I was doing so well, and then I was very sick for a week, which threw off both my filmgoing and my posting. So now you get the entire second half of SIFF all at once. Lucky you!

* Mothers & Daughters wasn’t a perfect film, but it featured some stunning performances. It follows three vaguely interconnected mother-daughter pairs, and I would have been happy to see entire films on all of them, but particularly Gabrielle Rose & Tantoo Cardinal. It spawned a conversation at the bus stop afterward, even, including a gentleman who found the whole thing too intense and had to leave.

* The second Secret movie was a crazy, colorful flick I wouldn’t have sought out on my own.

* I picked The Missing Person largely because I was interested to see a performance from Michael Shannon, who was apparently *the* reason to see Revolutionary Road. The film is a modern noir, reworking tropes as appropriate. I liked it very much, and would like to see it again since I had a coughing fit & had to miss half of the ending. Apologies to everyone sitting around me; I am much better now!

* The third Secret movie benefited particularly from the Secret set-up, because not knowing the synopsis going in, I wasn’t waiting for the ‘hook’.

* I took one for the team and saw Humpday. It’s mind-blowingly popular in Seattle, partly because it’s from Seattle director Lynn Shelton, and partly because Seattle apparently loves its mumblecore. I have no idea why. The film is funny enough and Mark Duplass is exceptionally charming, but it isn’t nearly as revolutionary as it thinks it is. Trading on straight white male privilege is not art, kids, and it’s certainly not shocking.

* The Dark Harbor is a Japanese film about a lonely fisherman who discovers a woman and young boy have moved into his closet. He chooses to let them stay, and the result is a sweet and tender film. Outstanding, actually, since I just saw that this is a first feature from the writer/director. Confidential to the guy who sat behind me: we get that you think it’s funny. You do not need to guffaw and stomp your feet. Also, don’t crow “oh, I know what’s going to happen!” Guess what. You didn’t. So shut up.

* Don’t Let Me Drown was a high school love story, set in post 9/11 New York. It’s a simple story, well told.

* I picked Lovely Loneliness because it starred Inés Efron, who was marvelous in last year’s XXY. This film was a romantic comedy of sorts, with Efron as the neurotic lead. Well-acted, visually beautiful (I *want* her apartment!), and quirky (in a good way).

* Never one to pass up a revival film if I can possibly help it, I got to see a Once Upon a Time in the West. Fantastic, obviously.

* The final Secret movie I guessed based on clues the programmer gave the week before. Does this make me a gigantic nerd? Yes, probably. But I was glad to see it.

Take the Money and Run was one of this week’s 69 series films. I was so jealous of a group of folks at this screening — it looked like a dad & teenage son, and then two of the teen’s friends. I always am jealous when parents bring kids to revival film (or, really, anything that’s not the prepackaged cereal-and-action-figures tie-in sort of thing) because that never would have happened in my “most film is immoral and indecent and a waste of time and money” family.

They were sitting in front of me, so I got to hear their conversation: if any of them had seen any Allen before, and then it somehow drifted off into Shakespeare in Love (which one of the teens didn’t like because it was too funny & made a joke of Romeo & Juliet, which is actually my problem with Baz’s version), and then complaints about it winning over Saving Private Ryan (which entertained me, because that was a topic of discussion in a friend’s journal the day before.))

The film itself is great, one of the original mockumentaries, with a snappy script & fantastic sight gags. It’s the first film he wrote *and* directed *and* starred in, and as such is essential Allen.

Probably the best thing about State of Play was Helen Mirren; also the direction, Russell Crowe & his long hair, the Great Big Sea needle drop, and the set decoration (this is not meant to be damning with faint praise; the sets, particularly for Cal’s office & the newsroom, were fantastic). Unsurprisingly, UK miniseries is much richer & more satisfying. It’s sort of unavoidable when you take 6 hours down to 2. The film is solid, though, and Jason Bateman’s supporting turn as Dominic Foy is fabulous.

I was doing so well for a while there, but I guess when I wasn’t seeing something every other day I forgot to keep this up. But SIFF is coming — the schedule is out next week! — so this is a good time to clean up this file.

* Putney Swope was another one of those 69 series movies I wouldn’t have seen if I didn’t have the full series pass, so I’m glad I did. It was interesting as a cultural artifact, and I did laugh, but I also spent a lot of time thinking “I see what you did there, but I’d be more interested if the writer-directer wasn’t white.” Maybe that’s just me.

