I View Films

Son of the Bride - El Hijo de la Novia

2011-10-04T22:25:00.000-07:00

Ricardo Darin portrays Rafa, a divorced father who runs the restaurant that his parents started many years ago.
He feels guilty about not visiting his aging mother(portrayed by the great Argentina actress Norma Aleandro) who lives in a care home. His father hits on the idea to remarry his mother as he realizes it's one thing he can do to make her happy.But it won't be easy to pull this off. It's a funny and touching film by Argentinian director

By the way, this is the same director of The Secret in Their Eyes, which I've talked about in the previous post.

Here's a clip from Son of the Bride:

Argentinian Film reviews

2011-08-23T01:19:00.000-07:00

I recently saw this great Argentinian film titled Samy and I (Spanish title Samy y Yo) which was released in 2002. It stars Argentinian actor Ricardo Darin as Samy Goldstein, a writer who seems to be going nowhere until he meets Mary (Colombian actress Angie Cepeda) who convinces him to host his own show playing himself.

There's a scene where Samy waits in a restaurant for Mary. While he waits, there's a great song on the soundtrack. After much digging I found out the title of the song and artist. The song is Aya by La Portuaria, a great Argentinian rock band from the 1990's. If you visit the La Portuaria website you can see a video of them performing the full Aya song. Click onto and go to the videos page. Find Aya & play this video of them performing the whole song. Sorry it wouldn't link directly to the video. It's pretty cool that they recorded such a rocking song that includes banjo which the lead singer Diego Frenkel plays.

Back to discussing the film: It's entertaining, amusing, inspiring and a good film to watch if you want to practice watching Spanish language films. Here's a clip from the film. It's been uploaded by someone who's a big fan of Angie Cepeda.

BTW, Ricardo Darin is also great in a more recent Argentinian film titled El Secreto de sus Ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes, released in 2009). You can check out the trailer for this. This film is both a mystery and a love story. Soledad Villamil is great as his co-worker. There's an especially powerful scene where she attacks a suspect's manhood and manipulates him into confessing.

IMO, Ricardo Darin is kind of sexy with his dark Latin features and deep blue eyes. I've also seen him in another film title El Aura (The Aura, released 2005) about an epileptic taxidermist who fantasizes about committing the perfect crime. This film I wasn't so crazy about because of the violence and what I found to be a dissatisfying ending. Another film with Ricardo Darin that I really like is Son of the Bride (El Hijo de la Novia, released in 2001). More about this film and others in the next post.

Electric Cars at SIFF

2011-06-10T01:05:00.000-07:00

I attended the screening of Chris Paine's Revenge of the Electric Car. This film is the sequel to his earlier film titled Who Killed the Electric Car?

You can watch a trailer of Revenge of the Electric Car.
You can also watch a trailer of Who Killed the Electric Car?

Unfortunately I wasn't able to film or interview Chris Paine at this event but I will say that I enjoyed his film and I also enjoyed the show outside the film. I created a little video of what I saw outside Kirkland Performance Center where the film was screened by SIFF.

First Podcast on I View Films

2011-06-08T03:00:00.000-07:00

I'm experiment with pod-casting in this post.
In my pod-cast I talk about film nostalgia, the magic of film and some of my film-related experiences. I also share some brief reviews. Enjoy!

Here's the link to it.

In my next post I hope to talk about a film I'm planning to view at the Seattle International Film Festival. You can visit the SIFF site to see what's showing.

BTW, last week I had a free pass to view Midnight in Paris, a new film by Woody Allen which I had hoped to review in this blog, but unfortunately the film was sold out when I arrived to redeem my free admission. Maybe if I had shown up earlier, I would have gotten in. On the other hand, I really want to focus my blog on non-Hollywood films so maybe it's just as well I didn't get to see it!

Please participate in the little survey located to the right of this post.

Thanks for visiting and listening. Come back and visit again soon.

