Hey folks, Harry here with the fabulous and mysterious Secret Asian Anne and her report from that town of limitless coffee beans and the grinders to match. That's right, Seattle! Here she is with a look at the Gore Vidal documentary, that strangely unknown Bubba Ho-Tep flick and a response review of DOMINOES. Without further hub bub, here's the lady...
Hey Harry,
Secret Asian Anne here again with more bits from SIFF.
Here's some stuff I've caught on days 3, 4, and 5.
Saw a couple of pseudo-duds today so I'll not mention
those -they weren't so bad that I would disrecommend
them, but both felt incredibly long. Now it's 2:00
a.m. and there are only so many times I can "call in
sick" to work before they'll catch on, so I'll stick
to reviewing the flicks that I dug and would recommend
seeing.
The Education of Gore Vidal
I have to admit first off that I haven't yet read
anything by Mr. Vidal, and of course it would seem a
rather odd choice to go and see this documentary since
I wasn't very familiar with the subject at all. But,
it was a fascinating documentary and I found it
totally interesting all the way through, which is
pretty good since I didn't go into it with much
background info on Vidal. Some of the clips included
archival footage from Vidal's high profile
congressional candidacy days, readings of excerpts of
his works by various actors, and interviews Vidal has
given throughout his career, including the notoriously
heated exchange between him and William F. Buckley.
The clips from interviews were some of my favorite
parts, as were the interviews Vidal did for this film
specifically. After the opening credits, the film
opens with Vidal strolling around his villa in
Ravello, Italy, and he says, "I moved to Italy so I
would be left alone to write." True enough and quite
understandable, but it was amusing to see that he does
actually love to be in the spotlight and on camera.
Director Deborah Dickson was in attendance and there
was a short Q&A session at the conclusion of the
screening. She mentioned that she was really nervous
initially when she embarked upon this project, because
she knew she would have to be incredibly well-prepared
in order to interview Vidal. Looks like she did a
pretty good job, she got some great interviews out of
Vidal and overall the documentary was very well
put-together. Worth checking out if you get the
chance. Even if you arenÃt already a big Vidal fan,
you may become one after seeing this film, and
hopefully you will at least learn some interesting
stuff. I know I did.
Bubba Ho-tep
Well, I know you've already gotten quite a few reviews
of this but it's fabulous so let me just chime in with
a few more words about it! Managed to catch the
midnight screening Saturday night, and it is a major
bummer that SIFF isn't having more than one screening
for this because I'm sure both of them would be
packed. It was geekfest mayhem the other night - the
lines, both ticketholders and passholders, wrapped
around the sides of the Egyptian. I was beginning to
sweat over whether I'd gotten in line early enough
because they only let in x number of passholders for
each screening but they never seem to say before hand
just how many it will be- so right before they let us
in they said they were letting in 44 passholders and
there were probably over 100 in line at that point.
gasp! fortunately I was somewhere in the 20's so I
didn't have to kick anybody's ass to get in. phew.
There was, however, plenty o' wheelchair walker cane
bedpan ass kickin' in the movie! You know oftentimes
there are token senior citizen roles in movies that
are supposed to be all funny because they keep
falling, or they keep breaking their hips or whatever,
but it gets kinda old (no pun intended. um, yeah.)
-cuz that's all they do - fall a lot and injure
themselves. Well, there's certainly a fair amount of
falling and hip cracking here, but how often are the
senior citizens Elvis and JFK, spearing gigantic
cockroaches with forks and kicking cowboy mummy ass?!
Bruce Campbell was alarmingly and excellently
convincing as an old Elvis, and Ossie Davis was
fantabalistic as Mr. Kennedy. Run don't walk to
whatever screening you can find of this movie!
Would you like a chocolate ding dong?
Dominoes
Man, what is with the dude who wrote in calling this a
"pretentious load"??!! I'm not generally a fan of
romantic comedies due to their sunny nature and
happily ever endings, but this flick was dark and
sarcastic and full of dialogue that people are
generally afraid to put in movies. Inter-changeable
twenty-somethings they were most definitely not.
Relationships do suck. People always make movies
about relationships not sucking, or relationships
sucking for a while but then not sucking at the end.
THAT's what *I'm* tired of seeing. It's great to see
a film about relationships in which the characters
actually have issues that aren't cut and dried - the
whole dating thing is confusing, you're always
wondering what the other person is thinking, or it
seems like they're always doing something stupid to
ya, or maybe you're making too many demands on them,
or maybe you bat for the other team momentarily and
you flip out -cuz then you don't know what you want
anymore... maybe these things are kinda out there for
most people... or maybe these things are just beneath
the surface for many of us and people usually just
don't talk about it. With 10 lead characters,
Dominoes doesn't follow one single narrative plot like
a traditional film... it's a little bit Slacker-esque,
moving from character to character, with several mini
plot lines that intertwine with each other. A
well-executed feature made in Seattle.
Welp, that's it for now. Hopefully i'll be checking
in some more later this week with some South Korean
films and a few flicks from Hong Kong.
ta,
Secret Asian Anne
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