The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper: Slog: SIFF

SIFF: The Scrapper World Premiere After-Party @ the Crocodile

Kelly O — Tue, 21 May 2013 16:05:24 -0700

Locally made feature film Scrapper (reviewed here) is throwing an excellent after-party at the Crocodile tonight:

Celebrate the Seattle International Film Festival world premiere of the feature film Scrapper at the Crocodile. After the 6 pm premiere screening at the SIFF Uptown Theater the afterparty will begin at the Croc featuring live music from Rose Windows, Kithkin, and Ephrata. Mingle with the stars and filmmakers from the movie including Michael Beach (Sons Of Anarchy, Soul Food, Insidious 2) and Joanna Angel (Burningangel.com).

You guys, that's porn star JOANNA ANGEL!!! Check out the official trailer (and my personal high-fives to director Brady Hall):

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This Weekend at the Movies (SIFF and Beyond)

David Schmader — Fri, 17 May 2013 15:15:05 -0700

This weekend brings a bunch of SIFF stuff that the Stranger SIFF Review Board loved, including the Wikileaks documentary We Steal Secrets, Noah Baumbach's and Greta Gerwig's Manhattan-flavored comedy Frances Ha, the dead pet-fetishizing documentary Furever, the French family farm-fetishizing documentary After Winter, Spring, and the modern-day adaptation of Henry James' What Maisie Knew.

And in the non-SIFF world, there's Francois Ozon's In the House, the highly effective Filipino kidnapping thriller Graceland, and the cliche-ridden mob film The Iceman, plus all them StarTrekIronManGreatGatsbyblockbusters.

Full film info here.

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Short Film Fridays: The SIFF Edition

Charles Mudede — Fri, 17 May 2013 15:01:31 -0700

For the next three weeks, Short Film Fridays will feature work by directors who are participating in the current Seattle International Film Festival. The first film in this series is a music video made in 1994 by the Seattle-based director Josh Taft. The music video is for one of the most important tracks in the history of hiphop, Nas’s “The World Is Yours.” The world premiere of Josh Taft’s first feature, Alive and Well, a documentary about people dealing with Huntington’s disease, happens at SIFF Cinema Uptown on May 22nd (7:00 pm).

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Some Really Good Food-Related Films at SIFF

Bethany Jean Clement — Fri, 17 May 2013 12:45:28 -0700

After Winter, Spring - a film by Judith Lit from Judith Lit on Vimeo.

SIFF has a dozen or so movies about food, or farming, or fruit, or wine, etc. this year, and of the ones that we were able to screen by press time, we REALLY liked four (good job, SIFF!).

DON'T MISS!
After Winter, Spring
Is there anything cuter than a farmer rubbing the fuzzy face of an hour-old calf, asking, "Is there anything cuter than this?" Yes: when the farmer and the calf and the question are all French, as is the case in this achingly lovely documentary about family farming in the Périgord. Shot over the course of a year, it's so pretty, it's ridiculous, and the people—from the idealistic couple starting a tiny organic operation to the 88-year-old vintner/philosopher—are marvelous. Facing tough times, they love their animals and their land with inspiring hope. Also featured: a famous foie gras farm, cast in a human and arguably humane light. (BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT)
Harvard Exit, Sun, May 19, 4 pm
SIFF Uptown, Mon, May 20, 8:30 pm

STAR!
C.O.G.
Inspired by reading The Grapes of Wrath and wanting to get his hands dirty, an overeducated white East Coast Yale grad heads out to Oregon to work in the apple orchards. Based on a David Sedaris essay from Naked, the story begins on the long-haul bus ride, where "Samuel" (his new identity) is accosted by a parade of weirdos. At the farm, he has trouble connecting with anyone and he is comically unprepared to exist in the real world. Will Samuel find happiness in the simple things instead of overanalyzing and sneering at everything? Or will he run back to his old life? Thanks to the film's wonderful performances and entertaining dialogue, you'll have a perfectly good (if not revelatory) time finding out. (GILLIAN ANDERSON)
Egyptian, Fri, May 24, 4 pm
Egyptian, Sun, May 26, 7 pm
Renton, Mon, May 27, 6 pm

DON'T MISS!
More Than Honey
Filmed in Switzerland, the United States, and China, this lively documentary covers the gamut of the bee world: part beekeeping family reminiscence, part incredible close-up of bee culture and physiology, part modern-day beekeeping in all its variety, part scientific bee study, part philosophical musing on industrial culture. The filmmaker muses, "The plants are rooted to the ground, they can't run across the field and hug each other. They can't have children on their own. What they need is a messenger of love: a bee." This film made me want to drop everything and devote my life to beekeeping. (GILLIAN ANDERSON)
SIFF Uptown, Thu, May 23, 8:30 pm
Egyptian, Tue, June 4, 4:30 pm

