SIFF is making a big deal out of snagging local director Lynn Shelton's Humpday for its Northwest Connections program; it'll be the SIFF Centerpiece Gala on Friday, June 5, and hopefully help raise money to help SIFF pay for their office relocation to the Seattle Center's Alki Room. We saw--and liked-- the "mumblecore bromance" Humpday at Sundance. We'll assume you know the HumpFest backstory. The "local" emphasis of the Northwest Connections program makes for a grab-bag experience: Sundance hit The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle will rub elbows with the filmed-in-Wallingford World's Greatest Dad, starring Robin Williams, and Sandy Cioffi's documentary, Sweet Crude. more ›

On Thursday, we saw a final two films at Sundance before getting the hell out of Dodge Utah. First up was Adam, an unconventional love story that was flying way under the festival radar until it sold to Fox Searchlight late Monday night.

Writer-director Max Meyer has crafted a tender and wistful film about the title character, a cute, wide-eyed, outer-space-obsessed twenty-nine-year-old man who happens to have Asperger's. It's delicate in its treatment of the syndrome, as well as the romance that develops between Adam (Hugh Dancy) and his new neighbor, Beth (Rose Byrne). Adam is a charming, unexpectedly moving film, and Meyer pulls no punches. Just like all of us, Adam has a deep desire for connection and intimacy, independent of his condition.

Our last film of the fest was Unmade Beds, a British flick in the style of L'Auberge Espagnole.In a London art space/communal loft, young people move in and out, crashing on mattresses where they can. The film focuses on the storylines of two of the squatters: Axl, from Madrid who is trying to track down his absentee father (when he's not having drunken blackouts), and Vera, a French girl trying to get over her ex (when she's not still thinking about him). Alexis Dos Santos infuses the film with playful direction, and lots of music and energy, including several live performances by indie British bands. But ultimately, we were a lot more interested in Vera's story than Axl's. Hell, we were more interested in all the other goings-on in the apartment than poor, boring Axl.

As to the festival itself, it was delightfully more low-key than in previous years (last year in particular was ridiculously overcrowded). The economic downturn kept the yahoos away, the industry asshole numbers down, and the movie tickets relatively readily available. But it is more than a little disconcerting to see Main Street looking like something out of 28 Days Later--in past years, it was perpetually crowded, day or night. Thankfully we didn't run into Mike Tyson, nor the Real Housewives of Atlanta's Kim Zolciak (whom we find equally terrifying). This year really was about the movies, and for that we are grateful. Sundance, we love you, and we'll see you next year. more ›

The main event last night was billed as "An Evening with Steven Soderbergh," but everyone knew he'd be showing his new film, The Girlfriend Experience. Steven himself commented on this presumed fact, saying that he didn't know how these rumors got started...and then he showed the new movie. Unlike Che, Girlfriend Experience (or at least the work-in-progress version we saw) is only about eighty minutes long, and made for a little under $2M in just over two weeks last October. Like Bubble, it's another one of Soderbergh's digital films, and it's his most non-linear story-telling since The Limey. more ›

Of course everyone in Park City is excited about Obama. At every chance they get, the Sundance staff member announcing the film makes a comment about our new president and/or our ceremonial dumping of the old one, to great applause. The morning screenings today have been lightly attended, with folks staying in to catch the inauguration. Not us, though; we'll catch that shit on YouTube. We've got movies to watch! more ›

January means one thing, and that's Sundance. This is actually our fourth year in attendance, and this time around, the festival is extra-super-dee-duper green. Which means Brita is handing out reusable (and BPA-free) Nalgene bottles, and you can't find a plastic bag to save your life. Seems that the economy is even taking its toll on Hollywood; compared to previous years, there's not as much swag, fewer press and industry folks are around, and audience figures are, we've been told, about 60 percent of normal. Well, we're still here, and so far we've seen four films. more ›

