Oops.

I completely forgot to mention: I moved over to Facebook about 2 years ago and never bothered to tell any of you.  If you wish to once again enjoy my witty banter, this is where you can get a daily dose once more.

Me and My Precious Feelings While Attending the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Me, Me, Me. [Part 2]

Oh Parker Posey, you adorable urchin of independent cinema. When I saw you from below the staircase you were ascending, it almost felt as if you were treading on my heart. And where did you get that slim figure? Who knew that the improvisational comedies of Christopher Guest would make an actress burn so many calories! Too bad your boyfriend at the photo shoot likes the generic wanky reggae of Bob Marley. P-U! Dump him pronto and get a new beau with better taste in music.

Well, look at you Chris Kattan! You're such a tiny little thing, it's probably not such a good idea to stand next to Graham Phillips for too long. Oops, too late. He's already towering over you.

When I shook your hand, Vera Farmiga, I could tell you were completely interested in who I was and where I worked. It was as if the entire universe stopped at that very moment and you were consumed with making sure you heard every word I uttered. Call me...?

Thank you for taking the time to pose for a photo with my boss, David Duchovny. Your brain might have gone to Princeton and Yale, but that smirk will always be reserved for the undergrads.

If there is one thing you've got to love about William H. Macy (besides his flippy-floppity hair and the ability to stay glued for almost an hour on a single cell call) is the fact that he doesn't know who LCD Soundsystem is, thus allowing him to politely decline an invite to James Murphy's DJ set in the Bing Lounge. I wish William H. Macy was playing at my house.

Was that you, gay Bishop Gene Robinson, wearing that severely flashy purple Catholic blouse with the ornate cross on top during the private photo shoot? Just because there is a new documentary on you playing this year doesn't mean you get to hog the fashion spotlight from all those girls walking the streets of Prospector Square drunk in their Uggs.

Me and My Precious Feelings While Attending the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Me, Me, Me. [Part 1]

Just attended the first screening of The House I Live In, a searing expose by Eugene Jarecki on America's so-called War on Drugs and its extreme effects on various racial and socioeconomic communities. There's probably more to this documentary than that, but I had been huffing goofballs all afternoon so the entire film is a haze.  I have a vague recollection that it has a happy ending.

Live Blogging The 2011 Telluride Film Festival

I have an idea how Sony Pictures Classics can market their forthcoming Holocaust survival flick In Darkness: "It's Schindler's List...filmed in tunnel vision!"  Also, they should consider changing the title to the catchier Sewer Jews.

George Clooney is here in person, apparently. This caused several people to riot, burn down dozens of theaters and march through the streets with Ken Burns' head impaled on a pitchfork.

This year's Guest Director (and one of my musical heros) Caetano Veloso is signing autographs today, and I've brought several CD's for him to mark up. Here's how I hope it will go down:

Disco:Very: Good evening, Caetano. You are but a god.
Caetano Veloso: Thank you, Disco:Very. You are one of my idols.
Disco:Very: When you give me the signal, I will overthrow the U.S. Government and smash the capitalist pigs.
Caetano Veloso: The time to end America's reign of terror is upon us!
Disco:Very: Viva Los Gringos!

Here is how it will really go down:

Disco:Very: Good evening, Caetano. You are one of my favorite musicians and--
Caetano Veloso: [Quickly signs my CD with a rubber stamp bearing his signature.] Done. Next!!

My Precious Feelings on the 36th Telluride Film Festival

Although I am not the winner of this year's edition of the Be the First to Spot Ken Burns game, I do, however, witness many 4-year-olds around town with the same bowl-cut hair style, which scores me a few points in the end.

The next morning, I happily spot Mr. Burns being nagged by his wife in broad daylight and provide him momentary respite from her by insisting I get my picture snapped with him (that's me on the left).

The minute the festival schedule is announced, rumors being to swirl like Lysol® Power Toilet Bowl Cleaner as it washes away pesky lime and rust. Due to a surprise announcement that Up in the Air will be screening, everyone is on the lookout for George Clooney to make an appearance. It certainly explains why I keep getting stopped in the street by strangers assuming I am him. Curse my masculine square jaw and rugged good looks!