* Sullivan’s Travels, however, was unquestionably great. It’s a meta-picture about the Hollywood system & the Depression (timely, that!), though I must admit a large part of why I wanted to see it is that the film Sully wants to make all through it? O Brother, Where Art Thou.

* The Class was fantastic, and yet another movie to make me Very Bitter that I speak about three words of French. You *know* that the subtitles left out about 90% of the material. It’s a year-in-a-classroom film based on the book by François Bégaudeau, who also plays a version of himself. The setting might make it easy to dismiss, but it’s not just Les Minds Dangereuses. I was particularly interested in the immigrant make-up of the class and the tensions that creates, and I loved how complex François was — he makes mistakes & decisions that could turn the audience against him. Finally, it’s interesting that the entire film takes place within the school, within the year. As an audience you experience the same frustration the staff does of only knowing a fraction of a student’s life.

* I haven’t seen Rear Window in years, so I was pleased about the opportunity to see it on the big screen in a full theater. It’s still a great movie. Obviously. And now I will use my icon of Kris Marshall in the Rear Window episode of “My Life in Film.”

In other news, due to total calendar reading fail, I missed Fellini’s Satyricon & The Damned. I am totally bitter about this, which is ridiculous in the grand scheme of things.

All I knew going into Paint Your Wagon is that it was a not-great musical western where Clint Eastwood sings. Things I did not know: that Lee Marvin has all the best lines ever, that the singing was bad but also endearing, and that it featured a sight gag that still makes me giggle when I think of it, as well as a surprisingly complex threesome, though not at the same time. I enjoyed the hell out of it, in a guilty sort of way.

It’s showing with The Wild Bunch, which is basically the polar opposite Western. It takes place at the end of the Wild West, a pretty violent film about an aging gang taking one more job. Excellent, but I do wish the Spanish had been subtitled.

Finally, this week they also screened The Rain People, a 16mm print sent from Australia, with gorgeous color but somewhat lacking in sound quality. An early Coppola, it’s the film basically responsible for American Zoetrope, which is the company Coppola and Lucas founded to make films outside of the traditional studio system. It’s in the tradition of an American road movie, but with a woman in the lead. Shirley Knight is Natalie who, dissatisfied in her marriage, hits the road & encounters bits of the country in the company of James Caan (as a brain-damaged ex football player) and eventually Robert Duvall. One of my favorite things about it was the incorporation of flashback to show us moments from various character’s memories, suddenly and without fanfare, just as memory actually operates.

On with 2009!

* Doubt. I did not realize until JUST NOW that John Patrick Shanley also wrote and directed Joe Versus the Volcano. That is hilarious. Now I am really sad that SPL doesn’t have a copy. I might have to reactivate my Netflix account now. As for the actual movie, I quite dug it. I haven’t seen the play to compare, however.

* Amarcord. Gorgeous & raunchy & touching. Love!

* Easy Rider. Not the first time I’d seen it, but the first time on the big screen. Deservedly a classic.

* Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is one of my favorite movies of all time, and so it was such a treat to be able to see it on the big screen.

* Let the Right One In. Second time. Still cold, still sweet, still too good to even be mentioned in the same sentence as That Other Vampire Story That Is All Popular Right Now.

* Elevator to the Gallows was the only title in SIFF’s French Crime Wave series that I made it to, but at least I made it to one! Which is good, as it is fantastic, beautiful & tragic, totally tense and engaging.

* Alice’s Restaurant. This movie makes me so glad I bought a 69 series pass. Would I have managed to drag myself over to the Film Forum & pay $10 to see it Thursday night? No. But as it was already paid for, I had no trouble at all. It’s a time capsule of a movie, strange and funny and sad. I’m glad I went.

* Che. (Part one, part two.)  Seattle’s one of ten or so cities to get the roadshow edition of this film, and we are so lucky. I have been following it since Cannes, through the struggle to get distribution without having to chop it up, and finally the decision to release it in two parts, but roadshow it as a four-and-a-half hour film. To see it that way was a gift.

* Synedoche, New York. I am sorry I did my best of 08 before I saw this movie. I am sorry I saw it on its last day at the second run theater. I am sorry I did not turn around immediately and see it again, even though I have no idea how I would have gotten home. I can’t stop thinking about it.

