Seven Days Down - Seventeen to Go

The last few years I had always taken the first weekend - Memorial Day weekend - of the Seattle International Film Festival off. I'd go play softball, head home to Spokane to see the family or zip over to Portland for a quick weekend of rest and relaxation with friends before the three-plus week grind of SIFF took its hold upon me.

Not this year, and for the first time in what seems like ages I finally feel I can look back on the first week of the festival with a much clearer and cleaner eye than normal. I've seen a lot - last count, 33 films and documentaries (which admittedly includes a couple of Hollywood big-ticket items like Indiana Jones IV, Sex and the City and You Don't Mess with the Zohan) - and looking back surprisingly an awful lot this year has been really, really good.

(Believe it or not, my total doesn't even come close to some festival goers. Thanks to the three weeks of press screenings before SIFF even began there are some out there who have seen 50, 60 even 70 films so for at this point, and if their rate of viewing continues at that pace they might just see almost all of the 300 or so feature-length presentations the festival offers. Obviously, I love film - probably far more than the next girl - but that's just crazy talk. C-R-A-Z-Y T-A-L-K, I say!)

Looking back at what I've seen up to this point, much like last year the documentaries almost can't help but be a cut above just about everything else. Nanette Burstein's (whom I am having the pleasure of interviewing later today) American Teen and Yung Chan's Up the Yangtze are the two standouts, but they're followed quite closely by Christopher Bell's steriod piece Bigger, Stronger, Faster*, Hartmut Bitomsky's giddy look at the microscopic world of Dust, Tina Mascara and Guido Santi's beautiful Chris & Don: A Love Story and Johnny Symons' explosive (and highly entertaining) "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military piece Ask Not.

On the narrative side, the clear standout is Fatih Akin's exquisite and absolutely mesmerizing Edge of Heaven. The more I think about it, this might just be the best film I've seen in 2008 so far, all of its multiple tangents and layers building to something so beautifully and explosively emotional I can't stop thinking about it. It is a movie of strength, power and heartbreaking originality with characters so rich and genuine I felt like I almost new them. For me, much like Ghost World, Once and American Splendor in Seattle festivals before it this feature is quickly turning into SIFF's most magical offering, and something tells me I'll be waxing poetically about it for some time to come.

But it hasn't been the only think I've loved up to this point. Other great highlights include Tarsem's visually speldiferous The Fall is a lyrical adult fairy tale full of fiery passion and heartfelt brio, while Baltasar Kormákur's Icelandic mystery Jar City left me coldly shattered with its story of frigidly emotional human isolation. Other highlights have included the visually stimulating anime enterprise Vexille, French-Canadian entry 3 Little Pigs, Yves-Christian Fournier's engrossng Everything is Fine, Stuart Gordon's odd man-in-a-windshield piece Stuck, the almost unbearably tense Columbian thriller PVC-1 and the rambunctious and engaging character study Garden Party.

The best thing about this first week is how few actual misses there have been. There hasn't been anything like last year's putrid stinker The Ten, only Dario Argento's The Mother of Tears failing to offer up anything of real value or interest. Granted, I have been disappointed, most notably by Savage Grace. Thankfully, even that unfocused muddle had Julianne Moore making somewhat worthwhile, her fiercely determined and ferociously carnal portrait of a woman looking for status and love easily one of the finest performances I've seen all year. If anything, the worst thing I've seen so far has to be the aforementioned Zohan, and while I can't say too much now what I can admit is that this supposedly "comedic" monstrosity might just be the worst film of Adam Sandler's entire career and I was in horrific pain trying to watch it.

The other news of the festival at this point is the passing of both comedian Harvey Korman (just last night!) and Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack. I'm still kind of reeling a bit from this double-barrel shocker (especially as to it relates to the latter figure), both of them offering up entertainments during my childhood that helped me down the career path I now follow. No two ways about it, each of these fantastically talented men will definitely be missed.

