Coming Attractions

July 27, 2005

Some of the most innovative film directors in the world will be in Northern Michigan this week, drawing inspiration from our tiny towns, piney forests and winey destinations.
What will they take home with them? Ideas for future films, perhaps? Here are some suggestions for flicks we’d like to see at next year’s Traverse City Film Festival, based on current events and sequels to what’s playing now:

• Karl Rove and the Half Bloody Prints: Based on the new Harry Potter novel, this is the fairy tale of a bespeckled wizard who always manages to pull the wiz-kids at Hogitall’s out of a jam, no matter what insanely stupid scheme they dream up. But when Karl is caught red-handed in a treason case, we wonder if even his magic wand is powerful enough to lull the public into its dopey daze once again.

• The Island, Part II: An attractive young couple go to Mackinac Island for the weekend and find to their horror that everyone there is a cone-lickin‘ tourist clone dressed in identical pastel-colored shorts and baseball caps. Slowly it dawns on them that they too are tourist clones!

• Mr. and Mrs. Sick: A wife-beating rock star and his action TV bombshell ex-wife have a love-hate relationship that spans decades. They keep breaking up and making up in a domestic violence action flick that’s splashed all over the tabloids. A tragi-comedy starring Bill Murray as Tommy Lee and Jessica Simpson as Pamela Anderson.

• The Not-So-Fantastic Four: By this time next year we’ll be catching an earful about how John McCain, John Kerry, Joe Biden and Condoleeza Rice are teaming up to use their not-so-fantastic powers in a comic book battle against Dr. Doom, aka Hillary Rodham Clinton. At stake: the leadership of the free world...

• Herbie: Fully Loaded, Again: Herbie is a lefty film geek who attends one too many parties at the TC Film Festival and gets “fully loaded“ at the wine table. He stumbles into the conservative counter-festival across town where a dittohead (also named Herbie) is fully loaded with the ideas of El Rushbo. The two end up sharing a dinner table and yak for hours on their opposing views in an homage to “My Dinner With Andrè.”

• Dark Water -- the Sequel: An attractive single mom and her daughter move to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to get away from the scary side of city life. Unfortunately, they find that a sulfide mine near Marquette is oozing sulphuric acid and deadly heavy metals into the groundwater and streams flowing into Lake Superior. An environmental horror flick based on a true story, coming to a town near you soon.

• War of the Worlds -- Closer to Home:
Giant tripods spread across the desert of a faraway world, sucking up oil to keep their alien petroleum-based culture going at all costs. Local fanatics react by blowing innocent people up in a reign of terror that spreads all over the planet with no end in sight. Rated R for senseless violence and no easy answers.

• Michael and the Fudgie Factory: Thirty film directors win a trip to the wonderful Land of Fudge where a mysterious dude in a baseball cap and his army of Fudgie-Wudgie assistants show them the pleasures of a place that seems too sweet to be true.