Hi, Seattlest readers waiting bemusedly for your Neighborhood News and Local Blog Round-up. We're mixing it up and moving NN&LBR-u to the afternoon so we can deliver fresher links, rather than the day-old variety. So look for that later on today. In the meantime, you've got a few minutes, why not enjoy a doughnut? Also, this week, we've got Inauguration news coming from our sister site DCist (and the crazy kids at Chicagoist who road-tripped out)--and we've sent Seattlest Audrey off to Sundance to sneak a peek at a bunch of films that will no doubt show up later this spring at SIFF.God it's exciting. Now excuse us while we show our doughnut--a glazed old-fashioned, if you must know--who's boss. more ›

The stats geeks at Deconstructing Sundance aim to be the FiveThirtyEight of the film festival world by predicting the future box office success of Sundance films, using the words in their festival guide descriptions (and a Bayesian algorithm) alone. Example: 62% of Sundance competition films in the last 15 years whose descriptions included the words "gay," "gays," or "homosexual" went on to commercial success. So "gay" becomes a positive indicator of success, and so on and so forth. more ›

Recently, we've been spending a lot of time talking about films not yet (if ever) released, but now it's time to turn our focus back to movies actually playing in theaters. Nanking, a moving documentary about the 1937 Japanese invasion of the titular Chinese town, won an editing award at last year's Sundance and also played SIFF 2007. Now the film begins its theatrical run in Seattle this Friday, February 1st. more ›

The last film we caught at the festival was The Visitor, written and directed by Tom McCarthy, best known for his 2003 Sundance darling The Station Agent. Like the previous film, McCarthy's sophomore piece is a well-crafted work about how people from disparate backgrounds can come together and form an unconventional family. Walter Vale, an uptight widower and bored college econ professor, has totally shut down and withdrawn from everything in his life, but when he heads to NYC for a conference, he finds a young Muslim couple, Tarek and Zaineb, living in his usually-empty apartment. He takes pity on them and lets them stay, and a friendship develops--until Tarek becomes a victim of racial profiling and is sent to an immigrant detention center, and Walter decides to take responsibility for his new friends. The Visitor is such a quintessential indie picture: the cast, led by Richard Jenkins, is strong, the writing is elegant, and the cinematography is simple yet effective. Most importantly, the film doesn't beat you over the head with immigration issues or over-the-top commentary on the war on terror. The messages here are nuanced, and conveyed more through subtle camerawork than bloviated speechifying. Thank god. more ›

We had heard a lot of good buzz going into Sunshine Cleaning, starring the perpetually lovable and talented Amy Adams and the nearly as up-and-coming Emily Blunt as sisters who break into the lucrative niche growth industry of crime scene cleanup. Dealing with the literal blood, guts, and body fluids of the recently departed forces the ladies to examine some of the biohazards in their own lives. Wackiness and personal growth ensues. Unfortunately, the movie is good but not great, and the rest of the audience seemed to like it a lot more than we did. With a cute kid and Alan Arkin in tow as the sisters' crotchety dad, director Christine Jeffs is totally aiming for Little Miss Sunshine Cleaning, but with a wisp of a script and a couple overwrought scenes, this film ain't making it to the pageant. more ›

, columnist Joel Connelly blithely goes along with the argument that if Prop. 1--the tax-heavy plan to breathe funding-life into the Regional Transportation Improvement District (RTID)--fails, the entire region will continue tottering along to complete and total transportation infrastructure collapse. more ›

Well, after two full days of filmery, we made it back from Toronto in one piece, but not before seeing our last movie of the fest, Sean Penn's powerful adaptation of Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer's mega-selling non-fiction book about the insatiable wanderlust that led a young man to drop out of society, tramp around the country for two years, and ultimately die alone in middle-of-nowhere Alaska (for a more detailed summary, check out the paperback's cover). more ›

It's SIFF's last bleary-eyed, numb-assed, popcorn-butter-fingered weekend, so if you haven't stopped in for some film-festy fun, you gotta act fast. We held Audrey upside-down and shook her until she gave us some selections -- no, no, you deserve the best. There's no telling how far we'd go to make you happy. more ›

