When it comes time to party after the movies, most celebrities tend to skip any mixers with the hoi polloi, or else bail after a very brief token appearance, like they're only partying with the people because it's their job.

Not so Danny Boyle. A Brit who's always dreamed of hanging out in L.A., he hung in there at the closing night party till nearly the end, meeting, greeting, and enjoying the free peach cobbler. My kind of director.

Prior to the screening of his latest movie SUNSHINE, Boyle told of stories he'd read about L.A. When he was younger, notably one about a brand new movie called Alien that was so scary, ambulances had to be parked outside one of the Hollywood theaters to revive people who were fainting from fear. Many years later, he was told it was probably a publicity stunt, which he found very disappointing. But acknowledging that Sunshine has a fair bit in common with Alien, he added that “there may or may not be ambulances waiting outside.”

After spending the other day at the Landmark, surrounded by bookstore windows advertising the latest upcoming boy-wizard bonanza, I had to wonder if I'm the only one who wants to chant "Har-ry Potter and the DEATHLY HALLOWS! Har-ry Potter and the DEATHLY HALLOWS! " in the style of the Beastie Boys yelling about Ali Baba and the 40 thieves.

Hoping readers have the faintest clue what's being talked about here. If not, let's keep moving along. Seated at the free Internet tables in the Red Room pounding out yesterday's blog entry, the guy next to me opined that I looked like a cross between Charlie Sheen and John Cusack.

You see my headshot right there on the left -- what on earth is this guy talking about? I opined that if he were correct, I'd probably get more dates.

Bad move. Shoulda known better. This gives him the opening to talk for about half an hour about how to pick up women. Like I never heard "be yourself" before.

Anyway, let's talk movies...

Thanks to the movie Resolved, discussed in a prior posting, we know that the number one fear Americans have is public speaking, and number two is death.

Dare we suggest that number three might be confinement in a room with a deathly dull public speaker?

It's inside the Billy Wilder Theater, and a group of the artists profiled in a doc we've just seen, titled THE COOL SCHOOL, are coming up to the stage to talk about it. But oh lordy, this moderator...I understand he's an art gallery owner, which is appropriate, but he's not a speaker.

Friday at the fest was a little bit different -- all the interesting-looking films were playing at the Landmark Westside, that new fancy art-house 12-plex at the Westside Pavilion. Parking there is free, unlike in Westwood, where everything else is happening. The trade-off you make is that beer is not free. I tried a $12 Avant-Garde Ale at the theaters beer and wine bar -- it came in a big bottle and was worth $12. A bit French-tasting, so probably not recommended for Republicans.

Likewise, the new Michael Moore movie. Nope, haven’t seen it, but Constantine’s Sword director Oren Jacoby told us that, because Sicko is doing boffo, Michael’s movie got added into another big auditorium, with LAFF wedged into one of the littler places. I have no independent confirmation of this -- but feel pretty certain that the LAFF screen was not the size any festival organizer would pick, given the choice.

This would cause some trouble later on.

Raise your hand if you thought Gavin Rossdale of Bush could be a decent actor. Or a decent anything. Yeah, he got his face melted in Constantine, but that proved nothing.

But Mr. Gwen Stefani really shows something in HOW TO ROB A BANK, as a pill-popping criminal named Simon (after Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran, as it turns out), who apparently didn’t get the memo that “LOVE” and “HATE” tattoos on the fingers went out of style years ago (as per his own lyrics, "love and hate, get it wrong"). Simon is the principal bank robber of the title, whose plans are derailed slightly when a pissed-off, Hobbit-looking good-for-nothing named Jinx (Nick Stahl) gets himself locked in the bank vault during the heist, alongside Simon’s associate Jessica (Erika Christensen). The story that ensues is a four-way stand-off among Jinx and Jessica in the vault, Simon and his armed thugs in the bank, flustered Officer DeGepse (Terry Crews) and his cops outside, and a mysterious man on the other end of Erika’s phone named Nick (voice of David Carradine).

After the claustrophobic overcrowding of Broxton avenue for the LAFF opening night party, I wasn’t expecting the Transformers premiere bash to be as well-run as it was. Adjacent parking lots were opened up, and food and drink were so prevalent that, if you actually ventured all the way in, it was possible to get plenty of both with no waiting.

Half the food was Burger King, which was a letdown, despite the presence of that creepy King guy from the ads. But there was plenty of other stuff too, including a make-your-own chili-cheese dog buffet line with gourmet chicken sausage, Caesar salad shakers, roast veggie wraps, and fancy low-carb pizza. Cotton candy and churro stands were also in effect.