STAR!
You Will Be My Son
Faced with the unappetizing prospect of bringing his only child into the family business, a stubborn winemaker (Niels Aretrup) begins looking for other candidates. Director Gilles Legrand veers expertly between grand tragedy and poker-faced comedy, including a moment with a car that should have Vin Diesel hustling for the phone. Aretrup, whose expert ambivalence helps power the fellow SIFF entry Our Children, here relishes the chance to go full Snidely Whiplash, spitting out venom with a hilariously jaded air. He's a sonofabitch of the highest order, and perfectly okay with that. (ANDREW WRIGHT)
SIFF Uptown, Wed, June 5, 7 pm
Kirkland, Fri, June 7, 8:30 pm

I already got my tickets to More Than Honey, which Gillian raves about above, and which Jim Drohman, chef/owner of Le Pichet and Cafe Presse, says farmers in France are ABUZZ about (his terrible pun, not mine). I'd also like to see SOMM, a documentary about four people trying to pass the master sommelier exam. Three more we weren't able to watch before SIFF-guide press time: Drinking Buddies, a "beer-centric romantic comedy"; Haute Cuisine, based on the story of Danièle Delpeuch, chef to former French president François Mitterrand; and Red Obsession, about the how crazy some people in China are for Bordeaux (red obsession, get it?).

As for the remainder of the 2013 SIFF food movies, Andrew Wright did not enjoy Mussels in Love, I did not enjoy The Fruit Hunters, and Goldy did not enjoy The Last Ocean.

More on all these films may be found in our awesome, as-comprehensive-as-humanly-possible searchable online SIFF guide (or in this week's paper).

For tickets, go here.

Lunchtime!

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Tonight: Smoke Signals at the Snoqualmie Casino

David Schmader — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:38:38 -0700

Tonight the Seattle International Film Festival invites you to get out of town, with a free, 15th-anniversary screening of Smoke Signals—the first feature film written, directed, and co-produced by Native Americans, with a script by Stranger columnist/Stranger Genius Award winner Sherman Alexie—tonight at Snoqualmie Casino. (Bonus: cast members Elaine Miles, Evan Adams, and Michelle St. John will be in attendance!)

Full info here.

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Much Ado About Nothing: Whedon's Shakespeare Is Horny, Cute, and Affable

Paul Constant — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:07:22 -0700

(Much Ado About Nothing was the Opening Night Gala film selection at SIFF tonight. It won't be screening again during the festival, but it opens ~~nationwide~~ in New York and Los Angeles on June 7th and in Seattle on June 21st, so if you missed out tonight, you'll be able to see it soon.)

Elsa Guillet-Chapuis
Clark Gregg: This is the scene where he recruits Beatrice to join a super-team with Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and Lady Macbeth.

This movie is a classic example of the they’re-sure-having-fun-up-there concept of entertainment. It was filmed in a matter of days at director/adaptor Joss Whedon’s own house, with actors who are all his friends, in cheap black and white on digital cameras. (Whedon famously conducts after-work readings of Shakespeare with the casts of his television shows and films, so he had plenty of practice.) And you know what? Everybody sure does look like they’re having fun up there, to the point where you want to forgive the film’s obvious flaws just because you feel like you’re an invited guest at an intimate dinner party.

This horny, very funny staging of Much Ado About Nothing is set in an opulent modern-day estate during a wedding, when distant friends and family gather together because they have to. It’s a cozy affair, and the actors are all practically flirting with Shakespeare’s language (standouts include Clark Gregg, who wins this affable movie’s coveted Most Affable award; Nathan Fillion, who feasts on his small comic-relief role; and Amy Acker as a strong, confident Beatrice). There’s some silly physical comedy, willful deception on a large scale, and, because Much Ado is arguably the world’s first rom-com, every major player makes one asshole move that seems totally out of character. (Blame the writer for that last one.)

But it’s light and fun and funny and delightful—it’s so rare that a movie claps Shakespeare on the back like an old bud, rather than putting him up on a pedestal, like he’s in a museum. Who cares if some of the acting is a little hambone? (Alexis Denisof’s Benedick wavers between charming and cartoonish.) Or that the music, by Joss and Jed Whedon, is simply terrible? Or that a few directorial tricks—a whooshing white-out transition between scenes is more jarring than useful—seem more telenovela than feature film? Everybody is—all together now—having so much fun up there that you want to forgive them their trespasses. And so you do.

(This post has been updated since its original publication to reflect the correct release dates. I apologize for the error.)

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Tonight in Seattle: Not One But TWO Opening-Night Galas!

David Schmader — Thu, 16 May 2013 10:56:20 -0700

At McCaw Hall, tonight brings the opening of the 39th Seattle International Film Festival, which is curated by a board of professionals and commences with Joss Whedon's brand-new Much Ado About Nothing.

