SIFF - 5/29/06

Films Today: 3
Running Total: 11

5/29 was to be our first four movie day. We started at Neptune to see Princess Raccoon. Man everyone is playing Sudoku in line this year. There was a guy behind me playing this handheld Sudoku game in line. This thing is bigger than a PDA and he’s carrying it around just to play Sudoku. I don’t get people (says the guy who i sacirifcing a month of his life seeing 40 movies.) I also spotted the orange-suit-guy-with-the-multicolored-goatee for the first time. I remember seeing him last year. He joins a growing number of film fest regulars I recognize continually (bald camera guy, long grey haired lady, Kurt Vonnegut with Lennon specs guy, reading light couple…) Before the movie, SIFF’s membership director introduced the film along with her dog, who was wearing a SIFF shirt and a Full Series Pass. How I missed getting a photo of this, I have no idea.

Thoughts on Princess Raccoon can be found elsewhere, although Roya pointed out that the piece came across more positively than I actually expressed after the screening. I gave it a C- on Listology (largely because of the last reel which had more false endings than Return Of The King) but I really did admire its inventiveness. Nobody’s threatened to kill me for pointing them to go watch it so I guess it all worked out.

One thing that sucks about today is we’re back and forth across town for every screening. Neptune->Egyptian->Neptune->NWFF. I suddenly realize we probably won’t have any time to eat any real food. I had realized this might happen, and even hoped it might help me shed some flab, but instead all I’ve done is plow through the boxes of Triscuits I stash in my bag and scarf the free chocolates they’re giving away in the lobbies of all the venues.

The King is a stinker. The story is just boring and done, and the acting by Gael Garcia Bernal is surprisngly uninspiring. I didn’t know who to blame for his totally unreadable performance - him or the script. I’ll say they both suck. William Hurt was about the only thing worthwhile in the whole film. I have this comment in the margin of my notebook - “King - better ending w/Elvis getting integrated” - and I have no idea what the hell I was referring to. Oh wait, now I remember. I’ll spoil the movie to save you all the trouble of seeing it. Gael plays Elvis a guy who is the illegitemate child of William Hurt, who is a preacher. He comes to meet his dad, who turns him aside. Gael then starts pursuing and eventually beds Hurt’s 16 year old daughter (yes his half-sister.) When her brother (this kid was actually really good in his role too) finds them out, Gael kills him. He tells the sister and she agrees to keep her mouth shut out of devotion to him! With the real son out of the picture, Hurt re-evaluates his life and starts bonding with Gael, eventually integrating him into the family. At this point, I thought it would be awesome if they all lived happily ever after, the daughter keeping her mouth shut and Gael continuing to screw her and nobody else ever suspecting what Gael had done or that he was a semi-incestuous pedophile. THE END. This would have been OK. Sadly the girl gets pregnant and in the end he kills her and her mom. Since I have decided to spoil this whole film, I can say that my biggest problem with Gael’s performance was that there was absolutely no hint of whether he was simply plotting a very carefully executed revenge, or if he was just a fucking weird-ass psycho. And without that sense of motivation, the whole thing to me just becomes kind of pointless. I generally value ambiguity but it doesn’t work here.

I had a ticket for The Hidden Blade at Pacific Place after this, however if I went to it I would have a scant 15 minutes (assuming it went off on time, always a dangeous assumption) to get to NWFF afterwards. Even worse I didn’t have my car. I therefore made the executive decision to skip it and catch it in a couple months when it plays at Varisty. I really hope I do because I very much enjoyed Yamada’s last film The Twilight Samurai and this is supposed to be sort of a followup. Roya had a ticket for The Horizon Of Events in this spot, so I decided to join her for that. A quick jaunt back across town to Neptune, where we hoped to get a veggie sausage from the hot dog stand on the corner. Sadly they were all out, I guess all film fest goers are a bunch of stinking hippies. We settled for a dash around the corner to Pagliaccis for a slice before running back to Neptune. This Italian film sets itself up to be a thriller and kind of becomes something else in the middle, taking a total turn in a different direction. I actually really like when movies do this (cf Limbo, It’s A Wonderful Life) and it worked well here. Sadly everything bookending this change took far too long and would have benefitted from some serious trims. Also the ending was pretty unsatisying and it didn’t ring true at all. I will say that the one scene which stands at the break was extremely well done.

So here we were after three movies, tired hungry and having just sat through three duds. If the films had been good we might have made it through, but as it stood we decided to bail on the fourth one - Jack Smith And The Destruction Of Atlantis - which is too bad because as Roya said on her entry it was sure to be the best of the bunch. It just wasn’t happening though. I am trying desperately not to get into the habit of skipping films I bought tickets for, although the money goes to a good cause I suppose.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 2nd, 2006 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Movies, SIFF 2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.