Rankism

By kate on June 25th, 2004

This is an interesting website, about the idea of rankism. More basic than racism or homophobia, rankism is seeing yourself as above another person, and acting accordingly.

On another topic, here are a couple of photos of me taken during the Fremont 5K that I think are pretty good.

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100% Stickler

By kate on June 21st, 2004

Grammar Quiz. Not to brag… OK, to brag a little, I got 100%.

In other news, Steve and I ran the Fremont Fun Run, a 5K race, on Friday evening. I came in at just under 26 minutes, which was a whole minute faster than I expected. I was very pleased (and very exhausted).

I arranged a family picnic at Golden Gardens for Fathers Day yesterday, and it turned out well. The weather was gorgeous and hot, and we relaxed in the shade. We ate tasty bagels and treats, tossed around an aerobie, flew kites, and played cards. It was leisurely.

Just so I’m not posting an entirely braggy-braggy entry, I’ve been stressing out lately because I’m trying to finish a big mosaic for our garden in time for our Canada Day party. I was all set to spend the majority of this weekend on it when I found that all the tile stores in Seattle close at 3 or 4pm on Saturday and AREN’T OPEN on Sunday! Finding this out pretty much crushed my dream of finishing it on time. I’m going tonight after work to get the tiles and will work on it at night this week… but there’s not much of a chance I’ll be able to unveil it this weekend. Damn it all.

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SIFF Journal #3

By kate on June 7th, 2004

Noise
This black comedy stars Ally Sheedy and supermodel Trish Goff (in her first acting role). Joyce (Goff) is a young divorcee who moves into an apartment below Charlotte (Sheedy), who plays loud music at night, makes lots of noise, and drives Joyce nuts.

I thought it was okay, but found Goff really distracting. I’m not sure where she’s from, but some other accent kept creeping out from behind her attempts at an American one. She’s pretty, but also kind of alien, and therefore it was hard to sympathize with her character. I can think of several actresses I would have preferred in the role. Sheedy was good, as always, in her smaller role.

The screenwriter attended the screening, and afterwards he tried to create some mystery as to how much of the events in the movie only happened in Joyce’s head. He’s the expert, I guess, but the movie seemed more straightforward to me.

Rating: 3

Cavedweller
This movie is based on the Dorothy Allison book of the same name. I really like Bastard out of Carolina (both the book and the movie, which incidentally was the first time I took note of Jena Malone). However, Cavedweller was not of the same caliber, despite a good performance by Kyra Sedgwick.

I won’t go into a synopsis of the plot – you can follow the link for that – but in the end, I found the story unsatisfying. I haven’t read the book, so I’m not sure if the fault is with Allison or the screenwriter and director. (I enjoyed High Art, the director’s first movie.) I don’t want to put any big spoilers here, so I’ll just say some of the characters’ decisions didn’t ring true to me. Also, platitudes were sometimes used in place of true emotion.

Rating: 2

Bloom
This is a movie adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses. A little over a year ago, my friend Ryan and I agreed to read Ulysses together, and we started in earnest. However, eventually we both started picking up the book less often, and eventually it just gathered dust. I had gotten about halfway through, I think. Anyway, when I saw Bloom in the SIFF lineup, I decided I should see it as penance.

Luckily for me, it was a good movie. I really can’t say how it would be as a movie if I was not already intimately familiar with the characters, though. The world of Ulysses is such an intense, every-moment, inside-the-head place that I am not able to view the movie outside of that. The filmmakers cut out some scenes, but I don’t think anything major was omitted. The stream-of-consciousness narrative was kept in many places via effective voiceovers. I was surprised to see that things like the streets of Dublin and the Bloom household looked a LOT like I had pictured them! I suppose that’s a credit to Joyce’s powers of description.

Anyway, seeing the film made me renew my intention to finish the book. Especially since there are more saucy bits in the second half…

Rating: 4

Only two more movies next weekend, and then SIFF will be over.

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SIFF Journal #2

By kate on June 1st, 2004

B-Happy
I really felt misled by the blurb for this film. It covers the last half hour or so of the movie… so I kept waiting for something to happen rather than watching what WAS happening. Bad PR aside, the movie was OK but not great. It reminded me of how I felt about Girl With A Pearl Earring – the lead is a beautiful young girl who navigates the rough waters of her life by just going along with what happens. The camera focuses long and lovingly on her pretty face and watches her gaze at things. But ultimately, I thought the character didn’t progress or change at all. In fact, the movie begins and ends with her reciting a very similar monologue that begins: “I’m not afraid of anything.”

