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Kim Voynar

By Kim Voynar Voynar@moviecitynews.com

Posted Thursday, May 17th, 2012 - Comments Off on SIFF 2012: Opening Weekend Preview
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SIFF 2012: Opening Weekend Preview

It’s that time of year again when one of the best things about Seattle, the Seattle International Film Festival, is about to get underway. Press screenings have already been churning along here for the past couple weeks (unfortunately my daytime schedule has made it impossible for me to make a single press screening so far) and the fest kicks off tonight with a festive Opening Night Gala at McCaw Hall featuring Lynn Shelton’s film, Your Sister’s Sister, followed by what’s sure to be a loud, crowded party chock full of Seattle film folks networking and noshing on that holy triad of film festival parties: hors d’oeuvres, desserts and free booze.

Because Seattle’s fest is so sprawling — we’re talking 25 days of movies here, folks — I’ve decided to try something a little different this year and do weekend previews of what’s coming up at the fest and my picks each week. I’m hoping that this will allow me to focus a little more on talking up films I’m excited about seeing and what you might want to check out at the fest as it rolls along. Since Seattle’s fest is also kind of spread out geographically, one of the things I like to do myself (and highly recommend to others) is to pick a film I’m interested in seeing, and then also catch whatever’s showing before and after it at the same venue. This is a great way to discover something new at SIFF, and it saves you having to try to park your car multiple times or navigate the bus system to the various venues.

Or you can always try using the SIFFter to find something new and unexpected.

Here’s what’s in store this weekend, once we get past tonight’s Gala start:

Friday, May 18

Friday, the first full day of the fest, gets things off to a solid start. The day kicks off with an 11AM screening at Pacific Place of Russian film Elena, which won the Un Certain Regard jury prize at Cannes in 2011. You could hang at Pacific Place all day and catch back-to-back screenings leading up to the excellent doc Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry at 6:30PM, with director Alison Klayman in attendance.

Over at The Egyptian in Capitol Hill, they’re showing The Intouchables, France’s second-highest grosser of all time, also at 6:30PM, while SIFF Cinema Uptown has the Duplass Brothers’ The Do-Deca-Pentathalon (pictured above) at 7PM; director Jay Duplass and actor Steve Zissis should be on hand for that one. If you live in Renton (or just enjoy schlepping out there) the Renton opening night film at the IKEA Performing Arts Center is Fat Kid Rules the World, with director Matthew Lillard in attendance (it also screens on Saturday in Seattle). Friday night has more compelling offerings, including Valley of Saints, Polisse, and LUV.

If I had to choose one, I’d probably pick LUV, if only because director Sheldon Candis should be there and he is just the nicest, most genuine guy you could ever hope to meet. I think I met his entire extended family on various shuttles at Sundance this year, and they were all every bit as nice as he is. He’s also got a good movie in LUV, so check it out. I’ve also heard good things about Polisse, which I intend to catch during the fest, and I loved Valley of Saints when I caught it at Sundance, so you really can’t go wrong no matter which way you go. Friday’s midnight offering back at the Egyptian is Irish horror-thriller Citadel. If the words “Irish” and “horror-thriller” in the same sentence don’t motivate you to check that out, I don’t know what will.

Saturday, May 19

Saturday is going to be a busy day of back-to-back screenings for me as I rush around trying to make up for feeling behind on the second official day of the fest. I’m going to have to flip a coin to decide between Dreams of a Life, a doc about Joyce Carol Vincent, who died alone in her London housing project flat and wasn’t discovered for three years, and Four Suns, a Czech black comedy by Bohdan Slama that I missed catching at Sundance. After that, depending on which film wins the coin toss, I’ll either be catching Chilean entry Bonsai, which looks interesting, or perhaps revisiting Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz, which I loved when I saw it at Toronto.

Later Saturday evening, I have a triple-header at The Egyptian lined up: Fat Kid Rules the World, Megan Griffith’s Eden, and midnight entry God Bless America (pictured above), another film I loved at Toronto and want to catch again. Other Saturday options you might consider: Playing at roughly the same time as Eden we have two other films I can highly recommend. At the SIFF Cinema Uptown we have the controversial Sundance flick Compliance, which you will either really love or really hate. It screens at 9:30PM and is preceded by Superclasico. And over at the Harvard Exit we have Oslo, August 31, director by Reprise writer-director Joachim Trier, which I caught at Toronto. Not your most uplifting film, but it’s very good. That one’s preceded by Kill Me, a German film about a suicidal teenage girl who makes a pact with an escaped and injured murderer. I know nothing about that one, but it sounds intriguing. Whatever you do, though, make it back over to The Egyptian for God Bless America or you’ll be kicking yourself later when everyone’s talking about it.

Sunday, May 20

In all the years I’ve been covering SIFF I’ve never gone to the Secret Festival, where you have to sign waivers swearing you’ll sign your offspring over to indentured servitude at the festival if you tell what films you saw. This year is no exception, but if you have a Secret Festival Pass, you’ll no doubt have a great — Shhhhhh!

For the rest of you, Sunday kicks off at 11AM at Pacific Place with a family-friendly screening of Danish animated flick The Great Bear, so why not skip church and bring the kiddos out to the fest? Sunday at 1PM there’s also a FREE animation workshop for kids ages 8-14 at the SIFF Film Center, which is actually not as hard to find as you think it is (it’s in Seattle Center, right next door to Vera Project and across from the Intiman Theater). The 5000 Days Project Family Workshop happens at the same time, also at SIFF Center.

Also on Sunday, you could catch Polisse at 2:30 at The Harvard Exit (preceded by My Brother the Devil, followed by Camilla Dickinson), or you could catch The Intouchables at the Egyptian, which is preceded by Rose, which won both the jury and audience awards at the Warsaw Film Festival and followed by Under African Skies, which I highly recommend. Later Sunday you might catch My Sucky Teen Romance, written and directed by Emily Hagins, who made her first feature, zombie flick Pathogen, when she was just 12 (Ms. Hagins was also the subject of documentary Zombie Girl).

Looking forward to the week ahead, my picks include Queen of Versailles (Monday, May 21); Tatsumi and Starry Starry Night (Tuesday, May 22); Safety Not Guaranteed (Wednesday, May 23); and Opening Night of Shortsfest weekend on Thursday, May 24.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon