My Personal Top Ten

If you’ve been following this Blog there are not going to be a lot of surprises as to what I think were the best SIFF had to offer this year. To my way of thinking, if I can come out of the festival jazzed and excited about two or three titles (last year The Edge of Heaven and Man on Wire were the definite winners) than I count it as a success. When I have as many of them as I do this year than I count it as the best one I’ve ever had the pleasure to cover.

That’s no joke. I think there are five films, maybe six, which have a legitimate shot at being included on my year-end top ten list. Even better, I think there are another half-dozen or so that might end up as honorable mentions. This was, without question, a SIFF for the time capsule, and as 35th birthdays go here’s hoping mine is even half as awesome as this.

Without further ado, here are my picks as the ten best motion pictures of the festival. Please remember, it is impossible to see everything (still kicking myself over Séraphine, Treeless Mountain and North Face, hopefully I’ll get another chance before they year is out), so this list obviously reflects that fact. (For the record, I saw 84 films this year which isn’t a record for me, but it is definitely pretty darn close.)

1. In the Loop – No surprise here, I’ve been raving about Armando Iannucci’s extremely funny satire since the very moment the credits ended. This is as smart and as hysterical a comedy as I’ve seen in ages, maybe one of the best I’ve ever seen, and the more I think of it the more I’m starting to put it on the same level of say M*A*S*H or Network.

2. The Hurt Locker – Another no-brainer, Kathryn Beigelow’s latest a heart-stopping war epic that’s as harrowing and as chilling as these things come. The tension she builds is almost unbelievable, all of it anchored by a performance from Jeremy Renner that’s easily the best thing the guy’s ever done.

3. Tetro – Another one that grows on me the more I think of it. Frances Ford Coppola’s is a beautifully layered familial melodrama with a star-making performance by young Alden Ehrenreich and a borderline Oscar-worthy one from the luminous Maribel Verdú. It reminded my of my favorite films of Goddard and Truffaut, the legendary director of The Conversation and The Godfather making an idiosyncratic and highly personal film that is only going to get better with age.

4. The Cove – I wasn’t exactly fair to this one back when I first wrote about it. Admittedly, Louie Psihoyos’s investigative documentary unsettled me so much when it was over I had trouble talking about it. But this truly startling piece of investigative journalism is as exciting and – at times – as humorous as they come. It’s those last 20 minutes that knock your socks off, however, and it is a cold hearted human indeed who isn’t sickened by the disgusting horror show the director and his team were able to uncover.

5. Food, Inc. – More documentary happiness, this time concerning the food we buy at the store and are served at the fast food counter. I knew things were probably not as they should be, that government wasn’t doing all they can to make sure what we’re putting on the dinner table is safe. I just didn’t realize things were quite this bad, filmmaker Robert Kenner worthy of a boatload of kudos and commendations for showcasing it here.

6. Hansel and Gretel – This South Korean ghost story is beautiful, eerie and extremely scary, the whole thing feeling like a Tim Burton meets Guillermo del Toro fever dream with plenty of traditional Asian genre tropes thrown in for good measure. But director Pil-Sung Yim’s film never feels derivative. Instead, at times it is downright magic, the final 15 minutes as surreal and touching as anything I’ve seen this year.

7. Grace – Whoa, Nelly! That’s what I have to say about this one. Writer/director Paul Solet’s epic of childbirth and parenthood is chilling to the bone, disturbing, horrific and emotionally moving all at pretty much the same time. There are moments here burned into my memory forever, the last scene so unnerving I get shudders now just thinking about it.

8. That Evening Sun – There is not that much that is new about director Scott Teems latest effort, but when the story it tells is depicted with such subtlety, grace and strength there really doesn’t need to be. Even you thought Hal Holbrook was Oscar-worthy in Into the Wild, just wait until you see what he does here. If handled correctly, this could be his The Visitor and score him another nomination.

9. Small Crime – Director Christos Georgiou weaves an absolutely charming tale of romance and mystery that had me smiling pretty much start to finish. By and large, I couldn’t get enough of it, it’s saga of a small island policeman trying to uncover what happened to the town drunk while also falling in love with his town’s returning lone celebrity an effervescent joy start to finish. I’m hoping it gets some sort of domestic release, U.S. audiences deserving of experiencing the same pleasures here that I did.

10. Humpday – Another one I’m having trouble letting go of, the reservations I originally had about director Lynn Shelton’s bromance comedy beginning to evaporate like the morning dew. There is a dinner table conversation smack in the middle that completely blew my mind, the whole final third of the film a cacophony of heartbreak, friendship and hilarity that more than makes up for the fact the first third or so tends to be an overly talky bore.

...And the Winners Are

I apologize for being a little behind this year, but the following is the list of all the winners as announced during the SIFF Awards Brunch at the Space Needle for the 35th Annual Seattle International Film Festival. Also, I’ll be back a little later today with my personal favorite ten pictures from this year’s event.

With that – on with the award announcements!

Best Film Golden Space Needle Award
Black Dynamite, directed by Scott Sanders (USA, 2009) – MY THOUGHTS: What the f**k? You’ve got to be kidding me, right? Black Dynamite is a fun little movie and all but, best film material? On what planet? This is just wrong.

First runner up: The Necessities of Life, directed by Benoît Pilon (Canada, 2008)
Second runner up: (500) Days of Summer, directed by Marc Webb (USA, 2009)
Third runners up (tie): ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction, directed Kevin Hamedani (USA, 2009) and Morris: A Life With Bells On, directed by Lucy Akhurst (United Kingdom, 2008)
Fourth runner up: North Face, directed by Philipp Stolzl (Austria, 2008)

Rounding out the top ten: Marcello Marcello (Denis Rabaglia, Switzerland, 2008); Departures (Yojiro Takita, Japan, 2008); Patrik Age 1.5 (Ella Lemhagen, Sweden, 2008); Amreeka (Cherien Dabis, Canada, 2009) Humpday (Lynn Shelton, USA, 2009)

Best Documentary Golden Space Needle Award
The Cove, directed by Louie Psihoyos (USA, 2009) – MY THOUGHTS: This is much more like it. With a lot of great documentaries to choose from, both this one and Food, Inc. are the two I cannot get out of my head. A devastating and horrendous peek behind curtain the Japanese don’t want you to see.

First runner up: Sweet Crude, directed by Sandy Cioffi (USA, 2008)

Second runner up: William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe, directed by Sarah Kunstler and Emily Kunstler (USA, 2009)
Third runner up: Every Little Step, directed by James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo (USA, 2008)
Fourth runners up (tie): Food, Inc., directed by Robert Kenner (USA, 2008) and Facing Ali, directed by Pete McCormack (Canada, 2009)

Rounding out the top ten: Gotta Dance (Dori Berinstein, USA, 2008); Afghan Star (Havana Marking, Afghanistan, 2008); Dancing Across Borders (Anne H. Bass, USA, 2009); The Garden (Scott Hamilton, USA, 2008); Icons Among Us (Michael Rivoira, LarsLarson, Peter J. Vogt; USA, 2009)

Best Director Golden Space Needle Award
Kathryn Bigelow, for The Hurt Locker (USA, 2008) – MY THOUGTHS: Fantastic choice. One of the best movies of the year and deserving of every award and recognition it garners.

