My SIFF Picks, Part One

Still from The Wild Hunt, via SIFF.

It's that time of year! Dilemma-time! Can you stand to be inside at the start of summer? Seattle International Film Festival always seems to happen on that first precious, long-awaited week where it's SUNNY EVERY DAY. You pass throngs of gorgeous people eating Molly Moon's mint ice cream in Cal Anderson Park, wait in enormous film-nerd queues, and duck into dark, moldy and possibly haunted theaters. All to catch a glimpse of something new.

I'm usually down for it.

Some years I've only made it to one or two films. They're inevitably of the nature documentary (Deep Blue) or lesbian coming-of-age (My Summer of Love) variety. There's certainly more of the same this year, plus an awful lot about adultery, which I'm especially interested in since reading Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of Love.

But I'm making those lists another day. Here is what's jumped out at me so far. Double-stars are things I'm definitely seeing. How can I afford to see all of these? It's no secret: volunteering! Working part-time has some killer advantages.

Happy SIFF'ing!
xo R


Set 1: "Midnight Adrenaline" at the Egyptian.

**5/29 Amer: "Tour de force pastiche of '70s Italian 'giallo' horror movies that plays out as a delirious, enigmatic death-dance of fear and desire."

**5/30 Splice: "Two scientists willfully ignore ethical boundaries by splicing DNA of diff. animals into the human genome to create a beautiful yet deadly winged chimera." Awesome!!!

**6/5 The Wild Hunt: "With the help of his Viking chieftan brother, Erik treads deep into a live-action role-playing community in his search for love."


Set 2: Music/rock films. There are ones on R & B, soul, bossa nova, rocksteady, breakdancing. Also two live soundtracks: Stephin Merritt plays 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; the Maldives play Riders of the Purple Sage.

6/5 Hipsters: "A young Communist is seduced out of his ideology by Western culture and music in this MGM-inspired Technicolor musical."

5/28 Beautiful Darling: The Life and Times of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar Nice, because we've got a Warhol exhibit going on at SAM right now.

**6/3 Disco and Atomic War: "Soviet signal-jammers and Communist idealogues fight a losing battle against Western pop culture's airwaves drifting over the Iron Curtain and into Estonia." Since being in Prague--where time can seem to be stopped in 1991, in terms of music and fashion--I'm very intrigued by this type of story.

5/22 Amplified Seattle: "Intimate portraits of 13 Seattle bands"

5/22 Shadows: John Cassavettes' style-defining debut examines racial identity and the NY jazz scene in the 50s." If I wasn't working during this screening, a triple-star.

5/28 Wheedle's Groove: "Documentary resets the local music clock to the 60s and 70s when Seattle had Soul."

**5/29 Beyond Ipanema: "From bossa nova to baile funk, from Carmen Miranda to Astrud Gilberto, this stylish doc showcases Brazil's top export: music."

Set 3. Visual art:

5/21: Jean-Michael Basquiat: The Radiant Child

5/26 Alternative Waves: shorts including "peaceful meditations to a hurricane of visual stimuli"

**5/30 Waste Land: Photographer Vik Munoz [who had an amazing show here a few years ago] journeys to the world's largest landfill where impoverished garbage-pickers help him create astonishing art."

**5/31 Rouge Ciel: "A kaleidoscopic journey through the world of art brut, or "Outsider Art"

Now I just gave you the first date a film is playing, or else the date I'm planning to see it. To find the other dates and theaters, synopses and gazillions of other listings, check the schedule at SIFF's site.

She's ba-ack...

My original idea for this blog lost momentum almost as soon as Ebert himself graciously granted me permission to use his name. "I'd be honored, even when you disagree," he wrote to me in an e-mail I'd originally sent to Scanners blog editor, Jim Emerson. I was beyond ecstatic that my hero had taken the time to write me back.

