400+ movies are screened at SIFF this time, much less than last year. This weekend is the "best of" rerun. I saw a package of short films (ordered by alphabet):
· Cappuccino (Switzerland) 16 min. 1/5. Lousy: a gay teenager and his single mom during one evening. Nothing new.
· Cataplexy (USA) 8 min. 5/5. Delightful. The call girl happens to be his old classmate.
· The Eagleman Stag (UK) 9 min. 4/5. Not sure I got everything. The monologue is too fast. Animation. White and gray only. Papercut effect. A scientist who studies a beetle.
· The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (USA) 16 min. 5/5. Sweet. Animation. After a violent storm whisks his house away, Morris happened on to library where he spent the rest of his life.
· Library of Dust (USA) 15 min. 4/5. Documentary. Thousands of corroded copper cans at Oregon State Hospital, containing the unclaimed ash of psychiatric patients.
· New Digs (South Africa) 2 min. 3/5. Animation. A hamster, feeling neglected, ventures out, when the owner was just buying a new cage.
· North Atlantic (Portugal) 15 min. 3/5. An isolated air traffic controller tried to converse with a pilot whose fuel is about to finish.
· Time Freak (US) 4/5. A neurotic inventor created a time-travel machine, but spent all his time traveling to yesterday deal with minute mundane things.
I saw the following Regular screenings of SIFF, (alphabetically ordered):
· Absent (Argentina): 2/5. A manipulative teenage student took an interest in a swimming teacher who discovered his homosexual tendancy? Well shot, many close shots, but steady camera. Music adds suspense. Not much story. Very slow. Not sure what's the point. Seems teacher's reputation is a thin paper, easily destroyed if not careful.
· All your dead ones (Columbia): 2+/5. A farmer found a pile of body in his farm. He hurried to town trying the report it. Slow. Well acted. Very shaky camera, otherwise some interesting shots: different angles, highly saturated scenes, closeup of insects, ...
· Almanya - Willkommen in Deutschland (Germany): 4/5. Funny, but nothing deep. A story can be placed anywhere with immigration. Well planned and made.
· Crying out (Canada): 2/5. Father-son relationship. Hand-held camera. Sometimes so close that you only see one eye of a face.
· The Darkest Matter (US): 0/5. Worst movie up to now. A bunch of kids trapped in a spaceship. Terrible plot. Cartoon characters. Sound is added later, flat. More like a class project.
· The Destiny of Lesser Animals (Ghana/USA): 3-/5. A Ghanaian police officer investigates the robbery of his counterfeit passport. It tried to tie in some ideology. Some dialogue was good. However, the plot was weak, seems only put together to convey the ideology. Ending is Hollywood. In fact, I don't understand why he quits the police force to become a taxi driver.
· Flamenco, Flamenco (Spain): 3/5. A collectin of stage performances of various Flamenco numbers, sung, played (guitar mostly, violin, piano), or danced by notable artists. Same stage, good lighting and camera work. I liked Sara Baras: powerful, Israel Galván: interesting, 2 group dances.
· Flying Fish (Sri Lanka): 2+/5. An inferior imitation of Once Upon a Time in the West, not only in cinematography, but also in music. Transition of both was often abrupt. Footage was only for aesthetic reason, even weakens if not damages the little bit story that I can gleam. Still some nice scenery and closeups (insects). No plot, just a very slow collage of bits and pieces of 3 families' life. As for the meaning of the title, the director said that fish flies sometimes, but still falls into water (where they belong). However, I cannot see that in the movie. A bit gloss over the politics: Sinhala soldiers patrol the roads and Tamil rebels extort money from citizen, and Tamils are cheap. Well, the director is a Sinhala. However, as a film student, shot in 15 days on a $25000 budget, this is well made. The director is curtious and humble.
· Hay Fever (Italy): 3/5. Love stories. A 70s vintage shop, its owner and workers, their relationships. Somewhat poetic and sweet.
· Heading West (Netherlands): 1/5. A woman with a child, his relationship with a guy in one year. Very slow. Nothing unusual or interesting. What's the point? I hate hand held camera.
· Holy Rollers: The True Story of Card Counting Christians (US): 2/5. A Seattle-based blackjack team whose members are entirely Christians (some are pastors) between 2006-2009. Their ups and downs, the business of running a cash operation that gets "back off"-ed by casinos. Interesting story, but not enough to fill a movie.
· Late Autumn (Korea): 2/5. An unlikely friendship between an ex-murderer and a male escort. The girl has no facial expression. It's funny for me to see Seattle on screen.
· Life in a Day (UK): 3+/5. Shot around the globe from midnight to midnight on July 24th 2010, a Saturday. Mostly editing work. Some footage is National Geographics quality (yes, they are a partner), but the better half is by hand held shaky camera, often in poor lighting. I was badly motion-sick for half of the movie. Nice concepts: what's in the pocket, what are you afraid of, ... Okhwan Yoon, who's biking around the world to promote peace, is quite inspirational.
