Rotterdammerung, Ledger

I'm off to the Rotterdam Film Festival tomorrow night, which is making me all atwitter. I was accepted into the Trainee Program for Young Film Critics (look - there's me!), which gets me press accreditation and a healthy helping of Dutch wit. Being the first big film festival I've attended, I plan on seeing an unhealthy amount of cinema and very little of the Netherlands. The photo above is a still from Garin Nugroho's new documentary, Teak Leaves At The Temples, which I'll be soaking in shortly: "Two extremes in music were brought together: western free jazz, leaning entirely on improvisation, and the local traditional music of Java as it has been played for centuries around the Borobudur Temple." It's a concert film I'm looking forward to far more than, say, U2 3D, which is premiering at some festival in Utah.

I'll be sending a few dispatches to IFC News, so check out that fine site for my polished thoughts on the fest. Hopefully I'll find some time to update the more unsavory aspects of my trip on the blog, but I may be too burnt out and/or hallucinatory to find the time.

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My favorite Heath Ledger performance was his incredibly funny turn in Lords of Dogtown. Effortlessly aping the mannerisms of a surfer/stoner megalomaniac, and emplyoing a rapid fire mealy-mouthed delivery, it was a tour-de-force comic performance that slowly edged into tragedy. A truly idiosyncratic effort.