I tried to think of a clever title—These Boots Are Made for Walkin', Walk (Don't Run), I'm Walkin' (the Fats Domino ditty)—but nothing fit. When music won't do, I tend to turn to Nicolas Roeg. The following has little to do with his 1971 masterpiece, but I'm still waiting for Roeg to get his due, so I like to drop his name whenever I get the chance...

So, after a weekend screening of Andrea Arnold's Red Road, I was thinking about walkabouts—er, walkouts. I only noticed two, but when one catches my eye, I always wonder what turned off the viewer so much to make them flee (assuming their reasons were film-related in the first place). My friend and I quite liked Arnold's debut.
It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but I'm open to surprises.

At a certain point, the story transitions from a meditation on voyeurism (Kate Dickie's Jackie is a surveillance expert) to a revenger's tale, but the couple to our left departed long before Jackie enters the world of the trio she's been surveilling. I'm guessing they simply found it dull. That wasn't my impression, but I did find it increasingly hard to watch. The third act reminds me of Jane Campion's In the Cut, in which an intelligent woman (a professor) purposefully puts herself in harm's way. Jackie also places herself in a position where she could be raped or killed, but she retains greater control over the situation than Meg Ryan's Frannie. If anything, Arnold gives away too much about Jackie's motivations—I was hoping for more mystery—but the epilogue is sublime. Incidentally, though SIFF didn't program Anton Corbijn's acclaimed Ian Curtis bio-pic, Red Road does conclude with Joy Division (and I'll take what I can get).

Continue reading "Walkabout" »

First, the correction: An alert SIFF Notes reader noticed that the first date in the capsule review of Manufactured Landscapes is incorrect. The correct date and time is today, Sunday May 26 27 at 7 pm at the Harvard Exit, not Monday. The SIFF Notes grid and website have the correct information.

And some notes for further reading:

The New York Times has a profile today of the unforgettable couple featured in Crazy Love, which plays at the festival Wednesday and Friday.

Also: Not many movies come complete with a director's statement, but the two movies in SIFF which were commissioned by Peter Sellars's New Crowned Hope Festival to celebrate the 250th birthday of Mozart are accompanied by elucidating essays. Read about Tsai Ming-Liang's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (at the festival Wednesday May 30 and Saturday June 2) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes and a Century (at the festival Monday June 4 and Thurs June 7) at this web page (choose "English," then "Program").

The Stranger's suggestions for today and tomorrow at SIFF:

SUNDAY MAY 27

11 am, Neptune: Go see Never on a Sunday, an entertaining Mexican take on Weekend at Bernie's.

1:30 pm, Egyptian: If you've already seen the excellent Girls Rock! (at SIFF Cinema, 1:45 pm), check out The Island, an awesome movie about an acetic Russian monk. Bradley Steinbacher liked it. Bradley Steinbacher liked a movie about an ascetic Russian monk. Go.

4 pm, Northwest Film Forum: The Stranger's classical & avant critic, Christopher DeLaurenti, endorses the 1992 Henning Lohner/John Cage film One¹¹ and 103. If you want something a little less heady--or you already have the DVD--check out the subtle commentary about racial relations vis-a-vis jump rope in Doubletime. I believe both directors will be in attendance. (Don't bother with Rescue Dawn--you're better off renting Little Dieter Needs to Fly; and previously rumored guest Werner Herzog will not be in attendance.)

Early evening: It's a tossup. I'll be at Bamako (Pacific Place at 6:30 pm), because I haven't seen it yet and I was totally enchanted by SIFF Emerging Master Abderrahmane Sissako's 2002 film Waiting for Happiness (playing in the fest tomorrow). Sissako won't be in attendance, however, presumably because he's on the jury at Cannes. And the movie's opening at the Northwest Film Forum later in the summer. Other excellent options in this slot are Manufactured Landscapes, about a photographer drawn to scenes of human-inflicted devastation (Harvard Exit at 7 pm, filmmaker in attendance) and the local-interest option King of Kong (Egyptian at 6:30 pm, about the fierce battle for the title of top Donkey Kong player in the world.

9:15 pm, Pacific Place: You're going to need to check out Exiled, Honk Kong filmmaker Johnny To's gunslinging ode to the spaghetti western. But it's got a big-name US distributor, and you could see it in theaters later this summer. For a lower-profile film, go with the first-person doc A Walk into the Sea (Northwest Film Forum at 9:15 pm, filmmaker in attendance), about the sad but not entirely shocking demise of one of Andy Warhol's discarded lovers. It has distribution, but I haven't heard any firm dates for Seattle.

Neptune, midnight: Strictly for caffeinated passholders: Severance opens next Friday in Seattle, so regular folks need not glue their eyelids open tonight. But the punning British horror-comedy with a The Office twist is screechingly funny and--this is what really won me over--it features this enormous wheel of cheese for no reason at all.

MONDAY MAY 28:

11 am: I wouldn't, if I were you. What good are holidays if you can't sleep in for hours? Perhaps anticipating this, SIFF has scheduled a bunch of repeats for this slot: additional screenings of Severance, Monster Camp, Paris Je T'Aime, Fish Dreams, and Doubletime—at the Neptune, Egyptian, Harvard Exit, Pacific Place, and SIFF Cinema, respectively.

1:30 pm, SIFF Cinema: See the graphic and shocking The Devil Came on Horseback (the main American subject and one of the filmmakers will be in attendance), about the genocide currently in progress in Darfur, from the directors of The Trials of Darryl Hunt.

4 pm, Neptune: If you didn't shell out for the gala screening on Saturday, now's your chance to catch A Battle of Wits, starring Andy Lau as the 4th-century warrior Ge Li.

7 pm, Egyptian: The Fly Filmmaking Challenge has loads of potential this year, with Dayna Hanson, Matt Daniels, and Lisa Hardmeyer set to premiere their made-to-deadline shorts films.

Maggie Brown (of Lynn Shelton's We Go Way Back) stars in Hanson's entry and Northwest Film Forum programmer Adam Sekuler edited Daniels's movie, so basically the entire Seattle film scene (and a decent portion of the modern dance scene) should turn out. (I can't go, unfortunately. Happy birthday, Gabey!)

Late evening: Documentary fans should seek out Crossing the Line (Neptune at 9:15 pm), by the North Korea-obsessed filmmaker who brought us the fascinating A State of Mind. If you're into experimental work, the Argentine film The Aerial (Northwest Film Forum at 9:30 pm) is pretty cute, if somewhat derivative. A friend of mine used to say she'd go to any SIFF film with me except the ones about street urchins. Here's the one you'll want to avoid this year, C.--another film from Argentina, helpfully entitled Glue.

