Anyone Wanna See "Black Cannonball Run"?

Posted Oct. 16 at 1:14 pm by Brian Miller

​With their SIFF prize-winning blaxploitation spoof Black Dynamite opening today at the Varsity, filmmakers Michael Jai White and Scott Sanders were eager to talk about the '70s origin of the genre during their Seattle visit on Wednesday. Both are young enough—VHS babies, if you will—that they saw the classics on home video or in second-run movie houses that continued to play the classics (Shaft, Coffy, Dolemite, etc.) well into the '80s. In co-writing the film (review), lead actor White recalls how they reflected back both on blaxploitation movies good and bad. Meaning those, like Shaft, that really seemed to reflect the black experience and a yearning for African-American heroes. And also the cheapies, the rip-offs that simply copied a Hollywood formula and slapped the word 'black' in front of the title.

Thus, White recalls, "They had white movies that worked, like The Godfather, they would just throw the word 'black' in front of it—they had The Black Godfather, Blacula, Blackenstein. And they said, 'Shampoo was a hit, let's have Black Shampoo!' They're not even thinking about how ridiculous it is—black shampoo!?!"

But the fun of blaxploitation, says Sanders, the film's director, is that mixture of the ridiculous and the heroic...

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Topics: Arts & Culture, Film, and SIFF 2009

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SIFF-Favorite Filmmakers Return Tonight

Posted Oct. 14 at 12:54 pm by Brian Miller

​The Golden Space Needle Award at SIFF this year went to the Blaxploitation comedy Black Dynamite (review), which opens Friday at the Varsity. Tonight, however, you can see it early and meet the filmmakers at the Harvard Exit. Co-writer and star Michael Jai White will appear with co-writer/director Scott Sanders; and the two will conduct a Q&A with the audience. (Buy your tickets early.) I'll be speaking with them this afternoon, and hope to have the interview posted Friday.

Harvard Exit 807 E. Roy St., 781-5755, landmarktheatres.com. 7 p.m.

Topics: Arts & Culture, Film, and SIFF 2009

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Amreeka Director Recalls Her American Upbringing

Posted Sep. 25 at 5:42 pm by Brian Miller

​Opening today at the Harvard Exit, the immigrant drama Amreeka (review) isn't autobiographical, but it certainly draws upon the experiences of its Arab-American writer/director, Cherien Dabis, as she explained while visiting for SIFF this June. Born in Ohio, she later shuttled back and forth to Jordan and the West Bank, where she has family members, but was educated in the U.S.

How difficult, or different, was the back-and-forth assimilation back then in the '80s? "Back then, the airport situation was okay for us," Dabis recalls of the pre-9/11 era. "The only thing that stands out to me was traveling to the West Bank. That really hasn't changed. If anything it's gotten worse."

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Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Posted Aug. 25 at 5:25 pm by Brian Miller

​One of our favorite titles at SIFF was Spike Lee's concert film of Passing Strange, the Tony Award-winning show based on the life of musician/narrator Stew. The movie is playing New York and L.A. but not, unfortunately, Seattle. So the next best thing, if you've got cable and the Sundance Channel, is to order it via VOD (video on demand) beginning this Wednesday the 26. Here's our review from SIFF:

I was hoping that the Tony Award-winning rock opera Passing Strange would eventually reach Seattle, but Spike Lee's exhilarating concert doc is the next best thing. This coming-of-age-while-black musical by Mark Stewart (aka Stew) has been a long time brewing. It progressed from the Bay Area to Off-Broadway with much acclaim, and finally hit Broadway last year. If you loved Hedwig and the Angry Inch at SIFF '01, Passing Strange packs at least as much power, but with a much tighter band and more concentrated story.

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Topics: Arts & Culture, Film, and SIFF 2009

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Paul Giamatti Has No Soul

Posted Aug. 20 at 11:21 am by Brian Miller

​SIFFgoers responded warmly to Cold Souls (review) this spring, when writer/director Sophie Barthes sat down with her director of photography/boyfriend/producer, Andrij Parekh, and the film's star, Paul Giamatti, to talk about the international black market in souls. Why do we extract them? Who buys them? Why isn't this racket more roundly condemned? But first, I ask Giamatti about the film (which opens Friday at the Uptown and Guild 45), which is worse for his character, an actor named Paul, to feel too much or feel too little?