What happened? Well, I quit my job as an arts calendar editor at Seattle Weekly, and spent three months in Prague reviewing films for the English-language paper there (Thanks to the lovely poet and pie-maker Kate Lebo). So far, it was the ultimate adventure of my life. I saw everything from Sex & The City to monthly installments of the FutureShorts series to East of Eden on a warm June night on the banks of the Vltava, to Paris, I Love You--in French, with Czech subtitles. I was too embarrassed to leave the packed preview, signifying I'd forgotten to ask "Cesky titulky?" Luckily, the message of most of the shorts, like Tom Tykwer's incandescent True, were easy enough to surmise.

I was busy with my assignments and keeping a general Prague blog while there. And, I suppose, with enjoying liters of fresh, cold pilsner while watching Euro Cup matches at enormous beer gardens. Since returning to Seattle in late summer of 2008, I've been consumed with keeping afloat and in the city. It seems like everything has changed, especially in publishing. Now I'm a waitress and a freelance arts writer for the Seattle Times. I also pick up random hospitality gigs, like wearing a tiered cupcake dress for a local gourmet bakery at fancy events and working the door at my DJ friends' monthly dub/techno/house party, TRUST.

I've watched tons of movies in the two years since I've posted here: Tropic Thunder at a desolate drive-in in Auburn, WA. Matthew Barney's Cremaster 3 on one of our first beautiful spring days (you may note the absurdity, if you've seen it). I adored An Education and A Single Man. I let classics on my Ebert list, like Apocalypse Now, languish in their Netflix sleeves for weeks because I wasn't "in the mood," finally returning them unwatched. I cancelled that service in order to hang out with the cute boys at On 15th Video, who are always watching something like Footloose. They call me about being late too. I've refused at least two opportunities to watch Great Movie Citizen Kane.

It's simple. For better or worse, right now I'd much rather be watching True Blood. Has it ever taken anyone longer to release a second season?!

Over the past year, I've been diving deep into HBO and Showtime dramas, after years of not watching TV. When I broke up with the boyfriend who accompanied me to Let the Right One In, who I wanted to be the right one, I watched the whole of Six Feet Under in order to cry about something else. Boy, did that ever work.

I watched three seasons of Big Love while simultaneously reading Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven, and asking a Mormon friend what she thought of both. I was spellbound.

I went crazy for Mad Men, whose stories I find quietly engrossing and subtly devastating. To say nothing of the costume, sound and set design. One day, I watched an MM extras disc, which showed the process of episode development in a writers' room. This is how people write for TV? In a group, around a big table, sharing old magazines, and conversations they remember from childhood?

And that leads us to today! I've been needing a new goal--something to take the place of the "I quit my dream job to work in Europe, and now I'm broke" story. That's getting old. My character has to evolve.

I've learned that she isn't so single-minded. She's secure in her identity as a writer, but she also can't live a hermetic writers' life. She loves waiting on people and hearing their stories, especially ones about how their parents met. She loves watching fights while riding public transit. She still goes to parties full of strangers, and eats dinner alone at pubs, at the counter, where people meet. Now she has business cards and a broken iBook. She writes her first, sputtering attempt at a screenplay on coffeehouse computers. She sometimes pulls all-nighters making or consuming media, but always always drinking wine. Thanks to anxiety medication, she can finally sleep when she wants to. She's thinking about collaborative writing. Grad school.

The personal details seem important to place here. If you're going to re-open a long-dormant blog, why should anyone try keeping up with your lazy ass a second time? Maybe they will, with a good explanation.

***

Roger's been going through a lot more than me. I like his response to Chris Joneses' Esquire article. What a man. That he encouraged my idea is something I'll never forget. People never want to "spoil" a movie for me, but I tell them don't worry about it. I always read Ebert's review of a movie before I see it, and again after. Sharing enthusiasm and cultivating introspection, and standing by the convictions of your opinion, are so valuable in writing and in life...that feels like what I've learned from him (and my editors) so far.