We are, in fact, over half-way there, and yet we continue to live on a prayer--a prayer that the latter half of SIFF contains nearly as many fine films as what's been shown thus far. Seattlest applies our well-honed knowledge of all things cinema to the SIFF catalogue in order to point out some notable films playing this weekend: more ›

Memorial Day weekend is finally behind us, so it's time to settle into SIFF. Yes, it's absolutely lovely outside, but Seattleites can only handle so much sun. Get away from all that UVA/UVB exposure and spend your time in the theaters' comfortable darkness. more ›

Now that the opening gala has kicked off SIFF all proper-like, it's time to join the orgy of cinema for the next 25 days. For all film screenings, the general/member ticket prices are $10/$8 (and matinees $7/$5), except for gala screenings, which are $25/$23, and the closing night film event, which is $40/$35. more ›

At long last, after months and months of announcements and press releases, it's finally time to kick off the 33rd annual Seattle International Film Festival. Tonight's the opening gala event (7pm), held for the first time at SIFF's swanky new digs at McCaw Hall. This year's opening night film--Son of Rambow--much like last year's, falls somewhere in between previous year's selections, including the mawkish abomination that is The Notebook and the precious artsy genius of Me and You and Everyone We Know. Rambow won't be out in U.S. theaters until 2008, so this screening is way early, offering you the ability come next year to sigh and say to your lesser-connected friends, "Son of Rambow? Oh, I saw that last spring." more ›

As the world holds it's breath, teetering precariously on the cusp of the Super Bowl (well, at least in America), the wheels of the -ists keep on turning. more ›

In some ways, we wish we could experience Sundance every week, but on the other hand, we're pretty f-ing exhausted. So it's a good thing that this is our last day here. We've had a great time with both the movies and the festival-goers. We've had film discussions with strangers everywhere we went, we've argued with film critics, and we've interacted with some really remarkable people, including two Lauras from Portland, a Bermudan film festival programmer, and a wonderfully chatty fag from NYC. Normally, we hate people. We tend to avoid meeting new people (most of them suck), and we definitely aren't prone to striking up discussions with strangers. But at Sundance it's different. Film really can bring us all together. more ›

Oh Sundance, has it been a year already since last we ventured to your snowy, film-filled climes? We had barely touched ground before we heard the usual gripes: there's less free parking, more expensive tickets, and it was way better back in the day. Of course, this year there's also no Lindsay Lohan in attendance (thanks rehab!), and the big theme is "Focus on Film," which means, amongst other things, "My idea of 'celebrity' is the filmmaker who directed my favorite film at the Festival." Hear, hear. With that in mind, what we've seen in our first ~18 hours: more ›

The end is near. Soon SIFF will be but a fading memory. So if you've been putting it off, this weekend is the last chance until next year for you to get some festival action. As an added bonus, on Sunday night at the Broadway Performance Hall, there will be an encore presentation for two of the films (one short, one full-length) that end up taking home SIFF awards. If you missed 'em the first (and second) time around, be there! more ›

As a wise man once said: "Ohhhh, we're half-way there / Ohhh-oh, living on a prayer." On Wednesday, SIFF officially reached the half-way mark. But it's by no means all downhill from here. There's still tons more great films to see before the fest is through. more ›

Now that Memorial Day weekend is past us, and Folklife and Sasquatch have played their last rain-soaked notes, it's time to focus on the things that really matter: SIFF films. Just for fun, go check out the SIFF 2006 profile on Flickr. It's got a lot of great pics, including a bunch of Jessica Biel looking vacuous and a dozen photos of Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn. Dudes, we understand that you really like his gangster trilogy (Pusher I, II, III), and he's one of your Emerging Masters and all that, but seriously, stop slobbering his knob. A couple photos would've sufficed. more ›

