SIFF Reviews: Tablet’s online reviews, to which I am a contributor. Unfortunately, it’s a bulletin-board style site without permalinks, so I’ll be reposting my reviews here as well.
Tablet also ran my profile on Jamie Hook and his film, The Naked Proof, this week, as well as a review of a Canadian film I saw for them, Marion Bridge. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to have the new issue’s content online quite yet, so I can’t link.
Rereading the pieces, I was underwhelmed. The Marion Bridge review was 150 words, which is a tough length for film, for me, and since I was of two minds on the film, I felt the review was scattered. also, the format required a numeric rating scale, 1 to 10, and I didn’t know if one should use the scale like an averaged scale, where 5 would be average, or like grades, where 7 or 8 would be average. I decided if they wanted grades, they’d have used grades. I gave it a five, but it seems like everyone else was thinking the other way, as 8 is the average score other reviewers offered. Stupid symbolic ratings.
The Hook piece was OK, but felt very choppy to me, and unfortunately was marred by an editing goof in which one of two dates for the film was partially removed, leaving the impression that the film was playing in two theaters on one day. Ah well, them’s the breaks. Hopefully there won’t be a long line of distraught Jamie Hook and Charles Mudede fans waiting at the wrong cinema come opening night.