Additions to your movie collection

By Josh Burrows
Sun contributor
Did anyone besides me feel like they missed out on seeing as many films at the Traverse City Film Festival as they would have liked? Never fear, thanks to some generous people you still have a chance to see most of the films from the last two festivals. Not many people are aware of this, but the film fest organization has been donating extra copies of the films shown to local libraries. Unfortunately they have been unable to provide all of the films, sometimes because there aren’t enough copies and sometimes because they haven’t yet been released on DVD.

Luckily David Diller at The Glen Lake Community Library has been diligently tracking down the movies that the fest couldn’t initially provide as well as the ones that have since been released on DVD and video. At this point, the Library’s 3,000-title DVD and video section contains almost all of the 2005 and 2006 Traverse City Film Festival selections, and room is being made for more titles. The collection is searchable online through the library’s website www.GlenLakeLibrary.net. Just click on the IPAC (internet public access catalog) link. The system is easy to use, and you can even find out if the movie you want is checked out before you go to the library.
If you’re like me, the film festival rolls around right when you’re working the hardest. It can be impossible to plan getting tickets and time off, just when the tourist season is at its peak. So I propose that you all hold your own film festivals, a few months late of course. Below is a list of my top picks from the last two years. I hope you enjoy them, and I hope that if you do, you’ll take advantage of the rest of this great little collection — now a permanent part of our community.
The Killing
First I must give due respect to this year’s featured filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. It would be impossible to describe in a few words the innovation and attention to detail Kubrick brings to his trade, so I won’t even try. I will say this: Kubrick was an avid chess player, and he approached his films as he would a chessboard. Try keeping this in mind when you watch this very early work. Kubrick takes what should have been a simple heist film and turns it into a life and death battle of wills.
Breaking the Waves
It may not be a very far stretch to see the existential overtones in The Killing. In Lars Von Trier’s “Breaking the Waves,” big issues like love and death, fate and God are presented with all the subtleness of a baseball bat. If you haven’t cried, gotten angry, or discussed theology by the end of this movie, well, you just weren’t paying attention.
Gunner Palace and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
I’m a huge documentary fan, and it seems appropriate that the filmmaker who brought us Roger and Me should have some good Docs at his festival. These are two of the best in recent years. They provide a window into events that may have happened only a few years ago, but are still mostly submerged in the flood of sound bites and talking points that we call “the news.” Watching “Enron” and “Gunner Palace” is an eye opening experience, mainly because they remind us of how much is held secret from us.