A few good shorts

The 21st annual Cinequest Film Festival is finishing up this weekend in downtown San Jose. Though the festival runs for 12 days - and I love movies - I opted just to catch two shorts programs so far this year. The festival has a variety of feature films and documentary films, as well as visits from a few celebrities, including AnnaSophia Robb and John Turturro.

One of my favorite parts of the festival is the shorts programs because it's one of the few venues to see good quality short-format films locally. This is not the stuff of YouTube videos.

Some of these shorts have budgets up to $10,000 or credits that run as long as a feature film. I sat through two shorts programs last Saturday, "Expectations," which included 11 films and "Slanted," which had five films. The pieces are as unique as the many filmgoers who filled downtown venues throughout the week. Some of the shorts were funny and light-hearted, while others tackled taboo subject matters that were difficult to watch.

The funny thing about the first shorts program being called "Expectations" is that it turns out that my expectations for the day versus my boyfriend's expectations were much different. I wanted to see the first program, which seemed like it might have more fun stuff in it and he wanted to see the darker movie in the second set. I suggested we buy tickets for both and then grab lunch in between. He said we should watch the first screening and then see if we felt up to seeing the second one.

I finally figured out why he hesitated at seeing not one, but two shorts programs, when we excited the theater after watching "Expectations." His first response was that the films were way better than he had expected. It seems he was anticipating low-budget films, with poor quality acting - sort of the stuff you might see on YouTube or in a student film festival. But he was pleasantly surprised by most of the films and I was content with them as well. He liked them enough to sit through a second batch of movies later in the day.


The person in charge of the Cinquest short films sets it up so that the movies are divided into several programs - so viewers can expect to see films that have something in common. Last year I saw films about kids growing up. The "Expectations" movies all have some sort of twist in the end that plays with what viewers' expectations are for the outcomes. "Slanted" was described as a slate of movies about people who have a skewed view of the world.

The first film for the "Expectations" set was probably exactly what my boyfriend was expecting for all the films. It was low quality and it was titled "Dry." It showed a person looking into a refrigerator at a bottle of booze. And then closing the refrigerator. It was short, probably under a minute long, with no dialogue and bad lighting.

But the great thing about a shorts program is that you get some bad films, but since you are seeing several movies chances are there will be some really good ones, too. With Cinequest, if you pick a random feature film, it's either bad or good. It's hard to know from the short descriptions in the program guide.

Of the 11 films, I liked eight of them. "Dry." was the only one I really disliked and the rest were okay. A short film can really be a challenge. It's like a short story - it shouldn't feel like a chapter in a book, but an entity that can stand on its own. It should feel complete. It needs to have enough background and characters that are well-enough developed to grab our attention in way less time than a feature film. It should make us feel something.

Some of the pieces felt a little bit like a prelude to something more or like something was missing. That was the case with "Wonder Boy," a movie about a college student who gets caught up with dealing drugs. The movie didn't have any clear closure, and the filmmakers, who talked after the screening, said they were making it with hopes of expanding it to a feature.

"Liv," a foreign film about a young girl who is a little on the wild side, also seemed a bit incomplete to me. The movie was funny, but it alluded to things that were never touched on again. For instance, the film starts with a blond-haired girl talking to her mother on the phone about how her father likes boys now and his boyfriend has moved in. In an off hand comment the boyfriend notes that the child's mother is dead. But no more is mentioned in the film and it ends on a jokingly upbeat note.

One of the pieces that felt most complete to me was "Mam," a black and white Scottish film. In it, a young teen gets his siblings up and off to school. Their mother is sick in bed. The movie had a lot of characters, but the focus remained on the teen and everything the other people did just added to explaining what he was all about. The movie has a twist at the end, which wasn't entirely unexpected, but the acting was good enough to make it one of the better pieces.

I also liked "Capture the Flag," one of two movies that featured an actor who has been seen in mainstream pieces. The movie is about a teenage girl who is going to the woods with her father and a group of friends or neighbors to play a game of capture the flag. She wants her father, played by Scott Cohen, to allow her to capture the flag this year. He has a boy from another family selected to be on the offense, and says he needs her on defense to guard the flag. The film is set in the 1960s, and what we know is that her mother is in a mental institution. She is on the cusp of adulthood - a lot of the other teens have moved on to not caring about the game. The movie captures the loss of some innocence for her.

One of the crowd favorites seemed to be a short called "The Same Old Story." It was in Spanish and starts with a guy standing on a bus, talking loudly on a phone. At first, the other bus riders seem annoyed with him, but soon enough, they are drawn into his tale of woe. His wife has left him and is at the house looking for a piece of jewelry while he has been out looking for a job - he is unemployed. He begs his wife to stay just long enough so that he can get home to see her - not for another chance, but just to see her for a few minutes. The other riders get so engrossed they stay on the bus past their stops and the driver speeds through a tunnel so the man won't lose his cell phone signal. I even found myself getting a little teary-eyed at his speech and recall of his happier times with his ex-wife. But since the name of the program was "Expectations," I should have known there was a twist. The film got me with the twist, and from the sound of the laughter in the theater, almost everyone else in the theater. I won't give away the ending for anyone who is lucky enough to see it.

As for "Slanted," some of the movies were exceptionally well made, but the movies were exceedingly hard to watch.

The first film was called "The Dive," and its about a bartender who has just gotten into med school in another state. The movie starts with the young man at a hospital, picking up a woman who has attempted suicide. It turns out to be his mother. So we know things aren't perfect with his life from the start. But things take a sudden turn when a man walks into the bar late at night to order a drink. He instantly recognizes the man, but we don't know why. The filmmakers talked about the movie after the screenings and said they wanted to make a story about people who have a hard time letting go of the past. The film slowly reveals how the young man knows the older one and why he is not able to let things go.

