There’s something about Texas and independent filmmaking, I don’t know what’s in the water over there, but something seems to be giving them an edge. They seem to be able make films without giving into the system that slows and destroys many Hollywood productions. An Ordinary Family is the perfect example of a team of filmmakers that still have a love for the art and a respect for their colleagues that gives their film a heart and soul that’s refreshing to see on the big screen.

I had the chance to sit down with the makers of the film, Director/Writer Mike Akel, Writer/Producer Matt Patterson, and Actor/Associate Producer Richard C. Jones at LA Film Festival while their film was playing at the festival and talk to them about putting together such a fine independent film…

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The 2010 LA Film Fest had another success with the North American premiere for the Japanese gone Hollywood film, Golden Slumber – an intentional reference to the classic Beatles song which is sung multiple times over in the film. The funny thing about this film is that it felt very much like an American action film with a bit more edge and better characters.

The film is about a sweet, gullible guy named Aoyagi who is framed for assassinating the Prime Minister. Due to his sweet nature, a lot of favors and some good friends, he’s able to fight back against a group of scary government officials who are trying to trap him.

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The 2010 LA Film Festiva is over, the awards have been given out and Downtown LA will once again be the dirty area of the city it once was. Below we list all the main awards, the first of which are the most important (I think) the Audience Awards. Everyone attending the film is handed a piece of paper and able to rate the films 1-4 (one being the lowest and then the highest) while walking out of the theaters. Then we have the big money winners and other jury picks.

Check the out now…

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Monsters, is a pleasant surprise from the LA Film Festival this year and reminder that quality doesn’t always come with money. The film is reminiscent of many monster/horror films gone by, but brought together in an organic way that makes it an entirely new beast. The film truly abides by the indie spirit — it cost what most studio films would spend on Starbucks in a day and as the Director Gareth Edwards told us after the screening its entire cast and crew could fit into one mini-van, they had one Sony EX3 camera, no lighting, no “script” and no idea as to where they were going to be shooting until they got there nor what they would be adding later with special effects.

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It’s clear that the LA Film Festival is feeling the budget cuts. Aside from the lack of food and beverages at the venue, they moved the festivals from the clean streets of Westwood to Downtown LA, a notoriously conspicuous part of the city. For the most part the festival is rather safe, you park in one big structure and stay within the safe walls filled with mainly only filmmakers and the usual film crowd surrounded by security. The decision didn’t strict me as entirely insane until I heard this…

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The LA Film Festival wrapped up on Sunday night with the closing gala of Ponyo, Miyazaki Hayao’s latest. Not being a great fan of animation, Miyazaki, or twee children’s dross I gave it a miss, although I may just be a curmudgeonly old cinephile with no soul. But if I’d seen that I’d have missed the sole screening of United Red Army, which was well worth the effort: a three-hour docudrama about the paramilitary student radical movement in Japan in the sixties and first two years of the seventies, culminating in a recreation of the Asama-Sanso Incident police siege for which the director used and destroyed his own house.

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Ready to laugh your ass off and cry your eyes out? Probably one of the most honest, heartfelt, and feel good movies of the LA Film Festival is After the Storm directed by Hilla Medalia.

The film follows a group of legendary New York Broadway actors Gerry McIntyre, James Lecesne, Randy Redd, who were inspired to help the youth of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The problem is, they didn’t know what to do, so they decided that the best way for help was to do what they knew best, put on a show!

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Wakamatsu Kôji’s United Red Army - the Path to Asama Mountain Lodge was the the final installment of the “films that got away” at this year’s LA Film Festival. Its Japanese premiere was in Yufuin back in 2007 and it has since played to great acclaim in Berlin, London and Turin, finally making its way to the US last night.

The film divides roughly into three sections across its three-hour running time and culminates in the infamous 1972 mountain lodge siege, the last stand refuge of five members of the radical leftist student group, the United Red Army. A title announces at the start that the film is factual, but with fictional elements interposed, and it begins with a dizzying documentary recap of radical student action from 1960 to 1971, comprised of newsreel footage, statistics of actions and arrests, and a frankly bewildering number of name and age captions for the actors and actresses who gradually pop up. From the humble beginnings of objections to raised tuition fees the various student groups combine, divide, get bitten by the bug of communism, fight amongst themselves, hijack aeroplanes, train in Palestine and eventually two of the paramilitary factions join forces to become the United Red Army.

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In association with the estimable Film Foundation, the LA Film Festival presents a spanking new restored print of LA favourite Curtis Harrington’s debut feature, Night Tide (1961). It kicks off like a seaside noir, with sailor Dennis Hopper tooling around the night-time Venice promenade before wandering into the scene at a basement jazz club. Amidst the hipsters and hopheads he spies a mysterious and elegant young woman, who’s scared away by a scary old lady speaking a weird language.

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