I'm starting the 2nd to last day of the Sedona Intl Film Festival and I for once got plenty of sleep last night since I made a successful effort to skip the nightly party.

In a few minutes I have to head off to a 9:30 film but I want to quickly mention something I realized yesterday: there is one thing that sort of in a way magically makes up for all the things I've been cynically and grumpily griping about for the last few days regarding the fest and film fests in general. The thing is THE FILMS THEMSELVES, or at least the cream of the crop of them, the few that really stand out and you see and you think, wow, that is one of the best films I've seen in a long time, or maybe ever, and I may have never seen it ever, because so many films in festivals never get distribution, never even get to DVD, or if they do they perhaps don't get the proper promotion and you never hear about them.

So I glad I'm here, namely for 2 films in particular that I have seen and really stand out: The Speed of Life by Ed Radtke and Selfless by the Pander Brothers - both of these film totally blew me away and made me happy to be here. And I should add that the Pander Brothers are from Portland (and are good friends of my Tucson pal Carl Hanni), and have been an absolute pleasure to meet and talk with at the various festival parties, and their film has lots of beautiful art direction and locations from Portland - but it's a sort of dark, soulless version of Portland, a critical vision of the yuppified, gentrified, "creative class" zones of Portland. And there's lots of great music and score by Portland music folks including Auditory Sculpture.

Neither of these film have distribution yet, but I pray that they will because you all need to see them!