The do-we decimal system

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12/4/2008 - 12/5/08

The ninth annual Santa Fe Film Festival continues Friday, Dec. 5, through Sunday, Dec. 7, with an array of screenings, panel talks, workshops, and parties. Screenings are $10 each; tickets are available from the festival's box office, which is at 519 Cerrillos Road (just north of Sage Bakehouse), 989-1495. See santafefilmfestival.com for full details. Here is a list of 10 Pasatiempo favorites.

THE CAKE EATERS (96 minutes) Mary Stuart Masterson, the coltish ingénue of Fried Green Tomatoes, has turned to directing. With this sensitive story of love young and old, she makes a promising debut. At the heart of the story is Georgia, a teenage girl with a debilitating nerve disease. Georgia knows she can expect a short life, and she doesn't want to die a virgin. She's played with a bracing lack of self-pity by Kristen Stewart (Twilight), a talented young actress who recalls Ally Sheedy and perhaps a bit of the youthful Masterson. The action takes place somewhere in small-town upstate New York, where the recently widowed local butcher (Bruce Dern) lives with his two sons (Aaron Stanford and Jayce Bartok, the latter of whom wrote the screenplay), who are coming to terms with the death of their mother. Over on Georgia's side of town, her mother (Melissa Leo) is overprotective, while her free-spirited grandmother (Elizabeth Ashley) tries to cut the girl some slack. There are interconnected relationships everywhere and secrets and skeletons in every closet, but Masterson handles it all with quiet elegance. (6:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 5, The Screen, College of Santa Fe campus, 1600 St. Michael's Drive, 473-6494) — Jonathan Richards

CRAWFORD (75 minutes) "It doesn't matter what the cowboy is doing — he's always doing the right thing." So says one high school student in Crawford, Texas, commenting on a possible reason that President George W. Bush chose to make this small ranching community his "hometown." Filmmaker David Modigliani's documentary is not just insightful about the psyche of a small town; it is also fun to watch as it covers the changes the community faces as the president moves in. There are some benefits, all right: the townsfolk get to have lunch with Dick Cheney and meet former Mexican President Vicente Fox. On the other hand, real-estate prices skyrocket; the media descends upon the town; and when Iraq War protester Cindy Sheehan shows up to demand a one-on-one meeting with the president, tensions and tempers flare. Crawford comes across as a town where God, football, friendship, and coffee are all important and where personal, political, and religious beliefs die hard — if at all. (3:15 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 7, New Mexico Film Museum, 418 Montezuma Ave., 476-5670) — Robert Nott

GUEST OF CINDY SHERMAN (94 minutes) This very watchable and sometimes wacky film by directors Paul Hasegawa-Overacker (Paul H-O is his preferred public name) and Tom Donahue runs like a series of home movies spliced together to give us a fascinating insider's look at the New York art scene. More than that, Guest of Cindy Sherman is about identity: multiple identities, celebrity status, and lost identity. Among a cavalcade of big-time New York artists, gallerists, and a few Hollywood types, the star of the film is photographer and queen of costume Cindy Sherman, who unabashedly reveals herself. In an evolving relationship that results from a series of interviews conducted by H-O for his public-access television show Gallery Beat, he and Sherman go from being total strangers to living together. Sandwiched between footage of Sherman's unexpectedly schoolgirl-like behavior in the presence of H-O are some poignant points relating to her work. That in itself makes this a valuable documentary about a major artist. But the story within that narrative about H-O's loss of identity via his relationship with Sherman is sad and even pathetic to watch. (3:15 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 6, and 7:45 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 7, The Forum, College of Santa Fe campus, 1600 St. Michael's Drive, 473-6011) — Douglas Fairfield

MURDER OF A HATMAKER (84 minutes) There are some topics that remain a source of terrifying intrigue many years after they occur. The Holocaust is near the top of the list. In this documentary, French filmmaker Catherine Bernstein looks into the short life of her great aunt Fanny Berger, a Parisian Jew. Fanny Berger rejected her family to realize her career ambitions in couture, and consequently only a few photographs of her, together with a small amount of ephemera, remain. Bernstein makes up for this lack of information, however, as he researches the French archives, where the documentation and records of the Vichy regime — which wholeheartedly collaborated with the Nazis — provides a systematic and meticulous catalog of the restrictions, deportations, and deaths of French Jews. As more and more restrictions were brought to bear on Jews, Fanny and her friends tried to escape France, were caught and imprisoned, and began the journey to the death camps. In a very short time Fanny went from being one of the most popular hat makers in Paris to being murdered in Auschwitz. Along the way she was banned from interacting with her customers, forced to answer to an official overseer placed in her studio, and eventually made to sell her business. (11:15 a.m. Friday, Dec. 5, The Film Center, 1616 St. Michael's Drive, 988-7414) — Jill Battson

SHOOT FIRST AND PRAY YOU LIVE (100 minutes) Lance Doty's directorial debut comes off as a respectable tribute to the revenge-driven spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s. Shot in Santa Fe and using a mostly local cast, it relates the famous frontier story of the rivalry between Red Pierre and Bob McGurk via sharp animation (by Bill Plympton), bloody gun duels, and dark humor. For a low-budget oater, Shoot First is surprisingly well shot, well acted, and mostly well scripted (though it's a bit talky and repetitious in places). A discussion between two gunmen about bee stings is pretty funny, and the use of flashbacks and split-screen imagery, while not particularly original, effectively works to move the story forward. (3:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 5, Regal DeVargas, DeVargas Center, 564 N. Guadalupe St., 988-2775) — R.N.

