Matthew Lillard's Fat Kid Rules the World

I wrote about the Saturday screening of Matthew Lillard's Fat Kid Rules the World  for The Stranger's Line Out here. Now Seattle International Film Festival has added a new screening: SIFF Cinema at the Uptown on Thurs, May 24, at 4:30pm. Long story short: It's good, and I recommend it!

Fat Kid cast members, including Matt O'Leary (center)

The fourth and final screening of Fat Kid Rules the World takes place at Everett Performing Arts Center (2710 Wetmore Ave) Mon, May 28, at 6pm.

SIFF 2012 Dispatch #2: Megan Griffiths's Non-Sensationalistic Docudrama Eden

EDEN (Megan Griffiths, 2012, US, 98 mins.) 

Click here for SIFF Dispatch #1 (Your Sister's Sister and The Do-Deca-Pentathlon)

I missed Seat-
tle writer/dir-
ector Megan
Griffith's last
film, The Off 
Hours, when
it played SIFF
'11, but I knew
I couldn't miss
Eden, which
arrived with
even greater
acclaim af-
ter premier-
ing at South
by Southwest (where it won the audience award for narrative feature). 

The storyline also caught my attention since Griffiths and co-writer Richard B. Phillips drew from the real-life experiences of a 19-year-old woman sold into sexual slavery. It sounds sensationalistic, except it isn't. Since the press screening, I've talked to several people about the movie, and they all liked it. SIFF '12 has barely begun--and it's already got its first hit.

The story begins in 1994 with Hyun Jae (Jamie Chung, a one-time MTV's Real World cast member in a revelatory performance), a New Mexico high school senior of Korean descent, who helps out her first-generation parents in their gift shop. After getting hold of a fake ID, the inexperienced teen hits the bars one night with a friend, in hopes of meeting cute guys.

That's exactly what happens when Hyun Jae clicks with a firefighter, who offers her a ride home. The next thing she knows, he hands her over to another man, and her long nightmare begins. Federal Marshall Bob Gault (Beau Bridges) runs the warehouse-like Nevada brothel where she ends up, using his law-enforcement career as a cover for his illicit activities. The other girls are mostly foreign-born, and those who try to escape are killed.

Because Hyun Jae lived in Eden Park, they rename her Eden. Bob's right hand man, Vaughan (Matt O'Leary), handles the facility's day-to-day operations. The women, who range in age from 15-19, service clients and perform in porn films. Bob's favorite, Svetlana, enjoys special privileges, like the tabby she totes everywhere. She also ends up with Hyun Jae's class ring; the latter will spend the rest of the film trying to get it back.

Though Hyun Jae tries to make a run for it the first time she gets the chance, she realizes they'll kill her or her family members if she does it again, so she bides her time. Vaughan has a crack addiction, which makes him especially vulnerable, so Hyun Jae works hard to win him over.

Griffiths lines up a shot

It takes time, but she eventually works her way up the ladder, such that she's spending more and more time alone with the former Army soldier, which allows her to learn how the operation works, and to figure out how she might be able to make a final break--and shut the whole thing down.

Once Hyun Jae gains Vaughan's trust, Eden turns into a two-hander predicated more on character development than action, but it never has the scrappy indie feel that has come to define the work of Lynn Shelton, Mark Duplass, and other filmmakers with whom Griffiths has worked (she co-produced Your Sister's Sister). Filmed in Washington and Nevada, the film plays more like a true-crime thriller, and if Griffiths hadn't cast the right actors, it wouldn't work, but she did. Chung and O'Leary play off each other marvelously (and Bridges is suitably oleaginous). 

Because she's dealing with difficult subject matter, I wasn't sure how the Seattle audience would react, but I haven't met anyone yet who wasn't impressed, including Charles Mudede, who praised it in The Stranger, and Sean Axmaker, who did the same in the pages of The Seattle Weekly.

Personally, I wish there'd been more information, by way of inter-titles, at the end: I'd love to know what Chong N. Kim, the film's real-life model, is doing now, but Google handily answered my question. In that sense, the film reminded me of Gerard Naranjo's Miss Bala, which also runs viewers through the ringer with a beauty pageant contestant caught up in a grueling situation--at the center of Mexico's drug war, with brutal cartel members on one side and corrupt drug enforcement agents on the other.  

