April - Wisconsin Film Fest / Day 1

My friend Alex has been going to the Wisconsin Film Festival in Madison, WI for years. Last year we decided to start a nerd-based cultural exchange program: I would join her in Madison for the Film Fest since she comes down to Atlanta to attend Dragon*Con with me. So while she's been going for a while, 2007 was my first year to attend, and I really enjoyed it although I got sick with a bad cold. (Which I was coming down with before I left and in no way blame on the Wisconsin weather.)

The Wisconsin Film Festival takes place over four days in ten different venues in downtown Madison. All of the venues are in walking-distance of one another, and usually the weather has just started to get nice up there when the festival begins, so going from venue to venue is really pleasant. I tend to prefer the narrative films and Alex likes the documentaries, so we'll occasionally split up to attend different movies showing at the same time, but this year for the most part we stayed together.

Since Alex & I attended fifteen films during the festival (and then I attended several more throughout the rest of the month), I've decided to break April up into five parts - one part for each day of the festival, and then another for the remainder of the month. Here goes:

Day 1 (4/3) -

• 20 - Turn the River, starring Famke Janssen as a surprisingly convincing hard-edged pool hustler who's trying to get custody of her son. Alex & I both thought she'd be too pretty to be believable in a role like that, but she nailed it.
• 21 - Waiter, sort of a Dutch Stranger Than Fiction but much more depressing.
• 22 - Mad City Chickens, a documentary about the struggle to legalize raising chickens within Madison city limits. There's a whole city-chicken movement, believe it or not, so you may see a coop going up in your neighbor's backyard before you know it.