Watching Roger Ebert's Great Movies, now numbering in the hundreds, is probably going to be a lifelong goal. Not something a very social person can accomplish in a year or two. But I vow to keep this blog updated at least weekly on those films, other films and worthy TV. I'll start next with my first SIFF picks of the year.

Thanks for reading. :) R

Slow as Snowfall

It's getting colder out, and people are in the theaters! My friends and I have very naturally fallen into the "yeah, sure!" pattern of constantly going to the movies, now that the time between utter darkness (5:30) and any evening event seems like a lot to kill. I've been out four times in the last couple of weeks and am surprised how many others are too, particularly on weeknights. I mean, it's not January yet...



Jessica and I saw Solitary Fragments (La Soledad) at NWFF tonight. It focuses on a few women and the triumphs (such as beating cancer) and tragedies (such as terrorist attacks) in their lives. It won some festival awards, and Jonathan Holland in Variety says:

Pic shuttles gracefully between the two strands (of stories), the carefully wrought script allowing the parallels to accumulate so that each becomes a commentary on the other, dealing with issues such as selfishness, greed, ambition and emotional manipulation. Beneath all of these lie the familiar themes of solitude and incommunication, here handled with rare intensity. All the drama is under the surface.

I say: you know the kind of movie with no soundtrack, and a five-minute unbroken shot of someone doing the laundry, and then having a heart attack in slow motion? Not really what I go to the movies for.

Jessica concurs: too real.

The split-screens were interesting and the actresses were very good, but far less boring in general was my viewing last night of the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in).



Above is the beast in question, Eli, in a calm, recently-eaten blush. It's a real shame that the movie will only spend one week at the Varsity (through tomorrow), soon to be usurped by Twilight madness. Like Solitary Fragments, it was glacially paced, but gorgeous to look at. As I told my housemate tonight while looking through an Anthropologie holiday catalogue, of course a jeweled necklace looks more beautiful when photographed in the snow. Ditto for a poodle, a lonely 12-year-old named Oskar, and fresh dark blood (among other things). The string soundtrack to Oskar and Eli's courtship was emotive but not manipulative. I've seen a lot of vampire movies and the road taken here was unusual and one of my favorites. There was a sub-story revolving on a character I didn't care about, that I feel could've been removed to make the film a little shorter, but otherwise nearly every frame was a pleasure to watch.

Ebert gave it two thumbs up, but thought it wasn't appropriate for kids. In his review he cites Film Threat's Jeremy Knox, who says that it is, and who I agree with. Knox feels that it's a date movie that "will make women melt." It's true: only because we sat in the middle row did I not give my new beau a (tender) bite on the neck.

Knox also says: Let The Right One In is a touching story about loneliness and falling in love with someone who fills the hole in your heart...The best fairy tales always have so much darkness in them. That's why they resonate so deeply. This is a magnificent film.

Here's Eli on a more difficult day:



This is one film that doesn't glamourize the lifestyle--and suffering--of vampires in any way. Oh yeah, and EW: do your f*cking homework! According to vampire lore, the movie makes perfect sense. Of course, this could be a case of an editor not matching up reporters with material they're in any way interested in actually exploring. Lame.

Bite-Sized Pieces

What I watched this week, as described through some common theater treats:



Brad Pitt looking like his Cool World character in Burn After Reading, a Coen Bros film in which I found every single cast member 100% hilarious. Like getting Jujubes stuck in your teeth, or choking on popcorn washed down with cherry coke.



Paris Vu Par, six fantastic--and way funnier than expected--shorts on city life in 1965. I thought it strange to end with Claude Chabrol's La Muette, which was starkly violent. Then I remembered that one of my first foreign films was to see his La Ceremonie with my Mother--a memory she's reasonably blocked out.



Above is a still from Rue Saint-Denis, Jean-Daniel Pollet's segment. A bashful john cooks spaghetti for a wizened-but-game prostitute. One of the most charming shorts I've ever seen. Like eating those bonbons some theaters have for you in the freezer, while smoking with the other hand.



