SIFF - 6/3/2006

Films Today: 2 (counting the shorts program)
Running Total: 20

Man I am officially two weeks behind on my SIFF blogging. I got off to such a good start too. However I guarantee to you, my 3 dedicated readers, that I will put down some mediocre rantings about every day and every film of the fest (although at some point I stopped taking notes by hand as well, so some hilarious stories are probably gone forever.) It’s a shame, as my memories of these films is not going to be nearly as vivid as they otherwise might have been. Sorry later SIFF films.

First off on this fine Saturday, Roya and I caught up with Chris, Francesca and Steve (nice meeting you) for a screening of Screaming Masterpiece, a film about the music scene in Iceland. It got off to a roaring start with Sigur Ros and their pummeling show-closer “popplagið” which quite appropriately blew Chris’ mind. Everything was good from there on out, although it was a little heavy on the Bjork. On the plus side we got another Sigur Ros song (my other favorite of theirs “viðrar vel til loftárása“), and I quite enjoyed Mum and Slowblow who are kind of like the Icelandic Low. Best of all were the scenes from the 1982 documentary Rokk í Reykjavík which showcased a pile of Iceland’s punk and new wave bands. The interviews were quite good as well, even the one with the rap/rock band who are apparently huge in Japan and whose name I have blissfully forgotten. Someone, it could have been Bjork, was asked why Icelandic music is so creative. This person said that when you have no music industry, and there is absolutely no possibilty of getting rich and famous, you just do whatever you want which inherently produces more heartfelt and interesting art. Amen to that.

After this there was a luxurious six hour break in which I ate a real meal and did some much-needed laundry as well as probably blogging or something.

Our second event of the day was Attack Of The Animated, a collection of animated short films. As could be expected this was largely a mixed bag, although the animation in all of them was at least interesting, with the possible exception of one that was like if Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python cartoons done by a Marilyn Manson fan. It was not good, I have blessedly forgotten what it was called (although if you’re really curious feel free to check my Listology list. I don’t care enough to bother.) These were the ones I particulary liked:

Dragon - A combination of stop motion and 2D animation about a little girl locked up in an orphanage. A heartfelt story told well, and the mix of animation styles worked really well.

Cockroach - A sleekly computer black and white animated film with a nice gritty noir feel.

The Tell Tale Heart - Someone found a recording of Bela Lugosi reading the story by Edgar Allen Poe and animated it with harsh high-contrast animation very similar to the stuff Robert Rodriguez used in Sin City. As a matter of fact it was so similar that I just went to IMDB to see if the director worked on the Sin City but no dice. Anyways this was cool.

Home Delivery - Apparently based on a Stephen King story. The animation was quality 2D and the story was fun, but the direction was very cinematic which is what made it so enjoyable to me.

While I didn’t enjoy it as much, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention The Gift which was done using sand animation! Yes, like real sand on a table drawn into shapes and photographed. After the films the programmer said that during the making of it, a bird flew in an open window and stomped all over the sand, ruining days of work. And I complain when my computer crashes and I lost 15 minutes because I forgot to save.

Looking forward to tomorrow, quite an interesting day. My most pleasant surprise of the fest, Tom Waits, a movie I can’t tell you about and a constant barrage of child penii. Only at SIFF.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 17th, 2006 at 9:30 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.