As soon as the extension of our current lockdown by seven days was announced, it became inevitable: MIFF would have to cancel all its in-person screenings.
Yes, even the ones scheduled for the drive-in.
Weirdly, this has actually served to focus me.
See, before then I had been caught in a kind of no man's land with regard to what movies I was going see this MIFF -- unsure if there were actually going to be cinema screenings, and if so, whether I would actually be able to attend them. (I don't think I told you that I was particularly trying to stay out of crowded areas in an attempt not to get COVID before my mother-in-law's 80th birthday visit -- which has now also been cancelled.) As I fiddled and diddled, most of the theatrical screenings ended up selling out anyway, though I had selected a handful of titles that I thought would work for me -- if we decided it was safe for me to go.
Now that I know definitively no one is going to any cinemas, I can just line up my streaming schedule.
Invigorating me on this subject is the fact that three of the films I had planned to see in cinemas are among the 30 that are now available to stream after their in-person screenings were cancelled, not to mention a couple others I wouldn't have been able to see because they were sold out.
Score -- I guess.
I should probably catch you up on what I've seen since I last updated you.
Tuesday night it was what feels like a personal MIFF tradition, but in reality, it's only the third of its kind overall: the latest and greatest from Iranian cinema. Asghar Farhadi's A Hero was sold out (and didn't come online), but that still left me able to catch Ballad of a White Cow, which joins previous MIFF Iranian films The Salesman and Just 6.5.
This one is about the mother of a deaf daughter, who falls on hard times as society shuts her out after her husband was executed for a crime he didn't commit. A laugh a minute, right? It has the rhythms and concerns of the films of Farhadi's filmography, if not quite the quality. Though I did give it a very solid 8 out of 10 on ReelGood, convincing myself it was worthy of higher than the 7 I was originally thinking of giving it.
I guess it also continues a tradition of movies with "cow" in the title after First Cow last year.
Then on Thursday night it was All Light, Everywhere, the latest from Rat Film director Theo Anthony. This documentary confounds in a similar way to Rat Film did, as it's more like an essay of interconnected ideas then a straight narrative -- but this one was also far more rewarding and profound. Vision is the theme underpinning it, including the inner biology of the eye, persistence of vision concepts related to the invention of the moving image, surveillance, and body cameras worn by police. Trust me, it works.
Okay, it's a Friday night at 8 o'clock -- hopefully my next MIFF post will go into a bit more depth on the movies.
And now that I know exactly what shape my 2021 MIFF will take, I'm hoping there will be seven or eight more of them.
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