Rating: 2

Down to the Bone
An American indie film about a drug-addicted woman, this movie seems better in retrospect. I think that’s because of the excellent performance by Vera Farmiga, who seems destined for a big acting career. Her looks are reminiscent of Cate Blanchett, and she played the part with subtlety and skill. I think my opinion of the movie suffered because I recently read Dry, by Augusten Burroughs, which covers addiction with a similar plot arc. It made Down to the Bone seem less original than it otherwise might have.

Also, a note about the audience. They were really weird. The rest of the SIFF audiences I’ve seen are intentionally very quiet during a movie. I don’t know what happened, but something in the movie seemed to set off the audience, so they would hoot and shriek at unusual parts, and laugh at things that weren’t really funny. People felt they had a license to talk to each other, too; there were a few couples that made audible comments to each other. That probably affected my perception of the movie at the time.

Rating: 3

Anatomy of Hell
A new film by French director Catherine Breillat, who made Fat Girl, which I really liked. This movie was different.

It was more of a philosophical discussion than a plot-based movie. The two main characters, a man and a woman, enter into a bizarre arrangement almost immediately upon meeting and the rest of the movie portrays their discussions and activities. The viewer is not given any prelude or character development beforehand. What I’m trying to say is that you watch this movie with your mind, not your heart.

You may have heard things about this movie. It’s clearly designed to shock and push the envelope. Some topics that are explicitly covered: self-mutilation, various sex acts, menstruation, dominance/submission issues, vulnerability inviting brutality. The male star is Rocco Siffredi, who is a very famous (straight) porn star. He plays a misogynistic gay-acting man. (I say “gay-acting” because the character quickly begins to act more bisexual than gay.) I personally was not shocked by any of the “shocking” things, so instead I focused on the philosophical discussion between the characters, which centered on the relationships of men and women. Rather, I should say, between Men and Women, because they spoke in capital-letter generalizations.

There was an interesting notice before the film began (in the opening credits) that stated that the sex scenes were done by a body double, rather than the actress, and that the viewer should keep in mind it is not her, but an extension of her character. Simply thinking about why the director chose to announce this is interesting; additionally, I have some doubts about whether there really was a body double.

During the post-film discussion (which was mostly filled with hot-air pontificating by people who were trying to appear as impressive as possible), one insightful woman said she thought the film was about self-loathing, and confronting the things we most hate about ourselves. I have not been able to come up with a better synopsis than that, so I’ll use it as mine.

Rating: 3

Buddy
A Norwegian movie about three twenty-something friends – two slackers who work hanging billboards, and one neat freak who is afraid to leave the immediate neighborhood. The main character, Kristoffer, films himself and his friends as they pull crazy stunts, play around, and generally be themselves. He drops some tapes in a TV station (while trying to escape a security guard) and the next thing they know, they become stars of a new TV segment. You’d think that the ensuing drama would be about the price of fame, but it’s really not. It’s about Kristoffer and his friends learning what (and who) they want in life.

Given that premise, the movie could have sucked, but the actors are lovable and add a lot of spark to the movie. I enjoyed seeing that life in urban Norway looks a lot like anywhere else. It wasn’t a masterpiece, but it was a fun film.

Rating: 3

Strayed (Les Égarés)
This movie follows a young (widowed) mother and her two children, a 13-year-old boy and a six-ish girl, as they escape Paris in 1940. Their convoy is bombed, so they escape into the woods and join forces with an enigmatic 17-year-old boy. They find a house and live/hide there. I could go into more about the mother’s initial suspicions of the young man, and how their relationship changes, but I really wasn’t interested. There is a good subplot about the maturing of her 13-year-old son (a very good actor), but it took second place to the mother’s drama, which was really lacking in chemistry.

Rating: 2

Touch of Pink
A witty movie about a gay Indian-Canadian man who is faced with having to come out to his traditional Muslim family. Oh, and his imaginary friend is Cary Grant (played by Kyle MacLachlan), who advises him on everything from fashion to how to handle his outspoken mother. This is a romantic comedy in the vein of silver-screen Hollywood, with a gay twist. The screening was attended by the lead actress, Suleka Mathew, who plays the main character’s mother. She told us before the movie that it is autobiographical – the writer/director based it on his own life, and took ten years to make it. The script certainly shows a careful polishing – I lost count of the number of laugh-out-loud lines. In fact, I’m now chuckling to myself over one joke that you’ll just have to wait to see the movie for. I hope it will get a good release, because it deserves it.

