Mary Ellen Geist's Blog (7)

It’s odd to sit in a dark movie theatre and cheer for a woman who set her father on fire and likes to terrorize and tie up people, and tattoo things like “sadistic pig” on their stomachs while they are unconscious.…

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I had heard quite a bit about this film: interviews with the stars, Catherine Keener and Amanda Peet; discussions about a moment in the film when Keener’s character, Kate, tries to give a man she thinks is homeless her

doggie bag from a New York restaurant, but it turns out he’s a customer waiting

in line. I had also heard about a controversial scene in which Keener’s

character and her husband buy

their daughter a pair of 230 dollar bluejeans. I was…

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The premise is so simple. The story seems so small: an unemployed, dirt-poor writer with no business experience decides to open an eco-friendly organic vegetarian food stand in a park in Austin and finds meaning, love and success in the process. But there is nothing small about this

film at all. It was the first standing ovation I experienced at the Traverse City…

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Ever since Michael Moore launched the first Traverse City Film Festival six years ago, I have wondered: where do the filmmakers and film lovers from all over the world go to play late at night in Traverse City, after all the movies and interviews and obligatory social events are over? I found out tonight: for many of them, especially filmmakers from out of town, it's the Park Place Hotel, on the Tenth Floor. Continue

Headed from Lars Hockstad to the The Opera House for the 3:00 show of “The Tillman Story.” The mood of the crowd seemed to change as we entered the auditorium, which was more stately and formal than the previous theatre. Perhaps it was an instinctive sense of needing to switch from the frivolity of the first full day of the Traverse City Film Festival morning, and

the lighter and more humorous films most of us had seen thus far, in…

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