You Can't Have "Sex" Again

Watching Sex and the City last night I was struck at just how much the show, and now the subsequent movie, really push a consumerist message of buy buy buy more more more that's actually kind of scary. Carrie Bradshaw and the rest of the girls may by as tight-knit a group of girls as any of the very best of the best friends you have ever known, but their unwavering desire to have the best clothes, carry the latest bags or wear the newest shoes (the latter a yen I can't help but admit to as well) more than a little but jarring. Viewing the film last night I couldn't help but wonder, in a world of $4.00 gasoline and skyrocketing food prices is this message of spend just for the sake of spending really the one we should be listening to?

Granted, the original HBO show was about more than just that. These were real women who talked about real issues with a direct frankness not usually found on television. It was refreshing and invigorating. More, it was also about time, Sarah Jessica Parker and company blazing a path so wonderful it became virtually a call to action and an anthem of exhulatation for women both across this country as well as around the globe.

Unfortunately, if Sex and the City the movie proves anything at all it is the old axiom that sometimes you just can't go home again. As nice as it is to see Carrie, Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) again enduring almost two-a-half-hours of them is almost a virtual impossibility. I'll talk more about it on Friday in my review but, for now, just know that while some of writer/director Michael Patrick King's zingers and one-liners blissfully hit their mark, more often than not this is an overly contrived and frustratingly meandering slog heading to a forgone conclusion that's neither surprising or enchanting.

All that said, both Cattrall and Nixon are donwright fantastic, and Davis has a moment at about the one hour mark that had me squealing with glee. It still doesn't make this well-healed (seriously, the shoes are fantastic, and so are the handbags) drama any easier to digest, but for at least a few blissful moments the magic of the show materializes I remembered why I adored these women so much once upon a time. The sex may not be great, but the foreplay has its moments, and I guess as I myself finally enter my 30's that's pretty much going to be par for the course.

Back in the world of SIFF, I had the great pleasure and honor to interview Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Darkside) about his lates documentary the enthralling and fascinating Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. It was as pleasurable interview - if far too short of one - as any I've had so far this festival, the filmmaker waxing poetic about how he chooses projects, what keeps him motivated as a filmmaker and on the glorious mysteries talking about one of the 20th Century's greatest writers can't help but conjure up. The film doesn't release for quite some time so you'll have to wait until then, but I can still give a little bit of a preview for you to enjoy.

"We were finishing [Taxi to the Darkside and Gonzo] in ajoining cutting rooms, and actually that was a lifeline for me to be able to go from the seat of torture to Hunter Thompson next door. That was a relief. Not that I was originally supposed to be doing them simultaneously, but that's just the way it worked out. [Gonzo] took a lot longer than I had originally thought it would."

"It was like hearding cats, to round up all the people who we wanted to be in the film, to get Johnny Depp to do the narration and also to pour through a tremendous amount of material, which initially we thought was going to be all in one place but turned out to be scattered all over. While we had cooperation from the estate, there were still all these bits and pieces every where, so just marshalling that material than walking through and then trying to make deals so we could include it, all of that turned into being a hugely difficult process."

"But, why does he still resonate to people today? I think there are a couple of reasons. First of all, I think we live vicariously through Hunter. He's a wild and crazy guy, he's the guy who does it all, he's the outlaw we all secretly want to be. I think there's that. Also, I think it's because he's the truth teller. He's the guy who gores every sacred cow in his path, who's not afraid to make fun of the rich and the powerful and who does so in a way that's hilarious. This is not a guy who is so full of himself he doesn't enjoy a good belly laugh. That's the key to his writing. It's angry but it's funny."

It looks like Magnolia is going to hopefully start releasing this film across the country this July, so look for more of my interview with Gibney on the main site right around then.

Sad News

I learned Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack sometime about mid-afternoon yesterday. The thing about film festival audiences, usually they are highly educated on a cinematic level and the news of his passing went through the audience I was seated with like proverbial wildfire. Most couldnt quite believe it, and even though he was sick more than a couple of people I spoke to about it were absolutely certain he was going to battle on and make at least a couple of more films.

I knew he had cancer but didn't realize it was bad enough to take his life 72. Pollack was in Seattle back in 2006 for his masterful documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry and I had the glorious opportunity to speak with him for a couple of blissful seconds after a screening. He was so warm and accommodating with a fierce intelligent burning behind his eyes. Standing there with him you knew you were in the presence of a man who seriously knew his stuff and I can only wish I would have taken the time to press the film's publicist a bit harder for an interview.