First runner up: Lynn Shelton, for Humpday (USA, 2009)
Second runner up: Kari Skogland for Fifty Dead Men Walking (UK/Canada, 2008)
Third runner up: Spike Lee for Passing Strange (USA, 2009)
Fourth runner up: Marc Webb for (500) Days of Summer (USA, 2009)

Best Actor Golden Space Needle Award
Sam Rockwell for Moon (United Kingdom, 2009) – MY THOUGHTS: No disagreeing here. In fact, my only hope that this win at SIFF is a precursor to the potential (although still sadly unlikely) Oscar nomination to come.

First runner up: Jim Sturgess for Fifty Dead Men Walking (United Kingdom, 2008)
Second runner up: Natar Ungalaaq for The Necessities of Life (Canada, 2008)
Third runner up: Mark Duplass for Humpday (USA, 2009)
Fourth runner up: Toni Servillo for Il Divo (Italy, 2008)

Best Actress Golden Space Needle Award
Yolande Moreau for Séraphine (France/Belgium, 2008) – MY THOUGHTS: Darn it! I knew I should have made more of an effort to see this one! Oh well. C’est la vie. That’s just how it goes sometimes, right?

First runner up: Catalina Saavedra for The Maid (Chile, 2008)
Second runner up: Trine Dyrholm, for Little Soldier (Denmark, 2009)
Third runner up: Nathalie Press for Fifty Dead Men Walking (UK/Canada, 2008)
Fourth runner up: Iben Hjejle for The Escape (Denmark, 2009)

For the rest of the winners, including the Jury prizes, please click here.

Getting My 'Justin' Deserts

The thing about writing this Blog and the uneasy relationship between it and SIFF is such that it becomes virtually impossible to write about everything you want to because, the moment one movie captures your imagination, you’ve got another three or four you’ve suddenly got to find away to fit in pretty much immediately.

I love the fact SIFF is so huge. I adore that they show so many different films from so many parts of the globe. I wouldn’t have them change a single thing about it. But all that said, it is a heavy workload, and trying to make your way through several hundred potentials and then write as quickly as you can about the ones that strike your fancy is as close to hopeless as anything I’ve ever done.

I only bring this up because I want to talk a little bit about actor Justin Kirk and as both the films he appeared in have already come and gone (and, potentially, might not hit theaters again) I’m doing this a little bit after the fact. But I liked both the emotionally moving melodrama Against the Current and the puzzle box black comedy thriller Four Boxes quite a little bit, and it seems remiss to not give them a shout-out each picture definitely deserves.

The first one is written and directed by relative newcomer Peter Callahan. It’s his second feature (I’ve never even heard of his first, Last Ball, so I can’t comment on its quality) and based on it I’m extremely excited to see what this guy can do next. The premise is risible. Paul Thompson (Joseph Fiennes) convinces his bartender best friend Jeff Kane (Justin Kirk) to be his chaperone as he attempts to swim the 150-mile length of the Hudson River. While the idea goes back to the pair’s childhood, the reasoning is altogether adult, Paul looking to commit suicide at the end of the journey on the anniversary of his wife’s death.

This movie should be horrid as you can almost hear the maudlin violins and see the melodramatic syrup run down the camera lens. And yet, by and large Callahan doesn’t go for the easy outs, refuses to pull the overly familiar heartstrings. Even better, he infuses the film with a ton of darkly acerbic humor that’s both bitingly funny and poetically moving, and even if the climactic moments do ultimately succumb to the usual three-Kleenex dynamic getting to the point is far more rhapsodic than I’d ever have imagined.

Four Boxes, while admittedly not working quite as well, is still a pretty potently nasty piece of work itself. Completely different in both subject matter and tone, this independent brain teaser follows two friends, Trevor (Kirk) and Rob (Sam Rosen), who earn extra cash going to funerals and selling off the dead guys stuff on eBay. Along with the latter’s girlfriend Amber (Terryn Westbrook), a woman who shares history with both men, the trio move in for the week in their latest target’s now-empty domicile, discovering a strange website bookmarked on his laptop apparently filming a terrorist completely unawares.

I had one of the central gags nailed right from the start, so the tension there never quite came together for me. The rest of the twists, however, are pretty darn wonderful. The best twist movies are ones where you can go back and discover all of the clues and puzzle pieces that could have given you the solution long before the climax, writer/director Wyatt McDill managing to do just that and more. Sure the movie is a con game, but it is one where the answers are all their for the deciphering, so even though most of what we’re watching is a sham the fact it all makes sense and is perfectly feasible in the end makes that fact pretty easy to take.

The film takes a rather darkly comic turn in the final moments I didn’t quite think were necessary, and there are some definite pacing problems especially during the opening act. But overall this is a fun little satire that kept me on my toes, and as I had the screener watching it a second time knowing the outcome was arguably even more fun than viewing it blind the first time around.

Kirk, best known for his work on the Showtime smash “Weeds,” is just great in both of these, turning in two completely different yet equally engaging performances. Not really familiar with him beforehand, the guy ahs a knack for getting inside the heads of the people he’s portraying making them feel honest and real. He’s someone worth keeping an eye on, and here’s hoping he gets the chance to stretch himself even more with future projects.

I spoke with the actor briefly in the lobby of the W Hotel about the two films and he was, even a little exhausted, pretty much a dream to chat with. I’m not going to bore you with all the details, but some of what he said about these two films I think deserves some coverage, not the least of which is how these two wildly different – yet in some ways eerily similar – projects came his way.

“They’re both comedies set in genres that are not usually comedic,” he admitted to me candidly. “But they are also still totally different, and they both came to me in totally different ways. Against the Current was pretty much a standard get. I loved the script a year or so before they go the money together to make the movie, and my friend Elizabeth Reaser was attached to be in it as well and so of we went! It was just one of those situations where you like the material and you want to be a part of it, it really isn’t much simpler than that.”

“With Four Boxes, that was a very special thing near and dear to my heart. The writer and director, Wyatt [McDill], was a childhood friend from the age 12. He was also a guy whose work I’ve always admired. He’s made some outstanding shorts, some great music videos, he’s a painter and is just really talented. He finally [wrote] his first feature and he sent me the script and I just loved it right away.”

“But, just because we had this history doesn’t mean there was any guarantee how things would be on day one walking on set, especially with someone who was your dear friend. More than that, there were other friends involved, and there was also going back home for the first time in a while to make it. But, boy, it couldn’t have worked out better. I really love the movie. It’s been a really cool experience and I’m so proud of what we accomplished.”

What about working with friends? Is that reason enough to make the film on its own? “I would never do a movie as a favor, so it was not that at all. I was very excited to work with Wyatt. I mean, I’ll give someone a ride to the airport as a favor, but as far as a movie, it takes too much out of you to do a movie just to be nice to someone. It’s draining and a lot of work. I did [Four Boxes] because I responded to the material and I like Wyatt’s work. I did not do it just because we were friends.”

There was a lot more we talked about in regards to both films, discussing how he worked on each character and what it took to bring them to life. We also talked about the nature of independent filmmaking as it is right now, and whether or not the marketplace is too saturated for films like these to be able to find an audience. We also, of course, talked about “Weeds,” but the information there was kept to an almost expected bare minimum, most of it hidden behind a toothy grin of utmost secrecy.

“I’ve been pretty lucky,” Kirk admitted to me somewhat coyly. “I mean, I’m on a television show most people don’t have and yet most people are aware of the show. It’s amazing to me, and I think DVD has really become a big thing that’s helped us become what we are.”