The festival begins on a high note for me thanks to Henri-George Clouzot's Inferno, an engrossing recounting of the unfinished masterwork-which-could-have-been by the director of The Wages of Fear and Diabolique. Some of the visuals are so strong, you want to take them home in your pants pocket to take out and look at later when you're alone.

I walk out midway during the first screening of the three-part Red Riding: 1974, which is too formulaic for my tastes. A few hours later, I endure a screening of The Miscreants of Taliwood--a potentially fascinating documentary on the local film production of Pakistan as it wrestles with local Islamic fundamentalism, but the story is overwhelmed by the self-absorbed director who inserts his hammer-over-the-head moral judgements into nearly every frame.

Despite critics who find his vision far too bleak, I personally delight in the films of Michael Heneke (Cache, Funny Games) and his deeply morbid take on the world, especially in his new flick The White Ribbon (a perfect date movie if you're trying to woo a Goth). He sometimes tries a little too hard to be The Bad Boy of Cinema ("I hope you have a disturbing viewing experience", he proclaimed before the screening I caught), but he'd be the type of person to which I'd gravitate at a party, especially as he gloomily points out the violent malicious nature of humanity to the shocked and horrified guests.

One of the delights of a great festival is when the selected films share similar thematic concerns. Such was the case of two very different films, A Prophet and Coco Before Chanel:

A Prophet: The protagonist is trapped in an oppressive prison system with no means of escape.
Coco Before Chanel: Lowly employees are trapped working for the oppressive Coco Chanel without any means of escape.

A Prophet: The lead character must resort to violence and murder to climb his way to the top of the prison hierarchy.
Coco Before Chanel: Coco must resort to violence and murder to climb her way to the top of the fashion hierarchy.

A Prophet: The protagonist conceals a razor blade in his mouth in order to slit the throat of an opponent.
Coco Before Chanel: Ditto.

It is announced that a special appearance will be made by Helen Mirren, who is in attendance with her new costume drama The Last Station. It certainly explains why I keep getting stopped in the street by strangers assuming I am her. Curse my matronly demeanor and bosomy man-boobs!

I hereby apologize to everyone sitting near me during It Came From Kuchar, the side-splitting new documentary about the Kuchar twins, George and Mike. The campy clips from their lewd filmography had me convulsing with booming laughter during the entire 90 minutes.

Early on, I decide to skip the special screening of the new Todd Solondz film Life During Wartime. If I wanted to experience tiresome smart-ass writing whose only intent is to make the viewing public uncomfortable, I'd just read my own fucking blog [*rimshot*].

I have a newfound respect for filmmaker Alexander Payne, whose films (About Schmidt, Sideways) have always slightly annoyed me. All of his picks as Guest Director of the festival were worth catching, from the weepy 1937 drama Make Way For Tomorrow to the Spanish black comedy El Verdugo to the darkly ironic Samurai epic Daisan no Kagemusha. His presentation of the splendid Italian romantic comedy Le Ragazze di Piazza di Spagna, which featured a very young Marcello Mastroianni in one of his earliest roles, was made even more special for me because I was sitting a mere two rows away from his frequent co-star Anouk Aimée. Being able to look over at her as Mastroianni appeared on the screen had me in cinematic heaven.

My Precious Feelings on the 35th Annual Telluride Film Festival

As usual, I was the first in my party to spot Ken Burns. I somehow end up winning this spirited competition every year, with Burns and I gravitating towards each other within mere hours of the festival’s beginning. Is it because I, too, am a 40-something male sporting the bowl cut hairdo of a 12-year-old?

While waiting in line for Firaaq (a film so pedestrian, I had to depart 30 minutes into it), I spy Salman Rushdie conversing with the film’s director Nandita Das. I briefly considered carrying out the fatwa which has been exacted upon him, but realizing there was no financial reward involved, I quickly lost interest.