And at Central Cinema, tonight brings the opening of the first-ever Black and Beautiful Film Festival, which is curated by Franklin High School senior Mia Roberson and commences with 1971's Shaft.

For full info on the Seattle International Film Festival, see The Stranger's SIFF Guide. For an interview with Black and Beautiful curator Mia Roberson, see this week's Festive.

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Every Damn SIFF Movie in One Damn Place

Paul Constant — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:05:39 -0700

Our exhaustive guide to SIFF is live on our site and physically arriving on the streets of Seattle even as you read this. You already know where to go to look up individual movies and read all our Slog entries about SIFF. But did you know that you can also read our reviews and descriptions of every single SIFF movie all in one ridiculously long document? It's true! And it may just be the best way to discover that hidden cinematic gem you didn't realize you've been missing all your life.

Go dig in.

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Starting Tomorrow: The Seattle International Film Festival

David Schmader — Wed, 15 May 2013 11:28:43 -0700

They don't call SIFF America's biggest film festival just for kicks. Besides corralling 273 films (plus multiple shorts packages) from all over the globe, the 2013 Seattle International Film Festival is three and a half weeks long, which means you have almost an entire month to dive into SIFF, get sick of it and ignore it for a while, then dive back in all over again.

As ever, there's a ton of stuff worth seeing, from glorious art films to splashy documentaries to craptastic cult fare. The opening-night gala brings Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing, which has been sold out since it was announced and will likely involve a hilarious mingling of speech-giving civic dignitaries and screaming Whedonistas. The centerpiece gala brings the much-buzzed-about documentary on backup singers Twenty Feet from Stardom. And the closing-night gala brings The Bling Ring, Sofia Coppola's ripped-from-the-headlines drama on Hollywood thieves. (The fact that it has a plot means it's already 10,000 times better than 2010's Somewhere.)

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE. Among the non-gala film events that have The Stranger excited: Fateful Findings, a fledgling classic of brilliantly terrible cinema in the manner of The Room; The Punk Singer, Sini Anderson's revelatory documentary about Kathleen Hanna; Furever, a squirmy documentary about the pet-memorial business; and An Evening with Kyle MacLachlan, during which the Northwest native and beloved Hollywood star will submit himself to an onstage Q&A (complete with clip show!), then hang out and watch the classic pilot of Twin Peaks on the big screen.

Here is The Stranger's guide to every single film in SIFF 2013, featuring eyewitness reviews of more than 130 films and a half-dozen jokes in poor taste.

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It's Time to Start Getting Excited About the Seattle International Film Festival

Paul Constant — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 17:19:01 -0700

In case you couldn't tell, Seattle International Film Festival season is upon us. This morning was the official press launch for SIFF, which brought some announcements about what to expect out of the festival this year.

You already know about the sold-out Much Ado About Nothing screening that's opening the festival up. The first announcement at the press launch was the Closing Gala film, Sofia Coppola's Emma Watson-starring The Bling Ring. This is the brand-new trailer for that one:

Other announcements include special guest appearances by Kyle MacLachlan (along with a screening of the Twin Peaks pilot) and director Peter Greenaway; the inclusion of 38 Northwest-centric films including a documentary called Evergreen: The Road to Legalization; a full slate of music documentaries including films about Peaches and Kathleen Hanna, and a documentary about backup singers titled Twenty Feet from Stardom that will be screened as the Centerpiece Gala along with a performance from two singers in the movie; a focus on African movies including an international smash-hit South African romantic comedy titled Fanie Fourie's Lobola; and a midnight movie slate including a couple of zombie movies (one of which is a documentary about zombie walks) and a so-bad-it's-good cult-hit-in-the-making in the style of The Room called Fateful Findings.

Tickets go on sale online and at physical box offices on May 2nd, and the festival runs from May 16th through June 9th. There will be literally hundreds of other films in the festival, and you can expect The Stranger's as-comprehensive-as-is-humanly possible SIFF guide to hit the streets just before the festival begins. Find lots of trailers for many of the SIFF movies I mentioned above after the jump.

This is the trailer for Evergreen: The Road to Legalization:

This is a Twenty Feet from Stardom promotional reel:

Here's the trailer for Fanie Fourie's Lobola:

And now you should prepare—if you can—for the trailer for Fateful Findings:

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Get Ready, Nerds: Joss Whedon, Nathan Fillion, and Clark Gregg Will Debut Much Ado About Nothing at SIFF's Opening Night Gala

Paul Constant — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 12:27:59 -0700

Looks like SIFF is getting a red hot nerd injection this year:

Start the Festival in style with the SIFF 2013 Opening Night Gala! The evening features the Seattle premiere of Much Ado About Nothing, with director Joss Whedon and cast members Alexis Denisof, Amy Acker, Nathan Fillion, and Clark Gregg scheduled to attend.

