This ended up sounding a little pretentious, but I'm posting it anyway

On our way to the Philly Film Festival last Friday night, our friend Q said something that I could relate to. She said she's been enjoying movies and books more than usual lately. At first I attributed my own increased enjoyment and heightened sense of discernment to our HDTV and a slew of Oscar-caliber films recently out on DVD and also that I've simply been reading more, trying to keep up with the book club. But maybe that doesn't explain it. Why have I been enjoying listening the early work of R.E.M. so much lately? Or laughing so heartily at episodes of How I Met Your Mother? And why do I feel so inspired to film something beautiful, even though I can't quite put my finger on what exactly that would be yet? Maybe I'm only going through a phase. Sometimes I look through my CD collection and nothing sounds appealing. Other times, I can't narrow down what to listen to because it all sounds good. I suppose it's possible my appreciation of art is deepening. Maybe I just crossed a threshold where I've examined enough media so that I can better recognize what is good and what is bad.

We saw a bad movie at the festival. The title was The Art of Travel, and I suggest you avoid it. I honestly can't believe a movie of this low quality was accepted into the festival... not only that but it actually seems to be receiving some praise (!). It was billed as Into The Wild meets The Motorcycle Diaries, but it was instead a poorly done rip-off of both of those movies. I've seen better acting on Saved by the Bell. The script had to have been written by a 13-year-old. It was filled with meaningless, gratuitous scenes leading to out-of-nowhere, forced "revelations." The dialogue was worse than cliché. If the editing were any good, there wouldn't have been a film because it would have all ended up on the cutting room floor. I don't think they can blame any of these problems on the budget, as I've seen much better movies made with much less.

To top it off, the presentation was awful. They announced ahead of time that they had the wrong lens for the projector, so the frame was squeezed to 4:3. But even the right lens wouldn't have helped the pixelated, DV resolution or the mono sound that was continuously peaking out of only one side of the theater! Oh yeah, and it took a while for the projectionist to get the DVD player figured out. First they accidentally showed us a trailer of the movie we were about to see, and then they started the movie at the end of it and "rewound" it to the beginning. Good thing there wasn't anything to spoil.

I expected more out of a large, respected film festival like this one. Maybe I need to see another movie to give the festival a chance to redeem itself. At least I have renewed hope that I could one day get my own film accepted. And it's good to see a bad movie once in a while, if for no other than reason than so that I can appreciate the good ones.