SIFFBlog

Wings (1927)

2012-02-10T20:00:00.002-08:00

Monday February 13, 7pm, The Paramount, Seattle

"D'you know what you can do when you see a shooting star?"

Two boys from the same town become pilots in the Great War. They battle the enemy over France and each other over a girl back home. Jack (Charles 'Buddy' Rogers) and David (Richard Arlen) both love Sylvia (Jobyna Ralston), while Mary (Clara Bow), the girl next door, secretly pines for Jack and joins the ambulance corps to be near him.

Wings (1927) astonished moviegoers with wide-screen "Magnascope" and breathtaking effects achieved filming the actors in-flight from fuselage mounted cameras. Adding authenticity, director William Wellman, writer John Monk Saunders and Arlen all served as fliers during the War. The United States Army enthusiastically loaned Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation hundreds of aircraft, vast amounts of Texas real estate and an infantry division, over and above their astronomical $2,000,000 budget.

Wings shared the first Best Picture Academy Award with F.W. Murnau's Sunrise (1927). Roy Pomeroy also won the first Oscar for Special Effects.

Wings Over Seattle

Paramount's World War aviation epic Wings opened at New York's Criterion Theater on Friday, August 12, 1927 and played for two years. Seattle waited until May 21, 1928 when Wings opened at the Metropolitan Theatre. Announcing a "Limited engagement beginning Monday night and twice daily thereafter at 2:30 and 8:30 with all seats reserved," ticket prices ranged from 50¢ to $1.65. "The Mightiest spectacle of all times! Aviation and romance combined! An intense story of love and adventure! A tense drama of courage among the clouds! A romance of gallant youth and enduring love!"

Designed by architect A.H. Albertson for Klaw and Erlanger, Seattle's elegant renaissance style Metropolitan Theatre opened October 2, 1911 on the south side of University Street between 4th and 5th Avenues. Originally planned as a venue for live theater, the 1560 seat Metropolitan began booking films to fill the gaps between touring stage shows within a few years. The Olympic Hotel opened in 1925, surrounding the theater on three sides. The Metropolitan's footprint became the hotel's porte-cochère after the theater was demolished in 1954.

STG Presents!

Seattle Theatre Group and Trader Joe's present the final film in their current series of Silent Movie Mondays with William Wellman's epic of the air Wings, featuring live musical accompaniment performed at the Paramount's original 1928, 4/20 Wurlitzer organ by Jim Riggs.

The Last Command (1928)

2012-02-03T20:00:00.000-08:00

Monday February 6, 7pm The Paramount, Seattle

"From now on you are my prisoner of war -"
"- and my prisoner of love."

As the Russian revolution runs wild, a General in the Czar's army, Sergius Alexander (Emil Jannings) escapes execution with the help of a beautiful spy. Years later, a former revolutionist turned Hollywood movie director (William Powell) recognizes a head shot of the general, now a decrepit old man working as an extra, and plans his revenge.

Directed by Josef von Sternberg, The Last Command (1928) was the highlight of Jannings' brief Hollywood career. Combined with his performance in The Way of All Flesh (1927), The Last Command received the first Academy Award for best actor in a leading role. Screenwriter Lajos Biró was nominated for best original story. Evelyn Brent, previously featured in von Sternberg's Underworld (1927), stars as the lovely femme fatale Natalie in a complex, pivotal role.

Inspired by the life of General Theodore Lodijensky, The Last Command features one extraordinary, unexpected shocker and a table-turning, earth-shaking finale.

A General on Pike Street

Emil Jannings in The Last Command opened at Seattle's United Artists Theatre on Friday February 24, 1928 for a weeklong engagement. The program featured a "special score and concert number," by Jan Sofer and his United Artists Orchestra, with selected shorts featuring Hal Roach's "Leave 'em Laughing, The Laughing Lullaby." For most of its existence, the movie palace at 5th and Pike operated as the Coliseum. Opened in January 1916, it survives today as a retail-clothing store.

STG Presents!

Seattle Theatre Group and Trader Joe's present the third of four films in their current series of Silent Movie Mondays with Emil Jannings in Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command, featuring live musical accompaniment performed at the Paramount's original 1928, 4/20 Wurlitzer organ by Jim Riggs.

2012-01-01T07:21:00.000-08:00

Movies
for Music
Lovers:
2011
Edition

Click here
for the
2010
edition

Some of these films premiered in the US in 2010, but didn't make
their way to Seattle until this year, in which case I deferred to lo-
cal release dates. Some missed the city altogether, in which case I
caught up via DVD, Blu-ray, or download. Altogether, I saw over
250 titles, and wrote about most of them for Amazon, Siffblog,
Line Out, and Video Librarian (the links lead to my reviews).

Just as my 2011 music list revolves around post-punk, a post-
punk vibe runs through many of these films. Animals also a-
bound, as do animalistic human beings, like Ryan Gosling's
Driver with his scorpion jacket (a clue to his true nature).

The Tops:
1. Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn)
2. Poetry (Lee Chang-dong)
3. Hugo (Martin Scorsese)
4. Le Havre (Aki Kaurismäki)
5. Jane Eyre (Cary Fukunaga)
6. Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)
7. The Skin I Live In / La Piel Que Habito (Pedro Almodóvar)
8. Project Nim (James Marsh)
9. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rupert Wyatt)
10. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives /
Loong Boonmee Raleuk Chat (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

Runners-up:
1. The Descendants (Alexander Payne)
2. Attack the Block (Joe Cornish)
3. A Screaming Man / Un Homme
Qui Crie (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun)
4. The Help (Tate Taylor)
5. Beginners (Mike Mills)
6. Weekend (Alexander Haigh)
7. The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius)
8. Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino)
9. Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin)
10. The Time That Remains (Elia Suleiman)

Note: I enjoyed The Help. I realize I'm supposed to hate it, but
I can't stand it when people do my thinking for me or assume that
I don't know anything about African or African American cinema.

I can like The Help and I can like A Screaming Man, too. The thing
is: Tate Taylor's mainstream movie got to me in a way Mahamat-Saleh
Haroun's art house entry didn't. Which doesn't make it the superior
picture; just one that had more personal resonance. I live for '50s-style
melodramas about ordinary women, especially those who triumph
over their small-minded oppressors, whether they're white, black, or
red-eyed space aliens. The critical opprobrium heaped on this film
carried a trace of misogyny that made me deeply uncomfortable.

Apparently, I'm not supposed to like The Artist either, in part because
Harvey Weinstein produced it. But he didn't direct it, and the story
centers on a man who refuses to compromise or to impose his will on
others--un-Harvey-like qualities. In the film, he triumphs over adver-
sity. In real life, it doesn't always work that way, but The Artist and
Hugo are movies about movies and their makers. Not their producers.

Second Runners-up:
1. A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)
2. Moneyball (Bennett Miller)
3. The Princess of Montpensier (Bertrand Tavernier)
4. Norwegian Wood (Tran Anh Hung)
5. Hanna (Joe Wright)
6. Melancholia (Lars Von Trier)
7. Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen)
8. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson)
9. The Yellow Sea (Na Hong-jin)
10. Winnie the Pooh (Don Hall and Stephen J. Anderson)

Openings: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy opens at the Metro Cinemas
(and other theaters) on 1/6 and A Separation on 2/3 (venue TBA).

Worthy of note: 50/50 (Jonathan Levine), The Arbor (Clio
Barnard), Aurora (Cristi Puiu), Bellflower (Evan Glodell), Car-
ancho (Pablo Trapero), Circumstance (Maryam Keshavarz),
Contagion (Steven Soderbergh), Curling (Denis Côté), Gods / Dioses (Josué Méndez), The Guard (John Michael McDonagh),
Henry's Crime (Malcolm Venville), The Girl / Flickan (Fredrik
Edfeldt), Hideaway / Le Refuge (François Ozon), The Ides of
March (George Clooney), Kaboom (Gregg Araki), The Piano in
a Factory (Zhang Meng), Putty Hill (Matt Porterfield), The Rum Diary (Bruce Robinson), Submarine (Richard Ayoade), Toast
(S.J. Clarkson), The Tree (Julie Bertuccelli), Vampire*, Vanishing
on 7th Street (Brad Anderson), The War Horse (Steven Spielberg), Warrior (Gavin O'Connor), Win Win (Tom McCarthy), X-Men: First Class (Matthew Vaughn), and Young Adult (Jason Reitman).

* I left out the director and don't want to reformat the whole paragraph. Vampire
is the first English-language effort from All About Lily Chou Chou's Shunji Iwai.

They've done better: A Dangerous Method (David Cron-
enberg), The Future (Miranda July), My Week with Marilyn
(Richard Curtis), The Sleeping Beauty (Catherine Breillat), Take
Shelter (Jeff Nichols), and The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick).

Top documentaries:
1. Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of
a Tribe Called Quest (Michael Rapaport)
2. How to Die in Oregon (Peter D. Richardson)
3. Tabloid (Errol Morris)
4. Page One: Inside the New York Times (Andrew Rossi)
5. Tie: Cave of Forgotten Dreams
and Into the Abyss (Werner Herzog)
6. The Woodmans (C. Scott Willis)
7. Ne Chien Range (Pedro Costa)
8. Nénette (Nicolas Philibert)
9. Public Speaking (Martin Scorsese)
10. Bobby Fischer Against the World (Liz Garbus)

Worthy of note: Bill Cunningham New York (Richard Press),
Broken Doors (Goro Toshima), Color Me Obsessed (Gorman Be-
chard), Crooked Beauty (Ken Paul Rosenthal), Girls on the Wall
(Heather Ross), (POM Wonderful Presents) The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (Morgan Spurlock), Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today (Stuart Schulberg), Pearl Jam Twenty (Cameron Crowe), Rachel
(Simone Bitton), Silver Girls / Frauenzimmer (Saara Alia Waas-
ner), Sin by Silence (Olivia Klaus), Still Bill (Damani Baker and
Alex Vlack), The Weird World of Blowfly (Jonathan Furmanski).

Reissues and Rediscoveries:
1. Kuroneko - The Criterion Collection (Kaneto Shindo)
2. Cronos - The Criterion Collection (Guillermo del Toro)
3. Videodrome - Criterion Collection (David Cronenberg)
4. Raging Bull - 30th Anniversary Edition (Martin Scorsese)
5. All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
6. Kes - The Criterion Collection (Ken Loach)
7. Prowler (Joseph Losey)
8. The Soft Skin (François Truffaut)
9. Four Nights with Anna (Jerzy Skolimowski)
10. Little Red Riding Hood and Other Stories (David Kaplan)

Odds and sods: Bal /Honey (Semih Kaplanoğlu), Boardwalk
Empire - The Complete First Season, The Double Life of Véron-
ique - The Criterion Collection (Krzysztof Kieslowski), Master-
piece Classic - Downton Abbey, Hamilton (Matt Porterfield),
The Hour, Season One, and Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes).

