Posted on by mwhybark

Dagnabbit 2: B-Trees united

No flat file backup’s yet emerged.

Disk Warrior 3.0 can be downloaded directly from the Alsoft website, so that’s a good thing. But it failed to fix the problem. So I’m gonna have to reformat the volume. Which means picking through the bogus drive by hand to try to keep as much of the data on the disk as possible.

The source of the problem is multifold; first, when Bellerophon crashes, I typically don’t take the time to run the various disk-fix procedures on the drive, because running something like DW on the volumes will take about 8 hours on the slow, elderly machine.

Secondly, there was some pre-existing file corruption down in the bowels of the drive that led to difficulties in attempting to back up – so instead of finding the bad file and dealing with it I kept putting off dealing with it. Oops.

Finally, the corruption in the b-tree happened to hit in such a way as to prevent the various tools from fixing the disk. The fickle finger of fate, indeed.

So, I spent spome time prepping the substitute server to multihome and so forth; it’s running the venerable QuidProQuo under OS 9.1.2, and is a 9500 with a g3 upgrade. I do have it set up to boot into OSX as well, but haven’t set up mail and PHP and all that good stuff. Yet. In theory, it’s also to act as a backup server. Oops!

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Dagnabbit (forgive the timetravel)

This time, I don’t even have a recent flat-file backup. Or maybe I do, but I haven’t found it yet.

However, the datafiles are all unaffected – yet, alas, the MT perl fils are all on the volume rendered comatose by the fickle finger of fate.

E-mail should remain unaffected.

Did I say arrgh?

For the technically inclined: the volume containing my web-published data has suffered a kind of B-tree error that, while troublesome, should be repairable (Disk First Aid reports “Keys not Found”). The volume is not mountable from OSX, and the standard procedure is boot into OS 9 and run Disk Warrior. Alas, unmountable state of the volume is such as to actually prevent the boot cycle from completing.

On May 6, Alsoft released DiskWarrior 3.0 with OSX-native directory rebuilding. The Alsoft website reports that they are rather backordered. Is there a copy in Seattle? Inquiring minds want to avoid doing a disk reinitialization.

Did I mention? Aaargh.

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Fish

abe vigoda status: dead? Alive? [via memepool]

Didn’t Fish go off the air when he passed away?

Or maybe he actually wasn’t dead. I mean, I know Jack Soo died, but I thought I heard Fish was dead.

Listen to the song.

(Sorry about the deeplinking – it’s not clearly labeled as a song on the site)

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Radio weblogs

KUOW’s Weekday, a morning call in show for the birkenstock and doc crowd up here in God’s Country, will be featuring weblogs for its call-in topic tomorrow at 9am 10am.

Having, I believe, heard Jim Flanagan stump for his ingenious community event, “Drive Yourself to Work Day,” on the phone lines of the very same show I hope to hear a bit from him and my fellow peeps tomorrow morning.

The GeoURL-based seablogs might prove a handy resource for the KUOW people, as well.

UPDATE: I thought this was airing at 9am, but Anita Rowland notes in my comments that it’s at 10am. I’m looking for a confirmation, but haven’t found one; perhaps the station announced the show sometime during the day today when I was off doing other things.

Ah, here it is: Weekday at Defective Yeti, the blog of slated guest, Mathew Baldwin.

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A tumble

As I made my way home from talking with local filmmaker Jamie Hook, I grabbed a bite at the Kidd Valley near my house.

Just as I turned from the counter, another patron said something that ended with the words “…fallen.” I turned to look out the door where a concerned elderly woman hovered over another elderly person, lying on the sidewalk outside the restaurant.

The attention of the restaurant shifted onto the old couple as I made my way to a seat. Employees provided a telephone and a call was placed, presumably to 911.

From my seat I could see the various denizens of the tiny park across the street from the restaurant also watching the couple. A trio of street drunks appeared to be the only persons who remained oblivious of the event.