“It has become a phenomenon, yes, but I think that’s something that has been very cumulative. I was pretty sure things were going to work out, and I remember telling Mary Louise [Parker] around the first day or so of shooting that I thought we might have the chance to be around for a little while. I think it’s been a situation where the fan base has just grown over time, people discovering it through word of mouth and DVD.”

“Last year I really started to feel it. We had a great season. I’m thrilled to be a part of it, and for the most part I think it’s good, it’s really good show, and I think the powers that be have had the courage to destroy it and recreate when it was time to do that. When we burned our town down I think that was just great, because when you’re around for a little while I think that’s something you just have to do to keep the ideas flowing and fresh. It’s also something you absolutely cannot do again, so you know going into Season Five that it better be something new and different the audience will keep responding to.”

And is Season Five going to be new and different? Is it as strong as past ones? “Definitely. I thought last year was our best year ever, moving into that border town and all, and I admit I was a little worried going into this one because I didn’t think we had anything new going on. But, boy, do we ever have so many new, exciting things going on right now. I think Season Five, and I’m not just saying that because I have to or anything, really, is going to be our best one yet. [‘Weeds’] is a great gig. I feel extremely lucky.”

“I sometimes sit on set and look around, and not that I don’t believe there will be other great jobs, but this one has been just so great and I know I will look back on it fondly when it is over. But, it can’t go on forever. More importantly, I wouldn’t want it to. I wouldn’t want us to be around when I didn’t think it was good anymore. But that’s not how I feel right now. Right now I feel we’re doing great and as long as I keep feeling that way I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere anytime soon.”

With that said, I couldn’t help but pry Justin for a few cursory hints as to what exactly it is he’s so excited about for this upcoming season and asked him if there was anything he could reveal. His response wasn’t exactly a shock. “No,” he smiles at me. “I’m not going to say anything other than that. You have to watch it to find out.”

Shout Out to the PR Whiz Kids

Publicists are a strange bunch. They want to be your friends but they also know they need to keep you at arms length. At the same time, they also have an innate desire to make you happy, and having been one myself in the past I know this is a strange, almost surreal conundrum almost impossible to reconcile.

That said, the SIFF publicity team is the best I’ve ever had the pleasure to deal with. Over the last three years these guys, led by the irrepressible Jessica Toon (pictured, hopefully she won't kill me from lifting it from her Facebook page) have gone out of their way to make me feel valued and special. But I’m not the only one. As far as I can tell they do this with every single press person that comes through their office, whether they work for The Seattle Times, The New York Times or for Moviefreak.com.

I guess what I’m saying is that I owe them a heartfelt thank you. I know it is their job and all, but as far as teams go they tend to go above and beyond to the point I don’t think they quite get the recognition they deserve. While this little post here isn’t going to change that, let it be my simple way of saying thanks. I love these guys, and if SIFF ever decides to go in a different direction I sure as hell hope the one thing they do not change are the people making the decisions inside the press office.

All that said, I do have to admit going to parties with them is slightly hysterical. As groups of people are concerned, especially groups who spend a lot of time working with journalists, watching them trying to hold their liquor is borderline hysterical. Granted, it’s probably a good thing the majority of them aren’t drunks or alcoholics, but watching them imbibe might just be the funniest spectacle I’ve seen this entire festival. I’m just sayin’…

(Second picture is of Ted Fry, the sort of leader of the actual SIFF press office, also stolen from his Facebook page. Sorry Ted. I really am a meanie [and you thought I was kidding when I said that last year]. Again, no offense meant, I just think you guys deserve some recognition. Is it my fault your pictures are sort of embarrassing? I think not.)

A Tale Worth Following

My guess is that this isn’t a coincidence, but Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1952 film The Tales of Hoffman was broadcast on Turner Classic Movies the other night. The reason I bring this up is that this film plays central significance in Frances Ford Coppola’s latest opus Tetro, and having never seen it (let alone heard of it) I can’t begin to tell you how excited I was to DVR the darn thing.

Keeping this short, let me just say the film is totally surrealistic and completely unhinged. I adore Powell and Pressburger. Black Narcissus is one of my favorite motion pictures of all time, while Stairway to Heaven (or A Matter of Life and Death, depending on which title you want to go with) is so beautifully enthralling and emotionally captivating just thinking about it is enough to bring a tear to my eye.

But this movie is just crazy. A filmed version of the classic Jacques Offenbach opera, there are things going on here the likes of which I’d never even imagined. It’s a pop nightmare of love, anger, aggression and fantasy, and for anyone who ever said times have changed and that they just didn’t think of things then in the same way we do now let them take a look at this and see what the think of those statements as soon as it is over.

I almost hate to admit this, but I’ve had doll fantasies of my own. I think every girl has thought how cool it would be to be Barbie, how neat it would be to be perfect in every way almost to the point you could be plastic. This movie takes those sentiments to an entirely different level, however, and any dreams I may have had pale in comparison to the operatic elements acted out here.

What does this have to do with SIFF? Not much, really, only the wonderfully imaginative Tetro tying this particular post to the subject matter at hand. But even if it didn’t this is just the kind of movie I love to champion and tell people about, a surrealistic wonder worthy of a second look over a half-century after it first appeared on theater screens.

After all, we can not look at the current state of film without familiarizing ourselves with what has come before, the masters of the medium setting the templates all current filmmakers now draw from. Even an Oscar-winning maestro like Coppola can’t help but stare at the forgotten impresarios like Powell and Pressburger and make modern commentary on what they accomplished, and if that isn’t reason enough to seek a treasure like The Tales of Hoffman out (as well as head to a theater showing Tetro) I don’t know what else would be.

Pressure

While sitting at the downtown Seattle W Hotel and chatting with a trio of my favorite local publicists waiting for actor Paul Giamatti to return from a quick cigarette break, the diminutive writer-director of his quirky new science fiction dramatic comedy Cold Souls Sophie Barthes exited the conference room where our interview was to take place and started conversing right along with us. Turns out she was excited about her last three interviews, all of them going so well she just had to come out and let the three ladies know about it.

“Seattle is fantastic,” she said with a gigantic smile, her thick French accent reverberating around the hallway. “They are so knowledgeable about cinema and they ask such wonderful questions. We’re enjoying this so much more than we did Sundance. The questions there were horrible!”

Talk about pressure. Suddenly I had that frantic piece of Billy Joel music reverberating around in my head as a little bit of sweat more than likely began to appear on my brow. Three not just good but great interviews in a row, and here I was the last print journalist of the afternoon standing in the hallway having to follow them up. Would my questions make the grade? Or would I be the one disappointment in a day filled, to that point at least, with probing insights and thoughtful discussions?

Granted, there was always the chance the director was exaggerating. “No, not at all,” stated a just returned Giamatti just as we were heading into the interview room. “It’s true. It has been great. I think we’ve all been surprised a little bit just how good these interviews have been. It’s nice.”

My own insecurity and fears as to how the interview went aside (for the curious, Giamatti and Barthes said afterwards I was more than up to par – hopefully they just weren’t being nice), I think these comments say a lot about the cinema loving climate here in Seattle. Not only do we celebrate and embrace the largest, most exhausting film festival in the world, we also know what we’re talking about when we discuss it afterwards.

I can’t tell you how nice that is to be reminded of. Living in our own Pacific Northwest bubble, we tend to forget just how passionate and knowledgeable we are around here. After all, thanks to moviegoers here films like The Stunt Man, Like Water for Chocolate, Two-Lane Blacktop, Il Postino and Memento got noticed to the point their respective studios decided to expand their releases for wider than they’d originally planned. In at least three of those cases, the films went on to become bona fide hits, while two have become cult favorites discussed and talked about long after their day in the art house screening room has come and gone.