Follow the link to buy tickets. We did a Slog poll on the trailer of Whedon's Much Ado adaptation, and Slog is apparently very excited about this movie. I'm thinking a whole lot of people are dying to see Whedon and his crew in person on opening night, too, which means this could be the biggest SIFF opening night gala yet. It's definitely going to be the nerdiest.

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With SIFF 2012 Safely Behind Us...

David Schmader — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 10:24:41 -0700

....we can turn our attention to truly important films—specifically the early '90s music videos of Reba McEntire.

In the early '90s, Reba was a country-music superstar who wanted to make a new kind of splash. Her million-dollar idea: Take the great, old, plot-heavy saga-songs of '70s AM radio, add a twang or two to make it "country," then gussy up the whole thing with extravagantly ramshackle videos in which Reba acts out the story.

Exhibit A: Reba's 1992 revamp of the Southern Gothic murder-by-kangaroo-court ballad "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia," in which the classic song is submerged in a dialogue-heavy mini-miniseries starring Reba in amazing, Mama's Family-quality old-age makeup.

Exhibit B: Reba's equally subtle and necessary revamp of Bobbie Gentry's mama-pimped-me-out ballad "Fancy."

Tragically, Reba's transition from country star to sitcom star robbed us of her miniseries-video covers of "Angie Baby," "(She Ran Callin') Wildfire," and "Harper Valley PTA." But we'll always have "Fancy" and "The Night Mama's Family Went Out in Georgia."

Also, SIFF-the-festival may be over, but SIFF-the-cinemas continue, this week featuring encore screenings of the greatest hits of the just-finished fest. (One more chance to see Eden!)

Thanks to perpetual Slog Tipper Jake for the Reba alert.

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Grant Cogswell Is Reading Tonight from His Poetry Collection The Dream of the Cold War

Christopher Frizzelle — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 11:20:39 -0700

Cogswell has been writing non-poetry for The Stranger for more than a decade. His quixotic run for city council has now been immortalized by the movie Grassroots, directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal, father of some famous kids and a poet himself. In a turnabout of sorts, Gyllenhaal is "opening" for Cogswell tonight. If you've seen Grassroots—it played closing night of SIFF—you have slightly cartoonish sense of Cogswell's life, but you probably don't have a handle on what a good writer he is. Matthew Stadler, who published this book through Publication Studio, describes the book like this: "One of the few successful attempts to drag Whitman out to our remote coast and make him live in a dirty downtown hotel."

Cogswell reads tonight at Naked City Brewery & Taphouse, 8564 Greenwood Avenue North, at 7 pm. It's free. His latest essay for The Stranger appears in tomorrow's issue. It's about a very terrifying road trip.

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Megan Griffiths's Eden Gets SIFF Awards Love

David Schmader — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 09:18:05 -0700

Yesterday SIFF held its annual awards brunch, and Megan Griffiths's amazing Eden was well celebrated.

Congratulations to all.

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SIFF 2012: The Fest Enters the Home Stretch, the Movies Carry On

David Schmader — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 11:32:44 -0700

SIFF 2012: Only three days left! Today's highlights include the smashing ~~cult documentary~~ documentary about a cult The Source and Otelo Burning, described below.

Meanwhile, the hit films of the not-yet-finished SIFF 2012 are circling back for proper theatrical runs, including the Seattle-based and highly enjoyable Safety Not Guaranteed. From Erik Henriksen's review:

Until the dark day of I Can Has Cheezburger: The Movie!, Safety Not Guaranteed will stand—as far as I can tell—as the only motion picture inspired by an internet meme. While its origins make Safety Not Guaranteed sound slight and disposable—a few steps above Battleship in Hollywood’s “Oh shit, what else can we turn into a movie?!” descent—the difference is that Safety Not Guaranteed is both staunchly independent and very, very good. Funny and sad and sweet and clever, it’s a film that transcends its roots to become—and I know we’re only halfway through 2012, but fuck it—one of the best films of the year.

Read the whole thing here. And find full SIFF info in our review-packed guide.

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It's the Friedkin Weekend, Baby, Have You Some Fun

David Schmader — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 14:41:00 -0700

This weekend brings the final stretch of SIFF 2012, featuring not one but two events celebrating the work of director William Friedkin.

Tomorrow brings a 10 pm screening of The Exorcist at SIFF Uptown.
And Saturday brings "An Evening with William Friedkin" at the Egyptian, where the man himself will be in attendance to introduce a screening of his new film, Killer Joe.

Would you like to win a pair of tickets to The Exorcist and another pair of tickets to the Friedkin Tribute/Killer Joe?

Just be the first person to correctly answer this question:

What is the gayest William Friedkin movie?

Email your answer to itaintcruising@thestranger.com.