I'm not going to go into it too much (the most eloquent article I've seen on Pollack can be found at Hollywood Elsewhere written by Jeffrey Wells) but what I will say is that, for me at least, my favorite works from the director were his raucous 1982 comedy Tootsie and the 1975 Robert Redford thriller 3 Days of the Condor. The former, in particular, gets me every time I watch it, the film building so beautifully and with such expert precision and passion it would take my breath if I weren't already laughing so hard. I also loved Pollack as an actor, his performances in Michael Clayton, Changing Lanes, Tootsie and especially Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut as rich and as satisfying as anyone else's in each of those magnificent motion pictures.

Back in the world of the Seattle International Film Festival, I saw a great one last night and I'm hoping general audiences are going to get the same opportunity. On the surface, Columbian director Spiros Stathoulopoulos' thriller PVC-1 sounds like nothing more than an intriguing trick and little else. A group of criminals burst into a peaceful family home turning the mother into a human time bomb after placing a piece of pvc piping around her neck, the whole thing shot in one continuous 85-minute take. No cuts. No edits. No stops. One single gosh darn take.

The thing is, Stathoulopoulos' picture goes beyond this simple premise and with the cute idea and becomes something chillingly disturbing. The tension produced is almost unbearable, the film building and building until it unleashes a climax such of raw, unadulterated power it left me shocked senseless. While the shooting style does give everything a bit of a theatrical staginess at times, overall this is a picture you absolutely cannot take your eyes off it. It is a movie I doubt I am going to forget, this journey into darkness and terror unlike anything else I've experienced this year.

Other than that right now there isn't too much else to report. I had a great interview with Children of Huang Shi, a movie I didn't particularly care for (although I did admire a couple of the performances and a few of the individual scenes), director Roger Spottiswoode I hope to have live over on the main site in a day or two. I also watched the engrossing German documentary Dust and was alternately amused and totally grossed out (and also suddenly felt the glaring need to clean my apartment) by its saga of that small pesky particle which makes the feather duster such an important invention.

Today might be interesting. I'm interviewing Alex Gibney later this afternoon about his engaging doc Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, and I'm hoping to make it to a 9:30 showing of Alexi Tan's supposedly quite solid 1930's gangster movie Blood Brothers. The question mark is the pesky press screening of Sex and the City I have to attend at 7:00. The film is a whopping 140 minutes, the distance between the theater showing it and the one screening Tan's thriller a good ten to twelve blocks away so I'll definitely be hoofing it after Sarah Jessica Parker and company get finished guzzling their Cosmos.

"One of the most touching love stories..."

Chris and Don: A Love Story is a documentary about two men and the three-plus decade relationship they shared with one another. These men were noted writer Christopher Isherwood (his Berlin Stories became the basis for Cabaret) and famed artist and portrait painter Don Bachardy, thirty years his lover's junior. Starting in 1950's Malibu these two shared a life together as openly as any you would see today, their commitment to one another no less profound or inspiring as any straight relationship you've ever heard stories about.

The film goes into release starting later this Summer, and I'll get into it more fully in a review then, but as for now just know that this is a pricelessly mvoing documentary that is richly satisfying and deeply emotional. There is an ethereal timelessness to the pair's love story that really forced me to look again at how I view relationships between people, and for anyone that thinks gay marriage can't work or is some sort of genetic impossibility I herby give you two men how, not only prove that statement wrong, did it decades before the idea that California could ever legalize marriage between people of the same gender was even a twinkle in some vocal activist's eye.

While I personally don't consider myself gay (can't say I've never thought about other girls, it's just the idea of giving up guys is as alien and as weird for me as those things come), looking at a film like this can really broaden people's horizons and open their eyes to the possibilities love has to offer. Committment isn't easy, but if these two could do it in an age when they could have severely harmed (or worse, kiled) for doing so gives me hope that I can maybe do the same someday in my life.

I sat down with the directors of this movie, Guido Santi and Tina Mascara, this morning to talk about the making of their film and how seeing it all come to fruition has affected their lives. It was a glorious forty minute chat that I hope leads to an equally fantastic profile piece a bit later on. As say later because, unfortunately, the film doesn't open in Seattle officially until this August, so for those interested in reading a complete article you'll have to wait a little while until it hits the pages of the SGN and the feature section of MovieFreak.

