Film-O-Rama opens at Prytania Theatre Friday. The selection of independent and foreign films was curated by the New Orleans Film Society, and 17 different films screen over the course of the week (May 13-19). Among the highlights are the critically acclaimed films Certified Copy, a romance set in Tuscany by Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3-D, The People V. George Lucas, about the fans for whom Star Wars is much more than a cult film, and the festival is screening the 1958 classic starring Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Also screening is the oddity above, Rubber, a horror film/horror film parody about a homicidal tire. It defies description. The short trailer implies everything from tumbleweed Western to Psycho to Reno 911. It likely would become a cult film were director Quentin Dupieux not trying to comment on the devices he is using. There's an audience of film viewers within the film who both talk about the action and interact with it. They are funny at times, but they also disrupt the tension Dupieux is trying to build as the tire stalks a young woman. It's still clever and offbeat, and it's not entirely clear whether Dupieux was more interested in making a horror film or mocking one. But it's like no other film in the amazingly diverse line-up of films in the festival. More on Film-0-Ramahere.