Missed (or haven't seen yet): 13 Assassins (Takashi Miike), A
Brighter Summer Day / Gu Ling Jie Shao Nian Sha Ren Shi Jian
(Edward Yang), The Adventures of Tintin (Steven Spielberg), Cap-
tain America (Joe Johnston), Carnage (Roman Polanski), Cedar
Rapids (Miguel Arteta), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (David
Fincher), Incendies (Denis Villeneuve), The Interrupters (Steve
James), J. Edgar (Clint Eastwood), Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan),
Margin Call (J.C. Chandor), The Muppets (James Frawley), Mys-
teries of Lisbon (Raul Ruiz), Nostalgia for the Light / Nostalgia de
la Luz (Patricio Guzmán), Shame (Steve McQueen), Source Code
(Duncan Jones), Sucker Punch (Zack Snyder), Terri (Azazel Jac-
obs), Tomboy (Céline Sciamma), The Trip (Michael Winterbot-
tom), and We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay).

Note: Tomboy, which played the 2011 Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, opens at SIFF Cinema on 1/6. Certified Copy, Nostalgia for the Light, and Of Gods and Men made my 2010 "missed" list...and I still haven't caught up with any of them yet. Looking forward to it.

Yes, I did see...Bridesmaids. And I sure didn't laugh much, but I'm glad that Jill Clayburgh, perfectly cast as Kristin Wiig's mother, went out with a hit. Clayburgh's daughter (with David Rabe), Lily Rabe, who also got her start on the stage, proves her own mettle in Christopher Munch's Letters from the Big Man, an animal-oriented film almost as strange as Uncle Boonmee.

A final thought: Shame on The New Yorker's David Denby
for breaking the review embargo regarding Fincher's The Girl
with the Dragon Tattoo--but more so for his spoiler regard-
ing The Skin I Live In. And shame on his colleague, Richard
Brody, for spreading the disease by quoting from Denby's Skin
review (though I still enjoyed Brody's comments about Tom
Cruise in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol). Critics!

Endnote: Cross-posted here. Drive image from Collider.

SKIDOO: You Gotta Be There!

2011-07-24T12:37:00.000-07:00

The following was
written by North-
west Film Forum
program director
Adam Sekuler to
promote a
screening of this
under-seen gem.
I'm posting it
with his permis-
sion on the occa-
sion of the film's
long-awaited ar-
rival on DVD.

SKIDOO
(Otto Preminger, US, 1968, 97 mins.)

The best film screening the first week of SIFF is easily Skidoo. It's this
Sunday at 3pm at the Film Forum, not in the SIFF program actually, but is
a part of our Secret Sunday matinee series. We don't typically divulge the
feature, but this is just that rare and just that good. I can't recommend
this enough, and in my typically verbose way, here's why you HAVE to be
here for it. Its not available on DVD or VHS, and the film rarely plays!

Skidoo presents an unlikely domestic situation in which Jackie Gleason
plays a retired San Francisco hit man-turned-car wash owner and Carol
Channing plays his daffy wife. Yes, Gleason and Channing as man and
wife; can you imagine them making love? Gleason soon finds himself on a
mission from God. Not the God of the Father-Son-and-Holy Spirit fame,
but the head of the local mob who is known as God. God is played by
Groucho Marx, and if you can believe Groucho as a mafia chieftain…

Anyway, Gleason is ordered by God to get himself arrested and sent to
Alcatraz, where he is to do a hit on a former gangster who turned infor-
mer. Unfortunately for Gleason, this target (played by Mickey Rooney,
who seems to be reading his lines from cue cards) is in ultra-tight protec-
tive custody and is thus immune from unpleasant visitors carrying shanks.

Unable to fulfill his assignment and stuck in Alcatraz on a bogus
rap, Gleason finds an escape by accident: he shares a cell with
a draft-dodging writer (Austin Pendleton, in his film debut)
who laced the glue of his stationery envelopes with LSD.

Meanwhile,
Channing is
coping with the
news their
teenage daugh-
ter [Alexandra
Hay] has fallen
in with a group
of hippies. The
mod mom hap-
pily embraces
the hippies
and brings
them into her
home. She
tries to get
to God by seducing a young mobster (Frankie Avalon; yes, that
Frankie Avalon). When that fails, she and the hippies commandeer a
small armada and sail off to God's yacht off the San Francisco coast.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

In 2009, the NWFF screened Model Shop as part of their 1969 series. Jacques
Demy's Los Angeles effort also features Alexandra Hay, the daughter in Skidoo.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Meanwhile, Gleason spikes the soup in the Alcatraz commissar-
y with the LSD-laced envelopes and creates a makeshift balloon
out of garbage bags and a garbage can. He and his druggie cell-
mate fly off to God's yacht just as the hippie fleet arrives. After
much to-do, God and the acid-tripping writer abandon ship to-
gether and sail off into the sunset with a bountiful supply of acid.

Skidoo is such a wild assault on the senses that it's hard to im-
agine the film was ever made. Under Preminger's direction, LSD
is a liberating and empowering tool; it makes Gleason and Marx's
characters end their criminal ways in pursuit of a greater truth. It
also allows an astonishing number of guest stars in the Alcatraz
sequences (including Rooney, Peter Lawford, Richard Kiel,
Burgess Meredith and Frank Gorshin) tripping on acid.

If that's not enough, the film is packed with other unlikely star
turns including Cesar Romero as Avalon's dad, George Raft
as the skipper of God's yacht, Arnold Stang as Gleason's stooge,
and the great character actor Fred Clark and singer Harry
Nilsson (who wrote the music) as prison guards.

As for the acid
trips, Premin-
ger fills the
screen with
such imagery
as the Green
Bay Packers
mooning the
camera and
an elaborate
dance se-
quence with
women dressed in garbage cans doing a mock ballet under a
red light. Preminger reportedly experimented with Timothy
Leary to get a feel for what one experiences on LSD, even
insisting that everyone try LSD before making the film!

Skidoo is one of the most wonderfully rude movies ever made. It is
so blatantly weird and in such marvelously bad taste that it feels as if
Preminger was prescient on the pending rise of underground counter-
culture comedy such as John Waters and Cheech and Chong.

It is a film where the druggies are the heroes and even criminals can
become angels if they just learn to chill with LSD. It is a movie where
Hollywood's icons happily ham it up while being under the narcotic in-
fluence and the closing shot, with Groucho Marx and Austin Pendleton
dressed as Hare Krishnas in a boat full of drugs is too funny to endure.

Okay, that's a hell of a lot about this film, but it's really the best
thing screening this week in Seattle, and you only have this one
chance to see it. Even if its 79 degrees on Sunday, don't miss out!

--Adam Sekuler, Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Endnote: Images from Talking Moviezzz and Paper.

Revenge is a dish best served… to the lions!

2011-07-12T20:00:00.000-07:00

He Who Gets Slapped (1924)

Sunday July 17, 7:30pm, The Castro, San Francisco

A gifted scientist is betrayed by his mentor who discredits him, then steals his research, and his wife. Humiliated, Paul Beaumont (Lon Chaney) disappears into self-exile and the anonymity of life as a circus clown. He contently suffers for years until his nemesis re-appears and plots to corrupt the lovely young bareback rider Consuelo (Norma Shearer) with the help of her wretched father.

The first original Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production had to be spectacular and it was. Based on the play by Leonid Andreyev, He Who Gets Slapped (1924) was the second of nine Hollywood films directed by Swedish master Victor Sjöström. Ethereal images of clowns used thematically throughout the film are both hauntingly beautiful and horrifying. Chaney delivers a searing (and possibly his best) role as a broken, demoralized shell of a man, opposite a luminous Shearer, John Gilbert as Bezano her intended, Tully Marshall, Ford Sterling and of course, Leo.

The 16th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival and Midnites for Maniacs present Lon Chaney in Victor Sjöström's MGM masterpiece, He Who Gets Slapped (1924) with live misical accompaniment performed returning artists, The Matti Bye Ensemble.

Life before von Sternberg

2011-07-12T19:00:00.001-07:00

The Woman Men Yearn For (1928)

Saturday July 16, 8.30pm, The Castro, San Francisco

A prince of industry abandons his bride when his head is turned by a mysterious and beautiful woman. Catching a glimpse of Staacha (Marlene Dietrich) through a train window, Henri LeBlanc (Uno Henning) is instantly bewitched. His resolve crumbles as she pleads for his help to escape her sinister travelling companion Dr. Karoff (Fritz Kortner). She only reveals the truth after Henri is hopelessly under her spell.

Based on Max Brod's original novel, The Woman Men Yearn For (1929) stars Dietrich the year before her breakout film The Blue Angel in a largely forgotten and surprisingly substantial role as the femme fatale with a twist. Excellent use of miniatures, industrial montage, spectacular costumes and the furious New Years Eve party are memorable.
Director Curtis Bernhardt immigrated to Hollywood in 1940, establishing himself as a women's director in films starring Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner and many others.

The 16th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the Film Noir Foundation, the Goethe-Institut San Francisco and German Consulate of San Francisco present The Women Men Yearn For (1929) with live musical accompaniment performed for returning artists, The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

"Mother isn't quite herself today."

2011-07-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

The Goose Woman (1925)

Saturday July 16, 4pm, The Castro, San Francisco

A bitter old woman drowns her sorrows in gin and recalls her career as a great opera singer that ended with the illegitimate birth of her child. Long forgotten, the great Marie de Nardi (Louise Dresser) is known as Mary Holmes, the "Goose Woman" to her village, until detectives discover her past while investigating a murder. In an attempt to regain her lost fame she fabricates an eyewitness account of the crime which implicates her son.

Produced by Universal Pictures and directed by Clarence Brown, The Goose Woman (1925) begins as a beautifully stylized and modest character piece, but develops into a sensational morality play with a compelling performance by Miss Dresser as the title character. The supporting cast includes Gustav von Seyfertitz as Mr. Vogel, the States Attorney, Jack Pickford (inexplicably with top billing) as Mary's son Gerald Holmes and lovely young Constance Bennett as his fiancée Hazel Woods.

The 16th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival and San Francisco Opera present Louise Dresser in The Goose Woman (1925), with live musical accompaniment performed by returning pianist Stephen Horne.

A Chump from Oxford

2011-07-10T20:00:00.000-07:00

Mr. Fix-It (1918)

Saturday July 16, 6.30pm, The Castro, San Francisco

An American at Oxford sends his "happy-go-lucky" roommate home in his place to fix looming family problems. Reginald (Leslie Stuart) hasn't been to the states in fifteen years, so his sister, aunts and uncle are clueless when Remington (Douglas Fairbanks) shows up and turns their blue-nosed, stogy lives upside down. Before long, marriage engagements are broken, the house is filled with playful orphans and "Mr. Fix-It" is climbing the stairs on his hands.