But I am not above posting a few highlights from our conversation. Hopefully you'll find them interesting. Even more important, I hope you take the time to see the pair's movie. It's very, very good and I seriously doubt anyone in the right mind is going to be even remotely disappointed.

On first coming up with the idea for the project:

Guido Santi: "I had a chance to Don Bacharady about 17-18 years ago when I arrived in the States from Italy. We became friends and I remember one night at a dinner party he showed this this beautiful footage he shot with Chris [Isherwood] in the 1950's and I thought, this is incredible. I was surprised nobody had told their story as this is one of the most touching love stories I'd ever heard. One day, Tina and I were talking and I interested her to Don and we decided make the movie, decided to put it on the credit card and make the documentary about this beautiful relationship."

On spending so much time with Don Bacharady:

Santi: "It's a film about the past. It's more much difficult when you work on such material. Don deserves about 90-percent of the credit [for this]."

Tina Mascara: "I mean, he's the film. He's amazing."

Santi: "Yes, amazing, that's right. He is a fantastic man and a fantastic storyteller. He makes you laugh, he makes you cry. In the film, you go up and down with him, and I think that is because Don was willing to be so intimate with us."

Mascara: "There were days when he was really really on and their were days when he wasn't really on, and on the days he was one we had more material then we knew what to do with. Everything he said sounded so amazing, and it was hard for us to actually take only the bites there were the important parts of the story because there was so much that he would say that would hit us over the head."

On not implicitly relating Chris and Don's story to recent political and social events:

Santi: "Our film is political in a different way. You can be political without being overt. I think, their life together for thirty years, is a major statement. The statement is the relationship."

On using animation to visualize the 'Kitty and the Horse':

Mascara: "I feel the animation is just so important because I don't think you really get the magical, secret life that was for them unless you play it really big. We read a few letters [in the film], but there was correspondence between them for twenty years in these character voices. It as important to show that visually in some way."

On living as an openly gay couple in the 1950's and 60's:

Santi: "It is dificult even now for a homosexual or a lesbian couple to live a normal life and for them to have thier rights and knowlesge recognized, but I think back then it was even worse. I think that if Isherwood were alive today he would be incredibly happy of all the battles that have been won by the gay and lesbian community. But, for them, living life was the greatest statment."

Mascara: "That's what they thought. I think in the 60's and 70's, when gay rights were coming into being, I think Chris was critized for not being involved in the active marches and that sort of thing. But I think his point of view was I'm always there to show up and talk about it and that I'm writing about it in my work and I am not hiding it [my relationship with Chris]. What more statement could there be then that? He was completely conscious that he was contributing. He did contribute and this relationship is proof of that."

On sitting down with Leslie Caron:

Mascara: "We went to Paris to interview her, and we were lucky because Don created a connection for us and she was automatically open [to us] because of her friendship with Don Bacharady and Christopher Isherwood. She was an honor for me. I saw Gigi and An American in Paris and I was, as a kid, jsut loved her. She's a movie star. It was incredible."

Santi: "I think her interview for the film, in my opinion, is the best because she gives such a personal touch to [Chris and Don's] story. When she talks about the last time she saw Chris and she remembered what he told her, it is such a poignant moment. It was amazing."

On Don's reaction to the film:

Mascara: "He generally travels with us and I wish he would have been here because the Seattle audience is just amazing. He would have been really, really blown away. But on his first time watching the film he cried. He laughed and he cried."

Santi: "We showed it to him about a year ago in March and we were terrified because it is his life, it is his legacy. I remember after he was reacting in a spelendid way, and that was the most euphoric moment so far. To show your work, to show four years of your life, and have the main subject of your film approve it, it was touching for me. I was so happy that night."

Again, I'll have the full interview available at Moviefreak in August. Until then, it's now time to get back to SIFF. I've got more movies to see today and tonight (which hopefully all be better then the anemic offerings I suffered through yesterday), and if I don't get going soon I just might miss out on another winner.

One Day Down...

...only 23 more to go.

