Awards, Honors, and Final Notes

Posted June 18, 2007 at 4:38 pm by Brian Miller

(Josh Hamilton and Ayesha Dharker in Outsourced. Courtesy of Shadowcatcher Ent.)

Local boys made good in the popular awards this year, cast by some 70,000 SIFFgoers during this year's fest (which concluded Sunday, June 17). Winner of the Golden Space Needle for best film is Outsourced, the locally produced romantic comedy about a Seattle call-center manager forced to train his replacement in India. Director John Jeffcoat, producers David Skinner and Tom Gorai, and co-writer George Wing (with Jeffcoat) all have strong Seattle ties and connections. Now their challenge is to secure a distributor and get the movie seen on Seattle screens while the buzz is still fresh (and before the rumored rival project associated with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson gets underway). Is the fish-out-water tale a work of groundbreaking cinema? No, it's a pleasing, modestly executed version of what Hollywood usually ruins with big stars, bloated budgets, and endless rewriting. The Indian locations are real, and actress Ayesha Dharker is particularly winning—put that woman on The Office already! The movie is a refreshing alternative to what might be called the local-auteur-with-head-up-his-artsy-butt syndrome (see Zoo). It's a film to which you could safely take your mother, and I mean that as a compliment.

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Saturday's SIFF Pick: Interview

Posted June 15, 2007 at 8:23 pm by T.J. Tranchell, Moscow Bureau Chief

(Photo courtesy of SIFF.) 

Interview

When: 1:30 p.m.
Where: Egyptian, 801 Pine St.
Cost: $7
Rating: R
More Info: www.seattlefilm.org 

All journalists are lying, scheming manipulators. Actors, too. So it’s a perfect pairing when a reporter (director Steve Buscemi) is forced to interview a supposedly airheaded starlet (Sienna Miller), for whom he feels perfect indifference and possibly contempt. And the feeling is mutual: He doesn’t know her work (including that slasher movie classic Killer Body 4), and boasts selfishly about his actually flagging career. She promptly ends the interview, but a plot contrivance soon puts them back in her gigantic loft, where they spend the night talking, sparring, lying, soul-baring, and even kissing while supplied with lots of booze, cigarettes, and coke. (Just like my professional life, in other words.) With insights like “You’re just lying to yourself,” there’s no way for Interview to be highly substantial; it plays like a one-act with two enjoyable performers simply horsing around. (It’s actually a close remake of the late Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh’s 2003 Interview, which cast an actual starlet and journalist as themselves; too bad tabloid queen Miller didn’t play herself here and, say, Christopher Hitchens the journalist.) But a cauldron of lies, deceit, and brinksmanship is always fun to watch. Buscemi is scheduled to attend SIFF, so maybe he’ll explain whether any of his real-life interviews have gone this entertainingly awry.BRIAN MILLER 

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Friday's SIFF Pick: The Little Book of Revenge

Posted June 14, 2007 at 4:13 pm by T.J. Tranchell, Moscow Bureau Chief

(Photo courtesy of SIFF.) 

The Little Book of Revenge

When: 9:30 p.m.
Where: Pacific Place Cinema, 600 Pine St., 4th floor
Cost: $10
Rating: Not Rated
More Info: www.seattlefilm.org 

Exactly the type of movie Hollywood snatches up for a bombastic remake, this French-language Canadian film is part thriller, part dark comedy, and part romance. It succeeds in all three genres, constantly surprising with simple twists rooted in its characters’ natures—not the screenwriter’s manual of outlandish plot devices. The revenge in question involves Bernard, an overworked accountant at a Montreal jewelry store who plans to rob his tyrannical employer, Monsieur Vendôme. As Bernard prepares for the heist, he must contend with Vendôme’s shady business dealings and win back the love of his daughter and ex-wife. Directed by Jean-François Pouliot, whose hilarious Seducing Dr. Lewis played SIFF ’04, Revenge is tight and well balanced, maintaining consistent style and tone no matter where the script wanders. Marc Béland’s excellent performance as Bernard makes us care about a deadbeat dad and criminal. Catch this one now, before Jerry Bruckheimer gets his stupid mitts on it. FRANK PAIVA 

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Thursday's SIFF Pick: The Bubble

Posted June 13, 2007 at 4:54 pm by T.J. Tranchell, Moscow Bureau Chief

(Photo courtesy of SIFF.) 