"I think the movie would posit that feeling too little is probably less good than feeling too much," says Giamatti, who maintains a slouchy, growly laughter for most of our sit-down. Discussing a comedy that makes fun of an actor's oversensitivity, he clearly enjoys making fun of the whole actorly process. "You have to strike a balance"

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Making Movies in Afghanistan

Posted Aug. 19 at 11:31 am by Brian Miller

​Opening Friday at the Varsity, the new documentary Afghan Star (review) might sound like a knock-off of American Idol. The documentary follows the made-in-Afghanistan TV hit Afghan Star, which is based on the British TV original, Pop Idol, created by none other than Simon Cowell. But as director Havana Marking explained when she visited town for SIFF this June, the indigenous Afghan talent competition has a very different vibe. "Afghans don't watch American Idol or listen to American music," she says. "They listen to Iranian music and Uzbek music. And they listen to Indian and Pakistani music; so Bollywood is a huge influence. It is different in that the judges are not rude to people. There's no humiliation in the way that Simon Cowell does it. It's a very respectful culture, and the audience wouldn't have it."

What's more, according to Marking, unlike our voting for, say, Adam Lambert, for Afghans to vote for their favorite singer on TV is a profoundly political act, one that's transforming the country...

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In the Loop Director Sorry He Missed SIFF

Posted July 30 at 7:44 pm by Brian Miller

​Speaking by phone from London, writer-director Armando Iannucci expressed regret that he wasn't able to attend SIFF for his gala opener, In the Loop. One cast member who did attend, David Rasche, told him "it went really well—3,000 seats or so," as the Paramount was in fact full to capacity for the well-received political comedy.

The reason for Iannucci's absence, he explains in a Scottish-accented purr, is his satirical BBC TV show The Thick of It: "I'm in the middle of making it now, which is why I couldn't make it to Seattle." Currently in its third season, that show and its star, Peter Capaldi (pictured at left), gave rise to the movie, which opens Friday at the Harvard Exit (review).

So why, I ask Iannucci, can't we have any decent scripted political satire on American TV? Or movies, for that matter? What's the difference between us and the Brits?

He responds, "I don't know why that it is. The thing about The West Wing, is that everyone in it is very virtuous. They're very good at their job. I don't know whether in the UK the idea of politicians being good at their job would be taken seriously."

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Topics: Film and SIFF 2009

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The Hurt Locker's Director Visits Seattle

Posted July 10 at 10:03 am by Brian Miller

Opening this Friday at the Egyptian, The Hurt Locker has earned director Kathryn Bigelow the best reviews of her career. She's been making the festival rounds with her film, including SIFF last month, when we sat down to talk.

Unlike just about every prior Iraq War movie or documentary, The Hurt Locker eschews politics and context. This was her intention as she collaborated with her screenwriter, a former Village Voice reporter who was embedded with a bomb-disposal squad in Iraq. "It all began with Mark Boal and his embed in 2004," says Bigelow. "It began as a piece of reporting. We thought a lot about it. You know that old saw—there's no politics in the trenches. You're not talking about various ideologies. You're just trying to survive and make it to tomorrow."

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Anxious Seattle Artists on Film

Posted July 9 at 3:44 pm by Brian Miller

After charming audiences at Sundance and other festivals, Seattle director Lynn Shelton debuted her third feature, Humpday, to an enthusiastic throng at SIFF. There, she also picked up an award from the mayor and found time to sit down with us for a chat. (Also see her interview with our SIFF contributor Sean Axmaker.) We first met at the fest in 2001, where she screened her short documentary about miscarriage: The Clouds That Touch Us Out of Clear Skies. Since then it's been features that also played SIFF: We Go Way Back (2006), My Effortless Brilliance (2008), and now her thoughtful comedy/bromance about two straight dudes who decide to do an avant-garde porno together (review). It opens Friday at the Harvard Exit.

In person, the largely self-taught filmmaker is as focused and energetic as her short, productive career would suggest. Fresh from a trip to Cannes for Humpday, coiled up in a hotel chair—Shelton seems glad to be home (where she's married and has a son) and ready to jump on the next project, again likely to deal with male artists and their insecurities. Friendly and personable, she appears to suffer from none of the creative anxieties that afflict her Humpday protagonists.