Reviews of: Year of the Dog, Temple Grandin

2011-06-01T00:06:00.000-07:00

Year of the Dog is a touching film starring Molly Shannon as Peggy, an ordinary single woman who lives contentedly with her pet beagle, Pencil. Then one day her beloved pet suddenly dies and Peggy's life starts to change.

Peter Sarsgaard is great as Newt, a dog-loving vegan who becomes Peggy's love-interest. Sarsgaard spoke about his role in the video clip. Newt first offers Peggy a new dog and progressively he influences Peggy to make some major changes in her life.

Regina King is great as Peggy's co-worker and good friend Layla. Laura Dern is Peggy's sister-in-law. All of the characters in this film have their own larger-than-life quirks. I caught myself being reminded of people I've met or known.

Mike White who's a vegan, was both the writer and director for this film.
This film is entertaining, touching and thought-provoking. I even thought that it was inspiring to see how a woman who finds a new passion in her life, affects and inspires other people in her life.

In this post, I also want to discuss an amazing film titled Temple Grandin which is based on the inspiring biography of a woman who overcame the challenges of autism and went on to earn her Bachelor's degree, her Master's in Science and finally a Doctorate. Her unusual method of seeing the world enabled her to create more humane handling systems for cattle. She believes that animals should be treated as humanely as possible before they become meat. Claire Danes did a fantastic job of portraying Temple. Even Temple herself was quite impressed and said that she felt as if she saw herself in Claire's portrayal. Julia Ormond is great as a Temple's mother, a determined woman who despite the advice and opinion of professionals, was driven to help her autistic daughter find her way in the world.
Here's a link to a video that includes clips from the film, discussion from Claire Danes, the director Mick Jackson, Temple Grandin and others.

I just have to include this little clip from the film of Temple as a teen. Sorry about the poor quality.

BTW, Temple Grandin will be giving a presentation in San Rafael, California on Sept. 2011.
More info at this site.http://www.motherearthnews.com/fair/ws-sr-livestock-grandin.aspx .
You can also visit Temple Grandin's website.

These are two very different films, one is a fiction and the other is a biography of a real person, but they are related by the love, compassion and respect for animals.

Green Festival: Interview with Zoe Weil

2011-05-21T22:23:00.000-07:00

In this post, I have a confession to make.
In addition to viewing films, I have also starting creating my own films. Of course, I have already posted some short little films I made at the AIFF (American Indian Film Festival) in an earlier film.

Today I attended the Green Festival in Seattle. While I was there I met and interviewed Zoe Weil, founder of the Institute of Humane Education. She kindly allowed me to film her while I interviewed her. Zoe was a guest speaker at the Green Festival in Seattle on May 21, 2011.

Below is the interview that I filmed.

SIFF in Seattle

2011-05-20T20:16:00.000-07:00

Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF for short) is on. Of course, it's in Seattle, naturally!

For those who like to get printed copies of the schedule, one of these is included in the latest issue of The Stranger, which is a free weekly paper that serves the Seattle area.

To the left is an image showing what the cover of the issue looks like.

To the right is an image showing what the cover of the SIFF schedule included in the issue looks like.

Barring that you could always do a search on the SIFF website . If you go to the View Details link you can browse films by program, genre, director, country and venue. I think it's kind of a cool feature, especially if you are interested in films by certain directors or from certain countries. Or maybe you only want to go to one or two venues. SIFF has a number of venues, including some on the Eastside too!

According to Amy Lillard, executive director of Washington Filmworks there are 11 regional films being shown at this year's SIFF. Washington Filmworks in a non-profit organization which offers some support and incentives for filmmakers in the state of Washington. There are a number of resources for anyone interested in film-related opportunities in Washington. These include information about incentives, networking opportunities, filmmakersworkshops and other info. People can even list their property as a possible film location. I encourage anyone interested to visit this website to check out all their resources.

Elaine Miles at AIFF

2011-05-07T09:23:00.000-07:00

Today I saw Elaine Miles at the American Indian Film Festival . Elaine first broke into acting when she was chosen to act in Northern Exposure. She told us how she got her first break into acting and I made a video of it that you can watch.