In both cases, the filmmakers manage to avoid exploiting their actresses while depicting exploitative scenarios, a harder trick to pull off than it seems, or the multiplex wouldn't be littered with cut-rate actioners that claim outrage over the victimization of women while treating them like sexy pawns in scenarios where the hyper-violent male vigilantes are the true stars. In Eden: a female captive becomes her own savior.

Eden plays the Egyptian on May 19 at 9:15pm, the Uptown on May 21 at 4:30pm, and Everett Performing Arts Center on May 29 at 8:30pm. Griffiths, producers Colin Plank and Jacob Mosier, and production designer Ben Blankenship are scheduled to attend all screenings. As always, dates and times are subject to change. Images from Centripetal Films.   

SIFF 2012 Dispatch #1: Your Sister's Sister and The Do-Deca-Pentathlon

YOUR SISTER’S SISTER 
(Lynn Shelton, 2011, US, 90 mins.) 

 THE DO-DECA-PENTATHLON 
(Mark and Jay Duplass, 2012, US, 90 mins.)

The 38th edition of the Seattle International Film Festival opens with Lynn Shelton's fourth feature, Your Sister's Sister, which was shot in the Northwest and stars Emily Blunt, Rosemary DeWitt (filling in for Rachel Weisz), and the writer/director's frequent collaborator, Mark Duplass.

In form and content, the film most closely resembles Humpday, except two sisters, Iris (Blunt) and Hannah (DeWitt), and a male friend, Jack (Duplass), fill the places occupied by a married couple and a male friend. 

Still mourning his brother, Iris's husband, who died the year before, leads Jack to their family cabin, where he runs into Hannah, who's recovering from a break-up. After a night of Tequila-fueled revelry, Iris shows up to find that her sister and her friend have changed in ways she wasn't expecting. Though I found Hannah more manipulative than intended, DeWitt allows the vulnerability behind her actions to shine through. 

The story engages, the laughs fall in all the right places, and the actors work well together, but I'd love to see Shelton change up her formula next time around. This one is starting to feel familiar, but that may be partly because so many other filmmakers are following her semi-improvised lead. Still, I give it a solid recommendation and believe it's an apt choice for the opening night slot. As the program guide states, "Your Sister's Sister marks the first time in the history of SIFF that work by a Seattle-based filmmaker has opened the festival (SIFF hasn't passed on a Shelton selection yet, though her films always premiere at other fests).

Shelton has just wrapped shooting on Touchy Feely with Ellen Page. According to The Playlist, her sixth film, Laggies, will star Paul Rudd.

Your Sister's Sister plays McCaw Hall on May 17. The Opening Night Gala takes place afterward. Post-fest, the film opens in Seattle on June 15.

Shelton and Duplass also appear in Colin Trevorrow's Safety Not Guaranteed, but I took a pass, because the synopsis didn't sound too intriguing. I also caught the trailer at the press launch, and that confirmed my impression. I’m not suggesting that it's a terrible film--it looks fairly amusing--but I didn't get the impression that it's a must-see, and my free time is limited (six freelance/on-call gigs will do that!).

Nonetheless, the cast attracted my attention, since many of them have worked together before—and probably will do so again. They include Kristen Bell (Gossip Girl) and Jake Johnson (The New Girl).

As TV stars, they probably don't need the reduced fees that comes from low-budget projects, so I'm guessing they signed on because it looked like fun, to help out a friend, or because the idea of working on something less structured seemed appealing. Further, Bell's husband, Dax Shepard, also stars in The Freebie, the directorial debut from Duplass's wife, Katie Aselton, while Shelton recently directed an episode of The New Girl.

She may maintain a Seattle residence, but Shelton has joined an extended family of Hollywood-based players, which will surely lead to more opportunities like Mad Men, on which DeWitt has appeared (not long after Humpday, Shelton directed the fourth season's pivotal Playboy episode).  

Just as I interviewed Shelton in 2006, circa We Go Way Back, I interviewed Mark and Jay Duplass in 2008 when they came to town with Baghead, their second feature (I also chatted with Mark on the set of Humpday). At the time, they mentioned that The Do-Deca-Pentathlon would be their next film, but that's not the way things turned out. Instead, like Shelton, they moved on to better known actors: Marisa Tomei and John C. Reilly in Cyrus and Jason Segel in Jeff, Who Lives at Home.