Seriously, though, as first days go diving into SIFF I could have done a heck of a lot worse than this one. In fact, I saw my first bona fide masterpiece of the festival so far, writer/director Fatih Akin's mesmerizing The Edge of Heaven. This three-part overlapping stunner left me completely knocked cold by its sheer mesmerizing majesty and brilliance, it's final scene a poetic tome to hope, regret and forgiveness virtually impossible to forget.



Seriously, movies do not get better then this. What the filmmaker has accomplished here transcends simple explanations and short recaps, the film so magnificent I can't wait to actually put pen to paper and write a full review. Considering it is now just past 2:00 a.m. here in Seattle, however, don't expect me to do that now. Just know that this is one of the first truly outstanding feature films SIFF has up to now offered up. While others have come close (and I mentioned them in my last blog entry Thursday morning), this one instantly ranks as one of the best I've seen in 2008, only the beautiful independent winner The Visitor and the Romanian mind-blower 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days ranking ahead of it right now at this point on the theatrical calendar. For those attending the festival, there is another screening on Sunday. I suggest you check it out.

Otherwise, my first day of a four-in-a-row SIFF marathon worked out pretty well. While I'm not exaclty a huge anime fan, I have to admit Fumihiko Sori's Vexille was damn amazing at times. He and his team of storytellers (the same ones who made the acclaimed Appleseed) have really crafted something visually stunning, some of the images of a dystopian Japan evoking the timeless imagery of Frank Herbet but mixed with a cybernetic recoil that's got plenty of kick. While it does't necessarily make a lot of sense, this Robotech meets Mad Max meets Ghost in the Shell meets The Matrix animated epic has energy and bravado to burn. I couldn't take my eyes off of it, and even when it get so darn silly I wanted to laugh my eyes were bursting so far out of my head the giggles just never made it out of my voicebox.

Speaking of giggles, it might just be officially time to mourn the passing of a true horror icon and legend. Dario Argento's latest gross-out epic The Mother of Tears, the final part of his Three Mothers series which began with his classic Suspiria and continued with the eerily grotesque Opera, is a flat-out howler (and I don't mean that in a good way). There are more unintentional laughs here than can be found in reruns of "Knight Rider" or "Baywatch," the midnight crowd I saw it with almost dying in hysterics in pretty much all the places they were supposed to be screaming in terror.

Not that the Italian master has completely lost it. There are a couple of his trademark tracking shots that just ooze creepy tension, and some of the blood and gore has that usual Argento relish no one else can even come close to matching. But the whole thing is just so unrelentingly dumb (even more so then usual) and makes so little in the way in sense you almost get the feeling they were making it up on the spot. True die-hard fans of the director may want to give this one a chance when it makes the art house rounds later this Summer. Everyone else, meanwhile, should probably do their best to avoid this one like the proverbial plague.

Thankfully, daughter Asia is also in The Last Mistress, and while she gets to look like a complete fool in her daddy's horror epic, for French director Catherine Breillat she gets to be treated like a movie star. In all honesty, I'm not really sure why I decided to take the time to watch this one in again, but something compelled me to make this period piece of infidelity, sex and lies my first repeat of the festival. While I admit the film played a lot slower on second viewing, I was still captivated by both the actress and her costar Fu’ad Ait Aattou, the pair having a lusty chemistry that at times is so freaking hot I couldn't help but blush uncontrollably.

That's really all there is to report right now. I'm tired - dead tired - and need to get some sleep before I attempt a six film marathon tomorrow. Not sure I'll be succesful, it's still early in the festival and I don't know if I have the stamina yet for that much bad popcorn and Diet Coke, but I'm certainly going to give it the college try. Besides, I'm really looking forward to Yoji Yamada's Love and Honor tomorrow afternoon at 6:30 p.m. and the delightful looking animated tale Nocturna first thing in the morning at 11:00 a.m. If I'm going to be out that early I might as well make sure I catch the two screenings between the ones I want to see. It would only be the right thing to do, after all, and when have I ever not done the right thing?

(NOTE - That was me being sarcastic. Please don't take that as a real question and start emailing me. Uness you're emailing to ask me out. Then messages are perfectly fine. I might not respond, but I'm sure I'll get a kick out of the messages. Thank you.)

