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.