Their fifth film (in release-date terms), however, feels like the logical successor to Baghead, and I'm glad they didn’t give up on it. Both Steve Zissis and Ross Partridge return to the fold, except this time, Zissis stars opposite Mark Kelly, while Partridge was involved behind the scenes, but doesn't appear on screen (and nor does Mark Duplass).

Filmed in balmy New Orleans, the comedy starts out as a look at sibling rivalry, but ends up as more of a mid-life crisis movie, and the directors do a good job in transitioning between the genres and avoiding many of the clichés associated with the latter, like the long-suffering wife and the overgrown man-boy. Steve Zissis' character, Mark, as it turns out, isn't immature at all. On the contrary, he's actually a responsible married father, but his professional poker-playing brother, Jeremy, who isn't as one-dimensional as he first appears, brings out his worst qualities.

The title refers to a 25-event athletic competition from the 1990s--laser tag, ping pong, etc.--that they revive during a family reunion in order to determine the superior brother, while keeping it a secret from their mother, Alice (Julie Vorus), and Mark's wife, Stephanie (Jennifer Lafleur, very good). Mark's pre-teen son, Hunter (Reid Williams), however, figures things out early on, and enjoys watching his tightly-wound father cut loose.

Naturally, the duo takes the whole thing too far and yes, they do learn a few lessons along the way, but the film is both funnier and more perceptive than the usual Hollywood drek about emotionally stunted men.

The Do-Deca-Pentathlon plays SIFF Cinema Uptown on May 18 and Pacific Place Cinemas on May 22. Zissis, Kelly, Lafleur, and Jay Duplass will be on hand for the first screening. Post-fest, the film opens at the Uptown on July 6. As always, dates and times are subject to change. 

An Apéritif...Alraune with Brigitte Helm

 ALRAUNE

(Henrik Galeen, 1928, Germany, 108 minutes)

Right: Brigitte Helm on fire

Based on the medieval legend of the Mandrake, a root, which grew beneath the gallows from the semen of hanged men, Hanns Heinz Ewers novel Alraune was brought to the screen in 1928 by Ama-Film GmbH and director Henrik Galeen (The Student of Prague 1926, Nosferatu 1922 – as screenwriter). 

Paul Wegener (The Golem 1920, The Magician 1926) stars as Professor Jakob ten Brinken, the "world famous authority on genetic cross-breeding", who implants a prostitute with the 'seed' of a hanged man in order to study the effects of environment over genetics on the offspring. The resulting child is Alraune, whom Brinken calls 'Mandrake', played by Brigitte Helm (Metropolis 1927, The Love of Jeanne Ney 1927). 

Alraune is raised in a convent, ignorant of her origins, believing Brinken is her father. Just as the Professor is convinced, his 'experiment' has overcome her genetic history she runs away with a boy and begins a life of troubled encounters with men. Helm is both innocent, alluring and at times intensely evil in this captivating performance of a lovely young girl, both attracted to and in conflict with the men in her life. As in the novel, which this film closely follows, the idea and understanding of love is unknown to Alraune. As she chats with a circus magician she shares her train compartment with, his real intentions unknown to Alraune, he entertains her with slight-of-hand tricks. He produces a live mouse that he places on her leg and it quickly crawls under her skirt as the girl calmly observes. " What? You are not afraid of mice? Little girl. You will make something of yourself." While the film was heavily censored in 1928, this surviving scene must have been, and remains today, tremendously provocative. Brinken eventually finds Alraune, living as a circus performer, just as she rebels against the magician's attempts to control her flirtations with another man. " Stop me if you can!" In one of the most electrifying scenes in all of Weimar Cinema, Alraune opens the door to the lion's cage now on the stage and steps in. As the curtain opens, the crowd reacts in utter horror while, outside the cage, circus performers furiously run in all directions. Alraune stands before several enormous lions she teased only moments earlier, completely motionless, as the camera cuts to a close-up of her penetrating eyes. Once they are away from the circus, Brinken determines to start a new life with the girl, but Alraune again plots to run away with another man. As she is leaving, she finds the Professor's diary and discovers the truth of her existence, "Where do I belong in society?" Alraune bitterly decides to stay with Brinken and seek her revenge, feeling unfit for the man she now loves. She tortures Brinken by constantly flirting with men. As her ultimate insult, Alraune, dressed from head to tow in shimmering silk, seduces Brinken, "Do you really think I haven't known all along that I am not your daughter?" She runs off, depriving him and the torture continues. Financially and morally destitute, Brinken confronts Alraune as she packs her bags to leave. In a harrowing scene, he chases her from room to room with a large knife. Just as her death seems imminent, Alraune is saved by her lover and Brinken is left to suffer "the hell of loneliness and insanity." An overlooked treasure, Alraune represents the height of silent film in the Weimar era. With the exception of early scenes featuring Alraune's 'mother' and the convent, the film is entirely occupied by men, surrounding Helm like the unnoticed setting of a luminous jewel. Originally posted January 21, 2007. Seek out the only version of this astonishing film I know, the terrible (like looking through the bottom of a fish bowl)video recording of a twenty-year-old Australian cable broadcast and you'll be generously rewarded. In the meantime...