UPDATE: We have our winners. The first double-set of passes went to Davey, who correctly identified William Friedkin's gayest movie as The Boys in the Band. The second pair of pairs went to Sean, who made a strong case for the gayest Friedkin film being Deal of the Century:

Look at the cover! Hines and Chase, nuts to butt, with the big thumbs up, Weaver off to the side with thumbs down. It's all subliminal man!

Congrats to both.

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Tonight at SIFF: A Celebration of Sissy Spacek and a Terrence Malick Film for People Who Think They Don't Like Terrence Malick Films

David Schmader — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 10:06:38 -0700

Tonight at SIFF: An Evening with Sissy Spacek, featuring the lady herself in attendance to receive an award, answer some questions, then join us all for a screening of Badlands, Terrence Malick's wonderful 1973 film starring Spacek in her first lead role. Here's the trailer:

For full SIFF info (only four days left!), see our review-packed guide.

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Today at SIFF: Marina Abramovic and the Alleged Spawn of Baryshnikov

David Schmader — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 11:33:45 -0700

Screening today at the Seattle International Film Festival: The don't-miss My Dad Is Baryshnikov:

...and the as-yet-unseen but thoroughly promising Marina Abramovic The Artist Is Present:

For complete info on SIFF, consult our review-packed guide.

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SIFF Enters Its Final Week

David Schmader — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 11:22:29 -0700

SIFF comes to a close this Sunday, and there's still plenty of great stuff to be seen.

As for today:

Find the Stranger's full, review-packed SIFF guide here.

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Tonight at SIFF: All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace and V/H/S

Paul Constant — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 16:45:28 -0700

Before I get into reviews, I just would like to note that we've crossed the halfway mark of SIFF, and most of the complaints I had last year have been resolved. Specifically, you don't have to sit through what feels like a two-hour pledge drive to get to the movie. The pre-movie experience feels streamlined and enjoyable now. I think SIFF should get some recognition for that. So: Good job, SIFF!

***

I know that a three-hour documentary about the relationship of technology to our self-image as a species is the hardest of hard sells, but All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace is absolutely worth your time. Adam Curtis's latest documentary—it aired in three parts on BBC—covers a whole lot of ground. The first part examines how Ayn Rand gave birth to the weird libertarian streak of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, and it also serves as a scathing indictment of Bill Clinton as the unwitting father of the 2008 economic collapse. The second part examines the problem with viewing the world as a computer program, tackling the birth of ecology, the problem with our understanding of ecosystems, and why this faulty logic leads to serious problems in the real world. The third part is about the concept of the selfish gene and its relationship to colonialism in Africa.

This movie feels like sitting down to a Thanksgiving meal. It's packed with asides and concepts and digressions —about internet commenting, about fistulas in bison, about whether some suicides are more valiant than others—that would themselves make worthy subjects of their own documentaries. Watching all three episodes at once isn't the ideal viewing experience. I'd rather see them one evening at a time, and savor them as they come, but since several of Curtis's documentaries aren't available on DVD in the United States, you take what you can get.

At times, Machines can be too ambitious. The third chapter closes with a too-pat, unearned declaration that the glory days of human ambition are over, which is the same kind of good-old-days bloviating that Curtis gleefully attacks in other moments in the documentary. Unfortunately, it's the last moment of Machines, and it leaves you feeling slightly unfulfilled. But in a way, that's the greatest trick of them all—at the end of three hours, you're sitting there in the theater with the lights up, wondering to yourself, "Is that it?" (All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace screens tonight at the Harvard Exit at 7 pm.)

***

How you feel about V/H/S hinges on three things: How you feel about horror movies, how you feel about found-footage, and how you feel about anthology films.

The framing story—a group of scofflaw youths invade a home in search of a valuable videotape—is pretty much standard framing story fare: A man in a room with a dead body and a stack of videotapes keeps shoving tapes into a VCR in search of the one he and his friends are looking for. Each of the tapes is a short found footage horror movie featuring young people who get into trouble and then die.

A few of the movies are terrible. Some of them are decent. None of them are exceptional. The worst, about a killer in the woods, features terrible acting—seriously, this is student-film level performance, here—but also shows off a great, scary special effect of a man who can't be recorded and comes across on tape like a walking smudge of static. The best one, about some men who happen into a ceremonial killing in a genuinely scary haunted house, ends too quickly. The rest all have some major flaw in logic or follow-through, though each one has something to recommend it.

In short, as I said: It's an anthology horror movie. If you like anthology movies because you feel like you get more bang for your buck, this could be just the thing for you. If you're the sort of person who freaks out at onscreen violence, you should stay far away. (V/H/S screens tonight at SIFF Cinema at the Uptown at 9:30.)

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Yesterday at SIFF: "Secret Festival" Screening Inspires Treasonous Response!

