BICYCLE FILM FESTIVAL This "all-out celebration of bicycle culture…reflects the diversity of bicycling, from urban bikers to road racing to BMXers." Highlights include The Warriors: The Bike Race, about 800 bikers who raced all night from the Bronx to Coney Island in an epic re-creation of the '70s cult gang flick The Warriors.
Is it geeky that I browse film event listings in the newspaper?
I attended the festival's Urban Bike Shorts Program this past Saturday.
Full disclosure: I'm no bicycling enthusiast. I prefer Parkour…
The 90-minute series of bicycle-related short films, headlined by The Warriors: The Bike Race, entertained more than you would think. I exited the theatre with a newfound desire to race through urban traffic on a track bike (no brakes).
Turnout impressed me for a film festival in Los Angeles centered around bicycling. I'd deem the event "ironic" except that I've been self-conscious about misusing the word ever since Alanis released that song.
Folks in the audience actually booed a bicyclist in the Warriors short when he mentioned that he was the only participant from Los Angeles.
If I had one gripe, it was the choice of venue. The Vine Theatre is the shittiest theatre my ass has ever graced. It's dilapidated, malodorous, rarely cleaned and its three employees are straight out of Deliverance.
I never discussed my Murder-Set-Pieces experience at the Vine last December.
Jon's brain: Jon, let's not bother.
Jessica Alba: No… Let's.
Murder-Set-Pieces sucked like a slutty Roomba. Critics totally inflated the gruesomeness of the film as I suspected they would. I'm not sure when my groans became audible — during the scene in which the antagonist fellates himself in his car with the severed head of a prostitute or the scene in which said antagonist does push-ups while his big screen television in the background plays video of Hitler speaking at a Nazi rally.
The Warriors: The Bike Race, which cleverly intersplices footage from the source film, will screen only once more in the States when the Bicycle Film Festival visits San Francisco this fall, at a better venue I hope.
I'm currently scrambling to secure this the next stop on the Adam Riff™ festival circuit. Why must Montreal be so far away?