Bicycle Film Festival 2008

I came, I saw, I...was sometimes entertained, sometimes puzzled. Maybe there aren't that many cycling films out there, maybe there isn't that much separating film from Youtube these days.

I went to two screenings on Saturday, the 5pm and 9pm. 5pm session first: three films, two shorts and a long. The two shorts sounded promising as they were intended to be tributes to Pantani and Coppi, but...well, the filmmakers may have considered themselves seriously, but the Pantani film was little more than messed-up footage from the 1994 Tour de France, while the audience could only laugh--out loud--at the pretentious abstraction of the Coppi film (corpa...nervo...ossa...corpa...nervo...ossa...corpa!...nervo!...ossa!...)(sigh...) and hope for it to end quickly (not quickly enough).

The long film was "Les ninjas de Japon", which cuts between following five road racers from Japan and following the 2006 Tour de Burkina Faso in West Africa. It's an interesting juxtaposition of scenes in a highly developed country and in a badly underdeveloped country, neither of which resembles the USA or Canada at all. Well worth seeing if you have a chance, in my opinion, even if you're not a cyclist.

Then, the 9pm screening, whose program was clearly aimed at the urban fixed gear scene. Thorough reviewing was already done by Beth, so I'll stick with a few observations:

(a) While film of fixie riders pedaling at high cadence may be impressive to the cognosceti, to most of us it just looks like a guy pedaling fast--which is NOT THRILLING in itself, regardless of your choice of music.

(b) Lucas Brunelle is to messenger biking what Warren Miller is to skiing, but it's a lot harder for Average Joe to go heli-skiing. Heaven knows how many idiots will be encouraged to skid through red lights by LB's work. At the same time, I admit to the visceral thrill of watching a rider make an awful decision and almost get smeared (literally) by a bus.

(c) The obvious crowd favorite was a 10-12 minute film featuring fixed gear riders on the streets of San Francisco, "Macaframa". There was much of the above-mentioned guys pedaling fast, ho-hum. Regardless of how not-interesting the cycling was inherently, the cinematography--great panning, tracking, deep focus, a little slo-mo--was really, really good. Darn good. Those kind of shots could make riding Muni seem sorta cool, while in this case some guys on bikes were sorta there.

In terms of things that I think you, my faithful reader, could spare some change to go see, stick with "Les ninjas de Japon", though it's unlikely to visit a nearby theater anytime soon. The rest was ignorable. If the filmmakers are reading (ha!), two words, even for a 3-minute film: character development. Make me give a damn, please. "Belle Epoche" managed it in 3, why can't you?

Festival Life

Last weekend I went to the Fire Arts Festival in West Oakland. It's put on by the Crucible, the place where I had my glassworking class a few weeks ago, as one of their major fundraisers. I wish I had pictures, if I could take pictures that could do the display justice, but picture-taking is discouraged, I imagine since (a) a lot of the displays are from artists actually trying to make a living off this stuff and (b) flashbulbs just would not be cool.

Without pictures, it's a bit hard to describe the first five minutes of the show. The doors opened at 8pm, letting everyone file in and take a look in the remaining daylight at the inventions and contraptions filling the lot below the BART tracks.

At 9pm, on schedule, the Opening Flare fired, and I could feel the heat on my face from 100+ ft away. Within 5 minutes, I was experiencing the vertigo of all hell breaking loose around me: a keyboard-fired menorah, a 25-ft wide candelabra beating flames in time with someone's pulse, hyrogen bubbles popping and pounding my eardrums, a Tesla coil giving off clouds of ozone as the Tin Man danced around it, a Baba Yaga treehouse belching steam high in the air, as a troupe of (I kid not) black vinyl-clad, flame-wielding go-go girls aboard their vehicles, the results of crossbreeding Amish wagons with Mad Max, shot roaring flames 30 ft into the air while the blackened iron sculptures scattered about them were fired to a roaring, glowing red...

First five minutes was pretty intense, and I was actually wondering if I was feeling okay, but a little time and a little fresh air later, glowing iron sculpture and go-go girls were pretty cool.

