SeattleInternationalFilmFestival Tagged Articles at Cinematical

It's almost time for one of my favorite film fests, the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), which runs a whopping 25 days, from May 24-June 17. Not only is SIFF one of the longest (if not the longest) film festivals on the planet, which is pretty cool, but it's sustained almost entirely by local support, with screenings generally well-attended throughout the fest.

I love this fest not just because it's in Seattle, where I live, which makes it a non-travel fest for me (good thing, since it's so long!), but the atmosphere of the fest is so ... Pacific Northwest. The weather is generally gorgeous -- June is one of the best months to be in Seattle, most of the venues serve popcorn with REAL butter instead of nasty "butter-flavored" grease, and folks are laid-back and friendly. This year SIFF will bring Seattle 405 films, in a sched boasting 48 world premieres and 39 North American premieres.

Shanghai Dreams, directed by "Emerging Master" Wang Xiaoshuai, centers on 19-year-old Qinghong (Gao Yuan-yuan), who lives in the rural province of Ghizhou with her parents and younger brother. Qinghong's parents came to this poor region at the behest  of the Communist Chinese government, which encouraged workers to leave the cities in order to settle in, and build up, the poorer regions. They were promised a better life, and instead have had a decade or more of poverty, factory work, and dismal rural living conditions. Qinghong's father, who was initially optimistic and happy to serve China by making the move, has in the ensuing decade grown angry and bitter, blaming his wife for talking him into leaving Shanghai. Qinghong's parents, and the other adults who came to this remote village with them, still think of themselves as being "from Shanghai", to differentiate themselves socially from the locals. The parents dream longingly of the day they will return to Shaghai, while their children have grown up in this place and consider themselves locals, thus adding an interesting layer of conflict to the t ypical teenager-parentual unit head-butting present in almost any film that has an adolescent character.

 

 

Going to see a French comedy at a film festival can be a dicey proposition. Sometimes they're really funny; other times, the French humor just falls flat with American audiences. In Quatre Etoiles (Four Stars), the humor meter was pretty much on, although certain aspects of the film seemed to rub the liberal Seattle crowd the wrong way.

When Franssou (played by the lovely and very charming Isabelle Carré) inherits €50,000 from an aunt, she's torn over what to do with the windfall. Spend it all traveling around the world? Save it frugally? Her boring, middle-aged boyfriend wants Franssou to buy him a mattress and save the rest. Franssou, wisely, decides instead to dump the boyfriend and take off on a luxurious trip to Cannes, where she holes up in the Ritz Carlton and proceeds to enjoy herself immensely.

When a film festival has 418 films, you're bound to miss a few you wanted to see. It was a cinematic hydra -- for every film I saw at the Seattle International Film Festival, there were always two more I didn't catch. Here are the seven films I most regret not being able to work into my SIFF-tastic viewing schedule:

• Frostbite - Man, I really wanted to see this film. It had vampires! Really mean ones! In Sweden! Where there's no daylight for part of the year, setting the perfect conditions for a giant vampire party: B.Y.O.B. -- bring your own ... you know.
• Host and Guest - This Korean film, about a cynical intellectual and an evangelist, won the jury prize for Best Director for helmer Dong-Il Sun.  I'll have to keep an eye out at future fests for this one.
• Starfish Hotel -  A Japanese gothic supernatural mystery? Holy geez, how did I miss that one? I overheard someone in the press office talking about how great this film was, but never managed to work it in.
• Beowulf and Grendel - Here I was all set to interview director Sturla Gunnarsson about Beowulf and Grendel, starring Stellan Skarsgärd and Sarah Polley and then I ended up not making the screening due to illess. I'm going to try to track this one down -- maybe it'll be at Toronto in September, and we can review it and do an interview then.
• House of Sand - How did I manage to miss this Brazilian saga about a family of women surviving amid the desolation of the desert -- again? I swear, one day I will see House of Sand, and then I will review it for you. It's on my "things to do before I die list" now, so it's official.
• Who Is Harry Nilsson (and Why is Everybody Talking About Him?) - Who is Harry Nilsson? The Beatles knew who the singer-songwriter was -- he was one of their faves.This film wasn't on my list, until I kept hearing people talking about being excited to see it, and, later, raving about what a fantastic film it was. Now I wish I'd had it on my list.
• We Go Way Back - I really wanted to catch this feature by former Fly Filmmaking Challenge director Lynn Shelton, about a woman confronted by a 13-year-old version of herself. Am going to try to track down a screener of this one. It had great buzz.

Below the fold, the seven films I enjoyed most at SIFF.

The winners of the 2006 Seatte International Film Festival Golden Space Needle awards are French hit OSS-117: Nest of Spies, for Best Feature, and Full Disclosure, for Best Short. I'm not at all surprised that OSS-117: Nest of Spies won the audience award at SIFF -- the response to the spy spoof at the screening I attended was overwhelmingly positive. The Trials of Darryl Hunt, about a man who spent years in prison for a brutal rape and murder he didn't commit -- even after DNA testing proved he wasn't the culprit -- won for Best Documentary. I don't have the info yet on the other prizes ( was at a screening of Monster House with my kids this morning instead of at the awards announcements), but will post that info when it's available.

There are only eight days left of the Seattle International Film Festival, and already I'm feeling the beginning twinge of post-fest letdown. It's rather like that feeling on Christmas morning when you were a kid, when you realized you were nearing the bottom of your present pile and slowed down to stretch it out and make it last. We're not quite to the homestretch yet, though. There are eight more days left, and there are lots of people blogging about SIFF. Let's check in to see what the buzz is.