 

The Bubble

When: 6:30 p.m.
Where: Egyptian, 801 Pine St.
Cost: $10
Rating: Not Rated
More Info: www.seattlefilm.org 

SIFF Emerging Master Eytan Fox continues his exploration of Israeli and Palestinian queer identity in The Bubble, his most accomplished film to date. The movie follows three roommates living in the chic young part of Tel Aviv. When one guy’s Arab boyfriend moves in, it forces everyone to confront conflicts both external and internal. This fresh, believable ensemble film is incredibly absorbing and full of fascinating characters; it also it forgoes the forced coincides and preaching of Crash and Babel. Yousef “Joe” Sweid gives a compelling performance as the Palestinian man caught between two worlds. Ohad Knoller’s turn as his boyfriend is equally captivating. (Both have appeared in Fox’s previous films; note that his 2002 Yossi & Jagger plays the Egyptian, 11 a.m. Sat. June 16.) Unlike many other SIFF dramas, The Bubble could actually be longer than its 117 minutes (and might help smooth out the ending). If you haven’t seen his earlier films including Walk on Water, now is the time to introduce yourself to Eytan Fox. He’s going to be around for a while. FRANK PAIVA 

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SIFF: Week Four Picks and Pans

Posted June 13, 2007 at 12:01 pm by Chris Kornelis

Photo Courtesy of Warner Bros.

Alien Autopsy

In the long history of fine Fox Network programming, the 1995 special Alien Autopsy: (Fact or Fiction?) is second only to 2003's Man vs. Beast in terms of overall ridiculousness. The Jonathan Frakes–hosted special purportedly contained never-before-seen footage of an intergalactic visitor who crash-landed in Roswell, N.M., in 1947. The creators of the footage, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield, eventually admitted it was fake. This British comedy fictionalizes the story of how those two conspired to make millions from the hoax. Sounds great, only the movie has no idea what it wants to be: It's neither media satire nor buddy picture nor exploratory sci-fi. It's not really much of anything. The only highlight is Harry Dean Stanton, brilliant and criminally underused in a supporting role. His hilarious turn makes this a great future DVD rental for a late night with a couple of beers, but that's about it. (PG-13) FRANK PAIVA Egyptian: midnight Fri., June 15. Neptune: 7:15 p.m. Sun., June 17.

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Wednesday's SIFF Pick: Shotgun Stories

Posted June 12, 2007 at 3:55 pm by T.J. Tranchell, Moscow Bureau Chief

(Photo courtesy of SIFF) 

 

Shotgun Stories

When: 4:30 p.m.
Where: Harvard Exit, 807 East Roy Street
Cost: $7
Rating: R
More Info: www.seattlefilm.org 

Jeff Nichols’ Shotgun Stories is the kind of thing Breece D’J Pancake would have written had he lived past 30. Set in oppressive rural Arkansas, the film captures the breaking point in a long-standing rivalry between two trios of brothers fathered by the same man but raised under vastly different circumstances. At his funeral, crashed by the first three sons, we learn he was a reformed drunk who abandoned his first family and sought redemption with the second. One son spitting on the casket ignites a feud between the two clans: Fist fights escalate to dog poisoning and finally to a fatal bar brawl. Mostly a cautionary tale about the futility of revenge, Shotgun Stories succeeds because the characters have been so skillfully rendered. Nichols’ script is colored with mildly comedic episodes and blunt, unvarnished dialogue. (Sample: “I ought to clean my van up.” “Yeah.”) Many attempts at portraying rural folk end up as caricatures, but Nichols, a native of Little Rock, has respect for these folks, no matter how inarticulate—and ultimately violent—they are. BRIAN J. BARR

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Tuesday's SIFF Pick: The Signal

Posted June 11, 2007 at 6:53 pm by Brian Miller

The Signal

When: 9:30 p.m.

Where: Egyptian, 801 Pine St.

