and the award goes to....

so no I wasn't giving the Academy awards out but I did see 19 feature length films and 30 short films at the 20th Annual Sarasota Film Festival.  Here is some of what I saw-

TUBA TO CUBA-

306 HOLLYWOOD

 

the only film we walked out on (and many left before us- the Frenchman in Florida if it gets released in your area I would skip it-

HALE COUNTY had many touching moments -

saw four groups of shorts and all had gems in them- in the first group we roared at WELCOME HOME- and really liked GLORIA - but not a clunker in the lot in my opinion-

In this next group the best of the lot was definitely BIRTHRIGHT -  but again all worthy of a quarter of an hour of your time-

this group all had local ties and was of interest because of that connection to where we live -
several were entertaining and a couple were sad and a few uplifting... a good mix...

This group was the most diverse and I found all of them appealing on some level but really loved the bottom six with THE BURDEN being my top choice for being full of joy and nuttiness - and HEDGEHOG for just being plain cute!

some of the shorts before films that I saw-

two more I would skip if they show up at your local cinema- the downer On Chesil Beach and the very appropriately named LONG DUMB ROAD- 

my very favorite film was THE KING (which was way more than a film about Elvis and was much more a film about the America he lived in and where we have gone from there--- thought provoking and unsettling for a portion of the audience.  Then I loved the beautiful 306 HOLLYWOOD and was angered by the amazing and extremely well done THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS.  Laughed repeatedly at the over the top el cheapo low budget comedy FEAST OF MAN... found ABOVE AND BEYOND enlightening but disheartening- well worth seeing about environmental issues that NASA is helping us face in order to save the one planet we know we can (could) live on - but maybe not for long....

Nine days of fun and festivities and really only one horrible film - a few not great films and many really excellent films--- keep an eye out for some of these!

and my last class was held on Monday the day after the last night of the SFF - it was on the future of skyscrapers and green architecture- unfortunately due to the film fest I missed the new urbanism lecture but I do have the slides to check out-

It was really an excellent class and I thought the professor was well versed in his subject although to me he looked very young LOL- I will definitely do another class at this college as it is much more conveniently located than the Lifelong Learning Academy has become - plus it was kind of nice to be on a campus again and to have college age classmates - they bring an interesting perspective on things - sometime naive but always earnest in their questions and views... it was ultimately a pleasure to share the lecture hall with the eight to ten of us old folks and the 20-25 of the full time matriculated students 

so now- on to the next adventures - getting ready for Lucy's big spring trip LOL....