I attended the first show in the Swashbuckler Saturdays program at SIFF, and—as a side note—the projection problems that plagued the Egyptian last year are back. No fire this time, but the film went out of focus at the first punch and the projectionist didn't notice until the brawlers had straightened their uniforms and shuffled off to the next scene. Way to dampen the swashbuckling, dude.

The show was Gunga Din, a 1939 George Stevens action-adventure film, and one of those archival presentations that really could've used a scholarly introduction. The movie is still relatively entertaining, but it can be hard to get into the fight scenes when you're having second thoughts about all that Jewish-to-Indian blackface...

... not to mention the cheery British imperialism, homosocial misogyny, California mountain ranges, and Yank accents peppered with probably ahistorical British slang. That post-lashing Cary Grant lounging about with his shirt calculatedly unbuttoned was also distracting.

But the rampant blackface in Gunga Din--which pretty much anybody would recognize as objectionable today--also reminded me of the new Michael Winterbottom film A Mighty Heart, which I saw earlier this week. Here's Angelina Jolie as the French-Cuban wife of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl:

Her skin is clearly pigmented, she wears dark contacts, and the wig is Africanized too. Now, the character she plays in the film is more a caricature of Jolie herself than any stereotype one might have about persons of Cuban ancestry raised in Paris. She spends most of the movie being very pregnant, playing with adorable children of other nationalities, and worrying about her man. In that sense, her blackface get-up is in no way comparable to the abject character of Gunga Din, a childlike would-be soldier more loyal to the Queen of England than any of his darker-skinned countrymen.

But Jolie was undoubtedly cast in the role of Mariane Pearl because the producers needed a star, and there are no French-Cuban actresses of equal stature wandering around Hollywood. Why else was Sam Jaffe cast as Gunga Din?

I caught Girls Rock! over at the Harvard Exit last night, and it was so much more adorable than I thought possible. The structure gets a little sloppy in the third act, but that's okay. The punk fucking rock kids and teens are beyond amazing.

If you want to see my favorite of the girls, the bright and slightly spazzy Amelia, play a noise show (at least I'm assuming—that's obviously her favorite genre) this afternoon, head over to the Chop Suey at 1:30 pm. Her band King is in the lineup, along with a Rock Camp "House Band" featuring the totally fierce 8-year-old Palace (pictured below) and her song about how much San Francisco sucks.

Hell yeah.

Tix are $10 (or more—donations go to the Rock 'n' Roll Camp), and more info about the show can be found here.

I'm not going to be able to make it, so somebody go and tell me how much it rocked, please.

The Stranger's suggestions for each slot in the festival for the next two days:

FRIDAY MAY 25:

4:30 pm, Harvard Exit: To continue your Son of Rambow '80s nostalgia high, see This Is England, a semiautobiographical tale of growing up punk in the '80s.

7 pm, Harvard Exit: Carrie Brownstein (hot hot hot) and Beth Ditto (hot hot hot) are instructors at the Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls in PDX—the subject of a new documentary. Girls Rock!, featuring badass 8-year-olds like Palace...

... will drag you into the post-riot grrrl age. (There's also a show at Chop Suey tomorrow at the kid-friendly time of 1:30 pm with some of the camp alumnae.) Director Arne Johnson and producer Shane King will be in attendance to answer your questions after the show. Or, you can skip the Q&A and bust ass to...

9:15 pm, Northwest Film Forum: Life in Loops, an innovative "remix" of an existing documentary from the late '90s about the working and underclasses in global cities, is one of the best experimental films in the fest.

SATURDAY MAY 26:

11 am: If you like mountains and overcoming adversity, check out Team Everest: A Himalayan Journey at the Egyptian. The director and producer will be in attendance. If you're a movie nerd, you might prefer Murch, about the editor/sound designer of American Graffiti and The Godfather, at the Harvard Exit. The directors will be in attendance.

Early afternoon: It's a tossup between the archival presentation of Gunga Din at the Egyptian, 2 pm and the massively expensive Egyptian epic The Yacoubian Building (based on this book, which is now available in an English translation) at Pacific Place, 1 pm.

Late afternoon: Check out the surprisingly good The Singer (3:30 pm at the Neptune), starring an uncharacteristically subdued Gerard Depardieu. Or the solid Monster Camp (4:30 pm at the Egyptian), about a Seattle community of live-action D&D warriors. Or the too-long but beautiful Malaysian entry After This Our Exile (4:15 pm at Pacific Place).

The first evening show has no losers—you can see the new Judd Apatow a little early, an ode to Paris, young love in Brazil, ancient action in China. But the all-around winner is probably Gypsy Caravan, SIFF Cinema, 6:30 pm. Director Jasmine Dellal will be in attendance.

In the late evening, check out Monkey Warfare (9:45 pm at the Egyptian), a paranoid pot romance-cum-urban guerrilla comedy from Canada. Director Reginald Harkema will be in attendance. We also liked Vanaja. Director Rajnesh Domalpalli will be in attendance.

And you should probably skip the late night. Unless you're a huge fan of excrement.

As you plan your slate for SIFF, consider these helpful resources.

Ted Z. at Big Screen Little Screen has compiled 20 trailers for the first week of the festival—many of which SIFF does not have up at their site.

Media Babe, who is employed by the best video store in the world, has a complete list of films in the festival whose DVDs are already available for rent. (Most of these are not Region 1, so if you don't have a region-free player, you'd best cross-reference with Scarecrow website.)

Finally, I've compiled a work-in-progress list of movies that will be opening theatrically in Seattle soon after the festival. I'll be adding this information to the capsules in SIFF Notes Online shortly.

Knocked Up (wide) ...... 1 June
Severance (Varsity) ...... 1 June
Paris Je T’Aime (Seven Gables) ...... 1 June
Paprika (Landmark) ...... 8 June
Surf’s Up (wide) ...... 8 June
Crazy Love (Landmark) ...... 15 June
Eagle vs. Shark (Landmark) ...... 22 June
Golden Door (Landmark) ...... 22 June
La Vie en Rose (Landmark) ...... 22 June
Day Watch (Landmark) ...... 22 June
Angel-A (Landmark, perhaps Varsity) ...... 22 June
Red Road (Landmark) ...... 22 June
Death at a Funeral (Landmark) ...... 29 June
Evening (Landmark) ...... 29 June
Rescue Dawn (Landmark) ...... 13 July
Introducing the Dwights (Landmark) ...... 13 July
Broken English (Landmark) ...... 13 July
Lady Chatterley (Landmark) ...... 13 July
Manufactured Landscapes (Landmark) ...... 13 July
Vitus (Landmark) ...... 20 July
Cashback (Landmark) ...... 20 July
Black Sheep (Landmark) ...... July?
Goya’s Ghosts ...... Not yet set
The King of Kong ...... 17 Aug
Rocket Science ...... 17 Aug
Dans Paris ...... Not yet set
Retribution? ...... (not confirmed)
Fido? ...... (not confirmed)

Everybody I spoke to seemed to love the opening-night selection Son of Rambow, a movie about Will and Lee, two British kids in the '80s respectively afflicted by smothering or neglectful home lives, who overcome all sort of obstacles (from falling in an oil pit to being crushed by enormous steel pillars) to premiere their adorable prequel to Rambo: First Blood in a theater showing Yentl. Whew.

The movie must overcome an initially forbidding level of cutes, which it does mostly through supersize but not wholly cartoonish violence. It also takes some ill-advised detours into social commentary: Will's fundamentalist Christian mother shucks her veil to symbolize a newfound freedom. But mostly, it's lovable. Son of Rambow will open theatrically sometime in 2008 and will not play later in the festival.

Before the movie, there was an awkward VIP reception, where topics included the best parties last year, Greg Nickels's wayward son, the most promising parties this year, Greg Nickels's wayward son, the picked-over fishbones at the party occurring right now, and—did we mention? Greg Nickels's wayward son. Greg Nickels did not put in an appearance, though a wild 'n' whiskery Tom Skerritt did.

The only thing notable that happened during Carl Spence/Deborah Person/Gary Tucker's famously long intro was that Stranger Genius award winner (and Academy Award nominee) James Longley was given an award by the city—something about bringing attention to the film infrastructure available in Seattle. Longley dutifully gave some shoutouts to the great postproduction facilities here—Alpha Cine, Modern Digital, Bad Animals, 911 Media Arts, etc.

And then, the gala.

There were blue drinks supplied by Bombay Sapphire:

There was delicious fried chicken supplied by Ezell's:

There were crowds and long lines and cupcakes and projections of John Hughes movies on the walls. Much to Greg Nickels's entirely imagined relief, topics of conversation shifted from Jake Nickels to the best Madonna song. Despite the copious free alcohol, this is the closest anyone came to debauchery atop the white tablecloths:

And then we all went home.

^{(Photos by Tim Wind)}

My plan last night was to skip out on the Vera Project's "anti-prom" between DD/MM/YYYY and Japanther and grab a drink at the SIFF opening gala. Dan gave me a pair of tickets on the condition that I slog about it. But the wizened man at the velvet rope said my tickets were only valid for the Son of Rambow screening and not the gala event:

Meh. Japanther rocked as always, and the Vera's anti-prom (theme: "under the sea") was a blast. Maybe next year, SIFF.

Mudede and Annie will Slog about the SIFF opening night party later, but three preliminaries:

1. Son of Rambow was adorable. Little British kids in the '80s making a dead-earnest prequel to First Blood? Hard to beat. Plus a French dandy exchange student, an oppressive religious cult called the Brethren, a teacher who impales himself with nose-hair clippers, and hyper-real shots of kids falling through trees and getting catapulted through junkyards for their jerry-rigged action sequences. You can't see it at this year's festival, but it'll be released in 2008. Go.

2. Next year, I'm showing up at least 45 minutes late. The opening remarks (which sounded like a p.r. orgy—"Seattle is passionate about film!" "SIFF is passionate about Seattle!" "The Mayor's Office of Film and Music is passionate about SIFF!") were interminable.

3. I wish I had a photo of the ubiquitous Culture Hippie. He was there at the after-party, in his beard and purple t-shirt and Guatemala shorts and sandals and beret. While the suits and swanky dresses stood around the empty dance floor, making stiff small talk over the night's first free drink, the Culture Hippie breached the no-dance perimeter, threw himself beneath the sparkling disco ball, and did his freaky-deaky undulations to the '80s music. Faces around the dance floor turned shades of embarrassed and alarmed. It was great.

I promise my Slog posts won't all be music-related,
but here are some thoughts on a couple of SIFF selections.

Rocket Science, the fiction debut from Spellbound's Jeffrey Blitz, features a soundtrack by Clem Snide's Eef Barzelay. I liked the wistful instrumental interludes quite a bit (they feature "utterings," but no actual words, so I guess they aren't technically instrumental). Blitz also includes a few Violent Femmes tunes, and I never noticed before how much Barzelay sounds like Gordon Gano, i.e. nasal.

But the best musical moments in the film—which isn't bad, by the way—are the cello/piano duets on Femmes numbers like "Add It Up." Reminds me of Twelve and Holding, in which Zoe Weizenbaum plays BÖC's "Burnin' For You" on the violin to impress construction worker Jeremy Renner (and if she wasn't 12, it might've worked).

Continue reading "Kissin', Burnin', and Sinnin'" »

The Stranger's comprehensive guide to the Seattle International Film Festival—fiercely opinionated, unafraid to geek out, and piles upon heaps of fun (you laugh now, but just wait until you set your eyes upon "Match the Boy Tit to the Gay-Themed Movie")—won't hit the streets till later today or tomorrow, but you can access all 174 original reviews and 139 terribly informative synopses at SIFF Notes Online now.

SIFF Notes Online lets you plan with ruthless efficiency: Search films by date and "Stranger recommends," check out our pick of the day (which won't go active until Thursday, duh), and read Slog posts like this one—plucked from the chaos and allowed to air out on SIFF-exclusive territory. And if you see a movie you like, you can move fast: We provide a link straight to that film's entry on the SIFF website so you can purchase a ticket within minutes.

Be sure to pick up a copy of the print guide too—we've got at least 15 last-minute changes and corrected errors that the official guide can't offer.

Also, you can subscribe to the weekly SIFF Notes podcast to hear my festival recommendations and the latest news and gossip.

And as an addendum: A colleague just asked me to recommend a date movie for opening weekend. I'll get to the straight-up best selections in a day or two, but if you're on the make, my schmoopy suggestions are after the jump.

Continue reading "Get Your SIFF Notes Now!" »

The German poster

Long before the line-up was announced, I was hoping SIFF would program these two punk-oriented films, so I'm thrilled they came through (Anglophiles rejoice!). I haven't seen either yet (This Is England screens for the press tomorrow), but my hopes are high based on the good reviews they've been garnering. Click here
for England's Dreaming's Jon Savage on This Is England and here for Salon's Andrew O'Hehir on The Future Is Unwritten. I thought it would be fun to compare and contrast the two, so here goes.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

- This Is England is a narrative feature from Shane Meadows (TwentyFourSeven, Once Upon a Time in the Midlands).
- Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten is a non-fiction feature from Julien Temple (The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle).
- The compact Meadows is 34 years old. The lanky Temple is 54.
- Meadows went to Burton Technical College, where he met actor Paddy Considine (Dead Man's Shoes). Temple went to Cambridge.

