NY Times tale lacking but ‘Elmo’ is inspired

IT was with some trepidation that The Guide sat down with a couple of pre-screeners for this year’s New Zealand International Film Festival, the Gisborne leg of which opens today.
Art films and feature documentaries generally provide the most satisfying watching around — but when they go bad, they go really, really bad.
The pair of preteens that made up the rest of the lounge-side audience certainly thought things were off to a rotten start.
In its early minutes feature documentary Being Elmo, from US director Constance Marks, was declared “booorrrriiinnng” — and this in the face of its having won a Special Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
And then . . . silence. Though the doco is not designed for an audience of kids, the young viewers were completely captivated by this compelling tale of how a young black bloke from Baltimore realised his dream of becoming a top-flight puppeteer.
Now in his early 50s, Kevin Clash was aged just nine when puppeteering benchmark Sesame Street debuted in 1969. His dedication to making his own puppets and fine-tuning his performances is inspiring, as is the extraordinary generosity of mentors including industry greats Jim Henson and Kermit Love (seriously). And for the past 31 years he really has been the life-force behind what is possibly one of the world’s most famous puppets — the furry red Elmo.
Right kids, off to bed . . . the journo-geek adult in the house wants to watch Page One: Inside the New York Times.
Another feature docu-mentary, Page One professes to get the scoop on what goes on at one of the world’s most influential newspapers.
Director Andrew Rossi keeps the action moving while focusing on two reporters — old-schooler David Carr and journo-of-the-internet-age Brian Stelter. For this geek Page One was a little clumsily-drawn . . . Carr the hard-hitting gravel-voiced former crack addict; Stelter the baby-faced screen jockey. It was, however, an intriguing look at how a bunch of committed scribes work to keep up standards and get the story on the street in what was, for newspapers, pretty tough times.
There are still 24 more films to see in the Gisborne line-up of the festival and, judging by the programme, many are real crackers.
Among The Guide’s picks of the festival are the Homegrown showing of six Kiwi shorts; the architecture porn of How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster?; and Fire In Babylon, US director Stevan Riley’s exuberant documentary about the transformation of the West Indies cricket team into world-beaters.
And, of course, there’s animated French film A Cat In Paris. That really is one for the kids. ■ The Gisborne leg of the NZ International Film Festival is on at the Odeon Multiplex until November 16.