David Schmader — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 13:41:33 -0700

The Secret Festival is a grand old SIFF tradition. From the official description (bolds mine):

The first rule of the Secret Festival is: DO NOT TALK about the Secret Festival.

Ever.

Consider the Egyptian Theatre your cave and the hundreds of fellow Secret Festival-goers your comrades in Extreme Artistic Adventuring. Each of the four Secret Festival screenings is held at 11:00 AM every Sunday. Your ceremonial offering of $53 ($43 for SIFF members) allows you to see screenings of one-of-a-kind, coming-soon, unreleased, forgotten, altered, found, private collection, rare, really rare, and exceedingly rare films. But only you will know what they are—and we want to keep it that way...Hold fast, and take these secrets to your grave!

However, after yesterday's Secret Festival screening, at least two attendees were driven to break ranks and publicly decry the poor choice of film (which, anti-spoiler alert, remains unnamed). From an email sent last night to The Stranger:

You should check out XXXXXX's rant about the Secret Festival on SIFF Facebook—I tried to post but I couldn't (did they shut it down for comments?) The film was...yeah. Every kind of violent sexual material was in it— including pedophila, snuff, slashing, violence against women, death of women, violence using dogs—and gallons and gallons and gallons of blood. Who knows what else. I only lasted halfway. Half the audience walked out. It was a last-minute substitution by the coordinator of the Austin (?) Film Festival. Unbelievable in the wake of stuff that happened last week in Seattle. This was just over top, given all that [and an] iInnocent" audience—in that we didn't know what we were seeing.

I know that SIFF has a lot going on right now. But JFC. Don't they read the papers? I won't be going again to the Secret Festival. I'm not sure how I feel about any of it right now...I really did last longer than most people in my row.

Questions to SIFF have been answered in an appropriately Fight Club-y manner. From artistic director Carl Spence:

We don't talk about the secret, discuss or confirm what we've shown. It's like Brigadoon—it really never happened. Secret Festival members are not supposed to talk about it either. Otherwise we risk not being able to get films that we get. So I can't give an official statement.

Good for him. In the absence of anything beyond hearsay and conjecture, let's have a poll.

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A Very SIFF-y Weekend: Take This Waltz and John Dies at the End

Paul Constant — Tue, 29 May 2012 14:46:22 -0700

(Find all of our SIFF coverage right here.)

With her elderly relationship drama Away from Her, Sarah Polley proved she was just as good a director as she is an actor. (Her direction, in fact, reminds me of her acting—there's a simmering passion, a sense that everything could fall apart at any moment underneath the naturalistic subtlety.) Polley's new relationship drama Take This Waltz pushes her work into new territory; she's a terrific actor, but she's an even better director. The best thing about Take This Waltz (which Polley also wrote) is the way it moves through time. A lot of directors get caught up when moving the narrative forward by a matter of weeks or even days. ("Quick—get me a montage of the actors looking depressed, set to a mopey pop song!") In film, it's almost easier, for some strange reason, to move forward by a decade or a century than it is a few seasons. But Take This Waltz spans a year or so in the relationship of a happy young married couple named Lou and Margot (Seth Rogen is the affable, cookbook-writing husband, Michelle Williams is the sensitive, freelance-writing wife) as Margot develops a crush on the artist (Luke Kirby) who lives across the street, and the passage of time in Polley's hands is an effortless thing.

This is a film that challenges its viewers, at times by testing their patience as viewers. Polley employs tweeness as a tool; in the beginning of the movie, Williams and Rogen are the kind of young, hip couple that make imaginative jokes out of everything, like an improv class starring precocious children. Their home decor—junky thrift finds and kitschy magnets all over the refrigerator—feels more precious than functional. And when Margot meets Kirby's unambitious artist, she tells him she hates airports because she's—gag—"afraid of connections." But after you settle into Take This Waltz you realize that Polley isn't herself a twee or precious director; she just happens to be making a film about people who occasionally behave in twee and precious ways.

There's some excellent acting all the way through: Williams is far more believable as a whole person here than in the overly mopey Blue Valentine, which looks fairly unambitious in comparison to this film. Seth Rogen, without any set piece-style jokes to hang his schtick on, simply plays a lovable schlub. And Sarah Silverman's few scenes hammer home the moral center of the film, but her character is so ethically cracked that she can't serve as an effective moral compass to anyone but the most damaged people. The marriage is realistic and unforced; Margot can't point to a single fault or mistake of Lou's as a reason to pursue her new flame. Instead, she has to accrue a number of tiny slights from the day-to-day of their relationship in order to feel like she has the right to see the new man who's captured her interest.