As for Cold Souls? Well, in regards to the interview you’re unfortunately going to have to wait until the end of July to read the rest of that. As for the movie itself, it’s one of the best things I’ve seen at SIFF so far, and considering just how strong many of the more high profile entries at this year’s festival have been that’s really saying something. Funny, insightful, thought-provoking and poetically moving, this is what intelligent science fiction is all about, and I almost can’t wait to go into it all in greater detail later this Summer.

Spoofing Around

I need to be up in a little less than five hours so this is going to be brief. I’ve just returned home from watching director Scott Sanders’ blaxploitation spoof Black Dynamite and I feel the need to relate a couple of immediate observations.

1. Films like this must be seen with an audience. I actually had the screener sitting here at home but decided to go to the midnight SIFF showing all the same. Good thing I did, because I doubt I’d have laughed all that much without the packed house almost egging me on. The best midnight schlock works whether you have people watching it with you or not, true, but a halfway decent one can seem even better than it actually is if the crowd continually goes nuts. Against my better sense of reasoning, I ended up catching the bug – if only partially – and had a lot more fun than I probably should have.

2. I can’t help but wonder why Michael Jai White, who stars as the title character and also co-wrote the screenplay, never became a star. I get that 1997’s Spawn wasn’t anything to write home about, but the guy has definite charisma and he kicks butt better than just about anyone. I’d sort of forgotten that, and it is more than a bit too bad he’s been relegated to throwaway supporting roles in forgettable motion pictures (save for his notable turn as Gamble in The Dark Knight) ever since that superhero spectacular bombed at the box office.

3. Spoofs, no matter how great some of the moments, good the performances or funny a few of the gags, need more than one joke to survive upon. You can only run on early momentum for so long, so by the time you’re suddenly cross-pollinating into multiple genres and throwing in Presidential kung fu nincompoops it’s more than a tiny bit too late.

4. Directors should introduce their films at SIFF screenings by reciting the trailer voiceover more often. It is hysterical, and gets things started on the absolute perfect tone.

That’s really it for now. From those four things I’m guessing you can take away the fact I was only moderately amused by Black Dynamite, but I did like the main character and, thanks to the audience, still managed to laugh a fair amount. In all honestly, as mezzo-mezzo I am with it all I’d much rather see a sequel to this than have Mike Meyers resurrect Austin Powers, and considering the latter’s fan base that’s probably saying one heck of a lot.

Night all. See you again sometime tomorrow.

Recollecting About the Hump

Just a quick post before I head out to see Guillermo Arriaga’s The Burning Plain, but I feel a little remiss for not including Lynn Shelton’s Humpday in my week two recap yesterday. The reason for this is that, in all honesty, I still can’t quite decide what I totally think about the much-buzzed comedy. It’s a good film, sometimes even a great one, but there is something about it that just keeps making me reticent to give it a whole-hearted recommendation.

The film revolves around two best friends, Ben (Mark Duplass) and Andrew (Joshua Leonard), who decide during the middle of a rather rambunctious party to take make a film for The Stranger’s annual amateur porn competition, Humpfest. They seem to think the idea of two straight men getting it on would be something akin to art, the duo almost daring one another to go through with the idea even though not a heck of a lot of thought has gone into their thought processes.

The movie has got to be the most ‘Seattle’ film I can possibly remember seeing. Shelton gets the look, feel and the vibe of the city absolutely spot-on, and she does it by refusing to insert a single shot of the Space Needle, too. I felt like I knew these people, knew exactly which neighborhoods they came from and/or were visiting, the whole thing ringing of an authenticity so many other projects strive for yet never are able to achieve.

Yet, as much love and discussion as this movie has generated since its Sundance debut, I found the first half more than a little bit frustrating. It’s a talk-heavy film and that’s an understatement, and I kept getting a Kevin Smith Clerks-like feeling from it all I had trouble embracing.

The thing is, the second half is pretty close to marvelous. Starting with a dinner table conversation between the two friends and Ben’s wife Anna (Alycia Delmore), the film starts building in both humor and emotion. It’s still very dialogue heavy but the words suddenly started carrying meaning for me, the layers beginning to peal back to reveal a saga of maturity and lost youth that honestly left me more than a little bit moved.

And yet I still hesitate over Humpday and I really don’t know why. I interviewed Shelton a couple of days back and I timidly didn’t share this reticence with her even though I knew I should have. At the same time, my enthusiasm over the pieces and the performances I liked are nearly without comparison, and speaking with her about those was pretty close to a wonderful joy.

I don’t know. This movie deserves more from me. It’s got a solid script, breezy direction and is acted by the three leads to near perfection. I should have included it yesterday and it is to my embarrassment and my folly that I did not. Bottom line, when it hits theaters in a couple of weeks I think people should check it out, and even if I have reservations here and there that doesn’t mean I still can’t recognize and endorse a thought-provoking comedy when I see one.

(As for the interview, check the main site next week for it, probably Wednesday. I hope to have the article written and up by then.)

Best of Week Two

Back during that first week of the festival when I was sitting down with TCM host Robert Osborne, I asked him about what I see as our current obsession with lists. Ever since that first AFI Top 100 list a little over a decade ago, it seems like you can’t go to a website or look at a newspaper without seeing that someone has another one.

I was talking about the end-of-year top ten lists, I was speaking of stuff like those weird seemingly clueless and highly random ones that pop up on various film websites or in Entertainment Weekly (Zack Snyder is one of the top 25 working directors? Seriously? In what world is that even remotely true?). They just seem so pointless to me, and while I’m as guilty as the next person for always feeling compelled to look at them that still doesn’t mean I understand the fad.

Osborne reminded me that these lists have their place. Not only do people enjoy reading them, they spark debate and get viewers excited. They also potentially lead them to films and filmmakers they may not have ever considered caring about before, and he reminded me that any time you can expand a person’s horizon that’s one opportunity you shouldn’t skip out on.

I bring all of this up because I’m now going to present my SIFF Week Two Top Six. None of the selections from my Week One list are eligible, only the ones that had their first viewing between Saturday of last week and the midnight showing this evening. I’ve also decided to cut things down a little and only focus on the films I truly thought highly of. Hope you all enjoy.

6. ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction – Maybe it was simply the fact a kid standing on the street corner pickign his nose would have looked better in comparison, but this local Seattle production hit me as a seriously good time after the horrors of having witnessed Land of the Lost just a scant 45-minutes before. Quite simply, the comedy worked, the gross-out effects worked and the movie itself worked, this little horror-comedy a heck of a lot of fun that went a long way to helping me redeem what was up until then a truly dreadful night at the movies.



5. City of Borders – Great (if really short) documentary about Shushan, a gay bar in Jerusalem. Director Yun Suh took me into corners and places I was hardly prepared for, the entire film an eye-opening trip to a part of the world many only know from television news reports. Seriously outstanding and I dare viewers to try and forget it.



4. Small Crime – Absolutely charming mystery/comedy/drama/romance coming out of Greece about a young, ambitious police officer on a remote island in the Aegean Sea who decides there is a mystery to be solved when the local town drunk turns up dead seemingly of natural causes. Throw in a famous television personality returning to the island to discover the identity of her father and you have as delightful a little motion picture as any I could have possibly hoped for.



