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The Navigator

Head to bazaar film experience

By RICK GERSHMAN
Published July 14, 2006

One film examines three characters at a "metaphorical crossroads."

Another is a spooky mystery about a cop and a missing girl.

A third features aviation pioneers Frank and Orville Wright.

Oh, yeah, and they're fighting crime.

They're among a diverse group of offerings on tap at 8 tonight. It's the Tampa Film Review, a free monthly screening of locally shot shorts and minifeatures.

This month marks the six-month anniversary of the review's new incarnation at International Bazaar, off Eighth Avenue in Centro Ybor.

Organizers Paul and Pete Guzzo got a soft turnout in May, perhaps because the screening took April off. But the crowds returned with a vengeance in June.

(Okay, not a real vengeance. They didn't storm the bazaar with torches or anything.)

(I mean, really, there are enough torches in that place already. It was just a busy night.)

"We had over 130 people there; it was sick," Paul said. "We just kept bringing in chairs and chairs; we still had people coming in all the way until the last film."

Paul said he's not exactly sure why June was a banner month for the review, but an increased diversity of genres could be one reason.

"We've been getting fantastic films lately," he said. "We started showing one a month from outside the state, and we also got a lot of comedies lately, which is good, because we'd just been swamped with horror films. We got some art films too.

"Once we got a different diversity of films, we got some different people coming in."

Horror films are big with low-budget filmmakers because they sell so well, Paul said. Comedy's tougher, as the Guzzos found out from marketing their feature 99.

Though the comic adventure fared well at numerous national festivals, it doesn't have a buyer yet. The brothers plan to shop it again when DVD distributors start buying again in August.

Meanwhile, they just began filming a new minifeature of about 45 minutes. The first of a series of shorts called Ghosts of Ybor, it's a fictional tale of mobsters in 1942 Ybor.

Its title?

"Uh, hold on, we just gave it a title today," Paul said one day last week. "It's, um, The End Is Blossoming."

The brothers scored a couple of established actors for featured roles. Ybor native Joe Lala is best known for his voice work in dozens of movies and TV shows, but he also has an extensive on-screen repertoire. And Al Sapienza has portrayed recurring characters on The Sopranos, 24 and Prison Break.

So it's a good stretch for the Guzzos, who also have seen actors from 99 pick up some important roles lately.

"A lot of them are going real good," Paul said. "Like Ross Francis, who played "Stoopid" in 99 - he's filming a movie where he just got killed by Kevin Costner."

If you attended the Tampa Film Review, you could say you knew him when.

Rick Gershman can be reached at rgershman@sptimes.com or 226-3431. His Times blog, the Ill Literate, is at www.tampabay.com/blogs/tampaarts.

[Last modified July 13, 2006, 12:50:33]