Take This Waltz is loaded with fine, touching moments. The most raw discussion about relationships happens in the shower of a women's locker room, where naked women of all shapes and sizes talk about commitment and age and pragmatism. The depiction of family—nagging, supportive, full of capricious children who don't fully appreciate the attention lavished on them—feels true. And when things get too interior or whiny, someone always comes along to remind you that this isn't some insipid Hollywood product. One of Rogen's best moments comes when Margot is complaining about how Lou doesn't honor the "courage" it takes for a wife to seduce her husband. He lets loose with an exasperated cry—from always-gentle Rogen, it sounds like a bellow—of "what are you talking about?" It's a reminder that when we're starting relationships, everything is amplified, and to unwitting bystanders that introspection and amplification feels self-indulgent and stupid. There's a million miles of difference between a crush and real life, and Polley spans that difference in a single, brisk, funny, sad movie.

(Take This Waltz is all done at SIFF, but it opens on June 29th. You should go see it.)

***

John Dies at the End is a terrible mess of a movie. It's about a pair of friends who take a drug that invites them into the world of the supernatural, but everything about the movie—chronology, characterization, plot twists—conspires to sap your interest. Director Don Coscarelli now has a schtick going of making pre-fab midnight movies. His Bubba Ho-Tep felt like about 65% of a good B-movie, but it was too impressed with its own pop-cultural inventiveness to go that extra distance into sheer pulpy abandon. John Dies at the End is a bunch of B-movie scenes smashed into one big incoherent reel. A few scenes (especially a grisly moustache attack) feel like part of something better, but the poor quality of the acting and scripting drag the whole thing down. Maybe someone who was stoned out of their gourd could appreciate this movie—I fully expect it to hit big with the kind of people who think Boondock Saints is in the top five best movies ever—but you've seen way better stuff that holds up in the sober light of day.

(John Dies at the End is all done at SIFF and has not secured distribution yet. I'm sure you'll see it on some cable channel or as a direct-to-DVD release sometime soon.)

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The Other Dream Team

Gillian Anderson — Fri, 25 May 2012 10:20:11 -0700

You may not think a documentary about Lithuanian basketball players sounds very enticing, but The Other Dream Team is terrific.

What does the 1992 Lithuanian Olympic basketball team have to do with the Grateful Dead? Find out in this documentary that mixes basketball, international politics, and the fall of the Iron Curtain. At the 1988 Olympics, the USSR won the gold medal in basketball over the US, but many of the main players were Lithuanian, made to compete for their Soviet occupiers. The emergence of an independent Lithuania, the stories of the players, the country’s basketball fever, and an Olympic comeback make for an exciting story.

The Other Dream Team plays:
Fri May 25, Harvard Exit, 8:30 pm
Sun May 27, Harvard Exit, 3 pm
Thurs May 31, Harvard Exit, 9 pm

Director Marius Markevicius scheduled to attend May 25 and 27 screenings.
Tickets here.

Find tons more movies in our SIFF Guide.

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Get "PostHuman" Tomorrow Night

Paul Constant — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:45:12 -0700

Click to enlarge.

"PostHuman" is a locally produced animated short film. In its five-minute runtime, it brings to mind Aeon Flux* and Akira. These are good influences for a movie to claim, and "PostHuman" makes the most of them. It's getting hard to discern a difference between animation and live-action, anymore (the best part of The Avengers was the computer-animated Hulk, which was based on a motion-capture performance by Mark Ruffalo, so how much of that credit should go to animators?) but a good rule of thumb is that animation should do things that live-action simply can't do. "PostHuman" is a work that, I think, would only work in animation, and it revels in the medium, with extreme violence, impossible camera angles, and the kind of buoyant female nudity that you can only find in adult animation.

It's just a segment of a larger story, a collection of action movie tropes arranged in a pleasing order for maximum audience stimulation, but "PostHuman" does make a very good case for someone to lay down the cash and turn the film into a feature-length extravaganza. The voice acting is the weakest link—it reeks of the kind of airy detachment that comes from a lack of conviction—but your ears aren't the center of attention here and neither is your brain; this thing is a feast for your eyes.

Find a NSFW trailer right here. "PostHuman" screens as part of a shortsfest package tomorrow night at SIFF Cinema at the Uptown. Find our excellent-if-I-do-say-so-myself SIFF guide online right here.

* By "Aeon Flux," I mean the very good cartoon that started on MTV's Liquid Television, but not the crappy-but-occasionally beautiful movie starring Charlize Theron.

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Announcing the 30-Second Exorcist Video Contest!

David Schmader — Wed, 23 May 2012 15:09:56 -0700

"Top this, bitches!"

Everything you need to know:

William Friedkin, aka the guy who directed the best horror movie EVER, is coming to SIFF this year to receive a lifetime achievement award. We DARE you, Seattle, to make a short video that will entertain us so severely that it causes our heads to spin around and green soup to shoot from our mouths fire-hose-style.

RULES OF THE CONTEST

Your film must be 30 seconds or less.