The drunks on the bench tenderly released their bottle from the depths of their coats before passing it with reverence to the next most grabby of their number. After his slug, that lucky man exaggeratedly concealed the bottle somewhere in the folds of his clothing.

Eventually the attention of the restaurant and of the others in the park returned to what they had been doing – eating, reading, waiting for the bus – with the clear exceptions of the older members of both populations.

At the bus stop, a seventyish man with a sagging face and intricate folds of skin beneath his jaw gravely regarded the couple from under the brim of his grey fedora, hands folded behind his back. His jaw worked erratically. Open, shut open, open, shut, open. At first it appeared that he was talking to himself.

A somewhat younger man, seated at a window booth in the restaurant, regarded the scene from under a rakish snap-brim, enlivened by a spray of pheasant feathers. His hat and recently barbered grey hair were at odds with his puffy orange coat. In the booth behind him, a white-haired, grandmotherly type gazed at the scene on the sidewalk.

From where I sat, I could not see the couple.

The ambulance arrived, and as the EMTs unlimbered the gurney, the restaurant’s golden oldies soundtrack segued from The Monkees’ Pleasant Valley Sunday into the Rolling Stones’ Time is on my Side.

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Simulated 'Dot-Com' Attack in Seattle Tests Preparedness

(See the NYT’s AP story Simulated ‘Dirty Bomb’ Attack in Seattle Tests Preparedness)

SEATTLE (ASP) — A national economic terrorism drill for hundreds of technology workers, press and other underemployed workers began Monday with the mock meltdown of a highly-hyped “dot-com” in a south Seattle industrial warehouse space, converted into startup-style loft offices.

Meanwhile, volunteers at Pacific Lutheran University near Tacoma, about 40 miles to the south, simulated a second, simultaneous attack. The attack on the city government of Tacoma unfolded with events set in motion by the parking lot murder-suicide of Crystal Brame by her husband David Brame, at the time of his attack on his wife Tacoma’s Chief of Police.

Over the course of the five-day drill embarrassing revelations about repeated failures by the highest levels of Tacoma city leaders to heed danger signs concerning Brame will be made public. As the scandal mounts, a wholesale paralysis of the executive level of Tacoma city government will be observed.

The attacks, which combine the Seattle disaster with a mock bioterrorist attack in Chicago, are aimed at testing the readiness of local, state and federal authorities to respond to large scale failures of leadership at the federal, state, and municipal levels. It is the nation’s first large-scale economic terrorism exercise since the December 2000 judicial appointment of President George W. Bush, and the ongoing dismantling of the America economy being carried out in the name of ‘readiness’ by the Bush Administration.

Democratic Seattle officials were quick to point out that the Bush Administration initiatives are not, technically, exercises, but instead actual federal policy.

The idea, said Mayor Greg Nickels, is for regional and national agencies to see where strengths and weaknesses lie.

“In the past, we’ve seen the region repeatedly fail to successfully combat economic terrorism on a variety of scales,” he stated. “From the blackmail that led to the construction of not one but two unwanted sports stadiums to the inability of city and state officials to do anything that will keep Boeing here, it’s long been clear that we have absolutely no idea how to prepare and maintain a stable business environment in Seattle or Washington state as a whole.”

He continued, pointing out how glad he was that Chicago would face a large scale infestation of SARS, exclaiming at one point that perhaps that would “bring Phil home,” thought to be a reference to Boeing CEO Phil Condit.

City officials settled on the “dot-com” scenario after having considered, and rejected, a simulated meeting of the World Terrorist Organization in downtown Seattle.

“We just felt that our ninja-stormtrooper cops had really already had a sufficient amount of urban training experience,” stated an unnamed but supposedly well-informed source. “Plus, we think that running a large-scale urban-unrest scenario again might result in even more criticism of poor executive-level leadership than we already get on a day-to-day basis.”

The ‘dot-com’ scenario was also selected due to a near complete absence of representatives of the once-flourishing local economic sector in the local political contributors’ pool. “There’s no-one left to piss off,” the official noted. “We even blamed the dot-coms for the endless Enron-derived price hikes for local utilities, and nobody ever complains!”