• James at Pacific Grits has been sharing his festival experience on his blog (and I'll forgive him the transgression of saying in his title bar that grits are better with butter and a little salt, when it's practically a scientific fact that a grit-eating experience is best enhanced with butter, sugar and a touch of cream). I'll also forgive him for calling The Puffy Chair a dud, because hey, diversity of opinion on film is what makes it interesting. He also comments on his experience of trying to enjoy an indie film debuting at the fest, after learning he was seated next to the director. I've had similar experiences -- directors asking me to please come see their film (which stresses me out, because what if I hate it? And then they ask me what I thought? And whether I'm going to review it? Arrrrgh -- the pressure!). So I can relate to your sentiment, James, but seriously. Try sugar on your grits, dude.

One of the weird things about film festivals (well, to me at least, maybe it's not to anyone else) is the concept of "hold review" films. "Hold review", as the term implies, means that we aren't supposed to publish full reviews of certain films until their actual release date. This makes sense from a distributor's standpoint, because they want reviews to go up right as the film is coming out, so that, theoretically, the plethora of reviews will drive butts into seats, and give the distribs some return on their investment. The interesting thing is, that probably half the films on the SIFF review list are films that Cine has already reviewed from earlier fests, before said films acquired distrib, and generally speaking, when we run a fest review of a film that scores distrib down the road, we almost always run another review then, with a pointer back to our fest review.

Since we prefer to stay in the good graces of our friends at both the distributor and fest end of things, though, we nonetheless rigorously comply with the "hold review" lists. We can tease you, we can tantalize ... we just can't tell you everything you want to know. Here's what we can tell you about the SIFF films I've seen so far for which I can't give you full reviews ... yet (think of it as a little cinematic foreplay) -- and links to those for which we've previoiusly run reviews.

We're heading into Week Two of the Seattle International Film Festival, and the excitement shows no signs of dissipating. One of the things I love most about this fest is how the audience members are just genuinely pumped about every single film, and how open people are to giving films a chance. Whether films sit well with an audience or not, there are always clusters of folks huddled outside the venues post-film, animatedly discussing the perceived merits of a film (or lack thereof). Let's go eavesdrop on some other folks writing about SIFF to see what people are buzzing about.

• Pop Culture A-Go-Go is blogging a daily SIFF diary, with short descriptions and film recommendations from one to five stars. My fave description of a film on this blog, about South Korean flick Sa-Kwa: "Dull South Korean film following the main character's love life. She gets dumped by her boyfriend. She gets married and has a kid. She is unhappy and has an affair with her old boyfriend. Then she dumps him and wants a divorce from her husband. Are you bored reading the description? I was bored typing it. Now imagine watching that "story" unfold over two fricking hours. Bored now." Alrighty, then. Thanks for saving me two hours of my life, Pop Culture.
• New to SIFF and not sure what to see or how to get around? The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a handy-dandy Guide to SIFF to make your film-watching easier.
• Emerald Sunshine had a Matthew Lillard encounter at the screening of Bickford Shmeckler's Cool Ideas (the film is not getting great buzz, btw)-- and was unimpressed.
• Roya is blogging her SIFF adventures daily, with her take on the films she's seeing and a report on the freakish behavior of audience members. One of her Audience Watch stories is about a Sigher, and she notes there seem to be a lot of those Sighers at SIFF this year (maybe there's a convention of downtrodden mothers going on or something). I had a Sigher behind me at Somersault, and I damn near turned around and smacked him after the 89,000th loud sigh. Wonder if he's the same guy Roya got stuck next to.
• The Stranger's Annie Wagner is talking up the OTHER film festival here, the Seattle True Independent Film Festival (STIFF). Also, be sure to check out her very excellent, in-depth interview with Al Gore. Is he gonna run for Prez in '08? Your guess is as good as anyone's, but if he does, will it start a trend of ex-politicians making movies about their causes? Who wants to see a Jimmy Carter doc at Sundance next year?
• Check out all the latest pics in the SIFF photo pool over on Flickr. If I ever get it together enough to remember to actually bring my camera with me, I'll be posting a photoblog here, as well as over at Flickr.

 

 

 

The good folks at the SIFF Press Office sent out a memo today announcing that Stewart Copeland will not be attending the event "A Conversation With Stewart Copeland" or the screening of his film Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out, due to the death of his brother, Ian Copeland. Ian Copeland, a well-known agent and promotor who worked with bands such as R.E.M, Squeeze, and younger brother Stewart's band The Police, died last Tuesday of melanoma at the age of 57.

SIFF will go ahead with tonight's event, "A Conversation With Stewart Copeland", even though the event will no longer include Copeland. Instead: "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."

SIFF will give vouchers good for a free regular screening to anyone attending the event.  Refunds will be given at the box office to those who request it.

There are few things in the life of a cinephile more exciting than opening night of a film festival. Okay, it's not world peace, maybe, or birth of a child, but on the scale of coolness and sheer energy, Opening Night is way up there. Last night was the Opening Night of the 32nd Annual Seattle International Film Festival -- the largest film fest in the United States, according to the festival staff who kicked things off. 400-plus films, shown over 25 days, to more filmgoers than anywhere else in the US. Why? Well, because we really love our movies here. That, and it rains a lot here.

Opening Night, showcasing Neil Burger's darkly magical fairy tale The Illusionist,  was held at The Paramount, an historic "movie palace" complete with balconies, lots of gold overlay, and sparkly chandeliers. The theater was packed with the usual eclectic Seattle blend of party people: film geeks, college students, yuppie couples all dressed up for a night on the town, and, of course, the passholes. This is Seattle, not Cannes, so formal wear is not required (heck, we might even laugh at you), but a few people show up dressed to the nines anyhow. Most of the crowd was "Seattle-dressy" - meaning you wear your nice blue jeans (the $500 ones with the holes artfully placed in just the right places), and add on a dressy top, jewelry, and non-Birkenstock footwear to gussy it up.