Written and directed by Hollywood legend and Fairbanks favorite Allan Dwan, Mr. Fix-It (1918) is a shining example of the light comedy and physical gymnastics that made "Doug" a Broadway star. His dinner table tricks, antics with the kids and a spectacular mid-picture brawl are worthy of particular note. Mr. Fix-It was also released in April 1918 only days after Fairbanks, Charles Chaplin and Mary Pickford appeared before thousands at rallies promoting the third Liberty Loan drive.

The 16th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival and Wells Fargo present Douglas Fairbanks in Mr. Fix-It (1918), presented with live musical accompaniment performed by returning organist Dennis James at the Castro's 4/21 Wurlitzer.

Chaplin and Fairbanks on Wall Street, April 8, 1918

Boyz wilb Boyz

2011-07-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

Huckleberry Finn (1920)
Friday July 15, 2pm, The Castro, San Francisco

An old maid adopts motherless Huckleberry Finn to "sivilize" his coarse, free-spirited behavior. Her plans are thwarted when the boy is kidnapped by his father, the abusive town drunk. Huck escapes by faking his own murder and befriends a runaway slave. Their tranquil life of rafting on the river is interrupted by two seedy con-men who sell Jim and involve Huck in fraud, while he masquerades as his best friend Tom Sawyer and falls in love.

Missing the satirical bite and social consciousness of Mark Twain's 1885 novel, director William Desmond Taylor's Huckleberry Finn (1920) displays a sentimental fondness for the story in a production that typifies the consistent quality associated with Taylor and Paramount Pictures. Huckleberry Finn is also noteworthy as the first theatrical film version of the book and for Esther Ralston's oldest surviving performance in a feature film, as the object of Huck's affection Mary Jane Wilkes.

The 16th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival and the California Historical Society present William Desmond Taylor's Huckleberry Finn (1920), with live musical accompaniment performed by returning pianist Donald Sosin.

Sons of an Apple Polisher

2011-07-09T19:00:00.000-07:00

An Adult's Picture Book View - I Was Born, But… (1932)
Friday July 15, 4.15pm, The Castro, San Francisco

Two brothers move to a new town and learn that the ways of the schoolyard and the ways of adulthood are not so different. Keiji and Ryoichi play hooky to avoid a bully, are shamed by their father's subservience to his boss, and challenge authority while relying on each other.

An idyllic portrait of suburban life and emerging adolescence in pre-war Japan, I Was Born, But… (1932) is a well-suited introduction to the great director of social commentary, Yasujiro Ozu. Never was so much value placed on a sparrow's egg, so much pragmatism on a pair of unsharpened pencils or so much love conveyed in the eyes of a parent. I Was Born But… survives with a handful Ozu's silent films as the work of an emerging master. Unassumingly hilarious, modestly sentimental and uniquely Ozu, I was Born, But… ultimately transcends its cultural boundaries as a universal celebration of childhood.

The 16th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival and the Center for Asian American Media present Yasujiro Ozu's silent masterpiece, I Was Born, But… (1932), with live musical accompaniment performed by returning pianist Stephen Horne.

"...the boy in the horn-rimmed glasses."

2011-07-06T20:00:00.000-07:00

Grandma's Boy (1922)
Friday July 8, 7.30pm, Kenyon Hall, Seattle

Of all his films, Harold Lloyd considered Grandma's Boy (1922) his personal favorite. The second of eleven silent features starring Lloyd, it was the story of a kind-hearted boy, convinced of his own cowardice, but driven by his determination to marry the girl he loves. He suffers humiliation at the hands of his rival, played by long-time Lloyd and Roach regular Charles Stevenson, and a brutish hobo who terrorizes the town. Harold lives with his adorable old Grandma (Anna Townsend), who dotes on the boy and laments his failures, "Poor Sonny – There ought to be some way to help him." In the end, she does find a way, giving Harold the confidence to battle his demons with hilarious and spectacular results. Never reluctant to be upstaged for the sake of a good picture, even by babies or animals, Harold shares the screen with a colorful cast of local townsfolk, and a generous compliment of cows, chickens, horses, pigs, puppies and kittens, all put to good use in a well developed sequence of sentimental and humorous scenes. Mildred Davis, in her thirteenth of fifteen films with Lloyd, plays the girl, a bundle of blond curls and lace, sweet on the boy and not afraid to show it. When Harold comes calling she plays the family organ, but its merely an excuse to sing, "I love you – I love you – I love you." This film may best exploit the "candy box prettiness" biographer Tom Dardis described in the future Mrs. Lloyd. Grandma's Boy includes the standard Lloyd fare: break-neck chases (by any means), a colossal fight, and wonderfully entertaining intertiles from the always-undervalued H. M. "Beany" Walker. Careful notice of The Rolling Stone character, a malevolent hobo played by Dick Sutherland, reveal the obvious influence on a popular green troll seen in current animated features. Other beautifully added touches to the film include, a kicking mule in a punchbowl, a frightened goose peeking around a corner, mothballs inadvertently placed in a box of candy, a litter of kittens menaced by a china dog, and Grandma's brief but priceless celebration jig.

West Seattle's Kenyon Hall presents Harold Lloyd in Grandma's Boy (1922), with live musical accompaniment performed by returning pianist Donald Sosin at the Chickering grand.

Lady of the Flies

2011-06-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

CRACKS
(Jordan Scott,
UK/Ireland/
Spain, 2009,
unrated,
104 mins.)

"The most im-
portant thing
in life is desire."
--Miss Gribben
(Eva Green)

From the trail-
er for Cracks,
the first feat-
ure from Rid-
ley Scott's
daughter, Jordan, I expected a cross between 1931's Mädchen in Uni-
form and 1975's Picnic at Hanging Rock. That's not quite what I got.

The casting of Eva Green (The Dreamers, Casino Royale) and Juno
Temple (Atonement, Kaboom) added to my curiosity, not just because
they're actresses drawn to sexually provocative material, but because all
three have famous parents: Algerian-born French actress Marlène Jobert
in the case of Green and British director Julien Temple in the case of Juno.

Like many of Sir Ridley's films, though, Jordan's adaptation of Sheila Koh-
ler's novel focuses more on power than sex (not that the two are unrelat-
ed). In this case, an exotic figure enters a regimented scene, and every-
one feels powerless, though the interloper isn't as powerful as they think,
and the more presumptions they make, the more powerless she becomes.

Filmed in Ireland, the story takes place on Stanley Island in 1934. Green
plays Miss Gribben, whom the girls call Miss G, a glamorous and free-spir-
ited physical education teacher at a remote boarding school for girls. Noti-
ceably younger than the other instructors, she wears trousers and sneaks
smokes in private with Temple's Di (Sinéad Cusack plays headmistress).

From the way Di looks at Miss G, she appears to adore her. From the way Miss G looks at Di, she appreciates the adoration. If Di, the head girl of her section, worships her teacher, she can be cruel to the other girls. Miss G also loans her banned books. "I don't think it's wrong to want to know about the real world," Di tells a friend. "We can't stay pure forever."

Then, the school admits Fiamma (María Valverde), a Catholic student
from an aristocratic Spanish family. The other girls, who harbor strange
superstitions about Catholics, are less than welcoming, while Di is down-
right unpleasant, but Fiamma takes it in stride. Despite her asthma, she
impresses Miss G with her diving skills, which makes Di resent her more.

As winter gives way to spring, everyone but Di warms towards Fiamma,
while Miss G looks at the dark-haired girl the way Di used to look at her
(she also hides a few of Fiamma's belongings in her room). Though they
share stories of their travels, the tide turns when Fiamma discovers that
Miss G likes to embellish her past--and may have never left the island.

Soon, the teacher also sees her as a threat, and pushes her too hard during diving practice, knowing she should take care with an asthmatic. (Miss G also takes the girls skinny-dipping in a scene more suggestive than explicit, though Green and Temple have done nude scenes before.)

The title comes from the cracks that develop in Miss G's composure. Self-assured at the outset, she becomes paranoid once Fiamma finds her out, at which point Di steps up her campaign, which upsets Fiamma. The cracks, in other words, take on a life of their own, though Fiamma has done nothing to cause them. The struggle continues throughout the film.

Just when things can't get much worse, they get better, but it's the calm
before the storm. The way D.P. John Mathieson (several Ridley films, in-
cluding Gladiator), shoots the surrounding water and the way Miss G ob-
sesses about diving as an end in itself--she has no interest in competition--
creates the impression that someone will drown (or suffocate) before this
claustrophobic tale is through, and when one of the women oversteps her
bounds, tensions reach a boiling point. Something has to give, and it does.

Cracks isn't as much of a genre classic as Mädchen, and some critics are likely to dismiss it as casually as they did Notes on a Scandal and Asylum, melodramas which share a similar hyper-feminine, hothouse atmosphere. Except for a few quick cuts at the beginning, Scott's directing is fluid, and all tech credits, as one would expect from a Scott heir, are first-rate.

Assuming you buy the story, and
I was willing to go with it, that
leaves the acting, an area where
Scott seems likely to improve
with experience. The actresses
aren't bad, but no one went as deep as they could (Temple and Imogen Poots, who plays Poppy, have been better in other films).

In the end, it all comes down to
Green, who shows more range
than before, but her performance
rests largely on the surface,
though she deserves credit for
taking on such a challenging role.

With her looks, she could make
a lot of easy money, but since
The Dreamers, she's avoided
rote rom-coms and expendable girlfriend roles for movies like the dys-
topian drama Perfect Sense from Asylum director David Mackenzie.

If the ending arrives as a foregone conclusion, Cracks kept me riveted
from start to finish, and Scott handles the thriller-like final act well, even if
the calm, cool, and collected epilogue feels anti-climactic in comparison.

So, I didn't get the Mädchen or Hanging Rock I was expecting, as the film
plays instead more like a cross between The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
and The Virgin Suicides (as Noel Murray notes in his AV Club review, Koh-
ler also wrote her book in first-person plural). And I'm okay with that.

Cracks plays the Varsity Theatre (4329 University Way NE) through Thurs., 6/30. For more information, please click here. Images from IFC.

SIFF Dispatch #5

2011-06-12T09:23:00.000-07:00

Click here for
SIFF Dispatch #4

The 33rd
Seattle In-
ternational
Film Festi-
val conclud-
es tonight at
6:00pm with
Kevin Mac-
donald's Life
in a Day at the Cinerama. Produced by Tony and Ridley Scott, Macdon-
ald constructed the 90-minute documentary from 5,000 hours worth of
YouTube-submitted footage. Editor Joe Walker will be in attendance.

One of my co-workers signed a release form, so she's hoping her video
made the cut, but won't know until she sees the final result (she's a fine
photographer, so I wish her the best). As with The First Grader, Life
is a product of Nat Geo Movies, a logical extension of the enduring print
publication (they also released SIFF '10's Oscar-nominated Restrepo).