Lindsay Lohan in pasties and with tassles on her coochie-cutters in the monstrously exploitative I Know Who Killed Me. She looks older than poor Julia Ormond, who plays her mother, but that's the tip of the nonsense iceberg lurking about 1" below the surface. Like sipping Newcastle through a goddamn Red Vines straw.

Do the Right Thing

Going to the movies as a first date isn't always a good idea. Especially if the movie in question is as sexy as Belle de Jour, as stupid as Little Nicky, or as hilarious as Superfly (i.e. the bubble bath/soaped-booty love scene)--all of which I survived.

Michelle and Barack Obama's first date, according to Wikipedia? Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. Wow!

Ebert writes: In May 1989, I walked out of the screening at the Cannes Film Festival with tears in my eyes. Spike Lee had done an almost impossible thing. He'd made a movie about race in America that empathized with all the participants. He didn't draw lines or take sides, but simply looked with sadness at one racial flashpoint that stood for many others.

His next line was: Not everybody thought the film was evenhanded.
I wrote: People see what they want to see--the point of the movie.

As he writes, it covers a day in the life of a Brooklyn neighborhood, and is not just about "how the cops kill a black man and a mob burns down a pizzeria." The man is Radio Raheem (above), and I learned that the LOVE and HATE knuckles were an "echo" of Robert Mitchum's character's tattoos in Night of the Hunter. I thought that was brilliant, and that Ebert had just taught me something very special about film- not only that directors' intentions can be so complex, but that there are all sorts of little homages and references you can't pick up on until you've seen a great lot of movies!

My notes:

-Saw alone in a small neighborhood theater, Central Cinema. Had 2 Mac & Jacks and a turkey pig-in-a-blanket. A Superman cartoon from the '30s or '40s played first, and there was a 5-minute intermission that encouraged you to "get another round of drinks" or "kiss your lover." ESG played in the lobby when I arrived, and drum and bass on KEXP when I left. There was a leopard-striped cat with a rhinestone collar outside, named Sativa.

-Next to Ebert's mention of the film as a stylistic achievement: of 1989! Oh, the neon bike shorts! Rosie Perez's fly-girl dance moves and shiny blue leotard!

-I wonder why Sal's son doesn't feel more like Sal in his attitudes...he grew up with the black kids after all, right?

-Underlined: None of these people are perfect. But Lee makes it possible for us to understand their feelings; his empathy is crucial to the film, because if you can't try to understand how the other person feels, you're a captive inside the box of yourself.

Those who found this film an incitement to violence are saying much about themselves and nothing useful about the movie.

I found that pretty meta, and made a note to use in my own writing: Always strive to have something useful to say about the artwork, not about (or just about) your own reaction to it. Good to remember for reviews of all kinds.

After I Wiki'd the film at home, I also learned the meaning behind the graffiti in one scene, "Tawana told the truth!"

And lastly, Do the Right Thing ends with two quotations, one from MLK, Jr. that violence is never justified; one from Malcolm X that violence is "intelligent" when it's self-defense.

I would love to talk with Obama about that problem, and all the others, that the movie raises for examination.

My Own Private Movie Blog

A few thoughts from my first viewing of My Own Private Idaho, yesterday. Gus Van Sant is a director I've been following for years without really thinking about it. Sometimes I love his movies (Drugstore Cowboy, To Die For, Good Will Hunting) and sometimes not (Elephant, Psycho). But I always enjoy his style. Someone on Wikipedia writes (I think, accurately) that a few of Van Sant's hallmarks are: "unfulfilled romanticism, a dry sense of the absurd, and the refusal to treat homosexuality as something deserving of judgment." When his films are set in Portland I also think he evokes the area perfectly with his colors and characters.

I'm glad I finally saw Idaho. I certainly wasn't ready for it at release time (I was eleven). If you had told me that it was Keanu's follow-up to Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, I would've told you to get out of town. I also wouldn't have said at one point, "It sounds like Shakespeare!"