The 17th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival will screen another remarkable film starring Brigitte Helm, The Wonderful Lie of Nina Petrovna (1929), Friday, July 13, 2012 at 9:15pm with live musical accompaniment performed by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

Abel Gance's Monumental 1927 Napoleon

NAPOLEON
(Abel Gance, France, 1927, 330 minutes)

March 24, 25, 31 and April 1, 1:30pm, The Paramount, Oakland

The Eagle of Destiny

The life of Napoléon Bonaparte as the heroic savior of France is revealed from age 10 to 27. Beginning with his boyhood at military school in Brienne, Bonaparte is viewed as an outcast and a leader. 

Emerging as a young officer during the Revolution, the adult Bonaparte (Albert Dieudonné) is first seen in Paris at the Club des Cordeliers where Danton introduces La Marseillaise to the mob as their national anthem. Bonaparte then attempts to unify his native Corsica, survives The Terror, becomes the hero of Toulon and embarks on his conquest of Italy.

Directed by Abel Gance, Napoleon (1927) was initially conceived as the first of six chapters on the life of Bonaparte. Cut by MGM from an original 29 reels to eight for its 1929 American release (with Erich von Stroheim's Greed a fresh memory), restoration of Napoleon became the life work of film preservationist Kevin Brownlow in 1954.

Presented by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in association with American Zoetrope, The Film Preserve, Photoplay Productions, and the BFI, Abel Gance's epic production Napoleon will be presented with live musical accompaniment performed by the Oakland East Bay Symphony with Carl Davis conducting his original score.

The Last Command (1928) with Emil Jannings

Monday, February 6, 7pm, The Paramount, Seattle



"From now on you are my prisoner of war -"
"- and my prisoner of love."

As the Russian revolution runs wild, a General in the Czar's army, Sergius Alexander (Emil Jannings) escapes execution with the help of a beautiful spy. Years later, a former revolutionist turned Hollywood movie director (William Powell) recognizes a head shot of the general, now a decrepit old man working as an extra, and plans his revenge.

Directed by Josef von Sternberg, The Last Command (1928) was the highlight of Jannings' brief Hollywood career. Combined with his performance in The Way of All Flesh (1927), The Last Command received the first Academy Award for best actor in a leading role. Screenwriter Lajos Biró was nominated for best original story. Evelyn Brent, previously featured in von Sternberg's Underworld (1927), stars as the lovely femme fatale Natalie in a complex, pivotal role.

Inspired by the life of General Theodore Lodijensky, The Last Command features one extraordinary, unexpected shocker and a table-turning, earth-shaking finale.

A General on Pike Street

Emil Jannings in The Last Command opened at Seattle's United Artists Theatre on Friday February 24, 1928 for a week-long engagement. The program featured a "special score and concert number," by Jan Sofer and his United Artists Orchestra, with selected shorts featuring Hal Roach's "Leave 'em Laughing, The Laughing Lullaby." For most of its existence, the movie palace at 5th and Pike operated as the Coliseum. Opened in January 1916, it survives today as a retail-clothing store.



STG Presents!

Seattle Theatre Group and Trader Joe's present the third of four films in their current series of Silent Movie Mondays with Emil Jannings in Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command, featuring live musical accompaniment performed at the Paramount's original 1928, 4/20 Wurlitzer organ by Jim Riggs.

Movies for Music Lovers: 2011 Edition

Movies
for Music
Lovers:
2011
Edition


Click here
for the
2010
edition

Some of these films premiered in the US in 2010, but didn't make
their way to Seattle until this year, in which case I deferred to lo-
cal release dates. Some missed the city altogether, in which case I
caught up via DVD, Blu-ray, or download. Altogether, I saw over
250 titles, and wrote about most of them for Amazon, Siffblog,
Line Out, and Video Librarian (the links lead to my reviews).

