SIFF 2005: Amie's Wrap-Up

I know it's been awhile, but a work has sucked me in and consumed me from the end of SIFF until now.

I just wanted to put in my opinions on SIFF 2005. As a whole, I didn't enjoy it as much this year as I have previous ones. To be fair, this could have been due to time and money constraints, resulting in me seeing less than 13 films this year, as opposed to my usual 20+.

But - I also felt like the selection of films this year was less appealing to me. I don't know why -- they had more films than usual, and there were quite a few interesting ones. I can't quite pin down why this seemed so, unless it was the lack of the horror-movie genre (my personal favorite), whose scant offerings were all at times I couldn't accommodate.

I was also disappointed in the venue changes; I'll admit, for purely selfish reasons. I live on Capitol Hill, so having all the venues located around the hill and downtown pretty much rules, as it's very easy to get to all them by either walking or taking 1 bus, so as not to have to bother with the parking problem. Plus, seeing films at the Cinerama is awesome because of the excellently huge screen. The Neptune was fine, but took a little more effort to get to, and I couldn't even bring myself to see anything at the Uptown. I stand by my statement of: "Lucas ruins everything" and I hope that the Cinerama and Pacific Place are back next year.

And, I wasn't thrilled with the "Evening with Peter Sarsgaard" -- as it turned out, it was about 45 minutes with Peter Sarsgaard after Sharon Waxman's introduction and some movie clips were shown. He was totally boy-next-door sweet, and absolutely adorable, so I was almost satisfied. I was just a little confused that they didn't present the Outstanding Achievement In Acting award at the Evening With portion of that night's activities, but I suppose seeing the briefest glimpse of Maggie Gyllenhaal while she embraced him behind the curtain of the Egyptian made up for that. It was still nowhere near as cool as the "Evening with Jeff Goldblum" last year.

The films I saw were mostly pretty good -- there were only a few that I didn't care for. The rest were enjoyable with just a few bordering on great, meaning I'll be looking to purchase them when they come out.

I'm really hoping to get a Full Series Pass next year, and possibly take some time off work so I can make my SIFF experience better in 2006.