STUPID TEENAGERS MUST DIE (76 minutes) OK, this one is probably best left to teenagers (smart or stupid) and fans of 1980s low-budget horror movies. Jeff C. Smith directs a no-name cast that, for the most part, delivers the goods in paying respectful homage to a not-very-respected genre. Ten teens — a pair of geeks, a switchblade sicko, a calm hero, some screaming sirens, and a pair of lesbians who never stop panting and moaning in a seductive fashion — enter the infamous Murderer McGee House to hold a séance. But as we all know, children shouldn't play with dead things. This film looks like it was made on a budget of about $28; the cinematography is grainy; the sets have bare-bones decorations (and, in one case, skeleton bones); and the special effects are cheesy. That said, the cast is game; there are the expected flashes of nudity; and the spirit is willing — to show up and kill people, that is. Jovan Meredith is particularly good as the hero. (9:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 5, Warehouse 21, 1614 Paseo de Peralta, 989-4423) — R.N.

THIS AMERICAN GOTHIC (63 minutes) Eldon, Iowa (population 998), has been part of your life for quite some time, thanks to a little white house with a very special window portrayed in a painting by Iowa native Grant Wood (1891-1942). In the spirit of documentary filmmaker Errol Morris — who gave us Gates of Heaven in 1978 — comes This American Gothic from Sasha Waters Freyer. Like Morris, Freyer has captured — with humor, local dialogue, and credible references — the persona of small-town America. Along the way, we also learn a thing or two about Wood's iconic painting American Gothic (1930). Part art history and part a portrait of the residents of Eldon, Freyer's film is essentially a sociological study of human pride and can-do attitude in bolstering a struggling local economy by capitalizing on the little house with the Carpenter Gothic-style window that is the town's only claim to fame. T-shirts, bake sales, a street parade, and a tattoo guy who lives down by the river all play into the story. The town aims to have an American Gothic visitors' center built to increase commerce in the town. (10 a.m. Friday, Dec. 5, and 3 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 6, Tipton Hall, College of Santa Fe campus, 1600 St. Michael's Drive, 473-6011) — D.F.

TORN FROM THE FLAG (97 minutes) Klaudia Kovacs' riveting documentary on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution sketches the fragile, shifting lines between war and peace, liberty and tyranny, hope and despair, and life and death. The film examines Khrushchev's conflicted decision to crush the uprising, the United Nations' vacillation over the possibility of intervention, and Eisenhower's exploitation of the tragic events to score propaganda points against the Soviets while Hungary waited in vain for Western help. But it also reveals the serious fears that intervention might have led to nuclear war. Much of the story is told through interviews with surviving participants, including former student radicals, freedom fighters, Communist Party officials, and members of the Hungarian and Russian militaries. There are moments of devastating emotion as the participants remember fallen comrades, shattered hopes, and the death of a dream for Hungary that led to another 33 years behind the Iron Curtain. But eventually the curtain crumbled, the Berlin Wall came down, and the USSR collapsed. For these survivors, that was a process that was set in motion in 1956. (10:15 a.m. Friday, Dec. 5, The Forum, College of Santa Fe campus, 1600 St. Michael's Drive, 473-6011) — J.R.

2:22 (104 minutes) It's refreshing to find a decent noir these days. Here, the perfect heist goes awry thanks to the sexual antics of a kinky television star, a BLT, and some unexpected guests with guns. This sometimes uneven mix of Grand Hotel and The Asphalt Jungle is nonetheless an appealing crime drama, with gritty performances by Mick Rossi (who co-wrote it with director Phillip Guzman), Robert Miano, Aaron Gallagher, and Jorge A. Jimenez as the four hapless thieves. Val Kilmer also scores in a cameo as a quirky, disturbed black-market jeweler. (9 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 6, Regal DeVargas, DeVargas Center, 564 N. Guadalupe St., 988-2775) — R.N.

WIENER TAKES ALL: A DOGUMENTARY (88 minutes) Judging by this engaging documentary from Canadian comic and columnist Shane MacDougall, there's nothing worse — or more unfair — than being forced to re-run a dog race because of human error. Who would have thought dachshund racing was so competitive or that the participants could be so fast, so cute, and so confused? Dog lovers will enjoy this pic, which has been created with a sense of humor, perspective, and concern. The dogs — who sport such adorable names as Noodles, Pretzel, and Baby Love (OK, maybe that's too adorable) — come off as having more integrity than some of their owners. And as the film's opening disclaimer makes clear, the fast-food chain Wienerschnitzel has nothing to do with the movie. (4:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 6, at Regal DeVargas, DeVargas Center, 564 N. Guadalupe St., 988-2775; 4:15 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 7, The Film Center, 1616 St. Michael's Drive, 988-7414) — R.N.