Just as my 2011 music list revolves around post-punk, a post-
punk vibe runs through many of these films. Animals also a-
bound, as do animalistic human beings, like Ryan Gosling's
Driver with his scorpion jacket (a clue to his true nature).

The Tops:
1. Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn)
2. Poetry (Lee Chang-dong)
3. Hugo (Martin Scorsese)
4. Le Havre (Aki Kaurismäki)
5. Jane Eyre (Cary Fukunaga)
6. Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)
7. The Skin I Live In / La Piel Que Habito (Pedro Almodóvar)
8. Project Nim (James Marsh)
9. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rupert Wyatt)
10. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives /
Loong Boonmee Raleuk Chat (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

Runners-up:
1. The Descendants (Alexander Payne)
2. Attack the Block (Joe Cornish)
3. A Screaming Man / Un Homme
Qui Crie (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun)
4. The Help (Tate Taylor)
5. Beginners (Mike Mills)
6. Weekend (Alexander Haigh)
7. The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius)
8. Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino)
9. Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin)
10. The Time That Remains (Elia Suleiman)



Note: I enjoyed The Help. I realize I'm supposed to hate it, but
I can't stand it when people do my thinking for me or assume that
I don't know anything about African or African American cinema.

I can like The Help and I can like A Screaming Man, too. The thing
is: Tate Taylor's mainstream movie got to me in a way Mahamat-Saleh
Haroun's art house entry didn't. Which doesn't make it the superior
picture; just one that had more personal resonance. I live for '50s-style
melodramas about ordinary women, especially those who triumph
over their small-minded oppressors, whether they're white, black, or
red-eyed space aliens. The critical opprobrium heaped on this film
carried a trace of misogyny that made me deeply uncomfortable.

Apparently, I'm not supposed to like The Artist either, in part because
Harvey Weinstein produced it. But he didn't direct it, and the story
centers on a man who refuses to compromise or to impose his will on
others--un-Harvey-like qualities. In the film, he triumphs over adver-
sity. In real life, it doesn't always work that way, but The Artist and
Hugo are movies about movies and their makers. Not their producers.



Second Runners-up:
1. A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)
2. Moneyball (Bennett Miller)
3. The Princess of Montpensier (Bertrand Tavernier)
4. Norwegian Wood (Tran Anh Hung)
5. Hanna (Joe Wright)
6. Melancholia (Lars Von Trier)
7. Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen)
8. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson)
9. The Yellow Sea (Na Hong-jin)
10. Winnie the Pooh (Don Hall and Stephen J. Anderson)

Openings: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy opens at the Metro Cinemas
(and other theaters) on 1/6 and A Separation on 2/3 (venue TBA).

Worthy of note: 50/50 (Jonathan Levine), The Arbor (Clio Barnard),  
Aurora (Cristi Puiu), Bellflower (Evan Glodell), Carancho (Pablo Trapero),
Circumstance (Maryam Keshavarz), Contagion (Steven Soderbergh),  
Curling (Denis Côté), Gods / Dioses (Josué Méndez), The Guard (John 
Michael McDonagh), Henry's Crime (Malcolm Venville), The Girl / Flickan
(Fredrik Edfeldt), Hideaway / Le Refuge (François Ozon), The Ides of 
March (George Clooney), Kaboom (Gregg Araki), The Piano in a Fac-
tory (Zhang Meng), Putty Hill (Matt Porterfield), The Rum Diary (Bruce
Robinson), Submarine (Richard Ayoade), Toast (S.J. Clarkson), The Tree
(Julie Bertuccelli), Vampire*, Vanishing on 7th Street (Brad Anderson),  
The War Horse (Steven Spielberg), Warrior (Gavin O'Connor), Win Win
(T. McCarthy), X-Men: 1st Class (M. Vaughn), Young Adult (J. Reitman).

* I left out the director and don't want to reformat the whole paragraph. Vampire
is the first English-language effort from All About Lily Chou Chou's Shunji Iwai.

They've done better: A Dangerous Method (David Cron-
enberg), The Future (Miranda July), My Week with Marilyn
(Richard Curtis), The Sleeping Beauty (Catherine Breillat), Take
Shelter (Jeff Nichols), and The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick).