· Magic Trip (US). 2/5. Recent voice interviews + edited original video recordings of Ken Kesey and his band of friends - Merry Pranksters on a road trip across America in 1964 in a remodeled school bus, carrying music instruments + drugs. The original footage is low resolution and somewhat faded. Very shaky. I got quite sick, even though my eyes were closed 1/3 of the time.
· Microphone (Egypt): 2+/5. A recently returned engineer in Alexandria got into street music, and decided to put up a concert for them. A collage of images, hand held camera in every angles, backward sequences. An experiment of many ideas. Music is not bad. Some dialogues are funny.
· Nobody (Greece): 2/5. Modern day Romeo and Juliet story between an Albanian gang and a Russian gang. Well filmed. But what's the point? There's absolutely nothing new. The end is left to interpretation. Maybe she killed herself.
· Norwegian Wood (Japan):3/5. A young man in 1960s Tokyo and his relationship with his best friend's girlfriend and others. Seems sex was a tool to facilitate or distress. However, the sex scenes are no good. Two main characters, Naoko and Midori, are self obsorbed and not likable. Otherwise, the Kyoto countryside is very scenic, music is quite powerful, albeit sometimes cut or start abruptly.
· On Tour (France): 2/5. A French tour manager and his 4 aged American burlesque performers. A bit sad. There isn't really a plot.
· Paper Birds (Spain): 3/5. A so-so story well told. Nothing exceptional. A barely surviving comic troupe in the Franco era. I don't understand why Jorge came back to the troupe. If he wasn't in the anti-government organization, why all the political remarks that caused a lot of trouble for the troupe.
· Perfect Sense (UK): 2/5. An idea, no story. Human is losing senses: starting from smell, then taste, then hearing, then sight. So the movie ends in darkness.
· Rene Goes to Hollywood (Georgia). 2/5. A film school teacher who also delivers propane. Hard to tell sometimes what is real and what's imaginary, or even what the director tried to tell. It made many references to poet Ilia Chavchavadze. However, it's beyond my comprehension.
· The Rescuers (US). 2/5. One British Jew (Martin Gilbert) and one Rwanda girl (Stephanie Nyombayire) commemorate the remarkable diplomats who helped Jews escape Holocaust (some lost their lives or livelihood because of it). Interviewed their kids and the survivors. It asks why we are still standing by and watch the genocides (like Darfur). Bad camera work, good editing. Music is not bad.
· Revenge of the Electronic Car (US). 4/5. Well made. Good matching soundtrack. More about the car business than about building the car.
· Salvation Boulevard (US). 4/5. Very funny. A religious satire. A mega-church's pastor accidentally shot a professor, and tried to cover it up, but with hilarious consequences.
· Small Town Murder Songs (Canada). 3/5. An aging but newly baptized police chief tries to fight against his violent impulses when a local murder upsets his newly reformed life. Gospel songs. Bold title for each section, which I don't really understand.
· Sushi: the Global Catch (US). 3+/5. Bluefin tuna, eating (chef Mamoru Sugiyama at Sushiko Honten) and boycotting (at Tataki, selling (Tsukiji market and stall owners, Alistair Douglas peddling ranched Southern Bluefin), breeding in captivity at (Hagen Stehr at Clean Seas). Not deep but broad. Hand-held camera (not too shaken). More details on Facebook.
· Tabloid (US): 2/5. A 1970s kidnapping of a missionary by a former beauty queen. Very well editted. Story is well told. But what's the point of digging up the old story, without any definite answer? Still entertaining.
· Toast (UK): 3-/5. Nigel Slater growing up in the 60s, his relationship with a sweet mother who cannot cook, an austere father, and then a step mom who cooks divinely. Helena Bonham Carter is excellent. Nigel is not a likeable character.
· Touch (US): 4/5. Very enjoyable. Bittersweet. Excellent cinematography. Wonderful colors. A lonely Vietnamese manicurist who has a handicap father and a mechanics with greasy hands trying to win his wife back.
· Viva Riva! (Congo). 2+/5. Riva, a small time crook, steals a truckload of gasoline from his boss and sells it. Of course, everyone tries to land his/her hands on the lucrative gas. Nothing new. Still entertaining. Lots of blood, whores, violence.
· Wasted on the Young (Australia). 4/5. Intense. High school bully, compliance or vengeance. Stylish cinematography, good plot. No single adult appears in the movie.
· Weekend (UK). 1/5. 2 gay men met in a gay bar, and their relationship over the next 2 days. One is going abroad. Nothing interesting, but pretty realistic. Mostly shot indoors. Shaky camera.