The exercise is expected to contribute markedly to local and national fear and insecurity, while not actively reducing unemployment or increasing business-environment stability in any way.

City officials in nearby Vancouver, Canada, applauded the effort, and noted that they have had to face few of the challenges that Seattle and Tacoma have weathered in the past few years. “Yeah, we even still have jobs for internet-oriented marketing people up here. We ran a few test-case dot-com terror scenarios a ways back and found that our local economy just wasn’t as prone to distortion and outright dissembling as yours appears to be. Oh, and Seattle? If you need a place to stay this week, come on up. Always room for our poor American cousins.”

Reports of black helicopters in the region and the preparation of suburban internment camps for the displaced dot-com workers, who vote disproportionately Democratic, could not be substantiated.

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SIFF Picks!

This list has been extracted from a database I’m using to manage the SIFF workload I’ll be taking a crack at; the title of each film should link to a search-results page hosted at SIFF’s website, rather than directly to the SIFF information page for the film itself. I gotta say, over 200 films is a huge amount of film info to try to winnow through. This list is made up of 45 films, and doesn’t include the shorts and compilation presentations such as animation or what not. I’m unsure if I managed to find all of the local-interest and loaclly-produced films.

I’ve quoted when I have used copy directly from the Seattle Times
-produced SIFF guide. On the whole, my notes on each film are intended to convey my attitude to the film and my reasons for being interested in it.

This is a work in progress – I’m really just trying to share a tool was making for my own use with others that might find it helpful.

(For a short while I helped to typeset the weekly film guides for a publication in my hometown, and I would play a game. I would try to see if each film in the list would be described as a “touching coming of age story.” Try it here and see what happens!)

23 (Germany, 1998)
Action/Thriller (HK, Cops, Etc)

4p, June 7, Pacific Place

Hackers and computers! Paranoia! The dangers of the internet! Don’t forget to use secure passwords and change them every three months!

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (Hong Kong, 1978)
Action (HK, Cops, Etc)

7p, June 9, Harvard Exit

Described as the “most popular screen version” of the story of the Shaolin monks and their new fighting style – it’s unstoppable!

800 Bullets (Spain, 2002)
Other

1:45p, June 13, Cinerama

9:30p, june 14, Cinerama

A “nasty, 12 -year-old boy” sneaks off in search of his grandfather, a former stuntman said to be performing at a “run-down theme park,” formerly the set of some Hollywood westerns.

American Splendor (US, 2003)
Other

7p, June 4, Egyptian

9:30p, June 9, Pacific Place

This innovative film that won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2003 is based on the works and artistic techniques of comic-book author and irascible jazz critic Harvey Pekar.

Pekar appears in the film as does Paul Giamatti as Pekar in segments that dramatize Pekar’s life; much as Pekar works wth different artists to create the stories in his long-running, critically acclaimed comic book, also titled “American Splendor.”

Animatrix (US/Japan, 2003)
SF/animation/fantasy

9:30p, May 31, Egyptian

All nine “Animatrix” shorts on the big screen. Just one showing! Considering that this screening takes place only two weeks after the extremely anticipated commercial premiere of the second “Matrix” film, this should be a HOT ticket.

Blind Shaft (China Hong kong Germany, 2003)
Action (HK, Cops, Etc)

9:30p, June 4, Pacific Place

40, June 7, Egyptian

A pair of Chinese con-men work the coal-mining hinterlands and make out like bandits – until trust is lost.

Blood Brothers (HK/China, 1973)
Period

11:30a, June 7, Harvard Exit

“Based on actual events surrounding the assassination of a general” in late 19th century China. Two bandits become friends with a mercenary in the wake of their attempted robbery of him.

Bubba Ho-tep (US, 2002)
SF/animation/fantasy

Mid, may 24, Egyptian

Bruce Campbell!

BRUCE CAMPBELL!