Top documentaries:
1. Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of
a Tribe Called Quest (Michael Rapaport)
2. How to Die in Oregon (Peter D. Richardson)
3. Tabloid (Errol Morris)
4. Page One: Inside the New York Times (Andrew Rossi)
5. Tie: Cave of Forgotten Dreams
and Into the Abyss (Werner Herzog)
6. The Woodmans (C. Scott Willis)
7. Ne Chien Range (Pedro Costa)
8. Nénette (Nicolas Philibert)
9. Public Speaking (Martin Scorsese)
10. Bobby Fischer Against the World (Liz Garbus)



Worthy of note: Bill Cunningham New York (Richard Press),
Broken Doors (Goro Toshima), Color Me Obsessed (Gorman Be-
chard), Crooked Beauty (Ken Paul Rosenthal), Girls on the Wall
(Heather Ross), (POM Wonderful Presents) The Greatest Movie
Ever Sold (Morgan Spurlock), Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today 
(Stuart Schulberg), Pearl Jam Twenty (Cameron Crowe), Rachel
(Simone Bitton), Silver Girls / Frauenzimmer (Saara Alia Waas-
ner), Sin by Silence (Olivia Klaus), Still Bill (Damani Baker and
Alex Vlack), The Weird World of Blowfly (Jonathan Furmanski).



Reissues and Rediscoveries:
1. Kuroneko - The Criterion Collection (Kaneto Shindo)
2. Cronos - The Criterion Collection (Guillermo del Toro)
3. Videodrome - Criterion Collection (David Cronenberg)
4. Raging Bull - 30th Anniversary Edition (Martin Scorsese)
5. All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
6. Kes - The Criterion Collection (Ken Loach)
7. Prowler (Joseph Losey)
8. The Soft Skin (François Truffaut)
9. Four Nights with Anna (Jerzy Skolimowski)
10. Little Red Riding Hood and Other Stories (David Kaplan)



Odds and sods: Bal /Honey (Semih Kaplanoğlu), Boardwalk
Empire - The Complete First Season, The Double Life of Véron-
ique - The Criterion Collection (Krzysztof Kieslowski), Master-
piece Classic - Downton Abbey, Hamilton (Matt Porterfield),
The Hour, Season One, and Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes).   

Missed (or haven't seen yet): 13 Assassins (Takashi Miike), A
Brighter Summer Day / Gu Ling Jie Shao Nian Sha Ren Shi Jian
(Edward Yang), The Adventures of Tintin (Steven Spielberg), Cap-
tain America (Joe Johnston), Carnage (Roman Polanski), Cedar
Rapids (Miguel Arteta), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (David
Fincher), Incendies (Denis Villeneuve), The Interrupters (Steve
James), J. Edgar (Clint Eastwood), Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan),
Margin Call (J.C. Chandor), The Muppets (James Frawley), Mys-
teries of Lisbon (Raul Ruiz), Nostalgia for the Light / Nostalgia de
la Luz (Patricio Guzmán), Shame (Steve McQueen), Source Code
(Duncan Jones), Sucker Punch (Zack Snyder), Terri (Azazel Jac-
obs), Tomboy (Céline Sciamma), The Trip (Michael Winterbot-
tom), and We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay).

Note: Tomboy, which played the 2011 Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, opens at SIFF Cinema on 1/6. Certified Copy, Nostalgia for the Light, and Of Gods and Men made my 2010 "missed" list...and I haven't caught up with them yet. Looking forward to it.

Yes, I did see...Bridesmaids. And I didn't laugh much, but I'm glad that  
Jill Clayburgh, well cast as Kristin Wiig's mother, went out with a hit. Clay-
burgh's daughter (with David Rabe), Lily Rabe, who also got her start on the stage, proves her own mettle in Christopher Munch's Letters from the Big Man, an animal-oriented film almost as strange as Uncle Boonmee.

A final thought: Shame on The New Yorker's David Denby
for breaking the review embargo regarding Fincher's The Girl
with the Dragon Tattoo--but more so for his spoiler regard-
ing The Skin I Live In. And shame on his colleague, Richard
Brody, for spreading the disease by quoting from Denby's Skin
review (though I still enjoyed Brody's comments about Tom
Cruise in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol). Critics!



Endnote: Cross-posted here. Drive image from Collider.