The movie was a downer, but not nearly as much as the second one. The movie was made by a group of filmmakers who got funding from the American Film Institute, and the film was made for under $30,000. The acting is good, but the movie's subject is gritty and in your face. "Silencio Fuerte," or "Hard Silence," follows a girl in her late teens or early 20s as she struggles to get away from an abusive mother - physical, verbal and sexual abuse. The footage is raw and graphic, and even days after seeing it, I couldn't get it out of my head. It was a well-made film, just not something I would have willingly chosen to watch. The filmmakers talked about making the film after the screening and they said they wanted to open dialogue about a subject that is not discussed.

Of the other films, one of them was a bit of a bizarre Swedish film, in which two guys roam the country side in search of a cup of coffee. It wasn't very funny and I didn't really get the point of it. The last film was called "Hollow," and it followed a couple who try to get clean from heroin before their baby is born. The actors had a Scottish or some sort of British accent, and the film felt a little bit like "Trainspotting"-Lite. It wasn't long enough to really draw out the characters the way I wanted them to.

The only film in the "Slanted" program that I liked was "Tapeworm." A teen at an all-girls school has such bad body image that she wants to eat a tapeworm so that she can lose weight. Her much skinnier, perkier best friend, however, wants the tapeworm for herself. The movie was an interesting look at how skewed a woman's perception of herself can be and also how mean girls can be to each other.

I liked enough of the films to make the day worthwhile, and I think I have a willing partner for next year's Cinequest.

Lentil soup warms a cold, winter evening

It's only March, and I've made quite a bit of progress on resolution no. 12. Of course, it is an easy one since I like cooking, and the food column I write for the Pinnacle life section gives me plenty of reasons to cook new recipes almost every week.

I am not an adventurous eater so sometimes I need a little coaxing to try something new. In fact, until a few weeks ago I am not sure I had ever eaten a lentil before. The only reason I did try lentils is because my boyfriend was nice enough to take me to my favorite Italian restaurant for dinner in downtown San Jose. Il Fornaio offers a special passport menu for a couple weeks each month and our Feb. 13 meal happened to coincide with the Puglia region of Italy. I persuaded him to order the taste of Puglia, a three-course meal that includes a small salad or soup, a small pasta dish and a full-size main course, so that I could try a baked pasta and meatball dish, but still order my old favorite standby.

For the first course, he ordered a lentil soup with farro, barley and vegetables. I didn't really have any intention of trying the soup, but since he offered to share it I thought I would give it a little taste. I am sure I've never eaten farro or lentils before, and I was pleasantly surprised that I actually liked it quite a bit. We ended up splitting the soup about evenly between us.

About a week later, when the weather turned wet and rainy, I decided it was time for a column about soup. And inspired by the meal at Il Fornaio, I decide to try my hand at making a lentil soup at home. The great thing about soups is that they usually don't take much work beyond chopping up some vegetables. And it's easy to speed them up for weeknight meals by using store-bought chicken broth as a base. My mom did most of the prep work for the soup one Thursday night before I got home from work. In fact, my main job was to bring it all to a boil, then lower it to a simmer and cover for about 30 minutes, checking on the tenderness of the lentils.

The recipe incorporated some of the same flavors I remembered from the restaurant dish, such as carrots, celery and onion. At the very end, elbow macaroni or another kind of pasta can be tossed in to add a little more hardiness to the dish. My only problem was estimating when the lentils would be done. I didn't want to overcook them, so I tossed in the macaroni about 40 minutes after the lentils had been simmering. The pasta cooked in about five minutes, but the lentils could have cooked a bit longer. Unfortunately, at that point, I risked really overcooking the pasta.

The soup was dished up, served with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese and then drizzled with a little bit of extra virgin olive oil. Everyone liked it, and my boyfriend even drove more than an hour in stormy, rainy weather to eat some of it. I gave him most of the leftovers to take home, for his effort. The soup held up well for lunch the next day. It's definitely a soup that has made its way into the winter rotation.


Photo by MELISSA FLORES

Lentil soup is cooked with vegetables and chicken broth, with elbow macaroni added in just for the last few minutes of cooking.

Cinequest turns 21

The only film festival I've ever been to is the Cinequest Film Festival, hosted in downtown San Jose. It's not Sundance or Cannes, but it's close enough that I can usually hit a screening or two each year and it's affordable enough with tickets selling for $10 per screening (a little more for special events.)

It may be in the heart of Silicon Valley, but I've had the chance to see plenty of celebrities at the various events I've attended. Each year the film festival gives a Maverick Spirit Award to a filmmaker or actor of note. In recent years, they have also added events with "emerging" Mavericks, up and coming filmmakers to watch, such as AnnaSophia Robb.

Through the years I have seen William H. Macy, Michael Keaton, Lili Taylor,Edward James Olmos and Benjamin Bratt. This year's maverick is John Turturro, who is featured at tonight's opening night event.

One of the cool things about the festival is that even at the regular screenings, not just the special events, a lot of the filmmakers come into town so guests have a chance to ask about the films. I've heard from actors, directors and producers about what it was like to make the movies that are shown at the festival.

Each year I try to see a shorts program since it is one of the few opportunities to see short films. I like the way Cinequest comes up with new ways to group the short films into three or four programs. In addition to the short films, there are plenty of feature films and documentaries to watch as well.

The hardest thing about Cinequest is trying to decide what to see since there are so many movies from which to choose. The festival runs today through March 12. I won't be able to catch any of the showings on weeknights, but I am looking forward to catching a few this weekend. I plan to catch a shorts program, and hope to hear from at least a few filmmakers.