I was unable to attend the press screening, which took place two weeks
ago, but my friend Kevin says it's worth the price of admission, and I've
enjoyed Macdonald's other films, including Touching the Void, The Last
King of Scotland, and the underrated State of Play, his feature-film ver-
sion of the BBC miniseries (I still haven't seen One Day in September, for
which he won the Academy Award). John Hartl also gave Life a rave in
The Seattle Times. The closing night party follows the film at 8:00pm
at the Pan Pacific Hotel. Life in a Day opens nationwide on July 24.

Other closing day highlights include Belgium's Illegal, which plays Pacific
Place at 7:00pm, and Japan's Norwegian Wood, which plays the Egyp-
tian at 3:30pm. I attended last week's press screening for Vietnam-born
filmmaker Tran Anh Hung's Haruki Murakami adaptation, but decided to
leave once I realized the digital projection would not include subtitles.

A few hardy souls remained, one of whom, Brent McKnight, wrote a piece
about the experience. McKnight says that there isn't much dialogue, so he
could still appreciate the 133-minute feature, but I found that option less
than ideal, especially since I just read the 1987 book a few months ago.

Although I missed the Paris-based director's last film, I Come with the
Rain, I found his Vietnamese trilogy enchanting. That said, Norwegian
Wood features music from Can and Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, which
sounds appealing, but no such music appears in Murakami's semi-autobio-
graphical novel. He intends that title literally: it's all Beatles, all the time.

Sadly, the same thing happened when I returned to Pacific Place two
days later for another 10am press screening, this time for South Korean
blockbuster The Yellow Sea. Once again: no subtitles. That was bad
enough, but in both cases, the films continued to play and staffers made
no announcements. It was hard to figure out what was going on or why.

Fortunately, SIFF rescheduled a press screening, which went off with-
out a hitch. Though longer than necessary, I found Na Hong-Jin's thril-
ler riveting. No exact date has been set, but it opens in Seattle this fall.

Here are five other selections opening in the next few months: The Last
Mountain (July 8), Winnie the Pooh (July 15), Tabloid and If a Tree
Falls: A Story of the ELF (July 22), and Another Earth (August).

I caught the final screening
of Errol Morris's Tabloid, and
would definitely recommend it,
though I haven't met a Morris
film yet that I didn't like (I re-
viewed his 2008 Abu Ghraib
documentary, Standard Op-
erating Procedure, here).

At its worst, his latest is slightly
less substantial than the rest,
but that just makes it more en-
tertaining, since comely sub-
ject Joyce McKinney, former
beauty queen and S&M prac-
titioner, is a hoot and a half.

Morris, who won an Oscar for
the similarly-structured Fog of
War: Eleven Lessons from the
Life of Robert S. McNamara, never states definitively that McKinney real-
ly kidnapped Mormon missionary Kirk Anderson, and the object of her ob-
session declined to appear in the film, but the facts speak for themselves.

Though McKinney agreed to participate in the Showtime project, she's
since been protesting it with every fiber of her considerable being and
even showed up after Thursday's screening with one of her cloned dogs
in tow (I managed to miss this spectacle). She claims that Morris lied a-
bout his intentions and edited the documentary to make her look bad.

Watch for yourself and decide, or better yet, read the statement "truth-
teller," likely McKinney herself, posted on the SIFF website. In the film,
the tabloid sensation states, "You can tell a lie for long enough that you
believe it." She isn't talking about herself--but maybe she should be.

Endnote: Images from Screen Daily and The L Magazine.

SIFF Dispatch #4

2011-06-04T11:06:00.000-07:00

Click here for
SIFF Dispatch #3

The Seattle
Internation-
al Film Fes-
tival has been
underway for
over two weeks
now, and I've
gotten my sec-
ond wind. I
don't tend to
see as many films as your average full series pass holder, but it's still a chal-
lenge to balance the fest with a trio of freelance/part-time gigs.

Other than a couple of interviews that fell through, though, things
have been going pretty well, and to be on the safe side, I've decid-
ed not to request any others, though it might've been fun to speak
with Magic Trip's Alex Gibney or Bellflower's Evan Glodell.

There are no more screenings of Bellflower, a high-octane,
blood-drenched road-trip romance that feels like an instant cult
classic, but Glodell's debut found a distributor in Adam Yauch's
Oscilloscope Labratories, and opens in limited release on 8/5.

In the Beastie Boys, Yauch goes by Ad Rock, and Santigold guests on the
trio's new record. Considering that Bellflower was shot over three years
for approximately $17,000, I was surprised to find her songs listed in the
credits. I'm guessing that Yauch pulled a string or two to keep the music
costs down. At the Q&A, Glodell, who plays passive-aggressive Mad Max
fan Woodrow, says that Oscilloscope will also be releasing a soundtrack.

As for Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place, there's one
screening left on Sat., June 4, at the Egyptian. An Oscar winner for Taxi
to the Dark Side, Gibney has also made films about Enron (The Smartest
Guys in the Room), Hunter S. Thompson (Gonzo: The Life and Work of
Dr. Hunter S. Thompson), Jack Abramoff (Casino Jack & the United Stat-
es of Money), and Eliot Spitzer (Client 9), all of which are worth a look.

I had hoped to make it to the Magic Trip press screening, but I was up
late the night before after watching The Last Circus (Balada Triste de
Trompeta), and had too much work to do the next day. Unfortunately,
there are no more screenings of this Álex de la Iglesia horror movie
mash-up, which references everything from Freaks to Pan's Labyrinth.

Granted, I always end up missing a few films, but that's hard to avoid,
unless you can afford to take time off work. In the 1990s, I approach-
ed the fest that way, but as a freelancer, it's no longer an option...not
as long as I want to pay the rent. A short list of other SIFF '11 misses
include Mika Kaurismäki’s Mama Africa (about the late Miriam Make-
ba); Michael Winterbottom's The Trip (with Steve Coogan and Rob Bry-
don); Sophie Fiennes' Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow; The Night
of Counting the Years; Bill Morrison's Spark of Being; and Kevin
Macdonald's Life in a Day, the closing night selection, which screen-
ed for the press on Friday. The Trip opens 6/17 at the Harvard Exit.

Fortunately, I've been able to see everything else that's attracted my
attention, either through press or public screenings. DVD screeners are
also available to the press corps, but since the publicity department now
requires writers to submit a credit card to check them out, I've decided to
opt out. It's not that I don't trust the staff or their system to keep my da-
ta safe, but that I disagree with this approach, and would rather miss a
film than hand over my card. I don't usually complain about SIFF's inner
workings, because I'm a longtime volunteer, contributor, and member. I
know how hard it is to put on a festival, but…growth comes at a price.

Frankly, I'd rather talk about the films. In reviewing the Tehran-set
Circumstance for Amazon, I wrote, "Filmed in Beirut, American-born
writer/director Maryam Keshavarz's feature-film debut is pitched some-
where between [Udayan Prasad's] My Son the Fanatic and [Bahman
Ghobadi's] No One Knows about Persian Cats. If less overtly political,
she's equally sympathetic towards her protagonists and just as critic-
al of the individuals and institutions that would stand in their way."

The beautifully shot entry stars Nikohl Boosheri, Sarah Kazemy, and Re-
za Sixo Safai, all of whom are very good (and also quite beautiful). Kesh-
avarz and Safai are scheduled to attend the screenings at the Harvard
Exit on Sat., 6/4, at 6:30pm and the Egyptian on Mon., 6/6, at 4:15pm.

Britain's Andrew Haigh will also be in attendance at the 6/5 screening of
Weekend at SIFF Cinema at 4:30pm. The first took place yesterday at
the Harvard Exit. For Amazon, I wrote, "Most everyone has had the exper-
ience of meeting someone new and feeling an instant connection. Transfer-
ring that phenomenon to the big screen, however, tends to fall flat when
the cast and the script aren't up to the task. As in Richard Linklater's the-
matically similar Before Sunrise, director Haigh has no such problem."

Since the film is largely a two-hander, it helps that Tom Cullen and Chris
New work so well together. In addition to Sunrise, I was reminded of Brief
Encounter, while a friend cited Friday Night. The comparison to David Lean
might seem a stretch, since Haigh's protagonists are neither heterosexual
nor married...but the climactic scene does take place at a train station.

Other recommendations include Christopher Munch's environmental-
ly-oriented Letters from the Big Man with Lily Rabe, the daughter
of Jill Clayburgh and David Rabe, and S.J. Clarkson's hilarious and
heartbreaking Toast with Oscar Kennedy and Helena Bonham Carter.

Munch, who directed The Hours
and Times and Color of a Brisk
and Leaping Day, will be in at-
tendance. I'm also fond of his
semi-autobiographical Sleepy Time Gal with Jacqueline Bisset.

Letters plays SIFF Cinema on
Fri., 6/10, at 6:30pm and Sat.,
6/11, at 4:30pm, while Toast,
an adaptation of chef Nigel Slat-
er's memoir, plays the Neptune
on Sat., 6/11, at 6:30pm and
Sun., 6/12, at 11am. It's one
of my favorites of the festival.

In an echo of Sweeney Todd's
Mrs. Lovett, Bonham Carter is
expectedly great as Nigel's bras-
sy, manipulative stepmother, but
I believe young Mr. Kennedy gives one of the year's finest child perfor-
mances (Finding Neverland's Freddie Highmore, also good, plays the 16-
year-old version). Ken Stott, as his father, and Lark Rise to Candleford's
Victoria Hamilton, as his mother, are equally strong. Clarkson, who has
helmed episodes of Life on Mars and House, will be at the screenings.

Click here for SIFF Dispatch #5.

Endnote: Toast still from Iain Stott's The One-Line Review.

SIFF Dispatch #3

2011-05-28T12:14:00.000-07:00

Click here for
SIFF Dispatch #2

I've been at-
tending SIFF
for 23 years,
so it's fair to
say I'm a vet-
eran. For 11
years, I vol-
unteered for
the festival;
for eight
years, I've
written for
the program guide; and for six years, I've covered it for Amazon, in-
dieWIRE, Reel News, The Stranger, and other websites and weeklies.

Through all these years, a pattern has emerged. Come week two: I feel
burned out. After all, freelancers start writing for the guide in early April,
so by late May, I've been steeped in screeners and screenings for weeks.

This year, burn-out hit between days eight and nine, and that's par for the
course. It's not that I get tired of watching films, it's my year-round occu-
pation, but I start to miss the life that lies beyond dark screening rooms.

A morning at home, for instance, feels like a luxury. I can get up when
I want, make my own mocha, fix my own meals, read the news, write
reviews, and catch up with some of the folks unable to attend the fest.

Furthermore, the SIFF press department was unable to accommodate
my interview requests. I could be wrong, but I don't think that's ever
happened before. This year, I was hoping to interview directors Peter
Richardson and Mike Mills, whose films have now come and gone.

I caught Richardson's follow-up to Clear Cut - The Story of Philomath, Oregon last weekend, where he and several individuals featured in the new documentary, including Cody Curtis's family, participated in a Q&A.

