The Final Friday

And so we come to the end.

Funny thing, as this last Friday of the festival dawns it doesn't really feel like the end. In fact, what with Seattle's fabled Cinerama Theater joining as one of the screening venues and a whole slew of talent in town to talk about their premiering motion pictures it almost feel a little bit like the beginning all over again.

Yet no matter how I wish it were otherwise, this really is it. Tomorrow the solid if unspectacular Bottle Shock has its closing night gala screening, the awards get announced at press conference Sunday morning and a bunch of long-awaited films finally get their screenings. Pictures from the likes of Dan Ireland, Rawson Marshall Thurber, Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam, Johnny To, Bernard Campan and Jean-Paul Salomé debut, while the Seattle Symphony breaks out the orchestra for a once-in-a-lifetime showing of Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky.



I'm excited for just about all of it. Movies that I finally get to see include Ireland's Jolene, Hark, Lam and To's Triangle, Salomé's Female Agents, the Katrina documentary Trouble the Water, the French sci-fi mindbender Chrysalis, Courtney Hunt's Frozen River, the Italian mystery The Girl by the Lake, the controversial U.K. erotic thriller Donkey Punch, Alex Rivera's ambitious U.S. debut Sleep Dealer and, if I can somehow fit it in, Aditya Assarat's Wonderful Town.

But there's plenty else to see. I'm interviewing Alan Ball about his fantastic (and highly unsettling) dramatic comedy Towelhead tomorrow (as well as Bottle Shock writer/director Randall Miller), and in just about a half an hour I'll be heading down to the W Hotel press offices to speak with Olivia Thirlby, Josh Peck and writer/director Jonathan Levine about their highly entertaining coming-of-age 1990's melodrama The Wackness. Other highlights include Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Tennis Shoes, a special presentation of John Cassavetes' immortal classic Faces, the supposedly stirring German drama Love and Other Crimes, a second screening of The Island of Lost Souls at the Cinerama (which I might just have to break down and see a second time) and a repeat showing of Russell Brown's excellent The Bluetooth Virgin (which, coincidentally, I interviewed both Brown and legendary actress Karen Black for yesterday - more to come on that front hopefully tomorrow).

Personally, I can't wait. After enduring the decidedly underwhelming video game banalities of The Incredible Hulk and being hit with a flurry of okay, if not even remotely exciting, screening here at SIFF, it's fantastic to have so many richly deserving titles to get all worked up about. As last weekends go, this one is shaping up to be one for the record books.

I can't wait.