Meadows: skin for life

- This Is England is Meadows' sixth feature. The Future Is Unwritten is Temple's 11th...not counting his video collections.
- Temple also directs narrative features
(Earth Girls Are Easy, Pandaemonium, etc.).
- This Is England is semi-autobiographical. Note that the main
character is named Shaun (non-pro Thomas Turgoose).
- Meadows often works with the same actors
(Considine, Vicky McClure, Andrew Shim, etc.).
- Temple often works with the same musicians
(Mick Jagger, David Bowie, the Kinks, etc.).
- Temple's narrative films often feature musicians,
like Sade (Absolute Beginners) and Tupac (Bullet).

Continue reading "The Future of England (Is Unwritten)" »

While I've been busting ass to get The Stranger's annual SIFF Notes pullout together (don't you just love working twenty hours over a single weekend?), my attention has more than occasionally wandered to the the Cannes coverage currently pouring out of southern France.

The best stuff is at The New York Times (no blog this year, sadly, but there are some OK podcasts) and The Guardian's film blog.

^{Duris as Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, AKA Molière}

Well, what's not to love? Like his countryman Mathieu Amalric (Munich), the heavy-browed, hairy-chested Duris is attractive in an unconventional sort of way and incredibly versatile. He was charming as a shaggy drummer in When the Cat's Away, believable as a brooding pianist in The Beat That My Heart Skipped, and hilarious as a lovelorn writer in Russian Dolls. You may also recognize him from L'Auberge Espagnole (the precursor to Dolls), Le Divorce, CQ, and Gadjo Dilo. This year, SIFF presents two Duris selections.

Molière, the closing night film, doesn't exactly break new ground. It plays like a cross between Amadeus and Ridicule, but it isn't as epic as the former or as nasty as the latter—though Ludivine Sagnier gives it her best shot. Still, it's a pleasant enough way to pass the time and Duris, as ever, does a bang-up job. Molière represents one of those multi-faceted roles where an actor has to do literally everything—quip, cry, disguise his identity, and act badly (the dramatist is presented as a failed tragedian). You name it, Duris pulls it off.

Continue reading "Why I love Romain Duris" »

So this year's SIFF poster is awesome. Artist Jason Green took a potentially cheesy theme (love, astrology) and turned it into a khaki green Chris Ware-style cross-section of a downtown Seattle building, whose residents are up to all sorts of no good.

Take these pandas:

If I'm not mistaken, that's an actual baby panda making a furry porno starring two costumed humans. Is it for HUMP!, I wonder?

But never mind HUMP! You guys are all busy putting finishing touches on your 28 Seconds videos, right? The deadline is tomorrow. Complete rules are available here.

Click here for the schedule and upbeat film synopses (our guide, with at least 150 original reviews, will be published in two weeks). Members can buy tickets now; nonmembers have to wait until Sunday at noon.

The opening night film, Sundance favorite Son of Rambow (here's the Variety review), is an unusual but solid choice.

SIFF openers tend to be somewhat frumpy and aimed at the oldsters; last year's The Illusionist is a good example, though Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know in 2005 was another exception. Son of Rambow is about a couple of mismatched kids who try to produce a homemade sequel to Rambo: First Blood. It won't open in theaters until 2008, so this is a really early glimpse.

There are some odd choices in the lineup. What's with Peter Boal choosing to introduce the "classic film" Ballets Russes, which opened theatrically two years ago? Or the mediocre La Vie Promise, which screened at SIFF 2004 and came out on DVD relatively recently? (Yes, La Vie en Rose, aka La Môme, is new and by the same director, but....)

There are a few notable omissions: No Chicago 10 from Sundance? Unless Bruno Dumont's Flandres is indeed going to get a theatrical run here--starting August 3 at Northwest Film Forum--but that would have been a nice preview. And, of course, Guy Maddin's filmed-in-Seattle Brand Upon the Brain, about which more later.

But there's plenty of good stuff to chose from. A few highlights: For the Bible Tells Me So and The Devil Came on Horseback and Manufactured Landscapes and Protagonist, four excellent docs from Sundance and/or Toronto. Arthouse favorites Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Tsai Ming-Liang have Syndromes and a Century and I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (ps SIFF: Tsai is his last name). SXSW fave The Signal. Plus some delightful surprises: so far we've especially liked The Cloud, a nuclear teen romance; Running on Empty, about a German insurance salesman; Sweet Mud, an unusual Israeli coming-of-age story; Ghosts of Cité Soleil, a doc about pro-Aristide gangsters in Haiti's largest slum; and Life in Loops, a remixed doc about the lives and aspirations of the working and underclasses around the world.

... to see if SIFF meant they'd post their schedule on the very minute the clock switched over to March 10th, well, it's probably time to hit the sack. Nothing to see here.

Except that announcement of the lifetime achievement award for Anthony Hopkins. Vital information, there.

I've bitched about this before , but this article by Dennis Lim in yesterday's New York Times really rubbed salt into my tear ducts:

Two years ago Gregg Lachow, founder of the Film Company, a quixotic Seattle production outfit, invited him to make a film — any film — with the condition that he use a Seattle cast and crew. [Guy] Maddin and his writing partner George Toles dashed off a screenplay. The shoot lasted nine days. Within six weeks of the initial phone call he had a feature in the can.

(photo by Adam Weintraub)

The result was not just a film--it was an old-fashioned spectacle, a theatrical performance. As Lim describes it:

Conceived as a live spectacle without a pre-recorded soundtrack, it is also the closest he has come to a pure silent feature, not that purity is a pertinent concept in the case of the magpielike Mr. Maddin and his dense, crossbred melodramas.

With “Brand Upon the Brain!” he tries to reinvent the silent movie as theatrical event. The film had its premiere in September at the Toronto International Film Festival with an orchestra, a singer (billed as a castrato), an interlocutor (a tradition derived from the Japanese art of benshi) and sound effects by Foley artists in lab coats.

After a few successful stagings--“Brand” was also presented at festivals in New York and Berlin and named one of the best films of 2006 by Manohla Dargis in The New York Times--Mr. Maddin is now taking his show on the road across America.

Where's this grand tour headed, you ask? Fifteen shows in New York (with guest narrators like John Ashbery and Laurie Anderson, not to mention Lou Reed and Justin "Kiki" Bond), four in Chicago, one in San Francisco...

... and not a single one in Seattle.

And please don't tell me the pale imitation print with a stupid recorded soundtrack is coming to the Egyptian on July 8, because the stupid film was--let's return to the tape--"conceived as a live spectacle without a pre-recorded soundtrack".

I want my castrato! I want my foley artists! I want somebody to pony up the cash and get this thing here immediately. SIFF, you've failed me. SIFF Cinema, you've failed me. Landmark, Northwest Film Forum, Town Hall, On the Boards, you've failed everyone in Seattle. Surely somebody could have made this happen.