In the film, which premiered on HBO last Thursday, Richardson profiles
Curtis, an engaging 54-year-old mother of two who suffered from stage
4 liver cancer, and others who've taken advantage of Oregon's death
with dignity law. He also documents the law's passage in Washington.

It's heartbreaking, but he recounts their experiences with a sure hand,
never overstaying his welcome or exploiting their emotions. The same
could be said of Mike Mills, who directed my favorite film of 2005, an
under-appreciated version of Walter Kirn's 1999 novel Thumbsucker.

For his second
feature, he
draws from his
life in depict-
ing an artist
(Ewan McGreg-
or) navigating
a relationship
with an actress
(Mélanie Laur-
ent) while mourning his
widowed father (Christopher Plummer), who announced he was gay be-
fore finding out he had terminal cancer. It's hardly as grim as it sounds.

If anything, I wish Mills had dug even deeper. I found Beginners charm-
ing, but not as moving as I expected. Still, I would recommend this deli-
cately directed film, which opens at the Harvard Exit on Friday, 6/10.

I had planned to interview Mills, who doubles as a documentarian
(Does Your Soul Have a Cold and Beautiful Losers with Treatment's
Joshua Leonard), for Sean Axmaker's site, Parallax View, where
he and other film critics have been covering the fest in fine style.

Lost interview opportunities aside, those were two highlights from the first
week of SIFF '11. The good news is that I only need a day to get back in-
to the swing of things. Fortunately, I have just three films on deck for this
weekend, including the Patty Schemel documentary, Hit So Hard, which
I caught last night. I was so tired, I almost skipped it, but I'm glad I went.

Afterward, I ran into Tom Kipp, a frequent presenter at the EMP Pop Con-
ference, who felt that there were a few too many scenes that lasted longer
than necessary. He has a point, but we agreed that the film is worth a look.

Raised in Marysville, Schemel went from drumming in local bands, like Doll
Squad, to membership in Hole. Along the way, she came out of the closet,
cavorted with Kurt and Courtney (intimate home-movie footage of the two
is likely to interest even non-fans), drank too much, took too many drugs,
and ended up homeless on the streets of Los Angeles before slowly mak-
ing her way back to sobriety, a second career, and a family of her own.

The second screening of Hit So Hard takes place on Sun., 5/29, at 4pm
at the Neptune. Schemel, director P. David Ebersole, and the producers
will be in attendance. Schemel's brother, Larry, showed up at the Egyptian
and said that he and Patty are making music again, just as they did in the
1980s (her brother provided much of the archival material in the film).

Next, I'm look-
ing forward to
Mahamat-Sal-
eh Haroun's A
Screaming
Man (Un Hom-
me Qui Crie)
which has a fin-
al screening at
Pacific Place on
Sun., 5/29, at
10am. In 2007,
SIFF program-
med his mag-
nificent Daratt, which I watched at a sadly underpopulated SIFF Cinema.

Considering the praise which greeted Bye Bye Africa and Abouna, Har-
oun's first features, I was saddened by Seattle's lack of interest in this
masterful filmmaker. By contrast, The Stranger's Charles Mudede has
been a Haroun supporter for awhile now. My friend, Bill, agrees with
him that Man marks another triumph for the Chad-based director, so
I hope the city shows more love this year, though the early-morning
start time will surely scare off a few punters. Plus, it plays opposite
SIFF's perennially popular Secret Festival (11am at the Egyptian).

I didn't get a chance to preview Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Mis-
adventure, but Chris Estey provides an informed preview at Three Im-
aginary Girls. As Chris knows, I've been obsessed with the "Little Man"
phenomenon since I discovered it in the 1980s, and I've always wonder-
ed whatever happened to the booze-sozzled Bay Area bickerers, Peter
and Raymond, as well as the two gents who chronicled their exploits.

As someone who has lived with
and next door to couples who
have, at times, recalled Peter
and Raymond, I appreciate the
reminder that I'm not alone,
though I can't imagine actual-
ly recording conversations
and releasing transcripts.

Instead, I once wrote a short
story for a writing class about
my college roommate and her
boyfriend, but I made certain
to change their names. Separ-
ately, they were nice people. Together: disaster (they ended up dropping out). Shut Up Lit-
tle Man! plays Sat., 5/28, at 10pm at the Neptune and Mon., 5/30, at 9pm at the Egyptian.

I attended Hit So Hard with Chris Burlingame who'll be interviewing Patty Schemel for his site, Another Rainy Saturday. Click here for his review of Shut Up Little Man! Burlingame has also contributed to Three Imaginary Girls and The KEXP Blog, where you can find even more SIFF coverage.

Click here for SIFF Dispatch #4.

Endnote: Images from indieWIRE, Chad Now, Film Move-
ment, and Focus Features by way of AllMoviePhoto.com.

SIFF Dispatch #2

2011-05-21T19:47:00.000-07:00

Click here for
SIFF Dispatch #1

Because I have
three jobs, I
can’t attend
every press
screening, and
that’s fine, be-
cause I’d nev-
er have time to
cover them all.

Consequently, I’ve been concentrating on the films that interest me
the most. This method reduces the number of pleasant--and unpleas-
ant--surprises, but I can always catch up with the unexpectedly strong
selections during the festival proper, which began on Friday, May 20.

Or at least I can try. The great thing about SIFF is that it brings a lot of
worthy films to light. If you miss something during the festival, there’s always the possibility that you can catch it afterward through theatrical screenings, video, cable, network and public television, downloads, and streaming video. (The options appear to be multiplying by the minute.)

When it comes to documentaries, for instance, PBS’s Independent Lens
often snaps up some of the finer entries, most recently the Oscar-nomi-
nated Waste Land (disclosure: I work part-time at KCTS 9). There’s a
catch, though: you sometimes have to wait a year, if not longer. Mugabe
and the White African (SIFF '10), for instance, doesn’t air until this July.

That said,
there’s noth-
ing like exper-
iencing a film
with an enthu-
siastic audi-
ence. I’ll al-
ways remem-
ber catching
Kinji Fukasa-
ku’s final film,
Battle Roy-
ale, at the Cinerama. I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed it on my computer or TV screen, but the reactions from the crowd added to the excitement.

I haven’t seen anything quite that exciting yet, but that’s no com-
plaint; Fukasaku set the bar impossibly high (at least within the
realm of dystopian action-adventure fare). So far, two documen-
taries have impressed me the most: James Marsh’s Project Nim
and Andrew Rossi’s Page One: Inside the New York Times.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

"It's the closest thing I can imagine to a walking J.G. Ballard
novel, a chilling story of mad science that would sound like
a bad TV movie adaptation of a Ray Bradbury short story."
-- Empire contributing editor Damon Wise on Project Nim

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Marsh, a British director who divides his time between fiction and non-
fiction films, has a mixed record with SIFF, but the tide should turn with
Nim, which recounts the remarkable story of a remarkable creature.

Five years ago, the director brought the narrative feature The King to
town, which met with a fairly negative reaction. The film had its admir-
ers, such as KIRO’s Tom Tangney, but I had to look hard to find them.

Then, in 2008, SIFF screened Man on Wire, which met with an over-
whelmingly positive response, and won the best documentary Oscar. Time will tell if Nim can scale those heights. Due to a subject that has little to do with world affairs, a nomination seems unlikely, and that’s unfortunate. Then again, Man on Wire was a left-field entry that went the distance.

Further, Amir Bar-Lev’s impassioned Tillman Story (SIFF ’10), which
should’ve been a sure-fire Academy Award contender, didn’t even re-
ceive a nod (in a strong year for documentaries, it topped my list).

Following on the heels of the well received Red Riding trilogy--Marsh
directed 1980 with Paddy Considine--his new film covers three dec-
ades in the life of Nim Chimsky (a pun on the name of linguist Noam
Chomsky), who has inspired books, articles, and the movie Project X.

In 1973, Columbia University behavioral psychologist Herb Terrace, the
Black Hat of the piece, placed Nim with his former lover, psychology stu-
dent Stephanie LaFarge, and her Upper West Side family, who raised him
as one of their own; he romped with the kids, he romped with the cats.

Terrace aimed to prove that a chimp can learn to communicate using
American Sign Language (ASL). The narrative takes one harrowing turn
after another as Nim moves, literally, across the country. Just when it
seems things can’t get much worse, the most unlikely hero arrives to save
the day. Marsh raises any number of fascinating questions about nature
vs. nurture, making Nim a must-see for animal lovers of every kind.

Bonus: Former Tindersticks member Dickon Hinchliffe provides the
fabulous orchestral score (highly recommended to fans of the duo Air).

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

"The media is not the message. The message is the media."
--David Carr, Page One: Inside the New York Times

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

While Rossi’s Page One, a completely different kind of document-
ary, adheres to a more conventional structure, media consumers are
likely to find it equally absorbing, if not more relevant, since the land-
scape keeps undergoing one metamorphic change after another.

In examining the relationship The New York Times has established
with entities like WikiLeaks, Rossi shows the Old Grey Lady embrac-
ing new media and looking beyond the borders of an insular environ-
ment to cut costs and remain relevant, but it's hardly a puff piece.

While he could’ve concentrated soley on Times staffers, like exec editor
Bill Keller and reporter Brian Stetler, who'll be in town to support the film,
he brings outside voices into play, including representatives from Gawker,
Vice, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and Wikipedia. Former staffer Gay
Talese, author of The Kingdom and the Power: Behind the Scenes at the
New York Times, helps to provide historical context, while Rossi also in-
corporates scandals involving reporters Jayson Blair and Judith Miller.

These are a lot of hyper-ar-
ticulate people, but that's par
for the course with the news
business. Then there's colum-
nist and former Carpetbagger
David Carr. As a filmmaker,
Rossi is perceptive enough to
know that when it comes to a
guy this interesting: the more
screen time, the better. Of all
the Times staffers, he spends
the most time with the hoar-
se, hunched-up, ex-crack
addict and single father

Like Stetler and media editor
Bruce Headlam, Carr has help-
ed The Times transition into the
21st-century. Though it took him
a while to embrace Twitter, he now has 322,000+ followers. As Rossi depicts him, he's a witty, infuriating man with a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to bullshit--it's worth the price of admission alone to watch him put the Vice crew in their place.

Click here for SIFF Dispatch #3

Endnote: Bob Ingersoll, who appears in the film, will be at-
tending the Project Nim screenings. Images from Twitch and
IMP Awards. Page One opens in Seattle on July 1 (venue TBA).

SIFF Dispatch #1

2011-05-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

"You have to
be crazy to pro-
duce a movie."
-- Mathieu Amal-
ric on his charac-
ter in On Tour

The 37th Seat-
tle Interna-
tional Film Festival, which runs from May
19 – June 12, begins on Thursday with a gala screening of The First Grader. After that, the fest will screen 440 features and shorts from 74 countries over 24 days throughout Seattle, Renton, Everett, and Kirkland.

