Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 6, 1993 TAG: 9311060079
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: C12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE MAYO CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Medium
As a group, the films selected were excellent; many of the prints were remarkably clear; the special guests - both the celebrities and those not so famous - had interesting things to say; there were no huge disasters, only the inevitable last- minute changes and mishaps; the crowds were large and enthusiastic; the weather was half-excellent, half-rotten.
Other observations:
Robert Mitchum remembered how good the food was at the Hotel Roanoke, where he stayed when he was in the area scouting locations for "Thunder Road" and stealing actors from the Barter Theatre in Abingdon.
It was a surprise to find that the venerable Virginian restaurant had closed, and the same was true for the little bar Chris Gladden and I visited last year.
The new films were particularly good this year. Two of them - "Ruby in Paradise," a feature, and "The Shvitz," a short documentary - were a lot of fun and radically different from conventional Hollywood fare.
The two young stars of "Ruby in Paradise" have real promise. Ashley Judd, sister and daughter of the singing Judds, has already been getting raves, and Bentley Mitchum, grandson of Robert, is doing a good job in villainous roles in low-budget films.
On the minus side, some of dignitaries tended to be long-winded in the presence of a microphone. When the chairman is there to introduce the dean who's going to introduce the producer who's going to introduce the actor, it all gets ridiculous.
Also, it would have been nice, at some point in the weekend, to have had a social gathering that was within reach of most the folks who were there. Tickets to the Saturday Night Festival Celebration at Keswick Hall cost $75 apiece. The exclusive nature of the gathering wasn't lost on the crowd.
There's nothing wrong with that kind of pricey affair, of course. One of the festival's objectives is to entice filmmakers from other parts of the country to work in Virginia. Those people aren't going to be impressed by takeout from Taco City. At the same time, though, there should be something else on a beer-and-pretzels level for the people who come to the festival simply because they love movies.
And those people shouldn't have been disappointed by what they saw. The recent emphasis on film preservation is paying off. In past years, the prints of relatively recent films like "Badlands" and "Nashville" looked like they'd been around the block a time or two.
This year, every print I saw was virtually flawless. Sure, there were some reel-change problems with "Farewell, My Lovely," but things like that are going to happen. I ducked in to catch a few minutes of several favorites I'd seen recently and was impressed by all of them. Much of the credit goes to David Francis of the Library of Congress, which provided several restored films.
Special credit also goes to Laura Oaksmith and the rest of the festival staff. In dealing with those of us who were looking for interviews and information, they were fast, friendly and informed. If they didn't have an answer right away, they found it and made sure it got passed along.
I suspect that their success will raise expectations for next year, though they will have a hard time coming up with a theme as popular as film noir, which, by the way, was suggested by critic Roger Ebert.
1994 might be too soon for film noir, part deux, but it's not a bad idea.
by CNB