madeinusa Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I suppose it's indicative of just how much of a total dork I am that I've been waiting patiently anxiously for well over a month for today's announcement of the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) lineup. Even more pathetic: I must confess that, every day this week, I've visited the SIFF website, on the off chance that maybe, just maybe, they'd be ahead of the curve and sneak it up early. Now that the blessed day has come, I've spent the better part of an hour perusing every inch of the festival lineup with the kind of love and attention I usually reserve for eyeing the menu at my fave Indian restaurant. I've been making lists of  "must sees" and "wanna sees" -- films I missed during the craziness of Sundance, films I've heard about and not caught yet, even a few I hadn't heard of yet. It's always dicey culling down a list of films the size of the SIFF lineup into an amount that can be reasonably digested over a three-week period, but hey, that's all part of the fun! Here are seven films (from my initial list of 60+ gotta-see-'em films) I'm all hopped up about catching during SIFF.

Anthony Kaufman has an interesting bit up about three little gems from Sundance - Madeinusa, The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, and Old Joy - which all had good showings recently at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Kaufman reports that all three films won awards at Rotterdam, but seemed to be "under the radar" at Sundance, and wonders how many Sundancers actually saw them.

Interesting question. Given that pretty much everything was sold out before the fest even started, I'd venture to guess quite a few. I actually heard some buzz here and there about Madeinusa. All three films were on my personal list of films I wanted to catch, and I missed all of them. In fact, I don't believe any of our team of four reviewers saw those films, and collectively, we saw and reviewed over a third of the films at Sundance. There are only so many films you can see in 12 days. Hopefully, a lot of the under the radar gems at Sundance will be showing up at a film festival near you - and me - and we'll have another opportunity to see them.