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From the Moon to Seattle

Posted July 2 at 8:00 am by Brian Miller

When writer-director Duncan Jones visited town for SIFF recently, we didn't want to ask about his famous father, David Bowie, or how the song "Space Oddity" might bear upon Moon (review), which opens Friday at the Harvard Exit and Metro. With an accent that's not entirely British or American, educated in the U.S. and abroad, Jones resembles a friendly, scruffy grad student—as he once was at Vanderbilt University. Subsequent work in the U.K. film industry, generally in commercials (for "beer and ketsup"), honed his longstanding interest in sci-fi, he explained. Blade Runner remains his touchstone, but his influences extend back to Silent Running and other space movies of the pre-Star Wars era. Read our Q&A, which includes potential spoilers, after the jump....

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Francis Ford Coppola Pours Wine Windfall Into Tetro

Posted June 17 at 11:23 am by Brian Miller

His name forever associated with the Godfather trilogy, Oscar-winning writer/director Francis Ford Coppola was in town earlier this month for SIFF. There, he was the subject of a festival tribute for his self-produced new indie release, Tetro, which opens this Friday, June 19 at the Harvard Exit. (J. Hoberman's review.) With him when we sat down to chat at the W Hotel was his young actor Alden Ehrenreich, who plays a seemingly naïve American kid who travels down to Argentina to find his much older brother (Vincent Gallo), long estranged from their wealthy, cultured Italian-American family back in New York. This quest, along with sibling rivalries and various family secrets, gives the tale a mythic quality, which Coppola studs with ballet and theatrical passages, symphonic sequences, and snippets of other movies. Ehrenreich's teenage character, Bennie, is a seeker traveling back in time, in a sense, delving into his family's past, where brother Tetro (Gallo) continues to nurse old wounds, harbor grudges, and obsess over the manuscript for a never-finished novel. But the Buenos Aires neighborhood of La Boca, where Tetro lives with his common-law wife (Maribel Verdú), is also a kind of Brigadoon, romantically locked in amber, where bohemians stride the crumbling streets.

Into this romantic Argentine idyll comes a crisp white uniformed American (Bennie is actually just a waiter on a cruise ship), who begins asking awkward questions and snooping. Is he like a detective, I ask Ehrenreich, or a cop?

Coppola answers for him: "He's a little rat!" The affectionate interruptions are a pattern that will be repeated throughout the interview—the professor listing for his young pupil the books and movies and music he must study; the student patiently explaining what IM means.

Speaking for himself, Ehrenreich admits that his character has a bit of an agenda...

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Fool Serious Voters Weigh In on SIFF

Posted June 15 at 2:51 pm by Brian Miller

Nobody, apart from a few wretched members of the media, sees more movies at SIFF than the full series pass-holders: a.k.a. the "fool serious" crowd. (It's a pun—get it?) And their post-festival judgment is often more interesting than the festival's juried and popular awards. Less swayed by local favorites (e.g., Humpday, Sweet Crude), these filmgoers generally achieve more diverse lists out of the sheer depth they penetrate into the SIFF schedule—seeing three, four, even five movies a day—for all of three weeks.

Hence from the Fool Serious site, the "most liked" feature was Departures, the surprise Oscar winner from Japan, about a former musician finding his way in the funeral home business. (It's currently playing at the Seven Gables.) This stands in opposition to ordinary SIFFgoers preferring Black Dynamite, winner of the Golden Space Needle award, which is a fairly easy, broad American comedy without subtitles.

More Fool Serious picks after the jump...

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The Winners at SIFF

Posted June 15 at 8:26 am by Brian Miller

The 35th edition of the Seattle International Film Festival concluded on Sunday with two sets of awards. First are the popular awards, the tally of torn-up cards left at the end of each screening by some 60,000 SIFF goers. The Golden Space Needle went to Black Dynamite, a fairly deadpan, consistently funny blaxploitation comedy made in the style of the '70s originals. Starring former action star Michael Jai White (pictured), the film is set for Sept. 4 release. It has midnight movie written all over it; but, even more than Grindhouse (which had some recognizable stars), the audience may be limited to video store clerks and genre aficionados.

