Saturday Night At The Movies — Seattle Film Festival wrap up

Saturday Night At The Movies

by digby

SIFFting through cinema: It’s a wrap

By Dennis Hartley

A Man Within–Smack, baby, smack.

The 2010 Seattle International Film Festival is wrapping up its 24 day run of 405 films this weekend (ow, my ass). As usual, I didn’t catch every film that I originally planned to, but a few of them unexpectedly “caught” me, as it were (with such an overwhelming catalog, sometimes you’ve just gotta say “WTF, Joel” and throw a dart at the schedule). So, what can I say about SIFF 2010? I laughed, I cried, I circled endlessly for non-existent street parking or paid exorbitant fees to price-gouging downtown Seattle parking garages (I know this goes against the grain of the urban hipster elitism that permeates such events, but for once, I’d like to see someone put on a film festival wherein all the venues are located in, say, mall theaters-you know…where the goddam parking lots are). But hey…I do this happily, dear reader-so that you don’t have to (you buyin’ this crap?).

Miss Nobody: The bad sleep well.

“Black comedy” is a fickle art form. Too dark-nobody laughs. Too ha-ha funny, and it’s merely comedy. One thing that does not work for black comedy is “cute”-although it can provide a touch of irony, if the doses are very carefully measured (see John Waters). Miss Nobody, which premiered at SIFF this week, is just flat out too cute for its own purposes.

Leslie Bibb stars as mousy (but cute) secretary Sarah Jane, a “nobody” in the food chain at a large pharmaceutical company. At the urging of her workplace confidante (Missi Pyle) she applies for an open junior executive position. Much to her surprise, she gets the job-only to have it snatched from her at the last possible moment by a weaselly, Machiavellian corporate climber (Brandon Routh) who offers her a job as his executive assistant with transparently smarmy sincerity. Sarah Jane swallows her humiliation and disappointment and takes the offer anyway. Her mother (Kathy Baker) sees a silver lining, urging her to go ahead and dig for the gold. What the hell, Sarah Jane figures, if she can hook up with her new boss, she can at least become “Mrs.” Machiavellian corporate climber (besides-he’s, you know, “cute”). Her “plan B” however is dashed when, in the midst of putting the moves on her in his apartment late one night, her boss lets it slip that he already has a fiancée. While physically struggling to put the kibosh on his amorous advances, Sarah Jane inadvertently causes his death by freak accident. She is still in shock the next morning when she goes to work, fully expecting to be “found out” any moment. She receives an even bigger shock when she is called into the chief executive’s office, not to be turned over to the authorities, but to be congratulated on her new promotion-to her late boss’ position. The little gears in her brain begin to click, and a more sinister “plan B” for climbing the corporate ladder emerges. What a kooky setup!

It’s been a while since I sat so stone-faced through a “comedy”. I could sense that director Tim Cox and writer Doug Steinberg were going for a Serial Mom vibe, but their film plays more like a glorified episode of Sex in the City, right down to the chirpy narration by the protagonist. Cox’s film has a slick, glossy look, but the flat and predictable storyline drags it down. Even the usually dependable Adam Goldberg (or as I like to call him, “Gen Y’s Joey Bishop”) can’t save this one. The film also seemed awfully similar to a 1997 indie starring Carol Kane, called Office Killer (which I rather enjoyed). Maybe it’s just bad timing-the employment situation is grim enough these days.

Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, Rebel – Puka shell necklace optional.

SIFF featured some great documentaries this year. Here’s a couple more to watch for:

Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, Rebel– Did you know Ray Bradbury was only paid $400 for the original serialized version of Fahrenheit 451 published in Playboy in 1954? That’s one of the interesting tidbits I picked up from this lengthy yet absorbing documentary about the iconoclastic founder and publisher of the magazine that I, personally, have always read strictly for the articles (of clothing that were conspicuously absent-no, I’m kidding). Seriously-there’s little of prurient interest here. In a manner of speaking, it’s mostly about “the articles”. Brigitte Berman (director of the excellent 1985 documentary Artie Shaw: Time is All You’ve Got) interweaves well-selected archival footage and present day interviews with Hefner and friends (as well as some of his detractors) to paint a fascinating portrait. Whether you admire him or revile him, as you watch the film you come to realize that there is probably no other public figure of the past 50 years who has so cannily tapped in to or (perhaps arguably) so directly influenced the sexual, social, political and pop-cultural zeitgeist of liberated free-thinkers everywhere.

William S. Burroughs: A Man Within– Director Yony Leyser has shouldered an ambitious undertaking for his debut feature-attempting to decipher one the more enigmatic literary figures of the 20th century. As he so beautifully illustrates in his film, William S. Burroughs was much more than just a gifted writer or one of the founding fathers of the Beats; he was like some cross-generational counterculture/proto-punk Zeus, from whose head sprung Hunter S. Thompson, Lester Bangs, Ken Kesey, William Gibson, Terence McKenna, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Jim Carroll and Kurt Cobain. Yet, there was an evasive, almost alien “otherness” to him, not to mention a questionable personal history. As John Waters so glibly points out in the film, he “…was a hard guy to like”, referring to Burroughs the junkie, gun nut and wife-killer (accident, so the legend goes). Leyser gathers up all of these conflicting aspects of Burroughs’ makeup and does an admirable job at providing some insights. There’s a lot of rare archival footage, mixed in with observations from friends and admirers like Laurie Anderson, David Cronenberg, Iggy Pop, Jello Biafra, Patti Smith and Peter Weller (who also narrates). Recommended!

And now, if you would please bow your head and join me in prayer:

Update by digby: How about a hand of applause for Dennis’ Bataan death march through this huge festival to bring the highlights to the masses? I, for one, am in awe. I haven’t seen that many movies in such a short time since sometime in 1986 — and I had the help of stimulants.

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