...and so it begins

It's opening night of the festival and I can't help but feel breathlessly excited. The start of every SIFF just makes me giddy with enthusiasm. While I know the next 24 days will be chaotic and stressful (and filled with far too little sleep and far too much Diet Coke), they are also just tingling with bewitching possibility. Will this be the year I catch another American Splendor? Another Ghost World? Another Brothers? Another Once? Only time will tell, and just the thought I could find another instant classic like any of those makes me as giddy as a schoolgirl madly blushing after her first effervescent kiss with the school stud.

Granted, I'm not entirely jumping up for joy this morning. While I am happy tonight's opening night attraction Battle in Seattle has attracted huge names to walk the red carpet (Charlize Theron, Martin Henderson and director Stuart Townsend, amongst others, are scheduled to attend), the biggest Seattle has seen since we premiered Mel Gibson's Braveheart back in 1995, I'm more than a little bummed I couldn't score a press invite to either the screening or the afterparty. It's the first time in years I've been snubbed, and while I totally get it (Moviefreak.com isn't exactly The Seattle Times, after all) the fact it happened still can't help but bruise my ego just a teensy little bit. Besides, I even had the perfect dress picked out for the event and now I won't get to wear it in pictures standing next to Theron. My mother will be ever-so disappointed.



All kidding aside, there is the press conference with the film's stars and its director today at 2:30 which I'm hoping to make it to, and I can always line up in the press row to take pictures of everyone's red carpet arrivals. Can't say I've ever done that and there is always a first time for everything, right? Besides, if I can't get a picture with Charlize then the next best thing is to probably snap one of her (at least, in my world it's probably the next best thing - I can't really comment on if it would be in yours).

As for the festival itself, unlike previous years where I've had trouble making the early press screenings before regular screenings commenced this year I've actually been able to fit in a few things. Quality, for the most part, has been very good, and while nothing has blown my socks off a couple have at least come close enough I definitely hope audiences take the time to track them down and check them out.

Chief amongst these are the two documentaries, Up the Yangtze and 2008 Sundance favorite American Teen, and Tarsem's visually audacious (and emotionally poignant) fantast The Fall. While none are perfect, each is richly satisfying filled with so much cinematic goodness I can't help but smile. In fact, along with Errol Morris' shattering Standard Operating Procedure the docs are easily the finest I've seen so far this year. Both offer up unique and engaging storylines filled with truth and resonance, and watching them left me moved - for completely different reasons - almost beyond words. Up the Yangtze is particularly satisfying, the final shot of a new canal as haunting an image as I've seen in ages. I'll be interviewing the directors of both films in the coming few days so expect more on both of them after I do.

As for The Fall, director Tarsem (whose last film was the Jennifer Lopez thriller The Cell), working under the aegis of producers David Fincher and Spike Jonze, supposedly took a decade to bring his masterful interpersonal period adventure to the screen, and while more times than not this usually spells disaster here it is almost cause for celebration. Not since Pan's Labyrinth has an intensely dramatic fantasy carried such weight and poignancy, and while it doesn't quite match Del Toro's masterpiece it comes just close enough I couldn't help but be impressed. The picture goes into wide release next Friday so I'll dig into more in my review then. Just know that, as far as the first weekend of the festival is concerned, this one isn't just a movie to search out it's one to break down doors in order to see.

I've seen more than these three but I'll go into them more closer to their SIFF showings. I will add that French director Catherine Breillat’s The Last Mistress, playing tomorrow at the Egyptian Theater, is a virtual must-see. I loved it, and while some of the others I've spoken to about it find it a tad overwrought and a little hyperactive for their tastes I personally feel this is one of the more explosively entertaining corset-busting period epics I've seen in quite some time. Those deciding to skip it will definitely be missing out.

On a side note, those considering skipping a part of the festival to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull this weekend please don't feel at all bad about doing so. Forget the naysayers, I found the Man with the Hat's latest adventure (after 19 frickin' years!!!) to be hugely entertaining. The picture doesn't make a lot of sense (and, admittedly, ends rather anemically) but it's sure one heck of a lot of fun during its running time. In fact, if I wasn't so completely consumed by SIFF I'd head out and see it again for a second time myself. Sometimes sequel expectations can be met, it just took a man with a bull whip and a fedora to do it.