Your film may be live-action and/or animation.

You may not simply edit together fragments of scenes from The Exorcist.

Points will be awarded for originality.

Deadline for entry is June 4, 11:59:59 p.m.

Upload your video to a site with no password restrictions. (YouTube, Vimeo, your own website, etc.) After you have done this, e-mail the link and your contact information to promotions@thestranger.com with the subject “exorcist.”

The Stranger will use this link to show off your work to our readers! We will announce the winner on June 5 on SLOG!

Get hopping, and may God have mercy on your souls.

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Sleepwalk with Me

Gillian Anderson — Wed, 23 May 2012 11:45:52 -0700

Highly recommended for tonight, Mike Birbiglia's entertaining mashup of reality and fiction, Sleepwalk with Me.

This American Life regular Mike Birbiglia writes/directs/stars in a dramatization of stories from his own life. He plays Matt, a guy working as a bartender and trying to start a comedy career; his longtime girlfriend (played by the adorable Lauren Ambrose) is ready to grow up and get married. As his anxiety about his life gets worse, he develops a sleep disorder where he acts out his dreams physically, eventually resulting in the infamous “La Quinta Inn incident.” The film is funny and interesting and full of cameos by some great comedians.

Sleepwalk with Me plays tonight, Wed May 23, SIFF Cinema at the Uptown, 9 pm. Tickets here.

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#1 for Mumbleporn!

David Schmader — Wed, 23 May 2012 11:18:37 -0700

From this week's New Column!:

P.S. The actual, non-pornographic, and perfectly delightful Safety Not Guaranteed plays tonight at the Seattle International Film Festival.

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Tonight at SIFF: God Bless America

Paul Constant — Tue, 22 May 2012 15:25:14 -0700

As I noted on Twitter, standing in line to see a Bobcat Goldthwait movie today says something very different about you than standing in line to see a Bobcat Goldthwait movie in the 1980s. Goldthwait is way better behind the camera than he is in front of it. His best movie, Sleeping Dogs Lie, is at once a rude, raunchy sex comedy about a woman who gave a blowjob to a dog in college and a quiet character study exploring why you shouldn't be completely honest in relationships. It's very much the work of a writer/director, and it doesn't feel quite like any other movie.

Goldthwait's new movie, God Bless America, is already available on pay-per-view and through various online rental services, but seeing it as a midnight movie at the Egyptian as part of SIFF was the perfect viewing experience for the film. The premise is Idiocracy meets Falling Down: A man named Frank gets fed up with how stupid the world has become. With a teenage girl as his improbable sidekick, he decides to do something about it, by killing idiotic reality-show "celebrities" and people who talk in movie theaters. Occasionally, Frank would go off on a rant about civility and shame and dignity, and the packed-out Egyptian audience would loudly applaud those monologues with such obvious excitement that the violent revenge sprees that followed the applause made the whole house feel complicit in Frank's crimes. (It helps with Seattle audiences that Frank is the rare left-leaning movie killer—targets of his rage include a Fox News riff and teabaggers.)

This isn't Goldthwait's best movie. It stalls out in the middle and doesn't have much to do once it establishes its premise. But it's a lot of fun—a road-trip movie, a Bonnie and Clyde riff, and a plea for civility disguised as a serial killer flick. In your living room, I expect the flaws would be magnified. In a theater full of people who sympathize with Frank's schlubby outrage, it's a wonderful treat. God Bless America is playing one more time at SIFF, this time at SIFF Cinema at the Uptown at 9:30 tonight. Rumor has it, it'll be back at the Uptown next month, just in time for the 4th of July.

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SIFF for a Soggy Monday

David Schmader — Mon, 21 May 2012 12:39:17 -0700

Sometimes SIFF's late-spring run forces citizens to choose between a day outside in rare sunny weather and a day inside at the movies—but not today. Among the highlights of today's SIFF offerings: Megan Griffiths's deservedly well-hyped Eden, the ACT-UP documentary How to Survive a Plague, and the Iranian drama Goodbye, praised by Jen Graves below.

For full SIFF info, go here.

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The Intouchables

Gillian Anderson — Fri, 18 May 2012 21:17:47 -0700

This film is based on a true story and was hugely popular in France. Philippe is a super-rich white guy who is quadriplegic after a paragliding accident. He lives in a giant house in Paris with an accommodating staff. Instead of the same old stuffy male nurse, he hires a street-savvy African immigrant named Driss to be his caretaker/companion. Philippe likes that Driss is straightforward with him instead of pandering. The two need a bit of time to get used to each other and their ways of living, but they end up sharing their interests (classical music and art appreciation; pot smoking and Kool and the Gang) and pushing each other's boundaries. The film includes plenty of irreverent humor that only the French can get away with.

It plays again Sunday, May 20, Egyptian Theatre, 4 pm.

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