easier with practice / the athlete / alias

Monday August 31st ..

first film at noon .. and american one which has won awards at 2 other festivals ..

easier with practice ..

davey is on a road trip with his brother to promote his self-published collection of short stories .. one night, in a cheap motel, he receives a phone call from "nicole" .. whom he's never met .. she called the motel room randomly .. she wants "phone sex" .. and they start a relationship of sorts .. though she refuses to give him her phone number .. and also refuses to actually meet him .. until the end of the movie .. the acting was fine .. but somehow i feel this movie would make a much better stage play .. because it's more about faces and dialogue .. so the visuals don't really contribute .. anyway .. just an opinion ..

my next movie was only at 5pm .. so i decided to see another one between .. and chose the documentary The Athlete .. which is really not a documentary .. more a biographical dramatization about Abebe Bikila, the ethiopian marathon runner who'd won the gold in 1960 in Rome -- barefoot -- and again 4 years later in tokyo, 6 weeks after an apendectomy ..

i'd looked up his biography on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abebe_Bikila so knew what to expect .. but i hadn't fully appreciated why his win in *rome* was so important to ethiopians .. as it was phrased: "it took 500 000 italian soldiers to occupy ethiopia (under mussolini) but 1 ethiopian soldier to conquer Rome .."

then I saw Alias .. another documentary .. about a man finding his real father ..

i've seen others like this in previous festivals .. about the children of deseparecidos .. about the offspring of bigamists .. this one, like the others, seems to be a search for self as well .. the reunion with the probably biological father was pleasant .. the film maker was at the screening .. among questions after, did he ever have the test to determine actual paternity? No .. he hadn't ..

anyway .. 2 more tomorrow ..

cinemoo in montreal