Although I am against public stalking in principle, during a screening of Max Ophuls’ newly-restored 1955 epic Lola Montes, I spy my favorite husband and wife filmmakers Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor (also known as the Desperate Optimists) taking their seats. Needless to say, I can’t resist planting myself in front of them to blather to them how much I love their films, especially Who Killed Brown Owl, a film which still haunts my thoughts every so often. Thankfully, they are gracious and polite, completely refraining from having security remove me from their vicinity, although the restraining order presented to me after the screening did hurt my feelings somewhat…

If the timing had been a bit more perfect, I could have crossed swords with actor Greg Kinneer in the men’s restroom right before viewing the tepid Danish blockbuster Flame and Citron. Instead, I am a few nano-seconds behind him, performing my last-drop dance at the urinal while he’s already at the sink soaping up. I had an “in” (we attended the same college) but by the time I had worked up my opening statement (“Hello, Mr. Kinneer. You lather your hands with the same dedication you showed in Little Miss Sunshine—and I even walked out of it halfway through!”) he was long gone. Curse me and my long-winded time-consuming verbosity!

Another restroom encounter, this time with UK director/genius Mike Leigh. I briefly entertained reaching out to introduce myself and proclaim my love of his movies, but he’d just left the urinal and had not yet washed up afterwards. Yes, he’s created some of the most acclaimed films in recent British film history, and more than a few of his cinematic efforts are on my Top 100 Favorite Films list, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let his pee-pee backsplash rub onto me as we shake hands. Ewwww!

A day into the fest, I once again spy Ken Burns, this time one row in front of me during the screening of the gritty Italian film Gomorrah. Oddly, he and his wife make tsk-tsk faces at each other during the film’s frequent outbursts of violence, as if to say couldn’t the director scale this bloodshed back a little? Considering it was a film about the present-day Italian mafia, he’s lucky the carnage wasn’t more savage than it already was. If only I’d had a bottle of tequila with me, I could have made their shocked reactions into a drinking game.

Imagine my surprise when Hunger—the film I was most reluctant to watch--turns out to be one of my favorite flicks of the entire fest. The elliptical style and the stark camerawork had me captivated from beginning to end. Bonus points go to those seated near me who did not seem to mind my loud munching on carrot sticks during the hunger strike scenes.

Take the frantic family antics of Capturing the Friedmans, turn the dysfunction up about 10 notches, toss in a third-act link to Orson Welles and you have Prodigal Sons, a discomforting autobiographical documentary by Kimberly Reed. After it’s over, you’ll almost find yourself feeling lucky for being born into your own family. Almost.

Rain is one of my least favorite weather elements (right behind tornados, swarms of locusts and ash clouds spewed from active volcanoes). To avoid one of Telluride’s typical torrents, I reluctantly grabbed a place in the dry tent-covered line for Paul Schrader’s Adam Resurrected merely as a means to avoid the downpour. Had I known what was in store, I’d have gladly chosen a deluge of Biblical proportions instead. Imagine the worst parts of Patch Adams, Life Is Beautiful and (I assume) The Day the Clown Cried tied together in a Holocaust comedy/drama vehicle for Jeff Goldblum. Goldblum is made to behave as a dog under the Nazi thumb of Willem Dafoe, later causing him to engage in dog-like animalistic sex on all fours with sexy nurse Ayelet Zurer (it's quite natural that hot women spread their legs for aged men 30 years their junior). Did I mention he attempts to heal the heart of a young Holocaust survivor who thinks he’s a dog?

One feels a sense of wonder and innocence while watching Jan Troell’s 1966 coming-of-age tale Here Is Your Life. Then the scenes of the where-did-that-come-from? homoeroticism pop up and you just end up feeling like a pervert. Bonus points for the snippet of conversation between two aging film professors I overheard before the screening begins: “My students are on You Tube all the time. I’ll send you the link.”

While exiting Tulpan, the acclaimed new film from Sergei Dvortsevoy, I find myself behind a contingent of marketing brass from Turner Classic Movies, all of them underwhelmed by this subtle award-winning work, utterly perplexed are they by the frequent images of goat herds living and dying on the Kazakhstan plains. It’s good to know the vast cinematic library overseen by TCM is in such capable hands.

It's a Disco:Very vs. Elisabeth Kübler Ross Smackdown!

The First Song Popping Up on Your iPod Which Makes You Weep During the Long Drive Home from the Funeral:
Don't Bother, They're Here by Stars of the Lid, due to its tender ethereal weight. A vast soundtrack to the cosmos, it makes you reflect on loss and grasping the infinite, asking yourself what the fuck it's really all about.

