FILM FESTIVALS AHEAD!

The film festivals keep announcing their line-ups. Is there anything we can do to stop them? There are so...many. Must...fight.

Looming on the horizon like the Death Star is RomeFilmFest (Oct. 13 - 22), the giant new contender in town that has managed to anger/scare/threaten every other European film festival with its size (95 movies), and its money. Plus it's allied as a "cultural partner" with the Tribeca Film Festival, instantly sweeping away any misconceptions about what side of the good/evil debate it's on. Although, I have to say, I can't get too frightened about a festival that's screening AKEELAH AND THE BEE.

Like Tribeca, Rome has a pretty anemic Asian line-up but that doesn't mean there aren't some good films in there. Shinya Tsukamoto's NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE is in competition, as are AFTER THIS OUR EXILE (Patrick Tam) and THE GO MASTER (Tian Zhuangzhuang). Out of competition you've got two films from the Philippines (surprisingly): HALFLIFE (Briccio Santos) and SUMMER HEAT (Brillante Mendoza). Then there's RIDING ALONE FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES (Zhang Yimou) and HOW IS YOUR FISH TODAY (China, Xiaolu Guo).

In Japan, there's the Tokyo International Film Festival (Oct. 21-29) and Tokyo Filmex (Nov. 17-26) getting announced. Tokyo International Film Fest is screening AWAKING (Junji Sakamoto), Yoji Yamada's LOVE AND HONOR, CRICKETS (Shinji Aoyama) among others.

Filmex opens and closes (respectively) with STILL LIFE (Jia Zhangke) and I DON'T WANT TO SLEEP ALONE (Tsai Ming-liang). There'll be screenings of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's latest, RETRIBUTION, THE HAPPINESS (Masahiro Kobayashi), and more.

(Thanks to Jason Gray and a sharp-eyed reader for the info)