http://www.variety.com/graphics/variety_com_31hi.gif http://www.variety.com/ 135 31 http://www.variety.com The premier source of entertainment news. Turn to Variety.com for timely, credible articles, reviews and analysis of film, TV, music, theater, video, gaming and movie and television production -- information vital to your showbiz career. en-us Copyright 2008, Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. For non-commercial use only. webeditors@reedbusiness.com webeditors@reedbusiness.com http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937622?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 7/4/2008 12:16:27 PM Film Festival Reviews: The lives of a foreman, a doctor and a high school prof touch tangentially during the frantic run-up to Chinese New Year in "The End of Year," a wry multicharacter ensembler that builds into an involving, very human portrait of everyday life in contempo Beijing. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937611?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 7/2/2008 5:34:38 PM Film Festival Reviews: Observational docu "End of the Rainbow" puts the human factor first and lets viewers draw their own conclusions about big-picture politics as it charts the establishment of a multinational gold mine in a remote part of Guinea. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937605?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 7/2/2008 3:01:45 PM Film Festival Reviews: More a provocation than a fully realized film, "Memorial Day," New York experimental theater director Josh Fox's feature debut, strives for a bold connection between spring-break party excess and Abu Ghraib. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937595?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 7/1/2008 2:59:36 PM Film Festival Reviews: The awkward pushes and pulls between two lonelyhearts are patiently registered in Mike Gibisser's quiet and furtive "Finally, Lillian and Dan." http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937597?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 7/1/2008 2:24:02 PM Film Festival Reviews: The smell of oil paint, beer, turpentine and fear wafts out of "The Art of Failure: Chuck Connelly Not for Sale," which is less a biodoc than a fractured portrait of the once-prominent New Yorker painter. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937589?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 6/30/2008 7:26:08 PM Film Festival Reviews: A contemplative grace note in NewFest's raucous chorus of self-affirmation, this muted two-hander traces a three-day mourning interlude linking a dead man's lifelong platonic pal to the deceased's Italian lover-in-waiting. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937585?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 6/30/2008 5:55:16 PM Film Festival Reviews: Actor-turned-director Mark Webber combines the worst of two schemes in his debut feature, "Explicit Ills": overweening artistic pretense with a crudely conceived political message. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937584?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 6/30/2008 5:51:35 PM Film Festival Reviews: Based on a true story, "Stone of Destiny" dramatizes how a gaggle of students broke into London's Westminster Abbey on Christmas Eve, 1950, and stole the ancient Stone of Destiny in order to return it to its Scottish homeland. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937583?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 6/30/2008 5:47:17 PM Film Festival Reviews: With roughly 9,000 residents, Trinidad, Colo., is an unlikely place to serve as the "sex-change capital of the world." http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937582?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 6/30/2008 5:42:32 PM Film Festival Reviews: Assorted issues -- dyslexia, adult illiteracy, the plight of careers for the disabled -- are refracted through the prism of drama in "Summer," helmer Kenny Glenaan's well-meaning but schematic third feature. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937581?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 6/30/2008 5:33:52 PM Film Festival Reviews: Sonic Youth has been documented by a host of filmmakers ranging from Jonas Mekas to Braden King, but the leading band of the No Wave movement has never been quite as expressively and thoroughly captured as by the high school crew behind "Sonic Youth: Sleeping Nights Awake." http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937580?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 6/30/2008 5:24:13 PM Film Festival Reviews: "Fate" aspires to the crown of epic Korean gangster sagas like "Friend" and "A Dirty Carnival" but falls short in scripting and doesn't justify its two-hour length. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937579?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 6/30/2008 5:21:05 PM Film Festival Reviews: "Would-be" is the operative term in tabloid documentarians Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato's "Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal," as neither the helmers nor their subject arrive at their expected target. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937578?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 6/30/2008 5:08:40 PM Film Festival Reviews: "Mum & Dad" reps a largely comic spin on the currently popular torture-porn genre, yielding mixed results. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937577?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 6/30/2008 3:49:21 PM Film Festival Reviews: The volatile ups and downs of horse racing are genially, if rather dully, distilled in John Corey's tyro docu. Account of the bittersweet, short-lived career of San Francisco thoroughbred Lost in the Fog illuminates the thinking, risk-taking nerve and pure faith that goes into owning and managing a race horse. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937576?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 6/30/2008 2:55:13 PM Film Festival Reviews: Now in his 60s, durable Franco-Belgian comicbook cowboy Lucky Luke starts off with a bang, meanders in the middle and comes home strong in the amusing toon "Go West! A Lucky Luke Adventure." http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937566?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 6/27/2008 7:47:12 PM Film Festival Reviews: A gently subversive melodrama whose modesty hides an enormous message. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937556?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 6/27/2008 7:46:51 PM Film Festival Reviews: A fourth-generation white Fijian from a prominent colonial family, Owen Scott bravely examines the 2001 murder of his openly gay brother John in "An Island Calling." http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937565?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 6/27/2008 7:45:44 PM Film Festival Reviews: A neatly assembled coming-of-ager set in a provincial Taiwan high school, "Winds of September" is a promising first feature by Cal Arts film grad Tom Lin that only lacks originality and characters to root for. Paced somewhere between a commercial feature and an accessible art movie, the film presents a familiar roundelay of teen bragging, bullying and first love without pushing the envelope much further. Winner of the top prize in the Shanghai fest's New Asian Talent competition, "Winds" looks set to breeze through fests but not into theatrical beyond Asia. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937562?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=4157 6/27/2008 7:44:17 PM Film Festival Reviews: Tale of geeky battle reenactment fans with love-life problems features no big stars, but has mucho Internet and publicity buzz, so even if it loses theatrical battles it could win the war on ancillary.