3. Grace – Writer/director Paul Solet’s horror film of motherly affection is so disturbing it left me visibly shaking by the time it ended. Never going where you think it will, the final moments build disgustingly beautiful tension, while the coda delivers a terrifying sucker punch impossible to describe. The movie sent me through the emotional and physical wringer, and yet by the time all was said and done the only think I wanted to do was watch the darn thing again.



2. Hansel and Gretel – Absolutely outstanding South Korean gothic horror-slash-fairy tale of young man rushing to be by his sick mother’s side who suffers a traffic accident in the middle of a dark and secluded forest. Befriended by a trio of mysterious children, he soon comes to realize that he and all the others who come their way are actually their prisoners, the kids looking for parental figures who will love and protect them no matter what. Think Tim Burton meets Guillermo del Toro with a lot of traditional Asian horror elements thrown in for good measure. Easily one of my favorites of the entire festival.



1. Food, Inc. – Scary, thought-provoking documentary about where our food comes from and the potential ramifications. Director Robert Kenner gets footage so horrific I can’t begin to give it justice here. Just know I’ll never think about the grocery store the same way again, and the whole idea about buying things from the organic section (or hitting my local farmer’s market – it is Seattle after all, we have tons of them) suddenly seems extremely appealing. A film not to be missed.

Technical Issues

This is just a quick, almost pointless post to apologize for not having as many posts up the last couple of days as I would have liked to. I've been suffering a few technical difficulties making updates a tad close to impossible. This looks like it has been remedied, however, and I should have some great Blog columns about SIFF for you tomorrow after I get back from a press screening of The Taking of Pelham 123.

What I will say is that I watched Frances Ford Coppola's stunning new film Tetro this morning and to say I was flabbergasted would be a gross understatement. This beautiful, thought-provoking and deeply emotional masterwork brought me to tears and left me sitting in the theater in complete darkness the last person to leave. It is, without question, a serious work by a still-gifted master whose last work - the semi-horrible Youth Without Youth - had many of us questioning whether he still had anything worthwhile left within him.



As answers go, Tetro is as good as is it gets. Moments of pretension aside (and a dip into traffic-filled melodrama I didn't quite need at the end), this might have a shot at edging The Hurt Locker as my second favorite piece of the festival. I'll have to think more on it, of course, but I can tell you right now that when this one opens film lovers of all kinds better be first in line. You simply need to see this and it has to be seen in a movie theater to appreciate fully, and if the darn thing doesn't get Oscar nods for cinematography, editing and sound design than those knuckleheads in the Academy have forgotten what brilliance is.

I'll leave it there for now. More tomorrow. Promise.

Gender War

Last night was the local Seattle press screening for the much-hyped R-rated Summer comedy The Hangover. It’s a funny movie and deserving of (most) of its early praise, but I was struck a little bit by the hypocrisy displayed by Warner Bros. in regards to this release. Not because the movie is getting one – I guarantee you this will be a massive hit – but because the studio did such a huge disservice to a highly similar comedy that could have done reasonably well itself, the SIFF first week favorite Summer Breakdown.

Why hypocrisy? The studio had absolutely no faith that a small, hugely inexpensive dumb comedy starring three women (Parker Posey, Amy Poehler and Rachel Dratch) could recoup its costs, while a tad more expensive one starring four nobodies (well, Bradley Cooper is sort of a star, I guess) is worthy of a prime June release and a huge influx of promotional dollars. They made the assumption that audiences wouldn’t see a juvenile farce starring women, and for some reason that gets under my skin and chaps my hide to absolutely no end.

Do not misunderstand. Neither film is high art. Both are extremely stupid (the former following four guys after a disastrous night in Vegas on the eve of one of their party’s wedding, the latter following three 30-something High School and Collegiate losers given the responsibility of following the sheltered daughter of a powerful Senator to Spring Break), their plots barely a decent enough reason for the films to even exist.

But they do generate laughs, lots of them. There were moments during The Hangover where I almost fell out of my seat, while Poehler has a couple of scenes in Spring Breakdown so hysterical I literally spit up a little bit of Diet Coke (not that this is something I’m proud of). More, it knows when to say when, it’s 86-minute running time a whole lot more palatable it’s almost two hours long male-driven second cousin.

I had a chance to sit down with Dratch and co-writer/director Ryan Shiraki during the first week of SIFF and asked them if they thought Warner was making a mistake, and if the studio’s decision was based on maybe a tiny bit of sexism, in not releasing the film to theaters and shuffling it instead straight to DVD.

“We heard so many different reasons as to why we weren’t getting a release,” commented Dratch, “and I remember one of them along the way was that we weren’t big enough stars to open the movie and they’d have to put in like $25-million in advertising and marketing into it. Yet, on the other hand there have been so many guy comedies with lesser known [actors] that do get a release. I would think Parker Posey and Amy Poehler have some name recognition, even if I do understand [they’re] not quite Drew Barrymore or Cameron Diaz.”

“We had the bad luck of being born at the wrong studio,” added Shiraki. “That’s really what it is. We were conceived to parents that didn’t understand us. When we were at Sundance, we had two other studios that wanted to buy and release the movie and Warner Bros. for whatever reason said no.”

“It’s hard to demonize the studio completely. They did let us make [the film]. That’s a miracle in and of itself, for a studio to make a female driven comedy that cost under $15-million that also makes Harry Potter. I mean, here we are marching into the President’s office saying, ‘Hi there! We want to make a comedy, and we want to do it with no guys.’ And it was like, who are we kidding, and yet they let us do it.”

“At the end of the day, we can’t be like, ‘Fuck you, all!’ because they let us play for an entire summer and the let us make the movie and even when we were at Sundance they were still supportive of the idea of this movie, if not how to market it. It’s like any difficult parental situation. Love them, hate them, what are you going to do?”

Personally, I think both Dratch and Shiraki are being too nice. The Hangover is a perfect example of the sexism on display here on the part of the studio, one comedy getting the full media blitz while the other gets shuffled off into Best Buy bargain bin oblivion with hardly a how do you do. It isn’t right, not even remotely. Nonetheless, here’s one critic’s vote for Spring Breakdown to at least make a couple of DVD waves and find the audience it deserves.

"Spring Breakdown" hits DVD and Blu-ray today while "The Hangover" will be at a theater near you this Friday. (Below clip is R-rated - you've been forewarned.)

Wave of Mutilation

As much as I’d like it to be, this is not a post about the Pixies, but that doesn’t mean it has absolutely nothing to do with them. I bring them up here at the start because their music, much like that fantastic cover of the Carpenters classic, tends to be a little bit on the dark – some would even say depressive – side of things. But there is almost always also a point to their lyrics, a reason for the malaise and ennui, and like all great musicians their work goes deeper then just being able to play well and craft a catchy tune.

Movies can sometimes be a lot like Pixie lyrics. Films like Babel or In the Bedroom or Platoon or Leaving Las Vegas can seem pretty grim for most of their running time, but there is a depth and meaning to all the heartbreak and sorrow that resonates so deeply each of those pictures become impossible to forget. Despair and darkness can be a good thing, and as long as there is purpose to the pain I’m all for stories that head straight inside the heart of darkness and holding nothing back.

What I do I have problems with are motion pictures like Downloading Nancy. Technically well made, gorgeously shot by the great Christopher Doyle (resembling a little his dynamic work on Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express) and extremely well acted by its three leads Jason Patric, Rufus Sewell and especially Maria Bello, director Johan Renck’s debut work a piece of straight-up nihilism that’s about as appetizing as mainlining battery acid.