Rating: 5

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A lot of running

By kate on June 1st, 2004

This Saturday, Steve and I did the North Seattle Street Scramble. It’s one of those races where you need to get to checkpoints and then back to the finish in a given amount of time. The twist in the Street Scramble is that there are more checkpoints than you could possibly get to, so each team needs to assess their own pace and choose the route they think is most advantageous.

You could be on foot or on bike, and have a 90-minute or 3-hour time limit. We went for the hard-core, 3-hour foot option, and ran pretty much the whole time. Some hills we walked up, and there was some stopping at rest points, but pretty much we ran for 3 hours all over North Seattle (west of I-5, north of Green Lake).

It paid off, though – we won our class! That is, the “mixed” class (men and women) in the foot division. (They awarded us the first place ribbons, anyway. I think there was some kind of accounting error because on the website, another team is listed in first place.)

The real feeling of triumph came later, though, when we got home and Steve plotted our course on Microsoft Streets & Trips. To our surprise, we had run 12.3 miles! Almost a half marathon! That’s farther than I’ve ever run by almost 4 miles. I had no idea it was possible.

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SIFF Journal #1

By kate on May 24th, 2004

This year I decided to commit to seeing a bunch of movies at the Seattle International Film Festival. I’ve seen varying amounts of movies in past years, but it’s been a while since I’ve really done the Festival. Since I made my selections and got the tickets, I’ve been excited to start going.

For my own reference (as much as for whoever reads this), I’m going to try to write up every movie I see. I think I’m going to 15 films over the next month, all on weekends. SIFF audiences are given ballots for most every movie, so I’ll include my rating (1-5) for each movie as well. Here are the first four movies I’ve seen already (no spoilers):

The Story of the Weeping Camel
As it is the festival’s only Mongolian film, Steve and I felt we had to see it. It was enjoyable – a “quiet film” in the same way that The Station Agent was. The scale of the drama was small, just a family and their camels amidst the sweeping landscape of the Gobi desert. The gradual influx of modern goods into nomadic culture was gently included but not the main story, which centered around a mother camel who, after a difficult birth, rejects her colt. As the capsule review in The Stranger drives home, the movie is saturated with camel sounds. While that reviewer found it annoying, to me it formed a beautiful soundtrack.

Rating: 4

Saved!
This was a gala screening that had a reception afterwards, but we only went to the movie itself and the Q&A that followed. It was attended by the director, producer, and two of its stars: Jena Malone and (singer) Mandy Moore. The latter two sat a few rows ahead of us. Celebrity sighting aside, this was a really good movie with a lot of heart. The basic premise is a student at a Christian high school gets pregnant, although there’s more to it than that. I expected a more cutting and satirical movie, but while it certainly gets laughs from the usual Christian stereotypes, it treats its characters with respect and depth. It’s a “feel good” movie in the best sense – it has a good message. (“The movie’s about love and tolerance, and if you’re against that, well, fuck you,” as the director said afterwards. He was referring to fundamentalist nuts like Jerry Falwell, who denounced the film.) It also manages to be funny, and the acting is high quality, with special praise due to Jena Malone and (surprise!) Macaulay Culkin.

Note to our big-city friends: the movie opens in five major cities this Friday, including New York (Molly, this means you!).

Rating: 5

Off The Map
The wide New Mexican landscapes of this movie felt a bit like the Mongolian vistas in The Story of the Weeping Camel. In the movie, the landscape, and the family he finds there, manage to completely transform a visitor’s life. The cast of characters include a precocious tweenager; strong-willed, capable, and lovely mother (Joan Allen); and clinically depressed father (Sam Elliott, who was in attendance at the screening). It was a nice movie, but lacked the powerful edge that would make it great. The acting was good, but I think that people with a Southwest fetish might enjoy it more than I did. I skipped the post-movie Q&A to get back in line for the next one…

Rating: 3

The Five Obstructions
Famous modern director Lars Von Trier (Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, Dogville) has studied and idolized the old-school Danish director Jørgan Leth for most of his life. In this unique collaboration, Von Trier challenges Leth to remake his movie The Perfect Human five times, with five “obstructions” of Von Trier’s choosing. The result is a blend of documentary (the filmmakers’ discussions of their art), archive footage (the original film), and experimental cinema (the five new pieces). It was fascinating – if you have any interest in the art of film, SEE THIS MOVIE. There is one more showing this Wednesday (May 26th).

Rating: 5

So, I’m doing pretty well so far – 4 for 4 – no duds yet. Not only that, but I saw two that I thought were masterpieces, although in completely opposite ways. Can’t wait to see what else is in store!