Last weekend, I watched The Yes Men Fix the World at SIFF. It’s the second documentary about the Yes Men, who are anti-corporate activists who speak at business conferences and pull hoaxes that satirize immoral corporate policy. I wholeheartedly confirm that David Schmader’s review is right on. The thing that saves this movie from becoming a Michael Moore-style proselytizing headache is the Yes Men’s commitment: They hang around long after things become awkward, and it’s that Ricky Gervais-ish commitment to a joke, no matter how painful the experience becomes, that makes the movie work as a comedy.
Unfortunately, we in the theater only saw about ninety percent of the movie. The digital projection at the Neptune was beyond glitchy, skipping the picture around quite often and at times going completely black. The audience was surprisingly patient with the poor projection quality, but this is not making the case for digital projection. It’s done at the festival, but The Yes Men Fix the World will probably come back to town for a week or two in the fall, and I’d advise you to see it—it works as both a comedy and as a documentary. Hopefully our local projectionists will have worked out the bugs by then.
I’m currently ticked at the digital projection at SIFF. As in, HATE. I find the 35mm projection to be much clearer.
I wish SIFF would let us know what format the screenings are going to have. I would probably flock to the 35mm projections.
Same thing happened at Warlords for SIFF – deserved a 5 but so many reel segments lost sound and/or picture that it started to get really irksome.
@1: You can find the format in the printed SIFF catalog. Stupidly they don’t list the info on the web site. They’re too busy creating iPhone apps and doing one-way twittering.
Also, it looks like there may have been a problem with the digital source material of “The Yes Men Fix the World” itself, not necessarily the Neptune’s projection system. The made an announcement about it before the second showing. You probably notice that the glitches only happened during certain cuts/edits in the movie itself. It wasn’t as if someone in the projection booth was randomly fiddling with cords.
Even more stupidly they sometimes list the we’re seeing 35mm when in fact we end up seeing a digital format. It sounds like Paul’s situation is the worst though because the kind of digital glitches he’s speaking of can only be found on DVDs! I can’t believe we suckers are taken at $11 a head to watch a glitchy DVD. And then they have the audacity to ask us for another $35 for a film center! I mean these are the same guys who got all excited to show us Hitchcock in HD. If I wanted to watch Hitchcock in HD I’d rent blueray and stay at my house. The festival is becoming more of a joke each year!
I was there too — wish they would have given us a discount on another movie or something. Oh well though. Yes Men was awesome, awkward, and hilarious.