This is a movie obsessed with depression. It is about a self-destructive woman named Nancy (Bello) whose 15-year dysfunctional marriage has driven her right around the bend. Apparently abused as a child, she likes things a bit rough (if you get my meaning), golf-obsessed husband Albert (Sewell) too caught up in his own superficial world to notice his wife is slowly falling to pieces.

Keeping thing simple, she comes to the conclusion that the only way she can be free and happy is to be dead, but she can only experience that if she can find someone to end it all for her in the act of absolute sexual brutality she desperately longs for. Patric is the man on the internet Nancy meets who likes it nearly as rough as she does, while Amy Brenneman also stars as one of the most singularly unhelpful therapists I’ve ever cinematically encountered.

If there were some deeper meaning to Pamela Cuming and Lee Ross’ screenplay (based upon the latter’s original story) I’d be okay with all this masochistic darkness. If I felt like I was learning something deep or meaningful about the human condition, I’d be okay with 100 or so minutes of straight-up despair. Heck, I’d have settled for one of the characters having some sort of emotional recognition that felt genuine or honest, at least then I could try to convince myself in some small way there was some sort of merit to all this depravity.

But nothing like that ever takes place. All this movie wants is to deliver the pain, and it wants to do it in as unsettling a way as possible. This has got to be the singular most uncomforting film I’ve seen all year, and while I appreciate and respect the fact that Bello and Patric were so willing to shed themselves so emotionally (and physically) naked for it that alone does not make watching such an irredeemable crock of hooey even slightly worthwhile.

I have a problem with movies that are all about and for the suffering with no other reason to exist than that. I’m not saying all stories have to have happy endings with rainbows and butterflies and little animated birds chirping brightly, not at all. What I am saying is that there has to be some point to the malaise, some reason for it to matter. After all, viewers are the ones who have to sit there for two hours and absorb it all in, and if your going to spend all that time making us feel like crap you sure as hell better make sure there’s damn good reason.

In other SIFF news, I just noticed that there is ANOTHER mockumentary on the SIFF docket, and like Mothers & Daughters it is a Canadian production. It’s called The Baby Formula and has its first screening on Tuesday. On the plus side, it actually sounds kind of interesting (lesbian couple desperately wanting a child secretly – and separately – go to a doctor and get impregnated with genetically modified ‘female’ sperm made from their own DNA). Maybe I’ll to give it a shot. After all, the Canadians can’t screw up the format twice in the same festival, right?

Over the "Moon"

The one major drawback to SIFF is also the one thing that makes it stand out from the international film festival crowd, its size. With so many features, documentaries and shorts, it’s sometimes easy to become overwhelmed to the point you actually forget some of what you seen. Especially if you see it early, like during the press screening period that happens weeks before the festival starts, and unless the picture stands out as magnificent the chances you might forget it – even for an instant – is unfortunately pretty high.

That’s what happened to me in regards to director Duncan Jones excellent science fiction drama Moon. I actually saw this movie all the way back in April, and it didn’t even occur to me that it was playing during the first week of SIFF until the moment I was suddenly sitting down with the director to talk about. It was completely absent during the Thursday’s recap of my early personal favorites, the fact I didn’t mention it making me feel a bit like a total idiot.

Why? Because this movie, even in spite of some relative problems with over-familiarity and predictability, is a total grabber from start to finish. The story of corporate drone Sam Bell (Sam Rockewell) at the tail end of a three-year contract working alone (save for the companionship of singular robot named GERTY, wonderfully voiced by Kevin Spacey) in a mining plant on the Moon, the film is a glorious 1970’s/1980’s style throwback that makes you think almost as much as it entertains.

Not wanting to give too much away, threw a seemingly random and bizarre sequence of events Sam ends up coming face-to-face with what appears to be a three-years younger version of himself, the two men having to figure out what is going on before a retrieval team from the corporate office arrives to assess the situation. Is there a conspiracy, the company hiding a secret the two Sams were never meant to discover? Or is it all a figment of the man’s imagination, almost 1095 days of solitude taking their toll on his fracturing psyche?

The answer isn’t all the surprising, to be completely honest, but the journey is still so enthralling the fact I pretty much had the whole story clocked the moment Sam One and Sam Two met for the first time didn’t really bother me. Jones creates a magnificent fusion of 2001, Silent Running, Outland and Gattaca consistently thought-provoking and engaging. There is a smooth, almost pulsating tension running through the picture that got a little bit under my skin and kept me gingerly creeping to the edge of me seat, the filmmaker plays things just close enough to the vest I couldn’t help but want to see more.



It also helps immensely that Rockwell, easily one of the most underrated and undervalued actors of his generation (his work in films as diverse as Galaxy Quest, Matchstick Men, Confessions of Dangerous Mind, Choke, Frost/Nixon and Snow Angels shows an almost unbelievable range) this dual portrait of one man’s journey at two points in time is arguably one of his very best. What he does here is like what Jeremy Irons accomplished in Dead Ringers, and if there were any justice in the world voting members will take the time to seek this small sci-fi drama out a give the guy the Oscar nomination he totally deserves.

As the film starts going into limited release in just a couple of weeks, I’m going to leave things there for now. There is so much more to talk about and discuss, and I almost can’t wait to get into that interview I had with Duncan. That said, here’s one quote from our brief 20-minute chat I think you might enjoy, the two of us having a debate on the two different types of directors who graduate from making commercials and go into the world of feature-length motion pictures. I have to say, to me at least, I don’t just think his answer is a good one, I feel it’s downright refreshing.

“I think there are two different types of [commercial directors]. I think there are those who want to make feature films to start off with, and commercials are a root to making [them]. They use commercials to learn, to explore the medium and to get better at the craft, and I think that’s the type I am.”

“And then there are the people who make a fantastic living making commercials and kind of just feel like they should probably make a feature because they’ve done so many commercials, and I think those are the guys who maybe have a little bit of a problem doing something that doesn’t come naturally to them. [Commercials], it is about the look of things, it is about the visuals, and if you don’t want to look deeper than the surface it’s easy to fall into that trap when you start making feature films.”

“For me, it is about the characters. The visuals are important. The look is important. But the characters and their story are more important. For some guys maybe that’s not the same, it’s not the point for them. They like blowing things up and showing off their technology, and sometimes that can be entertaining but, personally, I think a really good film needs to have more than that. Hopefully it shows in [Moon] and in the other films I’ll get the opportunity to make.”

Moon opens in New York and Los Angeles on June 12 and then expands from there. It should have been in the top five in my first week top ten recap and it is a movie I hope everyone goes out and sees and I apologize for letting it slip my mind.

First Week Top Ten

We’re now officially one week into the 35th Annual Seattle International Film Festival. Granted, regular screenings didn’t start until last Friday (only the opening night picture, In the Loop, screened on Thursday), so I guess I should be making that statement tomorrow instead of today. But it’s too late now as I’ve already written it, and while there are plenty of things playing tomorrow night I haven’t seen considering the number I already have I think I can write the rest of this entry in relative good conscience.

What in the world am I talking about? Well, I figured as we’re through the first seven days I might as well rate my favorites of the festival up to this point so far. After all, we are a culture suddenly obsessed with lists, so my adding one more (no matter how obscure it’s going to end up being) isn’t going to hurt anything.