What the fuck is the point of making movies in Seattle, Gregg Lachow, if you won't even show them here? Not everyone has the luxury of jetting off to the Toronto International Film Festival to see the products of their fair city. I am deeply disappointed.

At the risk of excessive narcissism, there's a lengthy interview with, well, me up over at Seattlest. Many thanks to questioner James Callan for patiently encouraging my yarnin'.

Alright, it's not really a scandal, and only tangentially connected to SIFF, but this new I, Anonymous submission is sexy, SIFFy, and scandalous enough to warrant your attention:

Yesterday my partner and I went to see the movie "In Bed" (part of SIFF) at the Egyptian. The movie starts (sound only, some visuals of sheets moving) with a heterosexual couple loudly having sex, and it goes on for a couple minutes. The whole movie focuses on this casual sexual relationship between the two--about 1/3 of the movie was just sex, the rest was them getting to know each other. In any case, regardless of your sexual orientation (we're queer girls) it was hot.

So, the movie gets boring...and I invite my lady to take off. She bolts for the bathroom, which is empty, and we head into the large stall and well, get to it. You know....

After a couple minutes these two women come in and are talking REALLY loudly, it was totally odd; at this point we're not doing anything but um..we'd like to come out of the stall and go home! They talk and talk and it occurs to us that they're trying to keep us in there? Get us to come out? Weird. A couple minutes later we walk out and some asswipe manager comes in and says "If you guys have to use the bathroom can you at least go into a single stall? You really shouldn't use the handicapped stall for so long because.." blah blah blah. What she was really saying was "I'm so jealous that you two love birds get to fuck in here after watching a hot movie, and those two bitches were totally freaked out by your lezzie sex! Please stop making me so jealous 'cause I never get any action except with my toys!".

My partner and I were both amazed that these two women actually CARED enough to go and get someone! Hell, if I saw two pairs of feet in a stall I'd hang around to watch- I think people getting in on is hot, more power to ya..what's the harm?

Oh Egyptian people, you need to have a more healthy acceptance of sexuality. Relax! And go get some...

Impromptu lesbian sex: Eternal component of cosmopolitan ladies' rooms, or inappropriate pollution of public space? Discuss.

There are tons of interesting movies at SIFF this weekend--it's a final, last-minute pileup before we all go into movie withdrawal, just in time to ignore the summer blockbusters. Tonight, check out Sundance favorite Quinceañera, the big, gay, Canadian C.R.A.Z.Y., the weirdly satisfying Slovene black comedy Gravehopping (love the scene with the language instruction tapes), the ever-intriguing François Ozon's Time to Leave, and French pop lust galore in Backstage. And a special event: Portatastic, fronted by Mac McCaughan of Superchunk, plays a live original score to the very cool Lon Cheney film The Unknown (by Tod Browning of Freaks explo-sideshow fame). Tickets are a little steep at $20, but I'd venture to suggest it's worth it.

It's hard to find an image for The Unknown, but if you do a Google image search for the phrase, the following strange thing appears. It has nothing to do with the movie, but I thought you'd enjoy it:

Saturday, check out the lovely local film We Go Back if you missed it Tuesday. It's rush tickets only for Strangers with Candy (yum!), but waiting in line for dubious reward may not be so boring when Jerri Blank lookalikes are constantly streaming past, angling for free tickets to the SWC afterparty. The other special event is Melodic Meshes, a cool-sounding collection of avant garde shorts (usual-suspect Meshes of the Afternoon, by Maya Deren, is actually the only one I've seen), including Tung (Bruce Baillie), Hands (Ralph Steiner and Willard Van Dyke), The Furies (Slavko Vorkapich), and one by by Joseph Cornell. Finally, I'd put money on the Sneak Midnight Film Saturday night being Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly--the print's in town for a press screening next week, and SIFF's coy clue ("a twisted new animated film from a director who first made his mark at SIFF with a film in 1991") seems to fit.

And then... the moment we've all been waiting for.... Sunday, June 18, The Last Day of SIFF 2006. Repeat screenings include C.R.A.Z.Y. and Quinceañera, Monster House, Backstage, and Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. Oh, and Broken Sky, which Dan Savage really, really liked, for some reason.

We have a new in-house review for The Science of Sleep, the closing night movie for this year. Happy Gondrying!

I must admit, SIFF has worn me out. I haven't even been the most conscientious viewer this year--for a time I was mustering around one movie per day--but I must be hovering around .8 movies a day now. Even having seen about forty movies before the festival began, I'm not going to finish anywhere near 100. The shame!

But we're coming into the home stretch, and this weekend is packed with great stuff. Onward, ho!

I saw Beowulf & Grendel last week, which I liked a little more than Lindy West, but not a ton. (My historical epic-lovin' boyfriend, however, dug it.) My biggest gripe is the very Clan of the Cave Bear-esque troll rape digression—what the hell was up with that? The movie begins its US theatrical run in Seattle at the Varsity tomorrow (7 and 9:30 pm), and the publicist is promising "VIKINGS & WENCHES TO DESCEND ON SEATTLE PREMIERE." Apparently,

There'll be Vikings in the streets, and in the seats, complete with broadswords, axes, and fierce visages.  And then there are the G.A.L.S., which stands for Gerry Addicted Lust Syndrome, an international fan club made up of adoring women who just can't get enough of the hunky actor who stars as Beowulf, Gerard Butler. Now, while that may sound typical, these gals take their mission one step further--all the way to the box office! G.A.L.S. have been flying and driving from all over the country to be in Seattle on July 16th to flood the theatres in support of Mr. Butler's latest film. Their efforts raked in over a half-million in sales so far for this independent film when it screened in Canada. Now on the heels of their recent 3 day convention in Las Vegas, the GALS are gearing up for film's upcoming American release this summer.

Who Killed the Electric Car? is a strong addition to the agitdoc ranks, although it would have been nice to have a few more subjects as captivating as the elderly inventor of a industry-suppressed car battery. There are too many speculative interviews and too little inside scoop. But my parents liked it, and it does the job.

New stuff: The screening at 4:30 pm at the Egyptian is In Bed. There was another screening of Frostbite today, but you missed it already. (Sorry!) And on Sunday, there will be an encore screening of one of the movies that's won the Gold Space Needle audience award or one of the juried prizes. That's at 6:30 at Broadway Performance Hall.

Tonight, the computer-animated kid-eating house movie, Monster House, plays at the Egyptian at 7 pm. (It'll open locally at the end of the month.) The excellent, locally produced doc Walking to Werner plays at the Neptune at 6:30 pm. And then there's the Face the Music Rock Party at Neumo's—the lineup includes our very own Sean Nelson, plus Razrez, Awesome, and more.