The Second Song Popping Up on Your iPod Which Makes You Weep During the Long Drive Home from the Funeral:
Song for Bob by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (from the soundtrack to The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford), due to its epic sadness, exposing the massive tragic destiny of life, making you ponder what the fuck is beyond living and dying.

The Third Song Popping Up on Your iPod Which Doesn't Make You Weep During the Long Drive Home from the Funeral, but Instead Just Makes You Ask "What the fuck???:
A Feast for Famished Ravens Part 1 by Xynfonica.

The Kurosawa Flick Which, After Enduring the Death of Your Father, Holds New Resonance and Wisdom, Pointing a Way Towards Understanding and Accepting a Loved One's Illness and Passing:
Red Beard, but only the scenes involving Yuzo Kayama witnessing elderly patients dying alone, not the scene where Toshiro Mifune is violently breaking the arms and legs of his attackers outside the brothel (this only occurred, like, just a few times in my youth, and even then only after I'd finished all my homework).

On Death and Dying, Part 1: It's become more common, when one dies in a driving accident, for your loved ones to mark the sight of your roadside death with flowers and mementos in remembrance of your life. I've decided, if I were to be killed while driving, that I'd rather my loved ones not commemorate the spot of my demise with trinkets. Instead, simply block off the road with massive cement barriers, making sure nobody is allowed to traverse on that particular street ever again.

How I Would Like to Die: The makers of Forrest Gump and The Puffy Chair (two sides of the same overwrought coin) are pitted against each other in a battle to the death, staged in an enormous outdoor stadium, broadcast worldwide. In my glee over the possibility of both sides getting slaughtered, I find myself slipping from atop my perch in the nosebleed section and rolling down the stairs, smack into the middle of the violent melee. My arch nemesis, Sarah Jessica Parker, is watching from the sidelines, cheering on my imminent demise. To her surprise (and to my delight), a swarm of alligators are released onto the field, all of whom quickly chomp onto the neck of Mrs. Matthew Broderick, killing her instantly and diffusing any chances of a sequel to Sex & the City: The Movie. Meanwhile, all the actors from The Puffy Chair--along with anyone who enjoyed this tepid turd of a film--are suddenly gobbled up by a pack mob of flesh-eating microbes, leaving the cast and crew of Gump momentarily victorious. But not for long: a large cache of M-16 missiles are mysteriously thrust into my waiting arms, allowing me to smite everyone remotely connected with this. In my haste to waste these cinematic vermin, I slip on one of Sarah Jessica Parker's Antique Rose Prada boots (a slightly amusing irony) and crack my skull open, dying instantly.

On Death and Dying, Park 2: It's quite natural, when envisioning your own future death, to ponder who precisely will be attending your funeral, and if their presence is because of unconditional love or merely out of a sense of duty. One way to guarantee the sincerity of your mourners would be to erect a Fear Factor-styled obstacle course outside your place of burial. Loved ones must traverse impediments such as acrylic crates of hissing cobras, walking over scalding coals, and so on. Nothing says "you will be missed" more than gulping down a spoonful of juice squeezed from pig intestines.

Praise You Like I Should

It was a given that Daddy:Disco was going to pass away very very soon, and although he was not much of a music lover, I had been scratching my brain for the last week or so in an attempt to find that perfect track which would pay tribute to him; something, say, like an Italian folk song.

It finally occurred to me, as that dreaded phone call arrived late tonight (pronouncements of death always come in the evening or early morning, don't they?), that since Daddy:Disco was the King of Cussing, especially while flexing his talents as a home renovator, what better CD track to post than Daddy's Curses, a hilariously surreal 10-minute rant by some Every Father (recorded in secret by one of his brood) utilizing the gamut of expletives: from gosh darnit to the American standard goddammit. There's even a few original gems such as scuzz hole, what a pain in the asshole, and my personal favorite motherfucking dog-licking goddamn bullshit. It's like listening to the Billboard Top 100 of dirty words.

Goodnight, sweet Daddy:Disco. From now on, anytime I scream you fucking piece of shit after hitting my thumb with a hammer during house repairs, it will be my own personal salute to you.