Jack, (Ossie Davis – no, really, Ossie Davis) believing himslf to be Jack Kennedy, teams up with an elderly Elvis Presley (a fellow resident of the nursing home) to put the hurt on an “evil Egyptian entity”.

I mean, how can you effin’ lose?

Bukowski: Born Into This (US, 2002)
Documentary

9:30p, May 28, Broadway Performance Hall

4p, June 6, Egyptian

I first read Chales Bukowski while spending some time in the Monroe County Jail for firstly having imbibed too freely at too young an age and secondly having repeatedly ignored miscellaneous court summonses.

As a consequence, I associate Bukowski with drinking, jail, and willfully self-destructive and foolish behavior.

Just as you do.

Cabin Fever (US, 2002)
Horror/Supernatural

Mid, May 31,

9:30p, June 10, Harvard Exit

This independently produced horror film has been burnin’ up the lines among connoisseurs of the independently produced horror flick, with special comparison to the first couple Evil Dead flicks.

Probably not my cup o’ tea, but honestly, it’s time for some more isolated-cabin-in-the-woods lo-fi fearmongering, I have to agree.

Caesar (US/Germany/Italy/Netherlands, 2002)
Period

6:30p, June 12, Egyptian

World Premiere

I’m genuinely surprised to see this film premiering here – such a topical film, and one that features the talents of Jeremy Sisto, Christopher Walken, and the final performance of Richard Harris, would normally be expected to get a red-carpet treatment in LA and NYC.

The film tells of the rise of – you guessed it – Julius Caesar. It’s part of the leading edge of a slew of classically-derived films, which included USA network’s miniseries “Helen of Troy” recently, not one but two biopics about Alexander the Great currently headed for production, and Wolfgang Petersen’s upcoming period blockbuster “Troy.”

To what do we owe this surge of interest in what have been called “the oldest dead white men?” Dude, haven’t you heard? It’s empire time! Pax Americanus on your ass, got it? Try to keep up, mm’kay?

(Well, there’s some other reasons too. The mid-nineties translations of Homer. The triumph of the Lord of the Rings films, unabashedly modeled on classical heroic narrative. A little film you may have heard of called “Gladiator”. Stuff like that.)

Le Cercle Rouge (France, 1970)
Action (HK, Cops, Etc)

4p, June 8, Harvard Exit

Dir. Jen-Pierre Meliville, “Le Samourai”, “Bob le Flambeur”

Extended version of this 1970s French film noir. An additional 40 minutes rejoins the film as originally released in the US.

A Chinese Odyssey 2002 (HK, 2002)
Period

7p, June 9, Egyptian

11:30a, June 13, Cinerama

Is this a period film? It’s hard to tell from the description.

“A young emperor and his sister sneak out of the palace.” In the ‘real world’ they meet up with someone dubbed King Bully.

Cinerama Adventure (US, 2002)
Documentary

7p, may 29, Egyptian

David Strohmaier, the leading film historian on the Cinerama format, had just completed this film at the time of the Cinerama Festival, which he was instrumental in assembling, here in Seattle earlier this year.

Strohmaier’s enthusiasm and knowledge for this fascinating subgenre in film history is infectious in person, and the story itself is simply fascinating.

Since the Cinerama is one of only two theaters on the West Coast capable of displaying the technologically-peculiar films (which require three projectors), and one of the directors of the seven films created for the system lives in Seattle, this is a must-see for me, at least.

Come Drink With Me (HK/China, 1966)
Action (HK, Cops, Etc)

9:30p, May 24, Harvard Exit

11:30a, May 26, Harvard Exit

Golden Swallow is saved by Fan Dabei after she’s felled by an evildoer under the command of gang leader Jade-faced Tiger. Love blossoms, yet the gang plagues the area. What shall the lovers do?

(Golden Swallow. Heh.)

 Demonlover (France, 2002)
Action (HK, Cops, Etc)

7p, june 10, Cinerama

Thriller centering on the attempted purchase of “TokyoAnime,” a “3-D pornographic manga video game.”

