Cinequest Mar 2

So tonight is The Girl With the Exploding Dragon Tattoo. Oh, wait, they’re different films. One must admit a tattoo of an exploding dragon would be sweet. 9pm at the magnificent California Theater: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, based on the Scandinavian best seller about a pair of investigators tracking down the real story of a ghastly string of murders.
By contrast, The Exploding Girl (Cam 12, 7pm) is almost like a palimpsest of Gabi/Roof/July, with Zoe Kazan (the writer gal in Orson Welles and Me, and DiCaprio’s girl-on-the-side in Revolutionary Road). Kazan is Ivy, an NYC lady who has to put up a friend for the summer. Whether or not an affair will break out: that is the question. Kazan got best actress at Tribeca for this Bradley Rust Gray film. Trivia: Gray’s movie Salt (filmed in Iceland!) was a visual influence on Sin Nombre, according to director Cary Fukunaga.

Earlier, at 7pm, Dr. Deepak Chopra will let the shining light of his countenance dispel all bad vibes at the festival. He’s at the California Theatre to sort of, I don’t know, wash over all of us, and to receive a Life of a Maverick award.
Later at night, if you want those bad vibes back, is a documentary about the discovery of hidden relics of the Holocaust at Maidenek concentration camp Buried Prayers, at 9:15. Or you could just go see some cartoons.

Shorts Program 4 has several standouts, but mong the animated work there is a shocker by Chris Landreth, The Spine, just about my favorite things at this entire fest. Landreth got the Oscar in 2005 for Ryan, whose story about his fellow Oscar nominee, the animator Ryan Larkin, whose life was ruined by substance abuse. The new one was a little too tough for the academy, apparently…a frightening story of a discovery at a group therapy session and  one of those films that proves (Jarrod W. should pardon the expression) hell is other people.