And if you wanted to find a bar -- look up. Each booze-stand was adorned by one of the movie’s Autobots (only in vehicle mode, though a Bumblebee robot was spotted in the street outside). Optimus Prime was in the exclusive press area, but other than that, said area had nothing the rest of the party didn’t have, except too many people.

Have you ever seen a movie that you really liked, but realized you couldn’t recommend it to anybody you know because they’ll probably all hate it?

I’ve been pegged as a contrarian before, but a lot of the time I’m genuinely surprised when people can’t see the merits of a film that I really dig. However, in the case of BUILD A SHIP, SAIL TO SADNESS, I totally get why many will hate it, and why so many walked out during the festival screening.

Picture Borat crossed with The Brown Bunny, minus any nudity. Got that? Now imagine the worst visual quality imaginable -- the movie was actually shot on Hi-8 and transferred to 16mm, but it looks like it was shot on VHS and left unplayed in a closet for ten years. This is deliberate, but ugly as hell, and a major gamble with jaded audiences.

If you’re going to talk during a movie, really do it. I’m talking like they do at the Magic Johnson theater. Yell out something like, “Oh no you didn’t!” or “Bitch, don’t go in there!” That can be fun.

DON’T sit down beside me, and spend the movie murmuring stuff just loudly enough to annoy me, especially if your observations are such gems as, “He did something to her,” or “I like the score.” Thanks, dummy, we were all on pins and needles wondering if some random jerk thinks the music is effective. This was the guy to the right of me during the screening of JOSHUA; I told him to shut up, and that lasted maybe 30 minutes. To my left, my lovely companion, and to the left of her, a bald Persian dude who complained about her text messaging (which is fair game to complain about) only to engage a running commentary throughout, at one point even kinda dancing in his seat, or something.

Remember in the movie version of Silent Hill, how the haunted town was a rural coal-mining community where coal fires burned non-stop underground? That was partially inspired by Centralia, Pennsylvania, subject of Chris Perkel and Georgie Roland’s documentary THE TOWN THAT WAS. In 1962, the townspeople started a “controlled” fire to burn up the local trash heap, but seams of anthracite coal down below caught fire, and have been burning ever since -- all attempts to stop it failed when projects would run out of money, and the government ultimately calculated that it would be cheaper to pay for everyone’s relocation than to actually stop the fire.

Eleven people are left. Most are old men, but one is a 33-year-old named John who has a strong sense of tradition, and a pretty good sense of denial regarding the harm that living on top of a seeping bed of carbon monoxide can cause.

Shane West needs to shut his friends up.

Just as a rule of thumb, actors -- if you’re starring in a movie, and want people to like it, don’t reserve an entire row of seats in the theater for people who are going to annoy the audience. Their enjoyment of your film will be hampered. I don’t know who the two people behind me were that kept muttering throughout, when they weren’t getting up and going to the lobby, or coming back from the lobby, but they were in Shane West’s row. I’d have moved, but for having snagged one of the few seats in the house with great legroom.

Shane stars as Darby Crash in a new movie about punk rockers the Germs, called WHAT WE DO IS SECRET, and presumably Germs fans will know what that title means, because the film never says.

I think I may finally be getting the hang of this festival schedule. Four shows today, and I never felt close to collapsing from tiredness. Perhaps it was the concession food that kept me going. Speaking of which, doesn’t it seem totally wrong that a hot dog is cheaper than a small popcorn? I’m no economic whiz, but meat product, bread, and multiple condiments seems a better option than corn-flavored air dipped in grease. But maybe that’s just because the latter often comes free at press screenings.

Many great screenings have been held in the mighty Mann National -- King Kong, Gladiator, Fantastic Four, and lots more were experienced by me there for the first time, so it’s sad to hear that it will soon be no longer, replaced by a Banana Republic store, of all things. But before the end comes, festival-goers get the last of it, and on this occasion, it was hosting a movie called CHASING GHOSTS, which sounds like a really banal title until you realize it’s referring to Pac-Man. The original obsessed videogamers are the topic of this documentary, from Joel West, who has mapped out all 64,000 possible winning techniques fro Berzerk, to Chris Steele, who chose his own last name in honor of TV’s Remington Steele, and mullet-headed Billy Mitchell, self-proclaimed “player of the century” (and also featured in the upcoming doc King of Kong, about Donkey Kong). Then there’s “Mr. Awesome,” who wears a modified cop uniform, calls Mitchell “Silly Bitchell,” and proclaims to all who will listen that Missile Command is a macho game, unlike Pac-Man, a “candy-ass” game “for girls and chumps.”

