for it at a film fest near you. I hope RESfest picks it up. Teknolust is screening next month as part of this series � check it out if you didn�t get to see it at the SFIFF. Incidentally, Lynn Hershman-Leeson, Teknolust's director, was at the Figgis screening too. OK. Am popping �Source Tags & Codes� into the CD player and getting serious about this cleaning stuff. Dust bunnies, BEWARE! any comments? (0 so far) previous - next recently on almostgoldsf... in defense of an email box I came to do battle with SPAM - 2008-05-17 hello 2006 - 2005-12-31 Happy Thanksgiving - 2005-11-14 bon voyage - 2005-11-05 October already? - 2005-10-09