AFI Film Festival in LA

Saturday, we got the chance to go to a movie showing at tha AFI Film Festival which just wrapped up yesterday. We aren't normally up on what's going on, but we knew the writer/director, Alex Holdridge, from years gone by, so we went to see In Search of a Midnight Kiss. Alex used to live in Austin, and we were lucky enough to see the premiere of his first movie, Wrong Numbers, and that was great, so we knew what sort of movie we were lining up for, and definitely had expectations.

It didn't disappoint -- it was such a great flick! The premise is simple enough. A guy is depressed after his relationship ends and his career comes to a screeching halt after moving to pursue it. His friends push him to have a date for the New Year's Eve party, so he posts a want ad on Craig's List and the story goes from there. It's a really well-written story with very human characters (no caricatures here). I'm sort of surprised it's being billed as a romantic comedy, because it's missing all the schmaltz and predictability that we've come to expect from that genre. This is more like a relationship drama with some laugh-out-loud scenes in it. We stayed for the Q&A after the film, and found that a lot of this story is autobiographical, and the whole thing was filmed in 16 days. What an accomplishment, to take a real-life tragedy and turn it into such a winning movie so quickly and on a shoestring budget. Alex's parents were there at the screening, and I'm sure his mother was crying tears of pride for her baby's obvious success.

If you get a chance to see this one, take it. Good stuff.