What can I say about LIBERTY KID? To be honest, not a lot, except that I liked it. Produced by Larry Fessenden, who’s best known for independent artsy horror, it’s a streets-of-New-York movie about how it’s rough out there, and opportunities slim -- but as far as I know, none of the actors is a famous rapper, and there’s no gratuitous tragedy at the end of the second act. People just keep on keepin’ on, and end up more or less where they started.

Our lead is “Derrick,” actual name Odalis, a Dominican black Spanish-speaker, dubbed “Peace Pipe” because he can get along with blacks and Latinos, played by Al Thompson, a young actor who apparently has 33 credits to his name, though he doesn’t look familiar. Derrick and his best friend Tico (Kareem Savinon, a newcomer who’s just as good as Thompson) work at the Statue of Liberty in September of 2001. Needless to say, shit happens, and they lose their jobs. Derrick struggles to get his GED while being aggressively pursued by army recruiters (in the scene that gets the movie’s biggest laugh, a recruiter insists that war with Iraq is “Not gonna happen”).

Tico, meanwhile, deals drugs, and urges Derrick to do likewise, just for a little while, to make some money. But thankfully this isn’t your typical “drug movie” -- at one point Derrick gets mugged for some money that isn’t his...and nothing happens as a result! No-one tries to kill him, or his family; life just goes on.

PRISON TOWN USA is the best movie I've seen at the festival so far, and the best documentary of this year so far.

Confession time: More often than not, we critics will favorably review a documentary that's kinda boring, if the subject matter is important enough. Even documentaries we like are a little boring sometimes. Rarely do we go to documentaries and think, "Tell me a good story."

But this one does, and it's never boring for a second. But that may be my biases -- I love prison movies, across the board, from the ones about action heroes fighting in prison, to documentaries about convicts who do rodeo.

One of the ideas the festival is heavily pushing this year is that for every movie you attend that you planned on seeing, you should go to another one you don’t know anything about, or might not be inclined to go to normally.

I tend to do this sometimes when I attend something simply because it’s playing at the right time, and thus found myself in BAJO JUAREZ, a movie with the all-lowercase secondary title of “the city devouring its daughters.” It’s a documentary about Juarez, a Mexican town near the U.S. border with work opportunities aplenty due to the maquiladoras, but also an epidemic of teenage girls being abducted, raped, and killed. At one point we’re told there have been 356 since 1996, which a prosecutor straight-facedly tells us is “not such a scandalous number.”

Dutch director Theo van Gogh is so identified with political martyrdom -- having been murdered by a radical Islamist -- that it comes as a bit of a surprise to sit down to a screening of INTERVIEW, the American remake of his movie of the same name, and discover that it's a comedy...sort of. Like Talk to Me, it uses humor to get you hooked, and gets a bit more serious later on. But no War on Terror metaphors...sorry, rabid bloggers.

It's directed by, and stars, Steve Buscemi, who, unlike some other actor-turned-directors, is usually best when directing himself (see Trees Lounge).

[Part one of an ongoing series of reports from the Los Angeles Film Festival]

Parking spaces in Westwood are like special offers in spam emails -- if you think you’ve got a good one, it’s almost certainly too good to be true. So naturally, the super-sweet street space I pulled into at around 5:45 p.m. turned out to have a malfunctioning meter. Sensing a premiere night, some of the local parking lots were upping their rates to $20, but the good old reliable basement of Rite-Aid was still only $5.

The premiere gala to kick off the 2007 L.A. Film Festival was at the Mann Village Theater, and one of the perks of being on staff at a reputable publication is that one actually gets to go to the big opening show. Without being patted down by security, even, though I’d left my brand-new, ultra-cheap cell phone in the car. My companion had left her camera in the vehicle, and immediately regretted it when we realized no husky suited folk were going to seize it.

Minimal remarks to start the show, which was a nice change -- perhaps with the sponsors’ logos projected on the big screen, there was less need to name them all, and the festival organizers realized we weren’t there to see them. So instead, Andy Garcia comes out, sounds dazed, and introduces director Kasi Lemmons, who promptly says, “Don Cheadle, you gonna help me out?” He does.