Sonoma Overlook Trail Rattlesnake

Out for the warm weather!

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SIFF – Sir Billi

It’s a rare treat to see a world premiere of feature length animation at a small film festival, especially one with voice talents on the scale of Sir Sean Connery and Alan Cummings. Many festival-goers (including me) lined up to see “Sir Billi” at the Sonoma International Film Festival last Friday evening. From the looks on everyone’s faces after the film (and those who’d escaped half-way through to the rose garden in the Plaza), most of us wanted the last two hours of our life back.

For starters, the computer animation in Sir Billi made PacMan look like Avatar. I guess I missed the homage to Connery’s James Bond films in the beginning with the curvaceous, busty silhouettes of heavily armed women striking poses against a background of flames. Instead, what I got were half-finished, animated sihouettes of Bette Midler dancing across melting celluloid. Each of the female characters in Sir Billi – including the bush pilot who was, incidentally, a duck –was drawn with a 40DD bust. One of them sounded exactly like Mrs. Potato Head from the Toy Story movies. Maybe that was another subtle homage I missed – to Pixar,  perhaps? But it left me wondering what Mrs. Potato Head would be doing in Canterness.

If the animation wasn’t bad enough, the story finished the movie off. I sensed some sort of Shrek/Donkey, Frodo/Sam Gamgee thing was going on between Sir Billi and his faithful pet – an openly gay goat dressed in a yellow spandex jump suit who peed on the floor because he thought he was a dog. The goat’s outfit–well, the only thing I could think of was that the spandex suit solved the problem of what to do with his goatly man-bits since he happened to walk erect, like a biped. Sir Billi, who was supposed to be a vet, was dressed like a crab fisherman.

This is how the movie is summarized on IMDB:

“An aging, skateboarding veterinarian Sir Billi goes above and beyond the call of duty fighting villainous policemen and powerful lairds in a battle to save an illegal fugitive – Bessie Boo the beaver! An heart warming and action packed family movie where thrilling car chases, heroic skydiving and daring stunts from this octogenarian, fueled with encounters with a hostile submarine, will keep you at the edge of your seat! Everyone wants a grandpa like Sir Billi, the Guardian of the Highlands!”

Here is my synopsis:

An eccentric crab fisherman lives with his incontinent goat-partner in the Scottish Highlands where they race against time and a pyschopathic Chitty-Citty Bang Bang Beaver-Catcher to rescue two stuffed animal carnival prizes that fall into a raging river after being thrown off the Disneyland log ride by Bette Midler and a rabbit with bangs. Afterwards, in a pub, the Solid Gold dancers celebrate the rescue of Bessie Boo, the last “stinking beaver in Scotland.” Chris Rock scratches his balls while wearing a kilt. Juan Valdez makes a cameo.

Apparently, the private dinner at the Swiss was the real story of the evening. I, sadly, was still recovering.

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Sonoma International Film Festival – Two New Favorites

A few films not to miss at this year’s Sonoma International Film Festival – both feature length documentaries – Circus Dreams and The Girls in the Band. These films are unique in that they not offer insight into the many hurdles female artists have faced throughout the years, but the inherent gender bias against, say, a female clown or a big band saxophone player in the 1950s. The films deliver an empowering message to aspiring young performers, especially women, and trying hard to get a foot in the door.

Circus Dreams follows the personal journeys of a group of kids ages twelve through eighteen as they compete for a chance to perform with the prestigious traveling youth circus Circus Smirkus. During their intense three-week rehearsal period in Vermont, seasoned circus performers from Ringling Brothers, Big Apple Circus and Cirque Du Soleil coach the kids. The filmmakers enter the lives of the kids – their individual dedication and hard work, their friendships and even a few budding romances. Director Signe Taylor is never intrusive; she maintains a respectful distance from the personal struggles the kids endure and instead focuses on their artistic challenges and what is wonderful and good about teenagers and youthful inspiration.

While it is impossible not to be charmed by all the kids, aspiring clowns Joy Powers and Maddy Hall, best friends and clown partners, steal the show. Both young women are set on proving to their fellow performers, instructors and audience members that “girls can be funny too.” Anyone who remembers the late shock columnist Christopher Hitchen’s insidious proclamation that women are genetically unfunny will experience the triumph of these two extremely funny physical comediennes. Powers and Hall are living proof that comedy is gender blind.

As a special treat for festival-goers – Circus Dreams will bring a few fearless performers for an aerial demonstration at the Sebastiani Theater prior to the film’s screening. Circus Dreams is appropriate for all ages.

Documentary The Girls in the Band won audience awards at several film festivals, and for good reason. The film opens up the repressed and censored history of the collective contribution of women to jazz for nearly one hundred years.

Director Judy Chaiken begins with the famous photo A Great Day in Harlem taken in 1958; the photo brings together dozens of the leading jazz musicians of the day, all of them male with the exception of two women who, for reasons the film explores, have remained largely unacknowledged. Throughout the documentary, through interviews with musicians, jazz scholars and historians, Chaiken establishes the real misrepresentation of how many women actually made up the intricate tapestry of the American jazz scene at the time the photo was taken.

Like Circus Dreams, The Girls in the Band looks at the early decades of big-band and swing, a time during which female musicians were treated as novelties, wore ridiculous, revealing costumes and were expected to project the image of a sex symbol even while blowing a horn. Archival footage celebrates the unsung talents of these women, many of them still alive such as drummer Viola Smith, saxophonist Roz Cron and Peggy Gilbert and Peggy Gilbert and trumpeter Billie Rogers. The role of Woody Herman, a uniquely progressive band leader who was proactive in opening doors to women in jazz. The film explores the history of all-girl bands such as Ina Ray Hutton and Her Melodears, the Fayettes, and the International Sweethears of Rhythm. That these bands were multi-racial, presented an entirely new set of obstacles, especially in the Jim Crow South where many of the bands toured. Ultimately, the women of The Girls in the Band are irreducible to gender or race.

Both Circus Dreams and The Girls in the Band are bittersweet reminders of how far women have come and the challenges they faced in carving out a path for future generations of artists. Yet both films manage to provide an upbeat and optimistic prognosis for women in the performing arts, as well as the passion, dedication and talent required to make it in a band or the big top.

Going to see Scottish animated film Sir Billie tonight (Sir Billied voiced by Sean Connery). Can’t wait!

More later…

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Last Speakeasy Days

Gone the swinging doors, and the old spittoons
Gone the red, dim rooms of MacCready’s Saloon
Where the Devil dealt cards to Fate and Chance
And the bird bones rattled in an ancient dance

Gone the dance hall girls, the pine boardwalk
Gone the player piano, the Firewater shots
In come the bootleggers with their Tanglefoot romance
And the bird bones rattle in an ancient dance

Old Hoagy Carmichael, said times were but the dregs
That old ‘bang of bad booze, flappers with bare legs
Jingle jangle morals and them wild weekends’
And still the bird bones rattled in an ancient dance

In come devil’s candy, bathtub gin and hooch
In come Bozeman Betty – a nickel for a smooch –
In come the Devil with a password and a prance
And the bird bones rattled in an ancient dance

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Fruiting Bodies

Wonderful thing about these late rains…mushrooms! These are a few I found on the Sonoma Overlook Trail this morning. I still haven’t identified all, but I’m sure I can  find them in David Arora’s All the Rain Brings and More.

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