So, without further ado, here are my votes for the Top Ten films of SIFF through the first week:

10. Pop Star On Ice – Outstanding and highly entertaining documentary chronicling United States figure skater Johnny Weir as he competes for Olympic Gold. Anyone who has ever seen the guy skate already knows how much of an outspoken character he is, but I didn’t expect him to be so interesting and compelling as well. Directors David Barba and James Pellerito do an excellent job of showing the highs, lows and mesmerizing in-betweens of Weir’s life, the film having an emotional resonance I admittedly wasn’t quite prepared for.

9. Summer Hours – To quote my review of director Olivier Assayas’ latest project, “There is an exquisite, almost longing ebullience to Summer Hours that lasted long after I left the movie theater, many of its themes whipping through my head like a whirlwind. I found that I didn’t want the film to end, that I wanted to see what kind of adults the siblings’ children would grow to become, to discover what sort of world it would be they would inherit. While not a masterpiece Assayas has still achieved something modestly miraculous, the finished product a memorable journey I can’t wait to embark on again.”

8. Morris: A Life with Bells On – If you scroll down you’ll see I already extolled the virtues of this winning mock documentary quite thoroughly. I also had the pleasure of interviewing the film’s star and writer Charles Thomas Oldham. Here’s my favorite quote (partly coming from my question asking Oldham where he hoped to go from here): “Worldwide domination, ideally, is the plan. That sounds nice. No, seriously, ideally I’d just love to do this again. That’s really what we want to do. I’ve been a lawyer, I’ve been a banker, they are the worst jobs on the planet. They’re dull, and they’re uninspiring to me (although there are [probably] plenty of people out there who enjoy being lawyers and bankers - I'm just not one of them). I love [acting], and I certainly love filmmaking. It is the most extraordinary way to make a living.”

7. Paper Heart – Another mock documentary (this festival seems to be full of them), this one revolving around actress Charlyne Yi as she travels across America trying to discover whether or not love exists, falling in l’amour with fellow actor Michael Cera along the way. Sweet, beguiling and beautifully awkward, this is one of those movies you can’t help but smile about each every time you think about it.

6. The Beast Stalker – Hong Kong director Dante Lam delivers a forceful, highly kinetic action opus that had me at the edge of my seat start to finish. A few too many of the genres usual quirks aside (the slo-mo inherent in Asian action cinema really has to stop), the central story (disgraced cop tries to redeem himself when a prosecutor’s daughter is kidnapped by trying to rescue her himself) is so gripping and suspenseful I found it impossible to look away. (The director has a second film playing at the festival, Sniper, and the buzz is that it is even better than this one. I can’t wait.)

5. Passing Strange – Spike Lee’s expertly photographed documentation of the landmark Broadway production’s final show. Extremely intimate, watching it I didn’t just feel like I was in the audience, at times I even felt like was actually on the stage itself. (There is no trailer for this yet, the video is from the 2008 Tony Awards.)

4. Spring Breakdown – Dumb? Yes. Silly? Definitely. Funny? You better believe it. How this inspired lowbrow comedy starring Parker Posey, Amy Poehler and Rachel Dratch (who also co-wrote the screenplay) is being shuffled straight to video is beyond me because this movie has laughs, lots of them. As underappreciated gems go, as far as SIFF 2009 is concerned this one might just be at the very top of my list.

3. Deadgirl – I cannot get this movie out of my head. I knew what was going to happen, I knew where it was going to go and I knew exactly the way in which it would end. Nonetheless, this story of two teenage boys and their undead corpse crawled under my skin and refused to let go. Disturbing, to say the least, but also unforgettable, and that’s not a gift I’m going to even remotely take for granted.

2. The Hurt Locker – One of the best films of the year, Kathryn Bigelow’s dynamic opus of a bomb disposal unit working Baghdad is easily one of the more kinetically ferocious pieces of work of the director’s entire career. It’s a ticking clock thriller where danger lurks around every corner, and by the time it was over I’d realized I’d sweat so hard I’d have to go home and change into a new shirt.

1. In the Loop – No surprise here. I’ve been talking this one up since the very first moment I saw it at the SIFF press launch almost a month ago. As satires go, this one is as smart and pointed as any of the best ones you can call to mind. As comedies go, it’s so fall on the floor funny I could almost foresee myself watching it as many times as I’ve seen A Fish Called Wanda or Some Like it Hot. As 2009 goes, it’s not just the best film I’ve seen at SIFF, it’s the best film I’ve seen this year.

HONORABLE MENTION
The Cove - Louie Psihoyos' documentary by all rights should be sitting in that number three slot. It is as good a piece of investigative filmmaking as anything I'm likely to see. But as much fun as it is, that final 20 minuts unnerved me so much I have trouble talking about the movie more than just saying, "It's good - it's really good," to whomever asks me about it. Unfair? Yes, but unfortunately that's the place I'm at right now. All I can add is that this is a movie everyone should see, the truth Psihoyos unearths one the whole damn world should take the time to do something about.

Mocking the Doc - Part II

I don’t normally repeat myself, but I just finished watching Canadian director Carl Bessai’s comedic drama Mothers & Daughters and it is another mock documentary to add to the 2009 SIFF list. It’s also been pointed out to me that, technically speaking, my favorite film of the festival In the Loop is also (more or less – but I don’t totally agree) one as well.

Mothers & Daughters is exactly why I do not typically like this particular genre. It is everything that annoys me, sort of the familial single camera cousin to Crash or Babel or Crossing Over. While the issues Bessai’s film are concerned with aren’t nearly as heady as the ones faced in those pictures, its multi-character structure is, and as far as the format goes combining it with the mock doc isn’t exactly my concept of a good idea.

This movie is arch and annoying. Chronicling the relationship between a handful of mothers and their respective daughters, on the surface the movie is supposed to be about the bonds between parent and child that irrevocably shape their lives for both the good and the bad. But the film is so overdone, so shrill and cloying, I never believed for a moment that any of these women were flesh and blood human beings. The film felt forced and false, and the only thing I wanted while watching it was for the darn thing to come to an end (when 86-minutes feels like 186 you know you’re in trouble).

To be fair, not everything is a disaster. Actress Tantoo Cardinal (you might remember her from a variety of projects, most notably 1998’s Smoke Signals) is outstanding. She is the only one that seems to tap into her character’s inner essence and I never felt like she was acting the part. Cardinal simply was Celine (a professional house painter regretting past choices made in regards to her own daughter now being given the opportunity to help out a young woman on the verge of motherhood herself), a part of me almost wishing we could have seen a movie only about her life and have left the rest of the women on the cutting room floor.

Like I said, not a lot to say here. I just felt like if I was going to extol the virtues of a couple of mock documentaries I did like I should probably point out one I mostly didn’t care for. Mothers & Daughters is that movie, and as of right now it is the only film I’ve seen at SIFF I sort of wish I’d never taken the time to view in the first place.

And now... back to a movie I do REALLY like...

Mocking the Doc (with bells on)

While two out of about 400 (well, three if you count an ingenious German short film about elder care, retirement, apprenticeships and zombie killing that I can’t for some reason remember the title of) cannot be considered a trend, I still think it is worth pointing out that a couple of the most popular titles to be discovered by audience during the opening weekend just happened to be mock documentaries. The British import Morris: A Life with Bells On had its North American premier to a virtual sellout, while Sundance favorite Paper Heart packed both of its houses nearly beyond the breaking point.

Personally, this is not a format I think works particularly well for a full 90-plus minutes. With rare exception (last year’s horror double-team Cloverfield and Quarantine both come to mind), films that go in this direction usually tire me out. You just can’t sustain the gag, and after a while it almost always begins to feel like the energy has waned and my attention span has wavered right along with it.

