Rehoboth Beach Film Festival

It always rains on Thursday, my usual day for festivities. This year I bought two film books ( an Andre Bazin collection, an issue of Screen) and saw two films. Newcastle is the locale and title of an Australian surfing picture starring a group of blond lookalike actors. The sole brunette plays a character called Faggot Boy. Jesse and his twin brother Fergus are stepsiblings to Victor, a married steelworker who used to be a surfing champion.
Separated from his wife and children, Victor's moved back home.
Jesse enters a competition and comes in third. Unfortunately he's not even recognised because there were only two prizes. Disgruntled, he agrees to going on a camping trip with Ferus and three of his surfing friends. Everything that happens on that trip is integral to the movie's outcome. I'll not spoil it for you. Although Newcastle's storyline is on par with S.E. Hinton or some other YA novelist, the acting, comedy and truly stoamach-churning underwater camera work makes you forget easily. In a Way Newcastle is the Australian Paranoid Park, with adults, without the alienation.

Let The Right One In has already won several prizes at genre and nongenre festivals. A lonely bullied twelve year old boy's new neighbor is first seen standing on a frozen jungle gym. She's a vampire. The town's recent spate of murders and disappearances are the work of Vampire Girl's seedy middlescent renfield. One of the film.s more memorable scenes is renfield's acid facial, administered to avoid identification. LTROI is not a fastpaced thriller. it's slow and moody but wonderfully paced. Every gotcha shock is totally logical and, as far as this grizzled horror fan's concerned, totally chilling.

The festival ends tonight.