Elaine was in Northern Exposure from 1990-1995. Since then she's acted in the Canadian series The Rez and she's also appeared in a number of films. After Elaine spoke, we were shown a documentary film she appeared in.

More about this in the next post...

Review: Fry Bread Babes

2011-05-07T02:43:00.000-07:00

As I promised in my last post, I'll be telling you about a film that was shown at the American Indian Film Festival . The film was Fry Bread Babes , a documentary by Steffany Suttle. BTW, fry bread is an important food in Native Indian culture.

It was Steffany's thesis project. Her film deals with Native women's body-image and identity. Elaine Miles was one of the women in it who shared her own experiences and ideas about her own self-image. The film is entertaining and thought-provoking using images from the women's youth, commericals and other media that present the idealized images that conflicted with their own bodies an identities.

Here's a clip from the film with Elaine Miles talking about hair.

In Elaine's words, "fry bread is round and brown, like me." Elaine's description led to Steffany choosing it to create the title for her film.This film is available through Native Voices .

After the film there was a brief Q&A session with Steffany & Elaine. See the next post for a video clip from this interview.

Film Review: Glass

2011-05-03T06:13:00.000-07:00

Glass: a portrait of Philip in twelve parts is a fascinating documentary about composer Philip Glass. Whether you love or hate his music, I think that you'll find this award-winning documentary very interesting.

This composer is quite the Renaissance man because he has such a wide variety of interests. He's a vegetarian and he practices Qi Gong He worked with Ravi Shankar before the Beatles did! He's also very good friends with artist Chuck Close who did a portrait of Philip Glass.

If you watch the DVD, there are lots of extra features included that director Scott Hicks didn't include in his film. This director also made the award-winning film Shine which was based on the real life of concert pianist
David Helfgott.

In my opinion, Philip Glass has found himself a good niche as a composer by creating the music for many films, some of which have been nominated for and even won awards. To get a better idea of what kind of music Glass composes, it would be a good idea to watch some of these films.
Here are a few films he's composed music for:

Music is a very important part of most films. I believe that the wrong music can ruin a potentially good film and the right music can make a good film even better!

Until next post, enjoy viewing films! I'd love to hear comments or suggestions from any readers out there!

First thought, best thought. --attributed to Allen Ginsberg by Philip Glass

In Praise of Subtitles

2011-05-01T00:48:00.000-07:00

Recently I saw a film where two guys were arguing about films with subtitles. (Can't remember what film it was! But if any of you know please share your knowledge on this with me!) One guy complained that he didn't want to have to read a movie, meaning that with subtitles he had the unpleasant task of reading while watching the movie.

I, for one, don't mind subtitles. Quite frankly, watching a film where the actors' lips are moving but don't match the words...that makes me crazy! I love to hear the voices and expression of the original actors. If subtitles are done properly, they don't diminish the film. They enhance it because they allow the viewer to hear another language and to also hear the original voices and feelings of the those actors.

I really like watching films that have more than one language. One film that I saw a long time ago had three languages with subtitle for all of them. To me it was very interesting because I knew that one of the languages hadn't been completely translated. The three languages were English, Japanese and German. The film was:
The Sea and Poison.

This was a great film by Japanese about a difficult subject and it caused me to have admiration for the artists to do a film about their own people in a docudrama style that allowed the viewer to feel like they were witnessing the event.

Subtitles allow viewers to enter the world of the filmmaker. If you don't like films with subtitles and avoid watching them, then you are probably missing the opportunity to see some great films and experience "dipping your toes" into many different cultures. So you may want to rethink your attitudes about subtitles.

"Foreign films in their original languages allow us to visit many other places without ever leaving the comfort of our own home." -Silvia

In future posts I'll write about some great foreign films that I've had the privilege to view.

Why start I View Films?

2010-09-07T16:02:00.000-07:00

I've been a film-o-phile for years and often enjoy sharing with others about interesting films I've viewed.
In my blog you'll see reviews about all different kinds of films and info about film-related topics, quotes and more.

Come back for my first reviews.