The 32nd annual Seattle International Film Festival kicks things off this evening with their opening night film at the Paramount and associated party at the new MOHAI space (the erstwhile interim Central Library at 8th & Pike). Wanna go as a VIP? Sorry, that's sold out. Already have a ticket and just want a VIP upgrade so you can get valet parking and reserved seating? You're SOL, 'cause that's sold out too. However, tickets are still available for the screening and gala, if you're willing to pay $50 ($40 for SIFF members) for some hors d'oeuvres and a so-so film. more ›

The Harvard Exit hosted one of those first come/first serve free screenings of the new Dan Clowes/Terry Zwigoff film Art School Confidential Monday night. The theater had a special row of seats reserved for the beleaguered hard-working employees of the local funny book factory that published both the screenplay and the original comic book series from which the film derives its material... or so the poor schlubs were led to believe. PSYCHE! Turns out all the reserved seats were somehow snagged before Fanta publisher/founder/mogul Gary Groth arrived with his posse. The Harvard Exit staff asked if everyone in the reserved row was with the Fantagraphics crew, and that's when we noticed, sitting at the end of the aisle, a certain local Christian Fundamentalist/Right Wing propagandist/movie hater... the infamous Michael Medved! more ›

Seattlest had gotten way too accustomed to festival life. Seeing several films a day, taking the occasional break to eat and walk around Main Street, collecting scads of free stuff, sticking around to hear a director speak about his work...it all became the norm. Sadly, it's back to the real world. Thursday was our last day at Sundance. Even though we were downright exhausted, what with all the movies at midnight followed by early AM wake-ups, we were certainly down for a few more days of constant movie-going. It's gonna be tough to get used to not seeing a couple films back to back, leaving a theater to get back in line at that very same theater. Sigh. more ›

Hey, Seattlest, what are you doing this weekend? more ›

Have we talked about the food at Sundance? Well, perhaps that's because it's nothing to blog home about. Everything's overpriced, there's not much by way of selection, and the service is slooooooow. D'ya want a grande nonfat hazelnut latte before your 8:30am film? "Sorry, we just have 2% milk and the only size we have is tall. That'll be $4." While waiting in line, you can purchase a pre-made sandwich for $6.50 or a banana for $2. Eating in town ain't much better. Yesterday we had some terrible pizza. It was supposed to be mushroom, but really it was cheese with some mushrooms thrown on top before reheating. And though we ordered it by the slice, it still took twenty minutes. Even at the fancier restaurants, you're gonna hafta wait at least an hour to get your food. Ah, if only movies alone could sustain us. more ›

Sundance is a whole other world---a world in which all anyone talks about is movies; a world where you can easily make the acquaintance of a writer for the Cleveland Free Press, a biotech researcher/filmmaker from San Francisco, or an L.A.-based events planner; a world that has as many Blackberries as ski boots. We've found ourselves falling into the festival's "mountain chic" style. We've taken to wearing bright orange vinyl knee-high boots (urban galoshes, if you will), into which we refuse to tuck our jeans---that scourge on fashion be damned! Additionally, we're willingly wearing a knit cap in the winter for the first time in over fifteen years. Why the hell not? Everybody else is. more ›

Our first film-going experience at Sundance got off to an inauspicious start. There we were, fresh off our flight, catching a film in Salt Lake before heading to the festival proper in Park City. We stood around in the wait list line for the requisite two-plus hours to guarantee we got a seat (once the actual ticket holders got theirs, of course). At long last, we entered the theater and took our seats. The lights went down, the credits rolled, this was it! And then---the film's sound went out. And it stayed out. For a half hour. During that time, the film kept running, sans dialogue, while the Sundance staff struggled to figure out what was wrong and the audience grew unruly. Trust us, you do not want to be in a crowd of pissed off Mormons. There were shouts of "this is bullshit!", "turn on the lights!", "turn off the lights!", and the ever-popular "start the movie over!" When we were close to ditching out (as many had), the sound came back, the film was rewound, the audience cheered, and our Sundance experience could begin. This time for reals. more ›