SIFF Unleashes Its "Battle" Cry

Okay, I admit it, Memorial Day weekend in Seattle is my favorite time of year. Better than Thanksgiving, better than Christmas, heck, it’s even better than my birthday, and the reason for all this enthusiasm and glee has nothing to do with the Summer holiday. It’s SIFF time, and for 25 days starting in May I become a giggly, bubbly enthusiastic cinephile literally bursting at her fetchingly beguiling (and oh-so girly) seams.

For those not having the first clue what it is I’m talking about, that four-letter acronym up above is the shorthand for the Seattle International Film Festival. It’s the largest and most attended event of its type in the United States, and while Cannes, Toronto and Sundance get most of the hype our little cinematic party has been chugging along since 1976, growing in both size and scope each and every year since its launch.

This 34th annual version promises to live up to that statement. Beginning Thursday with the opening night gala presentation of the star-studded WTO riot drama Battle in Seattle (Charlize Theron, Woody Harrelson, Michelle Rodriguez, Ray Liotta, Channing Tatum and Martin Henderson, amongst others, star), and finishing up June 14 at the Cinerama with local premier of the spirited wine melodrama Bottle Shock staring Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman, Chris Pine, Freddie Rodriguez, Rachel Taylor and Eliza Dushku, the festival has over 400 screenings, forums and events to get even the most jaded movie lover excited.

Like what, you might ask? Well, for Seattle residents there are definitely some choice locally produced picks, the chief highlight maybe just being the documentary Bailey-Boushay House: A Living History which chronicles the history of one of the city's most beloved nonprofit organizations. For everyone else, there is also recent Best Foreign Film Academy Award nominee Mongol from Kazakhstan and accaimed director Sergei Bodrov (Prisoner of the Mountains), the critically acclaimed German drama The Edge of Heaven (winner of the Best Screenplay award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival), the latest genre-busting winner from cult Japanese director Takashi Miike Sukiyaki Western Django, the eery looking French sci-fi noir Chrysalis, the South Korean ghost story Epitaph and the star-studded U.S. comedy The Great Buck Howard with John Malkovich, Emily Blunt and Tom Hanks. Also from Germany comes the world’s first gay zombie movie, Otto; or, Up With Dead People, a sure-fire midnight movie cult sensation if there ever were one.

All in all, SIFF 2008 will showcase films both big (DreamWorks’ latest animated comedy Kung Fu Panda premiers) and small (Bangladesh’s On the Wings of Dreams is a tiny little picture I’m going to be seeing if only for the simple fact it is, well, from Bangladesh -- when the heck do you ever get to see something from Bangladesh?) with plenty of in-between (Alexander Nevsky gets an archival presentation with accompaniment from the Seattle Symphony, F.W. Murnau’s timeless Sunrise screens at the Triple Door, John Waters will be here talking about making movies as a Hollywood renegade, Sir. Ben Kinsley gets a lifetime achievement award and there’s a big Gay-la screening of everyone’s favorite former 90210 resident Tori Spelling’s latest effort Kiss the Bride) to keep viewers of all ages excited and inspired.

Other notable events include more entries in SIFF’s Face the Music series, an afternoon chat with Oscar-winning actor F. Murray Abraham, the return of the ever-popular Fly Filmmaking Challenge, the oh-so-quiet and on the hush-hush Secret Festival, the slam-bang Midnight Adrenaline and the always exciting Films4Families series. Also returning in 2008 is the Planet Cinema program which presents documentaries and features with environmental themes, while the Northwest Connections program highlights 11 films with roots right here in the Pacific Northwest, many of them premiers.

As for me, I’ll be hitting one or more of the venues each and every day of the festival. While I’ll still be checking in with the latest Hollywood has to offer (can’t miss Sex in the City, The Incredible Hulk, Wanted or The Happening after all), mostly I’ll just be sitting in a theater sipping on Diet Coke, munching stale popcorn and watching world and independent cinema come to life on the type of gigantic stage it seldom gets to see but so often richly deserves.

Like I said before, this is as good as it gets, but like Christmas, Thanksgiving and my birthday, the sad fact is it only happens once a year. Hopefully you’ll get the opportunity to make the most of it. I sure as heck know that I will.

- Portions of this column reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle