CONVENTION opens at NYC's IFC Center

Akin to reading a newspaper from last year, the just-opened documentary CONVENTION, filmed by eleven different people (some of them well-known in the documentary field), charts the Denver-based Democratic party convention from 2008. If this does not sound particularly exciting, you're on the mark. Not quite as thrilling as yesterday's news (it's now two years old), the film seems not far enough back to be nostalgia but nowhere near current. Hearing Hillary and Barak speak (after a particularly unpleasant campaign as rivals) certainly brings home the dishonesty and smarm of politics -- though with the two-hour memory span most Americans possess, who will recall?

The film is best at showing us what a city like Denver had to go through to prepare for the convention, and we do grow to appreciate and rather like the government workers and those on the staff of the now greatly changed local newspaper, as everyone tries his and her best to do the right thing. But the movie seems too little too late. With documentaries, timing can sometime be -- if not all -- certainly the lion's share.

Convention is playing now at the IFC Center in New York.