FRIDAY, MARCH 27 — SARASOTA FILM FESTIVAL OPENING NIGHT GALA, VAN WEZEL PERFORMING ARTS HALL, SARASOTA
What’s big and purple and filled with a mountain of cocktail shrimp, bad ’80s dance music, members of the armed forces, and a handful of movie stars?
Answer: The Van Wezel, decked out for the Opening Night Film and Gala of the 11th Annual Sarasota Film Festival.
Tomorrow’s cover is so frickin’ mind-blowing that this is all we’re allowed to show you right now. Be sure to pick up a copy first chance you get!
The above tweet comes from Tampa Associate Editor Joe Bardi, recording results of the first ever Creative Loafing Tampa bolf match, with pathetic results from Sarasota’s own Brian Ries. Mind you: This was the first time Brian’s competitors had ever played the game.
Just in:
Washington–The House Energy and Commerce Committee today released a discussion draft of comprehensive energy and climate legislation. Below is the statement of Greenpeace US Global Warming Campaign Director Steven Biel:
After more than a decade of denial and delay by U.S. leaders, Chairmen Waxman and Markey have placed clean energy and global warming at the very top of Congress’s agenda as the world looks to the United States for leadership in the run-up to Copenhagen. The draft bill is a good first step in the right direction, but the bill must be strengthened to ensure that it will achieve the goals of transitioning to a clean energy economy and solving global warming.
America’s economy and climate are in crisis. From Gulf coast homeowners bracing for increasingly intense hurricanes to communities across the country facing water shortages and wildfires, Americans are seeing first hand what global warming looks like. The good news is that the solution to our economic crisis and the climate crisis go hand-in-hand. We must achieve energy independence with clean energy, which will create millions of new jobs, save trillions in fuel costs, and prevent the economic devastation we face if global warming goes unchecked.
Among the bill’s highlights:
Screened as part of the film festival’s retrospective of movies detailing the work of large-scale artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Michael Blackwood’s hour-long feature follows the couple and their work through the decades. It’s a different approach from the numerous other Christo-themed films being shown this week: Most are shorter, and deal only with one specific project from its initial stages to its completion.
As a really cohesive look at what makes Christo and Jeanne-Claude tick, I have to admit Blackwood’s movie falls a bit short. We get no narration, so the nuances of the couple’s development as artists is only touched on through interview footage with the artists, which leaves a bit to be desired.
Our friends at Political Whore are reporting that Creative Loafing, Inc. owner Ben Eason will maintain control of the company thanks to a ruling issued today. You can see the original post here. It is the latest development in CL’s ongoing bankruptcy case.
When Siesta Key Village’s Speakeasy closed a month ago, owners of that space and the neighboring Daiquiri Deck were ready to get to work. In just three short weeks they built a patio connecting the two properties, painted and redecorated, and created an entirely new menu for the expanded property featuring a hefty selection of raw bar items.
Now, everyone who wants to pair their oyster shooters or stone crab claws with a Deck Diesel or Voodoo Love Shake can finally live in peace and tranquility. Grain alcohol and raw seafood, two great tastes that taste great together.
I hope its not “rawful”. The audacity it takes to expand in this economy is “rawe-inspiring”. I hear that the atmosphere there is “rawcous”. If you need a hole punched in leather, I recommend using a “rawl”.
Put your own “raw” concoctions in the comments!
Linda “Success Just Got Closer” Larsen is a Sarasota-based motivational speaker who delivers talks around the country about everything from improving customer service at a business to parenting troublesome little ones at home. But the real reason we’re bringing up Ms. Larsen on The 941 today has nothing to do with her speaking skills, and everything to do with her rapping skillz, as displayed in a video clip she hosts on her website.
Titled “LL Cool Mom,” the video features beats straight from 1985 and rhymes that are questionable at best. Still, you will enjoy this. I promise.
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And so we come to Tony Manero, the first movie I’ve seen at any Sarasota Film Festival that came with a disclaimer. Programmer Holly Herrick — in the middle of the normal thank-the-sponsors-turn-off-your-goddamn-cell-phone intro — actually commended the relatively small audience for being brave enough to see this film, which she called the darkest the festival has ever screened, before yes, giving us permission to laugh during the film’s few humorous moments.
Yikes.
The movie tells the story of a dirt-poor cabaret performer who lives to emulate the character of Tony Manero (aka John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever) while living in Chile during the brutal reign of the U.S.-armed dictator Augusto Pinochet. To say that this main character is fucked up is a total understatement: He is probably one of the least sympathetic characters I’ve ever seen as a protagonist in a film. His Fever fever leads him to despicable and inexplicable acts of violence and degradation.
A Sunday afternoon screening of The Burning Plain was packed to the gills. People were clearly pumped about this one, probably because of the impressive star power on display (Charlize Theron, Kim Basinger) and the artistic pedigree of the film’s writer and director (Guillermo Arriaga, who penned Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel).
The film didn’t disappoint: An intense morality tale, Plain features three main narrative threads, told non-chronologically (as in Arriaga’s previous work), which eventually intertwine and diverge in interesting ways. It was clearly a crowd favorite, and I must admit it held me pretty captive, although I have my suspicions that the film amounts to little more than a traditional melodrama once the crafty storytelling techniques are figured out.