Best documentary, no surprise, went to the Dirty Dozen-style eco doc The Cove (expected Aug. 7), about crusading environmentalists determined to expose dolphin slaughter in a secretive Japanese village. Best director: Kathryn Bigelow, for her excellent The Hurt Locker (July 10), about bomb disposal experts in the early Iraq War. Best actor: Sam Rockwell for his multiple roles in the sci-fi psych job Moon (July 3). Best actress: Yolande Moreau in the biopic about a pioneering French painter, Seraphine (July 24).

Most of these titles will receive encore screenings this coming weekend, June 19-21, at SIFF Cinema. Awards continue after the jump...

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SIFF Review: Hachi: A Dog's Story

Posted June 12 at 1:56 pm by Brian Miller

Note the title: This is not Richard Gere's story. Nor is it the story of director Lasse Hallström (who had his 1985 breakthrough, let's remember, with My Life as a Dog). No, this is Hachi's story—the adorable Japanese-raised Akita who mysteriously lands at a commuter rail station somewhere outside New York, then is adopted by a kindly professor (Gere). After so many recent talking-dog movies, with their creepy CG-animated lips, it's a bit of a shock to encounter a picture that treats its themes so simply: grief, canine loyalty, the changing of the seasons and generations, and death. If that sound a little foreign, that's because Hachi is a remake of a 1987 Japanese hit, itself based a true story from the 1920s. Dog Hachi—also called Hachikō—has no superpowers, though Hallström gives him many reaction shots, flashbacks, and POV shots. He's an instrument of healing (allusions are made to Gere and Joan Allen's dead son), but hardly magical. Mystical is more like it: The dog's name, Gere's Japanese university colleague tells him, has a "spiritual significance reaching up to heaven and touching down to Earth." Something of a Shinto fable, Hachi is deeply sentimental, but not in our accustomed sense of gushing tears, swelling music, and forgiving hugs. The Swedish-born Hallström and Buddhist Gere respect their source material too much to cute it up. Look elsewhere if you want catharsis or golden retrievers. And even those who feel unmoved by the canine drama will agree that Hachi is a very good boy.

Hachi: A Dog's Story Cinerama, 6:30 p.m. Sat., June 13 and 12 p.m. Sun., June 14.

Topics: Animals, Arts & Culture, Film, and SIFF 2009

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SIFF Review: The Spy and the Sparrow

Posted June 11 at 6:11 pm by Brian Miller

This woeful local feature can't decide if it wants to be As the World Turns or The Bourne Identity, those being the chief influences, respectively, on its plot and camera work. Retired CIA agent Thomas Sparrow (David Rasche, from the SIFF-opening In the Loop) hasn't seen his daughter in 26 years. Why? Not very clear, especially when Pioneer Square doubles for East Berlin in flashback. Sparrow returns to Seattle to spy on his daughter (Elisabeth Röhm, the lesbian ADA on Law & Order), and the picture ain't pretty: She's a lush, a bit of a slut, a single mother about to loose custody of her young daughter. A cycle of bad parenting is being repeated. Sessions with her therapist (Eric Roberts, warmer than you'd expect) aren't terribly helpful. And the shrink's past CIA connections to Sparrow and the Russian mob aren't terribly clear. Added to the muddle are AA meetings, an estranged half-sister, and a showdown in the empty downtown bus tunnel. (Quite a good location, now unfortunately back in use.) Somewhere, shaking around like the last bean in a coffee tin, there's the irony of a secret agent trying to disclose secrets within his family. But the rest is a fog of flashbacks, purloined letters, and family reconciliation. One wishes for the clarity of Taken, where an overprotective dad proves his love for his daughter by killing as many Albanians as possible. Unfortunately, the lone baddie here is a Russian mobster who sounds Irish. Only Chad Lindberg, as a disheveled, cynical divorce attorney, lends any life to this mess (directed by Garrett Bennett). If his few scenes had been separated from the script (straight to the shredder, please), there might've been the seeds for a decent courtroom comedy—with nary a spy or a sparrow in sight. (NR) BRIAN MILLER

The Spy and the Sparrow Egyptian, 11 a.m. Sat., June 13.

Topics: Arts & Culture, Film, and SIFF 2009

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