I attended a screening of The Trials of Darryl Hunt at the Broadway Performance Hall last night. It is an extremely tense story about a black man convicted of raping and killing a white woman--the man then spent almost 20 years in prison while trying to prove his innocence. During the film, someone in the audience was jangling something--and while SIFF-goers are more sensitive than most to noise (which I appreciate)--it was really annoying.

When I was walking out of the screening room after the film, a woman was confronting the man who had been making the noises (rattling a dog-tag necklace, it turns out), apparently he had also been talking a lot during the film. He wasn't taking the criticism very well, acting very hostile toward the woman. I was agreeing with her in my mind when she launched an attack on his b.o. problem. Yikes. Things were escalating in the argument as I exited. The last thing I saw was her chasing after him, outside the theater, screaming "TAKE A BATH, PIG!!"

Yesterday's The Heart of the Game afterparty was a chill affair, with lots of adorable kids running around, some discussion of the nastiest caffeine/ethanol combination known to man (that would be Rockstar + tequila, if you're keeping track), and only one basketball in sight.

I met filmmaker Lynn Shelton (We Go Way Back, playing next Tuesday at 9:30 pm at the Egyptian and Saturday the 17th at 1:30 pm at the Egyptian) for the first time—she was rad. I bitched to SIFF Artistic Director Carl Spence about the problematic projection at the Egyptian Wednesday night, which made Lynn cringe, while Michael Seiwerath shared some projectionist horror stories of his own (none involving NWFF, bien sûr). SIFF AD Emerita Helen Loveridge proclaimed Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, which she had seen at Cannes, to be excellent.

Chris Paine, the director of Who Killed the Electric Car? (tonight at 7 pm at the Egyptian), talked about the movies he had liked at another festival (they were The Guatemalan Handshake and something else that sounded intolerably earnest). Today he emailed to encourage me to come to the screening (I'll go if my early Prius-adopter dad will come with me) and to inform me that "my eyes dance when [I'm] explaining myself." Confidential to Chris: poor eye contact does not poetry make.

And finally, a new review, by Lindy West, of the Sarah Polley-starring Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf & Grendel.

The movie screens at SIFF again tomorrow at 9:30 pm at the Egyptian, and it opens for its U.S. theatrical premiere in Seattle (and Seattle only) at the Varsity next Friday. (What, do they think New York and LA moviegoers aren't gonna like amphibious sea hags or something?)

I saw The Heart of the Game last night at SIFF. It is a documentary about the Roosevelt High School girl's basketball team. It was terrific. I was on the edge of my seat throughout--the movie was full of action, humor, and drama. For those who love basketball, a must-see. For others, the personal stories and the local basis of the movie make it absolutely worth watching.

The Seattle premiere was rowdy, with the players, families, coach, and filmmakers all in attendance. Even the Roosevelt Marching Band was there playing outside the theater, including a totally darling girl tuba player.

See The Stranger SIFF Guide review here.

The Heart of the Game plays again on June 11 at 4:15 p.m. at Lincoln Square. It opens for a regular run at the Guild 45th and Pacific Place on June 14.

Brand-new reviews today: VishwaThulasi (a Kollywood musical featuring a married virgin, a humble rich man, and a baby chick-murdering madman) , Blood Rain (arson! snuff scenes!), and Malas Temporadas (hard times, indeed).

And a rant for the projectionist at the Egyptian last night: Check the aspect ratio! Poke your head out and check the sound levels! Do not allow the film to catch fire! (Seriously, folks. It does look cool to see the burning, but those frames are lost to that print forever.) Adjust the frame so you can see both the subtitles and people's heads! Geez. That screening was seriously messed up.

Those words are the understated lyrics of the Refugee All-Stars, a band whose members are the moving subjects of the eponymous documentary about them showing at SIFF (Neptune Theatre) on Saturday at 4:15 and Tuesday (June 13) at 9:30. These are people who turn their own horror stories into catchy songs, and transform the words "We are the clients of UNHCR" (the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) into singable lyrics. They're well worth your 80 minutes.

And if you like them in the movie, they're coming to Seattle to do a benefit concert July 13 at Neumos for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.

Day 13: We've reached the halfway point!

Yesterday I saw The Forsaken Land (or, as the French had it, prettily, La Terre abandonée), the Sri Lankan film that shared the Camera d'Or with Me and You and Everyone We Know at Cannes. (The two movies couldn't be less alike.)

Anyway, it was somber and strange and abruptly, jarringly violent (okay, you've seen Hostel or whatever, but stick a sudden shot of a fingernail being pried off into the middle of an art film about frogs and parched holes in the ground--that's what really gets people to freak the fuck out). I doubt we'll see it around here again, despite the fancy Cannes prize. And that's exactly what's so awesome about SIFF. A surprising little epic of a movie about the vicious aftermath of war, being screened two blocks from my house. (You know nothin' good's gonna come to the Harvard Exit the whole summer long.)

Tomight you've got lots of good choices, including the awesome 49 Up at 6:30 at the Egyptian and the intriguing (and apparently local) Arctic Son at 7:30 at Broadway Performance Hall. David Jeffers over at the intermittently functional Siffblog expresses some interesting displeasure about the print of The Gold Rush they're screening tonight at the Neptune. His advice? Skip it, and seek out the 1925 version on DVD.

If you're planning ahead for tomorrow, The Heart of the Game (both screenings, actually) is sold out, so find a friend with a pass or get there really really really early to stand in the rush tickets line. Lucky for you, the movie--which is totally rad--is opening in Seattle next Wednesday the 14th at Guild 45th and Pacific Place.

This weekend was a leisurely one for me, having limited my intake to a modest one movie per diem. Those were: Lunacy (demented, yes, and I liked the Benito Cereno conceit, but the animation was unimaginative and overall it felt excessively earnest--I could have done without the post-orgy lecture extolling the virtues of blasphemy); Into Great Silence, about which more below; The Puffy Chair (eminently watchable and quite funny, though more than anything else I kept thinking that it would've been perfect for the university film series I used to program) plus David Russo's I Am (Not) Van Gogh, which was great. Especially the fish.

Into Great Silence, pictured above, is one of the longest movies in the festival (at 164 minutes, it's bested only by the multi-part marathons The Century of the Self, The Line of Beauty, and A Lion in the House). There are a few missteps, but I really enjoyed it (capsule review here). Its illustration of the monkish life didn't exactly make me want to quit my job and take vows of poverty and chastity, but it did make me want to clean my apartment. The next screening is Wednesday at 4 pm at the Harvard Exit.

Yet another reason I can't quite credit claims that violent movies don't affect behavior: I've become dangerously obsessed with crossword puzzles since watching Wordplay, a movie I didn't even particularly like. (Note to self: mother-of-pearl=nacre, you idiot! I'm so pathetic, I can't even finish a Monday.)

And one last new review: Sa-Kwa (which has been translated as "Sorry Apple"--a much better title, I think, even though it doesn't make immediate sense). It screens next weekend at Pacific Place and Tuesday the 13th at the Harvard Exit.

Finally, if you read our SIFF Notes grid and tried to go to a very poor South African film called Cape of Good Hope at 2 pm today, I'm sorry. That seems to have been a mistaken holdover from last year's grid.

So SIFF is entering its second exhilarating/exhausting week today, and the counterprogrammers—who were cowering a bit on opening weekend—are finally coming out to play.

Seattle True Independent Film Festival (STIFF) kicks off today with an impressively packed lineup of underground/low-budget/local/microcinema offerings. Andrew Wright previews the festival here. In addition to his worthy picks, I also recommend you check out Grand Luncheonette, a short by Peter Sillen (who co-directed the great Benjamin Smoke with Jem Cohen) about the closing of a Times Square lunch counter. It looks like it should be 16 mm, or at least a film-to-video transfer. Dansk Stil is a movie about the Danish hiphop scene, which makes for a nice counter-programming choice given that SIFF is doing a Danish spotlight. Charles Mudede says he's heard good things about Wally. There are also lots and lots of movies about zombies and ninjas and clowns.

Grand Illusion, which sells general tickets for a sweet $7.50, is in the second week of a Fritz Lang series—either an ambitious or a completely foolhardy alternative to SIFF's archival presentations. Go, now, watch M. Next week, they're retreating to more traditional microcinema territory with a movie called Psychopathia Sexualis (it's a dramatization of the Krafft-Ebbing text).

Northwest Film Forum embraced the SIFF behemoth last week, with a pretty damn good SIFF program entitled "Alternate Cinema" (so far, a Darkness Swallowed is my favorite experimental film of the year). This week, they're breaking away from SIFF and doing something pretty smart: music festival documentaries. Who knew such a genre existed? It should appeal to people who aren't so into SIFF's (I hate to say it) disappointing music-oriented programming. The T.A.M.I. Show starts tonight at 7 and 9; Festival starts Monday (Megan Seling's capsule review is here). Next week: Coachella.

I saw the documentary Clear Cut: The Story of Philomath, Oregon at SIFF the other day and would recommend it for people interested in Northwesty stuff—Philomath is a small town near Corvallis. One resident made his fortune in logging and established a college scholarship for the town. All a student had to do to qualify was graduate from the high school. Now there is a fierce conflict between the teachers/administrators in the school system and the descendents that run the scholarship foundation.

It is fascinating to see this battle of conservative versus liberal values played out in this small town—unfortunately at the expense of the town's kids.

I saw the director, Peter Richardson, speak at the screening. He is from Philomath and benefited from the scholarship himself, he had even more weird stories to tell about the crazy goings-on in that town.

See The Stranger review here.

Clear Cut plays today, June 1, at Broadway Performance Hall at 4:30 p.m.

First for the slow: Charles Mudede has a new review of The Hidden Blade (the second in a trilogy that began with The Twilight Samurai) up at The Stranger's regularly updated SIFF Notes. Just for the record: Slowness does not a bad movie make.

Next for the death: I review Snow Cake, a maudlin actor's movie, which attracted the likes of Alan Rickman (as English reserve embodied) and Sigourney Weaver (as an autistic woman coping with tragedy and dog vomit in her living room). Prominently featured are death, a funeral, and a wake.

AND, NEWS FLASH FROM THE SIFF OFFICE:
As SIFF Forum readers correctly speculated, Stewart Copeland will not be attending "A Conversation With Steward Copeland" due to the death of his brother Ian. Here are the revised plans:

Without Copeland, the pre-screening conversation and film will proceed as such:

Ben London, Executive Director of the Northwest Chapter of the Recording Academy, will talk about Copeland's life and career, with clips and trailers, and read a statement from Mr. Copeland. The screening of Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out will follow.

Those attending the screening will be offered a single ticket voucher good for a regular SIFF screening. Those requesting a refund can do so in person at the SIFF Main Box Offices, Broadway Performance Hall and the Pacific Place.

This is what I said about the film in the SIFF Notes:

Daniel is a charming young man, but as far as society is concerned, he's basically worthless. He makes all his money by doing under-the-table work and graffiti murals for friends, and while he tries to be a good friend to those around him, he's also self-involved. He's always getting into and then magically out of trouble. This is a frustrating thing for his friend, nicknamed Grandpa, who is a fat soccer referee wannabe. The black-and-white movie about their friendship and lives is pretty hilarious.

I didn't have enough room to mention the donut girl that goes to work while high on mushrooms, her slutty mom that is always hitting on all her guy friends and trying to get them wasted, and the parts where "Grandpa" makes Daniel play soccer by himself so he can practice refereeing the "game"... All the characters are their own kind of quirky and crazy. So go. See it. The movie is showing tonight at Pacific Place at 6:45 pm.

I meant to post something about Friday's screening of A/K/A Tommy Chong at the Egyptian but I... uh... I forgot. For some reason I forgot.

While we were in line, someone with a SIFF badge came up to us and said, "Anyone want to say something on camera for the SIFFcast? Something about the Cheech and Chong movie?" This guy holding the camera was someone who, well, let's just say he seemed to be the kind of guy who has an intimate relationship with green stuff. Unsurprisingly, no one took him up on his offer. He walked away, then turned back, held up his badge, and said (I guess because he was paranoid or something), "I'm official!"

A/K/A Tommy Chong is a documentary about how Tommy Chong, who has turned his fame as that stoner from those movies into a business selling bongs over the Internet, was entrapped by the government—an undercover "client" persuaded Chong's company to sell and ship a box of bongs to one of the few states where such sales are illegal—and what's great about it is that filmmaker Josh Gilbert sets the story of the sting against a national backdrop, not long after 9/11, when you'd think that Ashcroft and company would be preoccupied with tasks other than, you know, spending tons of Justice Department resources to bust Tommy Chong for selling bongs. How, exactly, does that make America safer? (Their real motive is to bust Chong for "glamorizing" drug use in all those movies he made.) The documentary has the production values of an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and there are a lot of interviews conducted while interview subjects are driving around surburban L.A. (or, later, while a certain interview subject is in his orange prison jumpsuit), but it's funny, persuasive, maddening, etc. It plays again at the Egyptian on Tuesday, May 30 at 4:30 pm. I recommend it.

The guy who introduced the film stared out by saying, "I'm guessing we have some Cheech and Chong fans here? I'm guessing that we also have some fans of Initiative 75? Is that what it is? 75?" Cheers, applause, etc. The person behind me said, jokingly, "Is that the monorail?"

The movie also includes that great speech Bush made about how "If you quit drugs, you join the fight against terrorism in America" (remember that one?), tempered by some well-put commentary by Atlantic Monthly correspondent (and Fast Food Nation author) Eric Schlosser, who says things like, "It's the power of the government to choose who they don't like and destroy them."

Kids from the International Community School in Kirkland—quite an adventurous lot—packed the screening of the found-footage shorts I had recommended earlier. They found something to like (the consensus favorite was Ringo) and I found something to love: Bill Morrison's The Highwater Trilogy is even better than Decasia.

This is not a very representative still. Most of the shots are starker and more horribly majestic. But it will have to do.

Blindingly bright, deliberately paced, perfectly scored (with the possible exception of the third-act flood, which was almost overwhelmed by its sawing, siren-inspired accompaniment), the end product is more than you could ever ask from a 30-minute experimental short. It's even politically aware! Completely amazing. I also liked the riot-grrlish Wall of Sound Flowers, but wasn't especially keen on Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine.

New reviews for this weekend include the locally shot Expiration Date (read my rant here) and Swedish wild child Lukas Moodysson's Container (which I quite liked).

The DJ at SIFF's opening party was not exceptional but he/she did manage to play a few dance classics that never fail a dance floor. But the problem was not so much the music than the dancers. There were no moves to organize them. Everyone was doing their own thing and it just looked chaotic. A dance floor of substance is one that is a community of moves--the oak tree, the cabbage patch, the snake, the sprinkler, the running man. (Admittedly, those are older moves; the new ones--booty shaking, crumping, freaking--lack the social value of dances like the old and trusty robot.)

Not long ago, I wrote this about a socially relevant dance that was popular in my late teens, which was spent in Gaborone:

Because there are more cattle than people (three to one) in the country of Botswana, it's not surprising that in 1988 (or thereabouts) the most popular dance in the nightclubs of the country's capital, Gaborone, involved imitating the movements of a cow. As the hiphop or funk jam played, people on the dance floor would bend over, let their arms hang, and move their shoulder blades up and down to the beat of the music. It was a convincing imitation, and those who mastered the dance mastered the dance floor.

Note: I hate line dancing (the electric slide, the achy breaky, and what have you). Unlike the totalitarianism of line dancing, a community of moves allows the dancer to retain his/her identity while at the same time using recognizable codes. The totalitarianism of line dancing, however, is much worse than what I saw last night: the anarchy of whatever.

The SIFF opening party was as ever it is: A 40-minute slog up a narrow staircase, then a 30-minute feeding/drinking frenzy, followed by standing around, followed by a mass exodus around 11 pm. The food lines are a lot like SIFF lines: From the end of the queue, you can't see what awaits you at the beginning, so everything is a delicious (or not so much) surprise! We got saddled with a Sterling merlot (mehck!) and Chipotle Mexican Grill. Better luck next year. New for 2006: DJs who thought they playing a 1980s bar mitzvah.

Northwest Film Forum programming director ADAM SEKULER enjoined us to take off our clothes! No, that's not right--he merely expressed his wish that more people would take off their clothes! He actually enjoined us to attend The T.A.M.I. Show, a "who's-who of early '60s rock" on Friday, June 2 at 9 pm, followed by a raucous after-party at 11.

Seattle filmmaker DAVID RUSSO, looking bohemian in a patterned synthetic shirt and hand-knitted brown scarf, said he's moving from Wedgwood to Magnolia, and he's not happy! Magnolia, apparently, is not a place where one can walk one's cat around the block with no clothes on at 2 am.

Continuing the naked theme, Seattle Weekly film critic BRIAN MILLER--just kidding! We just wanted you to envision Brian Miller naked. Mr. Miller was spotted flirting wildly (that means whole sentences!) with a lady friend next to a plasma-screen TV advertising Vitamin Water.

And Seattle actor TOM SKERRITT posed for a Kodak moment with The Illusionist star JESSICA BIEL in the awkward enclave of the VIP Lounge.

And what OFFICIAL SIFF GUIDE WRITER confessed to reading a Variety review that dismissed a certain movie's central concept a "gimmick," then reframing the official blurb as follows: "Although it may seem like a gimmick..."? Propaganda, we're telling you! SIFF Notes is your guide to the Seattle International Film Festival.

SIFF Notes has a brand-new review for Carmen in Khayelitsha, screening Wed May 31 and Sun June 4. Thanks, Brendan Kiley!

Second, an update to the official guide, if you still have that old thing lying around:

There's a NEW MOVIE called 0SS 117: Nest of Spies. It's a humorous Bond-ish French movie set in Cairo. There are additional screenings of No. 2 (Sun May 28 at 3:45 pm at Pacific Place) and The Method (Mon June 5 at 4:30 pm at Lincoln Square Cinemas). My Quick Way Out and The Valet are no longer screening. Our guide, SIFF Notes, incorporates all of these changes. Also, Emmanuelle Seigner, while a certified hottie, was not in Swimming Pool. (Ludivine Sagnier, however, was.)

We made an error in the print version of our guide, too. Get out your red pens! American Blackout is screening on Sat May 27 and Sun May 28 at 1:30 pm at the Egyptian. Not Tuesday the 30th, as was indicated at the end of our capsule review (our grid had it right).

The Illusionist screens tonight, followed by a big party at the old temporary Central Library. All the news that's fit to queue up for, tomorrow!

I quote the introduction to the print edition of our ever-popular SIFF Notes:

SIFF Notes provide you with the combined efforts of cinephiles, film scribes, and lowly interns who've studied, taught, and analyzed what film festivals mean to cinema as a whole and to you in particular.

SIFF Notes are intended to help make your cinematic gamble as painless as possible. To that end, SIFF Notes give you the basics—information about the ï¬�lms (country of origin, theater, showtimes), plus special events and a full programming grid. Most importantly, SIFF Notes feature nearly 200 original capsule reviews—more than any other guide in town. Be warned! The official SIFF program will mislead you. It is a promotional tool. SIFF Notes, by way of contrast, are on your side. Our reviews are here to help you avoid despicable garbage and lead you to films you will love.

One �nal note: The Stranger's third-annual 28 Seconds �lm contest, in which local �lmmakers were given the challenge of creating an entertaining movie lasting a svelte 28 seconds, drew a huge number of entries. Michael Sanchez's winning entry can be viewed before the following Stranger-sponsored SIFF �lms: Strangers with Candy (Neptune, Sat June 17 at 7 pm), This Film Is Not Yet Rated (Egyptian, Sat May 27 at 9:30 pm), and The District! (Neptune, Sat May 27 at midnight and Wed June 7 at 4:30 pm). You can also view the winning film (and the runners-up) at www.thestranger.com/siff.

Updates and brand-new reviews will be posted in our online guide and here on Slog. See you at the movies!