“I’m trapped in a genre I don’t belong in.” So says Victor Tellez, the titular character in Hernán Gerschuny’s witty and winning movie, The Film Critic. Victor is Argentinian but he thinks in French. Why? Because his native tongue is less refined. In a voiceover he explains that he is suffering through la maladie du cinéma. His editor at the local newspaper calls him a “terrorist of taste” because Victor has not written a five star review in two decades.
This week sees the nationwide release of the Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy. As part of the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival, Seattle Screen Scene was lucky enough to sit down with the soundtrack’s composer, Atticus Ross, to talk about the Beach Boys and his own meticulousness in the studio.
Below is an edited version of the twenty minute interview. To hear the complete segment, tune your dial over to Episode 61 of The George Sanders Show podcast. Continue reading “Love & Mercy: The Atticus Ross Interview”
This is part of our coverage of the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival.
Fans of Seattle’s essential record label Sublime Frequencies may already be familiar with the sound of Cambodia’s music scene from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. The country’s music during that time was often a unique blend of Western-style rock and traditional Eastern singing styles. Sublime Frequencies gets a shout out in the credits of John Pirozzi’s documentary Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock & Roll, which tracks the country’s wild regime changes over those years and the concurrent development of their music.
This is part of our coverage of the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival.
Vu is a student photographer, a quiet, contemplative young man who feels more comfortable alone in his dark room than out among the pulsing nightlife of Saigon. His lover, Thanh, however, thrives on the city’s rhythm and spends his evenings bartending at a club. He is also sleeping with the club’s chanteuse, Van, who loves drugs in the night and ballet during the day. These three inhabit director Phan Dang Di’s new film Big Father, Small Father and Other Stories. It’s a bit like a bisexual Jules and Jim with a soundtrack of synths and Vietnamese folk songs.
Continue reading “SIFF 2015: Big Father, Small Father and Other Stories (Phan Dang Di, 2015)”
This is part of our coverage of the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival.
Quello che un uso inutile di cinema. Sounds pretty doesn’t it? But that phrase reads, “What a pointless use of film”. The sentiment and its flowery adornment act as an apt description of Massimo Ali Mohammad’s new movie, Love Among the Ruins. The film begins as a documentary recounting the unlikely discovery of a 90-year-old piece of Italian cinema, found in pristine condition after an earthquake. After fifteen minutes of talking heads and depictions of the restoration process, the documentary cedes the screen to the even more unlikely lost film itself. Unlikely because the whole thing is fake.
Continue reading “SIFF 2015: Love Among the Ruins (Massimo Ali Mohammad, 2015)”
This is part of our coverage of the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival.
Nothing is more boring than listening to someone else explain their dreams. It’s a wholly selfish act, inflicting a narrative of zero consequence upon a hapless listener who will never, ever connect with it. With this handicap in mind, the success of the delightfully oblique A Matter of Interpretation, which is almost entirely about dreams, is even more astonishing.
Continue reading “SIFF 2015: A Matter of Interpretation (Lee Kwangkuk, 2014)”
This is part of our coverage of the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival.
Seoul Searching is set in 1986 at a summer camp created for foreign-born Korean teens to get reacquainted with the culture of their ancestors. Kids from all over the world are flown in to learn of Korean traditions and history. The opening voiceover explains that the program, which was indeed an actual project undertaken by the government, was ultimately abandoned because the unruly youth were too much to handle. Their counselors and teachers could not keep the kids in check. There’s a lot of potential here for comedy in the cultural clash and drama in the generational divide. Unfortunately, Seoul Searching chooses to rely on tired tropes instead of showing us something–frankly, anything–new. Continue reading “SIFF 2015: Seoul Searching (Benson Lee, 2015)”
This is part of our coverage of the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival.
Every four years the best young pianists in the world descend upon Fort Worth, Texas for the Cliburn Competition, the World Series of people playing impossibly complex classical music. The eventual winner is bestowed with an instant career of studio recordings and global performances. The losers get by, biding their time before entering their name again 48 months later. Christopher Wilkinson’s serviceable if occasionally busy documentary tracks roughly a half dozen contestants at the 2013 competition.
Documentaries that shine a light on a specialized subset of society have become so commonplace that it feels as though every two-bit convention and cult oddity has already been unearthed and overexposed. With this saturation comes a familiarity with the narrative’s conventions. To Virtuosity‘s detriment, we can tell just by the camera’s focus who is going to make the finals, long before the names are announced. On the other hand, the film has a natural villain hanging out on the margins and it chooses to let him recede, sidestepping an easy angle. (It would have been a fun bit of schadenfreude to see this confident man fail, however, had he been given more opportunities to hang himself.)
While the film is mostly focused on the performances and the personalities of the pianists (“artists” doesn’t feel like the right word for these technically impressive but creatively quiet individuals) the narrative does find time to wander down a few side avenues. The most interesting thread highlights two different critical analyses of the same performer that basically exposes the whole notion of competition at this expert level as a sham, dependent upon the fickle whims of an older generation the world has already passed by.
Speaking of getting passed by, the most tantalizing story here is the one left untold. What happens to these talented individuals once the competition ends? What paths do these kids follow once they’re considered simply the the sixth best pianist in the world? One character alludes to being dropped back on the street. That is a sequel worth paying to see. Call it Reality.
(Virtuosity plays 5/20 at SIFF Cinema Uptown, 5/21 at the Harvard Exit, 5/24 at Lincoln Square.)
There is a lot to like about Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter. The hypnotic soundtrack by The Octopus Project is a delight. At its center is a wonderful performance from Rinko Kikuchi. Best of all is the premise. The film, based on a true story, is about a Japanese woman who believes the events depicted in her VHS copy of Fargo are real and that somewhere in the Midwest lies a bunch of money, buried in the snow by a bloodied Steve Buscemi.
An engaging opening twenty minutes establishes Kumiko as a fish-out-of-water in her homeland. She steadfastly refuses the hollow aspirations pinned on her by family and society, be they marriage or a cushy job. When tasked with watching a child for a few minutes, Kumiko panics and runs away. Unfortunately, the film becomes much more obvious once she arrives as a fish-out-of-water in America. From here, the movie mostly deals in scenes of the fanatical, clearly demented young woman (we never once explore Kumiko’s very real pain) as she gets a blitz-in-a-blizzard of Minnesota nice. Continue reading “Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (David Zellner, 2014)”
Marty Jackitansky works as a temp at a mortgage company. He takes three-hour breaks, reads comic books at his desk, and orders office supplies so he can flip them for a cash refund. His life is an endless parade of desperate scams that net him $20 here, $30 there, the effort of which is clearly not worth the payoff. But Marty keeps doing it anyway because he believes he’s sticking it to the Man. And because he’s a total moron. Marty is like an adult Butt-head who grew up without a Beavis by his side. He listens to metal, eats terrible microwaveable food, and makes stupid decision after stupid decision.
Marty also happens to be the subject of writer-director Joel Potrykus’s new film, Buzzard. The film begins with a lingering shot of star Joshua Burge’s face. Rarely does the camera leave it for the next ninety minutes. Burge’s excessive features give Marty an alien look, well-suited for his character’s isolation. His bulging eyeballs are frequently deployed to convey Marty’s relentless desperation.
Seattle Screen Scene 