Juror’s Lunch at Simon in The Palms – Cinevegas

The juror’s lunch took place at Simon, a restaurant on the sixth floor at the Palms Plaza, which is down the tube corridor from the actual hotel. It’s more quiet there, which is nice. It’s less frat time, and nice. The restaurant especially on a sunday lunch time wasn’t busy at all. Even though it’s on the sixth floor it’s quite nice and has a little bit of the outside feel, since there’s a pool next door. I got the crab and avocado entree, of course it had tomato and sprouts. I forgot about the salmonella issue. I also got a mixed vegetable gazpacho which was great, but it looked like grilled tomato salsa. 

Thats’ Karina from spout.com and Patrick Walsh from cinematical.com. The good thing about being on a jury for film is to hear other perspectives of the same films, many of which I didn’t like, but they liked. 

In the foreground is Humberto Guida, who writes for a few places including BPM mag. In the background is Rob Smith from Cinevegas.

That’s Mike Plante, a honcho at Cinevegas. I used to review his zine, Cinemad when he lived in Tucson, Arizona. Now years later, he lives above the GR Silverlake shop. Now he’s the man here. So I’ll say it here: I think he looks like a cross between Robin Williams and Steve Zahn. He’s a good guy.

After talking and talking, we came up with our choices. We used these sheets to remind us of what we saw. Some of us liked some films, some the others, and in the end, we came up with a consensus, which is always about give and take. I know some films some liked didn’t make it, and so forth. But I’m good with the picks we made of the 40 or so shorts. I think we thought about them a lot, and talked about almost each one, giving them their due. They’ll announce them next week.