On a mostly unrelated note, the tshirt I made this avatar from has been reprinted at Threadless. Finally I was able to buy one! Yay.

…which was really just four days.

* Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red [Tennis] Shoes. The thing about this documentary is that, though I enjoyed it, I still don’t feel as though I know anything about Mr. Keillor. Which I’m not particularly surprised by. I had added it to my schedule precisely because I find him pretty enigmatic. I guess I got what I deserved. It was really more illuminating regarding the other members of the PHC cast and the process of putting that show together than it is about Keillor.

* Cherry Blossoms: Hanami was the Golden Space Needle Audience Award winner, and deservedly so. It’s a wonderfully paced story of aging and the challenges of family, tender and moving, and difficult to talk about without giving too much away. One thing I can say is that I found it interesting to get a non-American outsider view of Japan for a change.

* The screening of Sunrise was one of those special SIFF experiences I get every few years. They showed it at the Triple Door, with a live score written and performed by The Album Leaf. So cool! It’s a fantastic movie anyway, one of the last silents, and ranked on the AFI 100. It’s utterly gorgeous, with dreamy cinematography, limited (but beautifully executed) title cards, and in-camera created effects of superimposed images that are just mindblowing when you consider the technology of the time. And the story’s great too — a fable of a couple losing each other and finding each other again.

* I’m not sure that I can say I liked Faces, but I can see objectively what is good about it. I just found it personally exhausting. I think this is okay.

* Jeremy Podeswa was one of the Emerging Masters at the festival this year. Fugitive Pieces is his new film, and my second Stephen Dillane movie of the festival. It’s based on the book by Anne Michaels, which I have not read, and is utterly gorgeous. It hit all my buttons of history and memory and storytelling, all wonderfully acted and beautifully shot. (Oh my goodness. Rachel Lefevre, who has a minor role in this film, is Annie in the American remake of “Life on Mars”. A show, by the way, which will definitely be terrible. Seek out the original — it’s worth the effort.)

* My last film of the festival, Triangle, is a basically-insane exquisite corpse Hong Kong action flick, told in three acts by three different directors. Johnnie To takes the final third, and though it is stretching it to suggest he makes sense of it, he certainly provides us with an entertaining ending.

* The Red Awn still doesn’t exist on the IMDb, apparently. It’s written and directed by Cai Shangjun, the writer of Shower and Spicy Love Soup, both of which I also enjoyed, particularly Shower. This was a father-son reunion story of sorts, set among migrant harvesters in rural China, and a beautifully-shot trip into a world that I really don’t know anything about. Which is part of the point of film, yes?

* My first animated feature was Nocturna, part of the Films 4 Families portion of the festival. It’s a Spanish & French film that’s been described as a cross between Monsters, Inc & Miyazaki, which is a pretty fair assessment, actually. It’s an utterly charming story about an orphan who loses his star, and discovers the system that makes night as we know it happen. The version I saw was dubbed, but I thought it was well cast. And how can you not love a movie where one of the characters is a cat shepherd? I ask you.

* The only midnight movie on my schedule this year was Epitaph. It’s a little disjointed, but it had some really great scares, and is beautifully filmed. It’s a solid first film from the directors, who have scads of potential.

* Sita Sings the Blues is, hands down, my favorite film of the festival so far. I need it out *now*, so I can force everyone I know to see it. It’s the Indian epic of Ramayana as told from memory by friends of the director, animated, turned into a musical with tunes performed by Annette Hanshaw from 1929ish, with an autobiographical thread from the director. The interplay between all of the texts, the way the epic comments on the music, it makes my toes curl. Plus it uses several different styles of animation, and the most mindblowing thing? It was animated over the course of five years by the director alone. It is full-on amazingness. I need to own it, like, yesterday.

* There’s always a few revival features at the festival, and this year we have the 40th anniversary of Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, which I hadn’t seen since I was in high school, and certainly never on the big screen. Obviously the amazing thing with this film is it does what you could never do in a theater — cast the leads crazy young. Editing and ADR enable the creation of a performance that could never exist on stage. And the effect is heartbreaking. (Also, oh man, Mercutio! I have so much love always for that role.)