Unlike years past, I missed the screening of the opening night film, but it’s
worth noting that Justin Chadwick directed episodes of MI-5, The Other
Boleyn Girl with Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johannson, and the marve-
lous BBC/Masterpiece Classic adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House.
His second full-length feature centers on the efforts of a former Mau Mau
fighter, 84-year-old Kimani (Oliver Litondo), to secure an education.

I’m quite fond of co-star Naomie Harris, who gave such spirited turns
in White Teeth, Small Island, and Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later. I’m less
enamored by her work in the last two Pirates of the Caribbean entries,
but that endless series can suck the talent out of the hardiest of souls.

The screen-
ing of the
British/Ken-
yan co-prod-
uction takes
place at Seat-
tle Center’s
McCall Hall,
with a recep-
tion to follow
at the Cen-
ter’s Exhibi-
tion Hall. Sponsors include Don Q, Stella Artois, Cupcake Royale, Dil-
ettante, and Ivar’s, so expect plenty of booze, seafood, and sweets.

The First Grader opens May 27 at the Metro Cinemas (4500 9th Ave. NE).

Because I write for the program guide (this marked my eighth year),
I had already seen 13 films before press screenings began on May 2.
Of those selections, my favorites were actor/writer/director Mathieu
Amalric’s On Tour (Tournée), which I described as “joyous and gen-
erous,” and Sally Rowe’s A Matter of Taste - Serving up Paul
Liebrandt, which I described as “suspenseful and revealing.”

Until I read up on the film, I had no idea that On Tour, which revol-
ves around an American burlesque troupe's tour through France, rep-
resented Amalric’s fourth film as director. Though I’m familiar with ma-
ny of the films in which he’s appeared, I’m unfamiliar with his other direc-
torial efforts. In reviewing the premiere at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, Patrick Z. McGavin wrote, "The movie has a documentary realism and sharpness that carries it through the rough spots and dramatic lulls."

Though On
Tour has e-
licited mixed
reviews, and
Amalric does-
n't always
combine the
cinéma véri-
té and fiction-
al elements
as elegantly
as he could,
he won the
best direc-
tor award at Cannes. Writes David Hudson, "The crowd pretty much
went wild when Jury President Tim Burton announced the decision."

On Tour plays the Admiral Theatre (2343 California Ave. SW) on May 28 at 9pm
and the Neptune (1303 NE 45th St.) on June 9 at 9:30pm and June 11 at 3:30pm.

Furthermore, I had never heard of Paul Liebrandt, but the chef has
spent most of his life working in the kinds of high-end eateries I could
never possibly afford. As Rowe proves, though, even superstars like
Liebrandt don’t always have the easiest time of it, and she documents
a decade of ups and downs until the tide finally turns in his direction.

Though I don't mention it in my blurb, I would recommend that vegetar-
ians think twice before attending A Matter of Taste. I may be an omni-
vore, but I draw the line at calf brains and foie gras. Still, I have nothing
but respect for Leibrandt's artistry, and Rowe does a fabulous job at pho-
tographing the chef's dishes as if they were--and they are--works of art.

A Matter of Taste plays SIFF Cinema (321 Mercer St.) on May 20 at 7:30pm
and the Admiral Theatre (2343 California Ave. SW) on May 22 at 1:00pm.

Other films I would recommend include Tom Tykwer’s Three (Drei), Robin Aubert’s Crying Out (À L'Origine d'un Cri), Mark Meily’s Donor, Philip Neel and David H. Jeffery’s Lesson Plan, Ryan Redford’s Oliver Sherman, Louise Alston’s Jucy, Alain Corneau’s Love Crime (Crime d'Amour), and the final film from Jean Becker, My Afternoons with Margueritte (La Tête en Friche).

Click here for SIFF Dispatch #2.

Endnote: Images from BBC Films, MUBI.com, and The Wall Street Journal (via Sally Rowe). For more information about SIFF '11, please click here.

Lost in The Talkies...

2011-04-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

... and old in The Can

Considered by many to be his best feature film, Buster Keaton's The Cameraman (1928) played New York's Capitol Theatre (Broadway and 51st) on September 21, 1928. Included on the bill was a personal appearance by Hal Roach's Hollywood rascals, Our Gang.

Free and Easy (1930)

On the third week of September 1928, Seattle newspapers were abuzz with "All singing, all talking, all dancing" and hokey, old-fashioned silent movies had already become rare as hen's teeth. Keaton's disappointing last silent film, Spite Marriage (1929) quickly came and went, followed by a huge reception for his next picture, The Hollywood Revue of 1929, in which Keaton played a insignificant, but obligatory part as an MGM contract player. The Hollywood Revue played at Seattle's new Fox Theatre (7th and Olive) for what seemed like months.

Keaton's next Seattle appearance was given second billing (most likely an earlier short) at the University District's Neptune Theatre, listed only as "Buster Keaton" on September 9, 1929.

Missing the boat…

Less than one week after Keaton's dreadful talkie Free and Easy (1930) (which also enjoyed a long run) opened at the Fox on Friday April 11, 1930, The Cameraman finally crept into the second-run 723 seat Winter Garden Theatre (1515 3rd Ave between Pike and Pine) for a short, inconspicuous visit, no doubt to wring what pennies MGM could from their investment, leaving Keaton's masterpiece virtually unknown in Seattle until revival fans discovered it decades later.

The Winter Garden ca.1937

STG Presents!

Seattle Theatre Group, Northwest Film Forum and Trader Joes present Silent Movie Mondays and Buster Keaton in The Cameraman with live musical accompaniment performed by organst Jim Riggs at the Paramount's original 4/20 Publix 1 Wurlitzer.

Buster Bliss

2011-04-20T20:00:00.000-07:00

The Cameraman (1928)

Monday April 25, 7pm, The Paramount, Seattle

"I'm a photographer. Could I get a job here?" "Get a job here … with that cocktail shaker?"

The Cameraman marked Buster Keaton's move to MGM in 1928, and the loss of creative control that would lead to his eventual decline from stardom. In spite of this, it remains the ultimate refinement of Keaton's work in silent features, containing his best collection of comedy set pieces within a complex scenario. It was also the last time Keaton performed the reckless physical stunts he'd become famous for, which the studio saw as an unreasonable risk to their valuable star.

Buster wanders the city streets with camera and tripod making tintypes for ten cents. In the crush of a tickertape parade he spots lovely Sally (Marceline Day) and is instantly smitten.

Keaton possessed the charming ability to express romantic infatuation as though he was hypnotized. As he poses Sally for the photo, she stands head turned to the side while Buster gazes at her and loses himself in the moment. Later, as he waits in the office of the newsreel service where she works, he dreamily peers over his photos and bats his drowsy eyes at her while Sally looks back at him sweetly. His corny slight-of-hand coin trick to impress her seems to say "Oh that was nothing!" In Keaton's vernacular it becomes a beautifully expressed and touching sentiment. Throughout his career Keaton typically played modest characters, intent on winning the heart of a girl by the use of endearingly pathetic gestures and flourishes, while the actual 'gags' would be seen as accidents of circumstance, often with spectacular results. As Buster takes Sally on a date, they attempt to board a double-decker city bus, but are separated by the surging crowd separates the two, with Buster being forced to the upper level while Sally remains below. As it moves down the street and they find each other, Buster climbs down the outside of the bus and sits on a rear wheel fender to be near her. A big bump bounces Buster onto the street, he regains his wits, and chases after the bus, hopping once again onto the fender as they speed along. Keaton's character seems oblivious to any physical danger, blinded by his need to be with and please the girl. When in the end, he ultimately saves Sally from drowning, he never considers his own peril. His rival guiltily takes credit for the rescue, leaving Buster alone on the beach, heartbroken with only his camera and an organ grinder's monkey.

Among the brilliant comedy routines featured in this tour de force: A baseball game played in pantomime at Yankee Stadium with Buster playing every position, including the umpire! To pay for their date, Buster nearly demolishes his room cracking open a dime bank, then proceeds to scatter the fist full of coins when he removes them from his pocket. Sally's close-up reaction is priceless! After the bus ride, he takes her to a public swimming pool. Buster and another man attempt to disrobe in a three-by-three foot dressing room with hilarious results. "Will you keep out of my undershirt?" As she walks alongside the pool in her swimsuit, Sally is swarmed by overly attentive young men. When Buster finally emerges he has somehow been given absurdly over-sized swimwear. Forced to compete for her attention, he loses his suit when he jumps off the high dive; a routine repeated countless times by others after Keaton. Running gags throughout the film include constant collisions with the same beat cop who's convinced there is something wrong with Buster. "I'll try your reflexes to see of you're goofy." The monkey he appears to have accidentally killed springs back to life and clings to Buster throughout the rest of the picture. In one scene Buster cranks away on his camera, filming a Tong War in Chinatown, while the tiny monkey in a sailor suit cranks away on a machine gun! Keaton was also well known for his effective use of props in outrageous sight gags. The motorcycle in Sherlock Jr. (1924), the enormous ladder in Cops (1922) and the tiny gun in Go West (1925) are a few. In The Cameraman, Keaton's constant companion is the large and ungainly camera and tripod that virtually becomes another character with a mind of it's own. He stumbles over and into it, inadvertently knocks the cop unconscious with it, uses it to engage the girl and manages to break the same window with it repeatedly throughout the film.

Buster is a hopeless romantic, regardless of what it may cost him. His finances, social status and personal dignity are always on the table. And yet, he is shy and his desire is initially hidden from Sally, revealed only to the audience when she's not looking. Buster usually found a way to win the girl over by the final reel. Of course in Go West, the girl was a cow.

STG Presents!

Seattle Theatre Group, Northwest Film Forum and Trader Joes present Silent Movie Mondays and Buster Keaton in The Cameraman with live musical accompaniment performed by organist Jim Riggs at the Paramount's original 4/20 Publix 1 Wurlitzer.

Next: Lost in the Talkies...

How many times have I told you, "Don't play in the street!"

2011-04-16T20:00:00.000-07:00

The Crowd (1928)

Monday April 18, 7pm, The Paramount, Seattle

"The Crowd laughs with you always …. but it will cry with you for only a day."

King Vidor's masterpiece, The Crowd, is a landmark of Hollywood's silent era. The delirious joy and horrific sorrow of Johnny Sims (James Murray) and his beautiful Mary (Eleanor Boardman) remains intimate and touching even today. Theatergoers in 1928 were shocked by the visceral impact of this film. It is a simple story of boy meets girl, boy marries girl, love and tragedy amid the humdrum routine of daily life in the big city, told with poetic beauty and startling realism.

Director Vidor and cinematographer Henry Sharp treat the viewer to breathtaking moments: The magical lights of Coney Island at night, the roaring grandeur of Niagara Falls and the terrifying enormity of New York City, where people thrive or are swallowed up. Featuring Bert Roach and Estelle Clark in supporting roles, The Crowd is among the finest films produced by MGM's "Wonder Boy" Irving Thalberg during the silent era's golden age.