Cost: $10

Rating: Not Rated

More Info: www.seattlefilm.org

Among the most graphically violent works of art ever committed to celluloid, this mindblower of a film transcends the slasher genre, playing more like a super-hip hybrid of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Memento, Mulholland Drive, and Slither. The plot revolves around mysterious broadcast waves interrupting television and telephone traffic in the fictitious town of Terminus. These waves, it turns out, make people homicidally crazy, and much killing with blunt instruments ensues. Meanwhile a pair of lovers (deftly played by Anessa Ramsey and Justin Welborn) try to escape the murderous wrath of a scorned, jealous madman (A.J. Bowen). Tonally, the film is pitch-perfect, featuring panicked, quick cuts that maintain a creepy, suspenseful mood throughout. And like the aforementioned Slither, there’s some great campy comic relief: Chadrian McKnight, in maybe 10 minutes of screen time, damn near walks away with the film as a mustachioed, pussy-starved party guest who’s completely unaware of the madness that has engulfed their town. (NR) MIKE SEELY

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Saturday's SIFF Pick: The Boss of It All

Posted June 8, 2007 at 4:20 pm by T.J. Tranchell, Moscow Bureau Chief

Photo courtesy of SIFF.

The Boss of It All

When: 7 p.m.
Where: Egyptian Theatre, 801 Pine St.
Cost:$10
Rating: Not Rated
More Info: www.seattlefilm.org

Danish provocateur Lars von Trier took a break from his much-ballyhooed (but financially disastrous) U.S.A. Trilogy to make this unexpectedly playful, small-scale farce about the president of an IT company who invents a phantom “boss” to shoulder the blame for his own executive decisions. The movie is, on one level, an ideal workplace comedy for the era of downsizing, outsourcing, and fantasy accounting. On another, it’s a revealing check-up on the health and well-being of its own director’s career—and of cinema itself—in the digital era. A decade after von Trier and a cabal of filmmaking countrymen took a semi-infamous “vow of chastity” and a movement known as Dogme was born, Boss was made in accordance with a new set of dictates called Automavision, by which a randomized computer program serves as the movie’s de facto cinematographer and sound mixer. It’s as if von Trier, who has been publicly critical of Hollywood’s CGI-laden epics, is showing us how close we are to the time when movies will be directed by machines instead of artists. Perhaps he’s telling us that we’re already there. SCOTT FOUNDAS 

 

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Friday's SIFF Pick: Prague

Posted June 7, 2007 at 4:21 pm by T.J. Tranchell, Moscow Bureau Chief

Prague

When: 4:30 p.m.
Where: SIFF Cinema, Nesholm Family Lecture Hall at McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer St.
Cost: $7
Rating: Not Rated
More Info: www.seattlefilm.org 

Married couple Maja (Stine Stengade) and Christoffer (Mads Mikkelsen, familiar to Americans as the blood-weeping villain in Casino Royale) travel to Prague to reclaim the body of Christoffer’s father, who deserted the family when his son was 12. While negotiating with the Czech authorities and his father’s retinue, Christoffer also confronts his wife about the affair she’s having. Almost a companion piece to Lost in Translation, another film about being trapped in limbo, Prague edges its melancholy with black humor. Giving naked, nuanced performances, Mikkelsen projects the shadow of a thousand emotions onto his blank glare, while Stengade flickers between hope and exhaustion—depending on which lover has crossed her thoughts. Gorgeous color-enhanced cinematography and an aching-violins soundtrack show how far director Ole Christian Madsen, whose last feature was the Dogma-espousing Kira’s Reason: A Love Story, has migrated away from Lars von Trier and toward Ingmar Bergman. JONATHAN KAUFFMAN 

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Made in China

Posted June 7, 2007 at 3:59 pm by Brian Miller

Made in China

If it sometimes seems like half the toddlers minded by white Wallingford parents are Chinese adoptees, local director John Helde has a different story to tell in his debut documentary, premiering at SIFF: How his father, Tom, was born in China in 1920 to missionary parents, then spent most of his first 15 years in that country. His father, however—a retired history professor with cancer—isn’t so eager to cooperate. He consents to interviews, while John muses in voiceover, “China has become a way for us to connect.” Filmmaker Helde is a professional editor who’s worked with the Maysles brothers and Alan Rudolph, and he knows how to put together montages of wonderful old pre-war stock footage, new HD impressions of China, plus interviews with Americans—most now in their 70s and older—who also grew up in that pre-Communist nation. The warm, well-intentioned Made in China never provides any numbers on how many Westerners shared such a childhood, nor does it touch upon history’s sharper corners, but Helde tracks down some nice reminiscences of that unique period. In one lovely scene, two aged women sing church hymns together in Mandarin. The heart and harmonies endure after more than half a century. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Neptune: 7:30 p.m. Sun June 10.

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