We had great fun watching the Flame Vortex folks send a swirling tornado of fire curling and lapping at the BART cars (an unexpected bonus with your fare!). The Flamethrower Shooting Gallery was sadly not available to members of the general public. Firebots: remote controlled conflagration! The stage show had some music, lots of fire dancing, and the highlight of an acrobatic pas de deux aboard a hula hoop craned 40 ft into the air...noticeably without any safety equipment (say, a net?) that we could see. Or fire, for that matter, but still spectacular. Grand finale: a turbojet powered flame cannon generating 150 dB and continuous plumes of 100 ft flames.

Good fun, highly recommended to anyone not completely pyrophobic. If you've ever been Burning Man-curious but are put off by various aspects such as the dust, the FAF has all the spectacle, takes much less time, and involves far less inconvenience.

-----

This Week: the Bicycle Film Festival is coming to San Francisco, Wednesday-Saturday. Uh, there aren't any films to speak of in the program on Wednesday or Thursday, but they do show up Friday and Saturday. They're showing at the Victoria Theatre right atop the 16th St BART station making it super easy to get there. I may have to get tickets for a couple film sessions on Saturday (probably the 5pm and 9pm) with a break for dinner in between. Anybody else? C'mon, my festival-picking mojo is working pretty hard right now.

TdF coverage quibbles

For the first time in my life, I have unfettered access to live Tour de France coverage on television--even better, I can tape delay and fast forward through commercials, which are even more boring than watching a 4-man breakaway get slowly, inevitably gobbled up over 100 km or so. It's not like suddenly having indoor plumbing after a lifetime without, but still, it's a nice addition to life, though it (TdF coverage) doesn't help me get to work any earlier. (Indoor plumbing just gets me to work smelling better.)

Phil "The Voice" Liggett and Paul "The Vet" Sherwen obviously are still the commentators; Al Trautwig has been shipped off somewhere else. Robbie Ventura is possibly competent but I can (and do) fast-forward through anything he has to say. Bob Roll is around but I haven't watched any of the repackaged evening shows, so I have no idea if his French is as bad as ever (I expect it is).

Quibbles:

--Why list the nationalities of riders? It's been decades since teams were organized by country. Is Kim Kirchen riding for Team Luxembourg? No! (Side note: it was a curious and dirty little trick of the press to start talking about the Luxembourg "rivalry".) It would be far more useful to list riders by their team names, which would go a long ways towards matching name (e.g. Jegou) with team kit (Francaise des Jeux) while watching. Nationality is a bit of trivia Phil and Paul should banter about during nature breaks.

--Team Columbia = America's team, rah, rah, rah. Yes, Team Columbia is registered in San Luis Obispo, CA, but I also know that the company I work for in Berkeley, CA, is registered in Delaware. The only American on the start list for Team Columbia is George Hincapie, and there are only 3 Americans on the entire men's roster (plus one Canuck). And since the idea of Columbia's sponsorship is to increase its exposure in Europe, I don't expect to see an American grassroots program anytime soon.

--Not a quibble, just an observation: T-Mobile should be rolling on the floor in agony at the lost marketing after withdrawing their sponsorship (just imagine Kirchen on the podium every day, Cavendish winning sprints, in pink shorts).

--Hincapie is experienced, yes, but Phil and Paul spend a lot of time describing him as a "road captain" without ever mentioning that Team Columbia in fact has a DS who may be pretty sharp himself: Rolf Aldag, of (!) ex-T-Mobile fame. Oh, oops, are people allowed to say that name at the Tour after his doping confession last year? Perhaps Phil and Paul don't want to be blacklisted by ASO.

Hello, uh, Mr. Nobel-Prize-winner, uh, sir...

Had lunch across the table from a Nobel Prize winner today. I will claim to have not been star-struck, but it was a bit hard to keep up with the intensity of his agenda--frankly, he's been doing a lot more research on it than I have--so perhaps just staying quiet at all times would've been for the best. Gotta give the man credit, he has done well to get into an excellent position to actually address climate change and energy use in scientifically and practically relevant way.

--

After spending the day in my concrete box of a lab and reading the lead news stories online of the heat wave passing through the Bay Area, I was expecting to come outside and get the hair-dryer feeling while biking home. Instead, it was a bit cool for shirtsleeves to start. Hm, there are advantages to living in Berkeley/Oakland...I'm still going to hang out in the frozen foods section tonight, but that's 'cuz the cupboards are stripped bare.