"So Real It Makes You Part of The Story."

Barely one month after opening, King Vidor's The Crowd, came to Publix-Loew's Seattle Theatre (re-named Paramount in 1932) at 9th and Pine on Thursday, March 29, 1928. The stage show featured Jules Buffano and the Seattle Stage Band offering an updated version of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado in "Paul Ash's New York Revue starring Bob LaSalle and the Kimawa Troupe." Also on the bill, The Darling Twins, eight Geisha Girls, the Seattle Grand Orchestra conducted by Arthur Clausen performing the overture "Rigoletto", with Ron and Don at the Grand Organ. Admission was 25c from 11:30 to 1, 35c from 1 to 6 and 50c after 6.

James Murray and King Vidor on the set

STG Presents!

Seattle Theatre group and Trader Joes present Silent Movie Mondays and King Vidor's The Crowd with live musical accompaniment performed by organist Jim Riggs at the Paramount's original 1928 4/20 Publix I Wurlitzer.

Caring Is (Not) Creepy

2011-04-14T17:41:00.000-07:00

SOME DAYS
ARE BETTER
THAN OTH-
ERS (Matt
McCormick,
US, 2010,
93 mins.)

I get to sleep in
my own bed at
the end of the
day. And my
back doesn't
hurt as much.
-- Carrie Brownstein on the advantages of acting over touring

Rather than the musical or comedy one might expect, based on the pri-
mary participants, director Matt McCormick's Some Days Are Better
than Others revolves around loss and the things people leave behind.

Before the IFC series Portlandia, with Carrie Brownstein, and the debut
from Broken Bells, with James Mercer, Brownstein and Mercer starred in
this, McCormick’s first feature, which premiered at last year’s SIFF. Since
that time, Brownstein formed Wild Flag with three other women, including
Sleater-Kinney's Janet Weiss, while Mercer continues to front the Shins.

It's fair to say these two have been keeping busy, but who knew they could act--not counting the shorts they made with McCormick, which I haven’t seen. They’re rough around the edges, but I enjoyed spending time with Brownstein's Katrina, who works at a dog shelter, and Mercer's Eli, who works temp jobs and helps out Otis (David Wodehouse), his step-grandfather, who's making a film out of soap-bubble reflections.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Click here for the trailer

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

While Eli hangs out with Otis, Katrina works on art projects and makes
audition tapes for a reality show. McCormick contrasts their stories with
that of Camille, a middle-aged woman (Renée Roman Nose) who sorts
through new arrivals at a thrift shop. She takes most items in stride until
the day she uncovers a brass urn bearing the name of a child, and spends
the rest of the film trying to find a home for it. Eli has a similar reaction
when he helps to clear out a dead woman's house, which means rifling
through her belongings--and answering to a self-centered creep.

As for their love lives, Katrina's been seeing the same guy for five years,
but their relationship comes to an end when she finds out he's met some-
one else (she logs into his email account). When Otis asks Eli why he isn't
seeing anyone, he explains, "I have a bad habit of falling in love with les-
bians," a reference to his attractive roommate, Chloe (Erin McGarry).

I didn't buy the reality TV subplot, but found the rest of this low-key en-
try engaging. It's not that the audition process seemed unrealistic, but
that Katrina never came across as the type to fall for it. At least she's
not chasing fame or money, but rather the desire to express herself
and prove to her ex-boyfriend that she's moved on. Or so she says.

Though I expected Katrina and Eli to cross paths sooner, they don't meet
until the end, at which point McCormick reveals the surprisingly mundane
connection between them. Until that point, there was no obvious through-
line, and Katrina never runs into Camille as Eli does (in an oblique way).

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Click the links for McCormick's videos for the Shins' "Australia" and
"The Past & Pending" (unfortunately, embedding wasn't an option).

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Throughout, the filmmaker displays a refined eye. There's a studied sym-
metry to most scenes, which will surely strike some as cute or quirky, but
I appreciated the attention to detail, especially in a low-budget production
(which becomes clear in an early driving scene, where the looping is off).

A minimalist organ score from Eluvium's Matthew Cooper adds to the
feeling of Miranda July-like wistfulness, and compensates for the lack of
selections from Sleater-Kinney or the Shins. On the contrary, there's a
sequence in which Eli, a karaoke enthusiast, limps through "Total Eclipse
of the Heart" as if it were his first time at a mic. It's believably painful.

Lately, I've been watching a lot of Portland-set films. If Some Days isn't
as light on its feet as Aaron Katz's Cold Weather, which played the North-
west Film Forum last month, the city seems brighter and more welcoming
here. Katz was going for a cold, clammy, noirish look, and he succeeded.

The Portland in McCormick's movie recalls the one that anchored 2007's
Paranoid Park, so it only makes sense when Gabe Nevins, who played the
lead in that picture, shows up for a cameo here (as a grocery store clerk),
alongside Sleater-Kinney's Corin Tucker (as a customer at the store).

Pitchfork confirms the link between these projects: "Neil Kopp and Da-
vid Cress, the producers of Some Days Are Better than Others, al-
so produced Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park and Kelly Reichardt's Will
Oldham-starring Old Joy" (in which McCormick played "weed dealer").

All that said, it’s hard to predict
how fans of Brownstein and Mer-
cer will react to this film, since
it doesn't capitalize on their mu-
sic/musical personas, yet they
represent the biggest names as-
sociated with it. I hope they like
it better than Slant's Simon Ab-
rams, who dismissed it as "the
kind of American independent
quirk-fest that needs to be
quarantined and examined."

The debt to You and Me and
Everyone We Know may be too
clear at times, intentionally or
otherwise--Brownstein has also
worked with July--but McCormick
flirts with indie rom-com tropes,
only to abandon them along the way, which seems fitting in a film about abandonment.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Some Days Are Better than Others plays the Northwest Film Forum
from 4/15-21 at 7 and 9pm. Matt McCormick will be in attendance on
opening night, along with Renée Roman Nose. The NWFF is located at 15-
15 12th Ave. between Pike and Pine. For more information, please click
here. The title, incidentally, comes from a song by Seattle's Carissa's
Wierd. According to Urban Honking, source for the image at top, "Mc-
Cormick was heavily inspired by their music in the creation of this film."

Goodbye to All That

2011-04-02T11:00:00.000-07:00

THE TIME
THAT RE-
MAINS:
Chronicle
of a Pres-
ent Absen-
tee (Elia
Suleiman,
2009, 35mm,
105 mins.)

In his films, Arab-Israeli director Elia Suleiman (Chronicle of a Disap-
pearance, Divine Intervention) blurs the lines between fact and fantasy.
It's part of what makes his work so enjoyable, despite the fact that all
three, part of a trilogy, focus on the conflict in the Middle East (and if
he hailed from Belfast, I don't see how he could avoid the Troubles).

Where other filmmakers see doom and gloom, he sees irony and ab-
surdity, which doesn't mean he wears rose-colored glasses. His movies
may be funny, but they're hardly conventional comedies, not when he
takes his cues from Franz Kafka and Buster Keaton. Characters rarely
smile, but that just makes their predicaments all the more comical.

His most straightforward film yet, The Time That Remains, returns to his roots with four chapters about his family. He begins with Nazareth's surrender to Israel in 1948 (his grandfather, the mayor, does the honors).

After the Israeli Army imposes a curfew, his father, Fuad (Saleh Bakri, the
unbelievably good looking Egyptian musician from The Band's Visit), a gun
maker, must stay inside in order to avoid getting shot. When he and a cousin step outside to help a fallen comrade, the army captures him, binds his hands, ties a blindfold around his head, and attempts to coerce information from him about the local weapons supply (they let the cousin go). When he refuses to talk, they beat him up, and leave him for dead.

Fuad lives to fight another day--and then some. The director next catches
up with him in 1970, after he has gained a wife, a son, and streaks of grey
in his wavy hair. At one point, Elia's mother (Samar Tanus; later Shafika
Bajjali) writes a letter to her sister-in-law, quoting a teacher who said her
boy is "always in the clouds." Meanwhile, their salty old neighbor is con-
stantly threatening to light himself on fire. "Shit on this life!" he exclaims during his latest attempt. Other things remain the same: Fuad still smokes, fishes at night, manufactures weapons, and risks his life for the injured.

Because he continues as a gun maker, the authorities hassle him from time to time. And because he continues to smoke, he develops a cardiac condition, which leads to open-heart surgery and further complications. By 1980, the authorities have transferred their attentions to Elia, a smoker and free thinker like his father, who flees the country to save his skin.

In the final
chapter, the
filmmaker
plays himself,
as he's done
twice before.
Suleiman isn't
the most ex-
pressive actor, but he doesn't direct anyone else to emote in the traditional manner either (he looks like a Gallic Robert Downey Jr. with small-scale Susan Sontag hair). There are no weddings, births, deaths, or funerals. Characters simply appear and disappear.

If this Israeli-Italian co-production starts in neo-realist mode, though,
it becomes lighter, looser, and more elliptical as it goes on (the fourth
chapter even features Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone music cues).

Like Sweden's Roy Andersson (Songs from the Second Floor), Suleiman
embraces the static tableaux. Throughout, he arranges characters per-
fectly within the frame, though he moves the camera more often, and no one shows up in whiteface (an Andersson trait which renders everyone ghost-like). Even without the grease paint, though, sad-eyed Elia seems like a ghost in his own home: life in Nazareth has gone on without him.

I'd be lying if I said I was able to follow all of the political developments
in The Time That Remains, which Suleiman conveys through radio
and TV reports. That isn't his fault. The situation is complex, and he is-
n't just looking at Israel and Palestine, but also Iraq, Egypt, and Jordan.

What happens elsewhere in the Middle East affects Elia's family, both
directly and indirectly, making for a film filled with more sadness than
anger: at lives lost both to the passage of time and to the transfer of land.
And yet, the song that plays over the end credits, an Arab take on a 19-
70s disco hit, sums up these affairs in the most humorous way possible.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Suleiman's film isn't the only one this year to explore life as an
Arab-Israeli. Click here for A.O. Scott's review of Julian Schnab-
el's Miral, which opens at Seattle's Varsity Theater on 4/8.

The Time That Remain, which opened on Fri., 4/1, continues at the Northwest Film Forum through 4/7 at 7 and 9pm (no 7pm show on 4/7). The NWFF is located at 1515 12th Ave. between Pike and Pine on Capitol Hill. For more information, please click here. Images from indieWIRE.

Sherlock Holmes Is a Pimp

2011-03-10T12:00:00.000-08:00

COLD
WEATHER
(Aaron Katz,
US, HD, 2010,
96 mins.)