Not so with this pair. The former, still looking for a domestic distributor (and certainly is deserving of one), revolves around the trials and tribulation of an English Morris Dancer (a peculiar folk dance involving hankies and wooden sticks), while the latter stars (and was written by) Charlyne Yi and revolves around her sudden romance with movie star Michael Cera during her filming of a documentary all about love.

They’re a crazy little pair with just about nothing in common, yet both are made so skillfully that if you didn’t know they were fake going in you’d almost think (especially in regards to Paper Heart) they were 100-percent real. The casts for both films are decidedly game, staying in character even when the central action has nothing to do with them at all. They are perfect examples of how to do this genre proud, and I think if general audiences are given they chance both of them might end up doing reasonably well as far as ticket and DVD sales are concerned.

I actually had the opportunity to sit down with Charles Thomas Oldham, writer and star of Morris, on the eve of his premiere and our free-flowing (and quite funny) conversation lasted almost a full 40-minutes before we both came to realization we should probably end or we might end up sitting on couches at the W Hotel for the rest of the afternoon. While I’m not going to reprint the entire thing, I liked the film so much I’d be remiss for not at least transcribing some of the better bits.

So many comedies don’t come close to meeting expectations, so to encounter one that pole vaults right over the top of them it’s the least I can do to spend a couple of minutes urging you all to check it out. It’s part of the job, after all, and I have to say that, if it wasn’t, I’m not entirely sure I’d love to doing it near as much energetically do.

It’s a big night. Are you excited about your North American premiere? “You always get nervous because, it’s your baby. In the case of Morris, [I’ve] lived it and breathed it for three years. Suddenly you’re putting it in front of audiences and you don’t know what’s going to happen. You think, ‘Why didn’t you laugh at that bit? I liked that line, I thought it was funny.’ Then they laugh at a different bit you didn’t expect and you think to yourself, okay, fine, whatever, I get it. At a certain point you just have to let it go. The audience decides for you if you got the job done, hopefully for us they’ll think we did.”

Are British comedies better than their American counterparts? Do you worry that British humor just doesn’t connect for audiences over here or is that a cliché argument not worthy discussing? “I’m thinking of what you’re saying there and, naturally, I would always think of Frasier, not just because I’m in Seattle but because it is my favorite comedy. That’s the best English Farce outside of Fawlty Towers that’s ever been written. It’s so well done, and I keep on watching [that] and thinking this is so amazing, and yet it’s so English, and yet it is also so popular over here [in America]. I think any comedy that is done well, and especially if it is not nasty and it is done genuinely, I think it will translate, doesn’t matter if it is British, American or something else. Good comedy makes people laugh, and I [think] we made good comedy.”

What were you thinking when writing this? Did you always know you were going to act in it as well as write the script? “It was actually as calculated and as cynical as that. I’ve been an actor for a while now but I came to acting quite late. I used to be an investment banker and a lawyer and then I discovered I wanted to wear tights and makeup and all of that. So I went to drama school quite late and graduated at 32, which is a tough time to leave especially when you’ve got red hair and are 6’3”, and I was really struggling.”

“At the same time, though, I was able to start doing really well doing voiceover work. I’m very lucky to this day to being voiceover work, but you get to the point where you have to make a choice, and that’s to be doing voiceovers all the time or, in the back of your mind, you say I’ll put all this success here to good use and write something for myself to star in. I’ll give myself the chance no one else is giving me. And so, using the Noel Coward school of writing and the like, I wrote myself the biggest part, cast myself in the lead role and then had an absolute ball. It’s that simple.”

Why Morris Dancing? Where did that come from? “There’s something about Morris that just appealed. We knew we could make it for cheaply. But, basically, at the end of the day I just thought it was funny. I look at Morris Men and can’t help but think, yeah, that’s funny.”

But how do you prepare for a role like this? How do you become a Morris Folk Dancer? “This is your forensic cross-examination quality because you’ve uncovered my deep dark secret. The truth is I lived with a Morris family when I was 16. When my parents went to Australia I stayed in the U.K. and went to stay with my next door neighbors. I went from a typical, British Middle Class with a small ‘c’ and not particularly artistic family [to] a very, very folksy, artsy, energetic family surrounded by artists of all types doing Morris Dancing in the backyard during BBQs. It was the most extraordinary different world, and I think was assembling nuggets [back then].”

“Obviously I wasn’t writing a film, but there was something about the Morris world that was permeating through me and I channeled that for the script.”

Were you surprised at all at the cast (Naomie Harris, Derek Jacobi, Greg Wise, Ian Hart, Dominique Pinon) you were able to assemble for this film? “Completely and utterly. I get such a kick rattling off all the names. Given that we were paying them a 150 Pounds a day – everybody got that, it was a flat rate – it was absolutely extraordinary that we were able to get the talent we did, especially to that extent. If I never work again, I can die happy after having made this having acted beside Derek Jacobi and Greg Wise and Ian Hart.”

Ian Hart is such a criminally underrated actor. I mean, funny enough, over here he’s not so much, but back home he is. I mean, he [was] in Dirt over here and that was a much bigger hit in America than it was in [England]. But he’s just the most outstanding scouter, and he’s fantastic just to have around. I love telling the story about when we were shooting one day [outside] and we had about 200 extras there and the kids, as they always do, want your autograph afterwards I felt like a total fool. I kept looking at them saying, ‘Actually, you want his autograph,’ and they’d be like, ‘No we don’t, we want your autograph. You’re the star. Why?’ So then I’d be like, ‘Harry Potter?’ and the lines would suddenly go like whooom! and my whole line evaporated. But he was great; he stood there for at least an hour signing autographs and pictures for the kids. It was great.”

Sounds like you almost wanted to pinch yourself a little bit. “Yeah. Maybe. I mean, like Naomie Harris flew in immediately after the Pirates of the Caribbean 3 premiere – and I’m betting her agent had no idea why she wanted to do it – and she jumped on a plane and she was here filming the beach scenes the following day. Freezing, just freezing her backside off on a cold Dorset beach, and she didn’t complain, knew her lines inside and out, and was just a total delight to work with. Same thing with Dominique Pinon, who is a hero if mine, he was just mental and brilliant. It really was a real master class of actors. We were so incredibly fortunate. It was great.”

What was your immediate reaction when you got a call from SIFF asking to premiere your film? “When we got picked for SIFF it was really out of the blue and it was like, wow, that’s f**king fantastic. We were beyond thrilled, and it was a great opportunity for us to come to the States and hopefully sell it, but there is that moment when you step off the plane and think, how are people going to respond to a film about Morris Dancing? Are they going to like it? All that goes through your mind. But it was brilliant to be picked for SIFF. I’m still a bit unbelieving that it actually happened.”

What do you hope happens from here? What are your plans? “Worldwide domination, ideally, is the plan. That sounds nice.”

“No, seriously, ideally I’d just love to do this again. That’s really what we want to do. I’ve been a lawyer, I’ve been a banker, they are the worst jobs on the planet. They’re dull, and they’re uninspiring to me (although there are [probably] plenty of people out there who enjoy being lawyers and bankers - I'm just not one of them). I love [acting], and I certainly love filmmaking. It is the most extraordinary way to make a living. You’ve got Derek Jacobi or Dominique Pinon saying your words and you just think, yes, I lived a charmed life. In the end, I think the only thing you could ever want after that is the chance to do it again.”