movie update

So far I've seen three movies at SIFF, and for the most part they've all been great. And for now my favorite is Expiration Date, which I saw on Saturday. For anyone who loves quirky comedies and like making fun of death...this is the movie for you. Especially cool (as far as I'm concerned) is the fact that the film was shot entirely in Seattle (cameo appearances for the troll and Waiting for the Interurban...also featured quite a bit is Ballard Ave.)

I also saw Russian Dolls which was pretty good...Xavier super annoying, but he's supposed to be...and I wish that more of the characters from l'Auberge Espagnol had bigger parts in this movie. But overall it was great to finally see something happen between Xavier and Wendy. And it was so obviously a French movie...and no JJ, this does not mean that everybody died at the end...just that there was lots of nudity. There's this one scene where...well, I'll keep that a secret for anyone who wants to see the film :-) Plus, seeing Paris again, even if on film, was awesome.

And the last movie I saw this weekend was Princess Raccoon...I've been finding it a bit hard to describe this film...it's a musical, filmed primarily on stage sets...and it's a sort of fairy tale about a princess of magical woodland creatures and a human prince (whose father wants to kill him off) who fall in love. There were some great dance numbers (and by great I mean incredibly silly), but one of my favorite scenes is when the king is trying to kill Princess Raccoon on a beach (one of the few scenes not on a set)...but all the dialogue was dubbed in and they didn't use any of the sounds from the surf or wind...so you see a beach with waves and obviously lots of wind pulling at clothing, but you don't hear any of it. Very strange...but then the entire movie was strange.

Seattle

Here's a neat website with photographs of Seattle...they're 360 degree images and very fun (but beware, you might get dizzy if you spin the images too fast):

VR Seattle

The present or the past?

From the today's Seattle PI, cartoon by David Horsey.

SIFF

I bought tickets for the Seattle international Film Festival yesterday...in case anyone might be going, here are the movies I'll be seeing:

Expiration Date (already posted about this one...can't wait to see it!)
Russian Dolls (this is a sort of sequel to l'Auberge Espagnol)
Princess Raccoon (Japanese, and I guess it's a musical..we'll see)
Carmen in Khayelitsha (South African and based on an opera)
Bickford Shmeckler's Cool Ideas (this just looks silly)
Vishwa Thulasi (need to get my Indian movie fix)
No. 2 (from New Zealand)
the Valet (and I also need my French movie fix)
What Remains (documentary about the photographer Sally Mann...this one should be excellent)

Can't wait to see these movies :-) I love SIFF, but I wish that it wasn't just once a year...sigh. Or I guess I wish that we got more international movies as general releases instead of having to wait for film festivals to see them.

football! (not american football..the real game)

In a little less than a month the World Cup of soccer, or football as the rest of the world calls it, will begin. Then it will be one solid month of intense competition. I'm already starting to get excited...and at work Richard and I have been checking out the FIFA website for updates and looking at slide shows. I've even already found a local pub in my neighborhood where I will be able to go and watch the games. Here is the website in case any of you want to check out the teams or the game schedules:

FIFA World Cup

And I also have to post two of my favorite pictures that I nabbed from the slide show:



This impressive looking guy is the Czech team's head coach, Karel Bruckner. Doesn't he look like some sort of warrior king getting ready for a major battle?

And to contrast the intense Czech coach, here's another pic that is a bit more in the realm of the silly, gee...I wonder, do you think a lot of guys watch football?

court jester

Yes, that's right...I'm going to take a minute to join all the many others talking about Stephen Colbert's monologue at the White House Correspondents' dinner. If you have been living under a rock over the last week, here's a site that has video of the event:

Thank You Stephen Colbert

I wish I could have been there...I think it would have been vastly amusing to listen to Colbert roast Bush and the media right to their faces. To see the media squirm in their seats and laugh nervously or not at all and the watch Bush try to keep up and understand what's really being said. "Wait, is he making fun of me, or is he really praising me?" But really, what were they expecting when they invited Colbert themselves...have they never watched his show?

Here's another link for y'all. It's to an article in the Seattle PI:

Why Stephen Colbert is my hero

Expiration Day

So I learned about what looks to be a great movie over the weekend that encompasses all the feelings I went through when I turned 25...basically that my life was over cause I'm old now...only I didn't have a milk truck trying to run me over :-)

Anyway, it's an independent film, shot in Seattle and looks perfectly goofy...I can't wait to see it:

Expiration Day