"Sherlock Holmes is a pimp."
--Carlos (Raúl Castillo) to Doug (Cris Lankenau)

A forensic science student stumbles into a mystery in writer/direc-
tor Aaron Katz's third and most accomplished feature. It begins af-
ter Doug (Quiet City's Cris Lankenau) moves back to Portland from
Chicago to room with his sister, Gail (United 93's Trieste Kelly Dunn).

Until he finds a job, he comes and goes as he pleases, but she follows
a more set schedule. In the opening sequence, though, Doug does con-
vince her to leave early one day for a trip to atmospheric Cannon Beach.
This sets the scene for their relationship, as well as the entire film. By
the end, these virtual strangers will have reestablished old family ties.

Not long afterward, Doug finds work at an ice factory, telling the man-
ager that he's undecided about finishing his degree. He works nights with
Carlos (Raúl Castillo, a sparky presence), a part-time disc jockey. When
Carlos asks about his area of expertise, Doug explains, "I don't really
want to be a CSI-type detective. I want to be more like Sherlock Hol-
mes." He proceeds to turn Carlos on to the Sir Conan Doyle series.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Then, Doug's ex-girlfriend, Rachel (Robyn Rikoon), who says she's
been working in a Chicago law office, drops by for a visit while in
town for training. At their first meeting, she seems a little out
of sorts, but the four go on to form a comfortable social unit.

Along the way, Carlos invites Rachel to join him for a Star Trek
Convention, since she's the only one who expresses any interest--
suffice to say, he's a man of surprises--but when he subsequent-
ly invites her to check out one of his DJ nights, she never shows.

At first, Doug doubts that anything is amiss, even though Rachel left
her motel lights on and stopped answering the phone, but Carlos con-
vinces him otherwise. Previously, he had laughed at the Holmes-Watson dynamic--"Elementary, my dear Watson," he sniffed--yet he comes to ful-
fill that function once Doug gets on board, which makes Gail a Hermione
to their Harry-Ron combo, if you'll pardon the Harry Potter reference.

The trio starts by retracing Rachel's steps: examining her room and fol-
lowing up on the clues she left behind, like a phone number and a porn
site handbill. Whereas a different filmmaker might turn to darker lighting
or heavier music, Katz takes the opposite tack: the tone becomes bright-
er and looser as the amateur investigation kicks into high gear (he re-
ceives a helpful assist from the inventive Keegan DeWitt, his regular
composer). Doug even picks up a certain Holmes affectation to get him-
self in the optimum frame of mind (not the deerstalker cap, fortunately).

Unlike the BBC's recent Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch as a
contemporary version of Doyle's detective--to Martin Freeman's Wat-
son--Cold Weather doesn't draw from the same source, but Katz nev-
er shies away from the inspiration. Despite the use of cell phones and computers, Doug's approach is essentially low-tech, which is to say, an-
ti-CSI. Instead, he relies on library research, stake-outs, and disguises.

As in Dance Party, USA and Quiet City, Katz, by way of DP Andrew Reed,
chooses his compositions with care. They don't feel studied, but they al-
ways look just right, which is important, since he favors static shots, an
unhurried pace, and naturalistic performances. Like the Chris Doyle-shot Paranoid Park, Portland comes alive as wet, green, and mysterious. Be-
cause Katz tends to works with inexperienced or non-actors, there isn't
a lot of technique on display, but the characters register as believable.

That said, if you're expecting a big reveal or a fast-paced wrap-up,
you may leave disappointed. Though the ending took me by surprise--
I was expecting an epilogue--it makes perfect sense when you think a-
bout it: Doug proves himself the detective he was always meant to be.

Cold Weather plays the
Northwest Film Forum March
11-17 at 7 and 9:15pm. The
NWFF is located at 1515 12th
Ave. between Pike and Pine
on Capitol Hill. For more in-
formation, please click here. Image from IONCINEMA/IFC.

She's Lost Control

2011-03-03T13:00:00.000-08:00

THE WOODMANS
(C. Scott Willis,
USA, 2010, Digi-
Beta, 82 mins.)

If Francesca
Woodman hadn't
killed herself, it's
doubtful C. Scott
Willis's provoca-
tive film would
exist. There are,
after all, other
talented 22-
year-old pho-
tographers who
haven't merited their own documentaries. Similarly, photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn's Control wouldn't exist if Ian Curtis hadn't hung himself, yet Joy Division was an undeniably important band whose legacy has long outlived its lead singer.

On the contrary, I had never even heard of Francesca until I read about The
Woodmans in The New York Times. From Stephen Holden's review, I also learned
about her parents, artists George and Betty Woodman, who have been married for
over 50 years. It soon becomes apparent that the film wouldn't exist without them
either, since this is a group portrait (as if the title didn't already give that away).

The story begins in Boulder, where George taught at the University of Colorado (as
a child, I lived in CU campus housing while my stepfather was getting his law degree).
Tellingly, he describes children Francesca and Charlie, a video artist, as "these sort
of gift calamities." George and Betty continued to produce art while they were growing
up, and earned enough to buy a home in Italy, where Francesca started sketching.

If she inherited their interest in art, her parents worry that they spent more time
creating than parenting. Says Charlie about his mother, who was raised in a Jewish
family, "She doesn't really practice a religion. Art was sort of the religion for her."

George says his daughter picked up photography in boarding school (Phillips Exet-
er Academy, according to her ID card) and studied the subject at the Rhode Island
School of Design. By 1979, all three artists were living and working in New York.

Willis weaves Francesca's photographs and video pieces throughout the narrative.
In most, she appears nude, indicating a certain comfort with her own sexuality and
Pre-Raphaelite appearance. In light of her suicide, however, which looms unavoid-
ably, there may have been more to it than that (other female and male subjects ap-
pear without clothes). Also, in some images, she looks like a blur or a ghost. If she
were still alive, that might not seem quite so eerie, but that's what happens when
someone takes their own life: every move can look like a rehearsal for death.

To add perspective, Willis interviews classmates, as well as neighbor Patricia Saw-
in, who found Francesca's photos "a little scary," and friend Edwin Frank (New York
Review of Books), who acknowledges a crush. In addition, Willis adds words (via on-
screen text) from her journal to bring Francesca's voice into play. That she kept one
at all invites speculation as to whether she knew it would one day become public.

An unabashed fan, George says Francesca's work made his look "stupid," but who's
to say it wasn't also morbid and self-indulgent? I find it intriguing, but it makes me
feel like a voyeur. And her parents admit that her "tragic story" adds to the allure.

Until she moved to New York, though, her story really wasn't tragic. Unfortunately,
she expected instant success. The problem isn't that she over-estimated her worth,
but that her expectations weren't realistic. And that's the point at which things start-
ed to fall apart, despite encouragement from friends, relatives, and colleagues.

If I sound cynical, it's because I believe Francesca was an artist in the truest sense,
with all the single-mindedness and arrogance that implies. Everyone thought she
was special--herself above all. Even her father uses the term "self-preoccupation."

Granted, she wasn't the first photographer to make herself her primary subject, but
you could hardly compare her to someone like Cindy Sherman, who seems like an
actress in comparison, since she takes on a different persona for most every print.

Francesa Woodman died believing she was unique, and she was. Her work will live on,
and she'll loom larger in history than her parents, despite their enduring devotion to
their respective crafts. It doesn't seem fair. But I also prefer her work to theirs.

The Woodmans concludes tonight,
3/3, at the Northwest Film Forum.
The NWFF is located at 1515 12th
Ave. between Pike and Pine. For
more information, please click
here. Images from Lorber Films.

Somewhere

2011-02-24T21:00:00.000-08:00

KABOOM
(Gregg Araki,
US, 2010, 35-
mm, 86 mins.)

"I don't really be-
lieve in standardized
sexual pigeonholes."
--Smith (Thomas Dekker)

From the opening sequence alone, it's clear that Gregg Araki is back on familiar turf. This is good news for fans of The Doom Generation, Totally Fucked Up, and Nowhere, his teen apocalypse trilogy, but bad news for those expecting another Mysterious Skin. Time will tell if he'll ever make
a movie that gritty again (he followed it up with the loopy Smiley Face).

He introduces his latest lead, Smith (The Sarah Connor Chronicles' Thomas
Dekker, likably low-key), a "perpetually horny" film student at an unnam-
ed So-Cal college, as he's talking about his dreams. In one blue-tinged ep-
isode, he makes love with his roommate, when in reality Thor (Chris Zyl-
ka, believably stupid), a surfer who sleeps in the raw, prefers women.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Like many Araki protagonists, Smith swings both ways. When he isn't dreaming about the "excruciatingly hot" Thor, he's kvetching about him
to his best friend, Stella (Haley Bennett, whose blasé act gets old fast).
The combination of three lookers--there will be others--also reinforces
Araki's abiding interest in triangles of lust. While Stella majors in art,
Thor aims to suck his own dick (hey, it pays to have ambition!).

The apocalypse enters the picture via the Messiah (Araki vet James
Duval), Smith's RA, who claims that the end of the world is nigh (and
dresses like Adam Brody's dealer in Smiley Face). Then Smith starts
to run into people from his dreams, like spacey-eyed Madeleine (Nicole LaLiberte), who appears to meet her maker at the hands of men in animal masks, and Lorelei (Fat Girl's Roxane Mesquida), a lesbian witch who has the hots for Stella (and recalls The Doom Generation's Rose McGowan).

Smith has a fling of his own with London (director Julien Temple's cute, uninhibited, fuzzy-haired daughter, Juno, who previously appeared in A-
tonement), a British chick with a thing for gay boys. He makes plans with
a few gents, too, including a bashful fellow who tracks him down through Explosions in the Sky's Facebook page (a nice touch on Araki's part).

If Mysterious Skin took place in the real
world--Scott
Heim's life in-
spired the nov-
el which fueled
Araki's adapta-
tion--Kaboom
inhabits a more
stylized realm.
Characters
may experi-
ence real feelings, but they don't talk like real people. Instead the slang-intensive dialogue comes on like an R-rated version of Buffy or The Gilmore Girls.

In the end, it plays like a paranormal teen romance with all the boobs,
blood, and blue language that those books--and the attendant movies
and television shows--tend to leave out. I could do without a few of the
ick-making scenes (Smith has a habit of walking into puking girls and
onto dog shit), but this is definitely one of Araki's more accomplished
efforts. If you enjoyed the teen-apocalypse films, do not pass go.

If not, you may want to take a pass, though it's hard not to admire the
way he brings all the disparate story strands together at the end with
a takedown of Scientology, doomsday cults, homophobes, and pseudo-
Christian sci-fi twaddle about Chosen Ones. I particularly enjoyed the
New Order/Joy Division allusions--after all, post-punk has always been
as much a part of Araki World as the lovingly shot bisexual three-way.

Kaboom plays the Northwest
Film Forum from 2/25 - 3/3 at
7 and 9pm. The NWFF is locat-
ed at 1515 12th Ave. between
Pike and Pine on Capitol Hill.
For more information, please click here. Images from IFC.