Here's an image from one of my favorite scenes, for obvious reasons, and a quote on River. I've used this before, because not only does it show a time when movie stars had interesting things to say and journalists could coax them out (even to a teen magazine), it also very sweetly reveals a private part of River's character. He's so good as Mike in Idaho, you can tell there's that passion--as well as drugs, unfortunately--involved.



"Once when we were fifteen, River and I went out for this fancy dinner in Manhattan and I ordered soft-shell crabs. He left the restaurant and walked around on Park Avenue, crying. I went out and said, "I love you so much. Why?" He had such a pain that I was eating an animal, that he hadn't impressed on me what was right. I loved him for that. For his dramatic desire that we share every belief, that I be with him all the way." -Martha Plimpton on River Phoenix, Cosmopolitan, April 1995.

La Belle et la Bête

The rose, the horse, the key, the mirror, and the glove. 1/29/07

Roger Ebert writes: Before Disney's 1991 film, Jean Cocteau filmed Beauty and the Beast in 1946, in France. It is one of the most magical of all films. Before the days of computer effects and modern creature makeup, here is a fantasy alive with trick shots and astonishing effects, giving us a Beast who is lonely like a man and misunderstood like an animal. Cocteau, a poet and surrealist, was not making a "children's film," but was adapting a classic French tale that he felt had a special message after the suffering of World War II: Anyone who has an unhappy childhood may grow up to be a Beast.

I wrote in the margin: But "love can make an ugly man handsome."
which I believe is a line in the dialogue, but which really means that love is a redeemer.

Beauty and the Beast was the first film I tackled after I decided to try watching each of the 100 movies in Roger Ebert's Great Movies book. My Mom gifted it to me on Christmas of 2006, after I'd devoured so many of his essays online that it'd become a bona fide obesssion. I went back to favorite movies with fresh eyes, learned about new ones, and became fascinated with cinema in general because of Ebert's writing. A piece of good writing, for me, is one that will have me on Wikipedia for an hour afterward, looking up this and that. I also blame the blah Seattle winters for sparking a passion in film. Since I moved here from Florida, where I grew up, in 2003, each lowering of the bell jar--the descent of gray after Halloween that doesn't let up until May or so--finds my knowledge in movies and microbrews deepening (and my waistline expanding).

Returning to work after New Years, I was thrilled to discover that a colleague had many of the Great Movies in his office collection. He let me take a couple per week. I didn't expect to love Beauty so much. I hadn't seen many pre-'60s movies, and most of the French films I'd seen were more like dares: fall asleep, and you lose. I watched Beauty alone over two cold winter nights, while drinking a French Syrah ("appropriate, oui?"). It was an oddly sensual winter...I was living alone, enjoying the last of my painkillers from having teeth pulled, and dating a passionate person. So I was in the perfect state for Beauty to thoroughly charm! I found it funny, spooky, erotic, "not a jolly comic musical but deals, as all fairy tales do, with what we dread and desire," as Ebert wrote. Some thoughts I wrote down:

*I'm so glad I watched this! I wouldn't have known it existed for a long time probably. Beauty and the Beast was my favorite of the Disney flicks coming up, much preferred over Little Mermaid, Aladdin, etc. But who would have told me about this version?

*I put an exclamation point near the graph where Ebert shares that Marlene Dietrich held Cocteau's hand at Beauty's first screening. Disappointed at the cookie-cutter prince who appears at the end, she shouted out for the Beast. What a moment that must have been!

*The problem with DVDs: this movie is 90 minutes long, but I'm sure it took twice that to watch because I kept rewinding scenes:

-The sparkling hair of the white horse when Belle whispers, "Go where I am going, La Magnifique! Go, Go, Go" in its ear.

-When Belle first enters the castle, not tentatively like her father had; and when she returns, shouting.

-When Belle is away, the Beast wanders through her room obviously in despair. He taps his heart with his paw and picks up the fur blanket from her bed and buries his face in it (!!!).

-An androgynous Diana's drawn arrow.