* Finally, my first documentary was a local piece, A Wink and a Smile. It follows a group of students through a burlesque class in Seattle. Our screening was the world premiere, and though it was not *quite* as insane as last year’s Blood on the Flat Track premiere (for one thing, no one took photos of the screen), it was pretty amazing. The documentary itself was fabulous, blending history, the Seattle scene, and the development of the class as they worked their way towards their graduation performance. It almost made me want to try burlesque. Almost.

* First off, did I forget to post about For the Bible Tells Me So? I am thinking I did! Fail. Every year at the film festival there are movies I hear about in line, but never manage to see. For the Bible Tells Me So was 07′s, and now I understand why. I’ve seen a lot of queer-themed documentaries, and even a few others on gays-and-religion, but this one was easily the best. American-focused, of course.

* On a recommendation from a friend, I queued Shackleton, the story of the 1914 trip of the Endurance to the South Pole. Beautifully filmed & acted. It is long, yes, but I thought it was well-paced. I have to admit I was particularly taken with all the scenes including the men singing, showing how they passed the time at sea. Also, I have to give a shout-out to Matt Day who played the photographer Frank Hurley. He’s in one of my favorite comfort movies, the criminally underrated Love and Other Catastrophes (which seriously needs to come out on DVD soon, before my VHS wears out.) Oh! It was also neat to see it after going to the Maritime Museum in Greenwich this summer — they have the replica of the James Caird used in the film.

* The Lion in Winter was utterly delicious. I’m just sorry that there wasn’t a revival of it to pair with last winter’s big screen adventure with Becket.

* Kiss of Death was in my queue already after Noir City, but I bumped it to the top after the death of Richard Widmark in late March. It’s a solid enough noir on its own, but (as everyone knows) it’s Widmark’s portrayal of the villain Tommy Udo that makes it particularly worth seeing.

* The week after Widmark passed, his Night and the City director Jules Dassin died, so Rififi moved on up the queue. I wrote a bit about Dassin on the ephemeral blog already, but in between the two films, he was blacklisted, which is why Rififi was filmed in France. It’s *the* classic heist film, worth seeing for lots of things, but in particular for the heist itself, something like a half hour with no dialogue but an excellent score. Um. No pun intended. This is not a hijinks sort of heist movie. It’s very dark.

* The Best of Youth was a six hour Italian film, originally aired on television in four parts, and then as an edited version in the theater. I am a total sucker for any sort of epic family history piece, and this was beautiful and satisfying. Also, I might now have a bit of a crush on Luigi Lo Cascio.

* Toy Story, I realize, is sort of a random selection, but I’m in a group on Ravelry that’s working through the AFI Top 100. I actually hadn’t seen it in years, possibly not since shortly after it came out on video, and I was surprised to see how well it stands up. The animation is still strong (my favorite bits being the details like scuff marks at the bottom of doors), the story has a lot of great stuff going on, and probably the use of classic toys helps it feel all the more timeless. But the thing I noticed most about it this time around is that Andy’s is a single parent household. His mom cares for him & his sister, maintains a gorgeous home, plans his birthday and the family move, and there’s never a mention of a father. So cool!

Being in Seattle, I also get to see Old Stuff on the Big Screen. It RULES.

The Prowler was part of this season’s Noir City festival. I enjoyed it a lot. It’s a corrupt cop story, and I particularly liked that I never knew where it was going, right up to the end. That happens less than you’d think.

It was a double feature with Gun Crazy (with a young Russ Tamblyn in the prologue!) A forerunner to Bonnie & Clyde, with two fantastic leads, and some really great camerawork for the time, particularly with the getaway scenes.

Another night of noir featured Richard Widmark in Night and the City and Road House, the first of which is pretty much the ultimate noir role, and the second of which was a rather strange movie but totally engaging.

Finally, Cinerama ran Lawrence of Arabia again, and how could I resist? The first time I saw it for the whole package, this time I saw it for the visuals. Maybe next time I’ll watch it for the dialogue. It was best not to do that this time, as the sound dropped out for a bit near the intermission. Fail, Cinerama, fail.

Can I say anything about Lawrence of Arabia that hasn’t been said before? No. I cannot. All I can say is that I have waited years for the opportunity to see it in a theater, flat-out refusing to see it on video, and that it was well worth the wait.

I can’t find any evidence of this now, but I could swear that when it was up on the Cinerama website it said it was the first in a series of 70mm films they were going to present. I hope that is true, because it would be totally awesome.