Gimme summa dat. Actually, I’m more interested in the idea of a movie about hi-tech business acquisitions. Foolishness! Waste! Arrogance! Wealth! Brilliance1 Heartbreak!

Say, maybe THAT’s my script…

Dominoes (US, 2002)
Other

9:30p, May 25, Egyptian

1:45p, June 13, Broadway Performance Hall

Locally produced – World premiere.

“Ten Seattleites spiral in and out of sex, love and relationships as they try to find meaning in all the usual – and not so usual – places.”

Is this set in a pizza joint? If so, who plays Julia Roberts?

Double Vision (Taiwan/HK/US, 2002)
Horror/Supernatural

Mid, June 7, Egyptian

9:30p, June 10, Cinerama

Winner of HK Academy Award 2003, Best Supporting Actress.

“‘Double Vision’ pairs a washed-up cop with an equally burnt-out FBI agent as they investigate brain altering black fungus, evil Taoist sects, supernatural forces, and a psychotic serial killer.”

The trailer’s effects were impressive. In English. Played up “demons” in the trailer. Cops on the trail of demons. There ya go.

Dream Cuisine (China/Japan, 2003)
Other

6:30p, June 1, Broadway Performance Hall

4p, June 8, Broadway Performance Hall

A 78-year old Shangdong master chef wants to visit her childhood home in Shangdong province China from her longtime life in Japan in her dotage but hubby is opposed.

Longtime readers will understand my interest in the description of Shangdong cuisine – no sugar, no lard, no MSG. It intrigues me, as I am acutely aware of my lack of fundamentals in Chinese and Japanese cookery. I’ve eaten varieties of Asian cuisine since I was a child – being unable to reproduce it as easily as I can varieties of European cuisine frustrates me.

The Enbalmer (Italy, 2002)
Other

7p, June 10, Egyptian

9:30p, June 15, Pacific Place

A gay dwarf taxidermist is key to a young man and woman’s developing relationship.

I covered the first US festival appearances of this flick for Cinescape, and it looks so strange I can’t help but be interested. Apparently very beautifully shot.

Ever Since The World Ended (Canada, 2002)
SF/animation/fantasy

2p, May 28, Broadway Performance Hall

9:30p, May 29, Broadway Performance Hall

“Twelve years after the Kotto Plague reduces the population of the San Francisco Bay area to 186, local filmahers Calum Grant and Joshua Atesh Little interview survivors, document the empty San Francisco streets, and undertake a hazardous journey into the savage hinterlands of Marin County.”

What’s not to like?

G–Sale (US, 2002)
Other

11:30a, may 25, Egyptian

Word Premiere. Locally produced.

“Bogwood, Wash., is the fictional suburban setting for this tale about the eccentric residents of the ‘Garage Sale Capitol of the USA’, who try to outmaneuver each other at each sale.”

The Good Old Naughty Days (France, 2002)
Other

9:30p, May 29, Egyptian

A compilation of silent French porn from early in the century. “Every type of coupling known to man woman and dog.”

Is it prosecutable child porn if the child’s dead of old age? Film at 11.

The Great Wonder (US, 2003)
Documentary

11:30a, May 26, Egyptian

World Premiere – Locally made.

The “Lost Boys” of Sudan, youthful refugees from a civil war, arrive in Seattle.

The Hebrew Hammer (US, 2003)
Other

Mid, June 6, Egyptian

The film’s creators term it “Jewsploitation,” and the idea is to use European and American stereotypes of Jewishness to create a satirical, um, ubermensch, along the lines of the 1970’s classic “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song,” or Sweetback’s tamer descendant “Shaft.” Stars Adam Goldberg of “Saving Private Ryan” and “A Beautiful Mind.”

King of the Ants (US, 2002)
Action/Thriller (HK, Cops, Etc)

9:30p, June 13, Egyptian

11:30a, June 15, Cinerama

World Premiere

Stuart Gordon, director of “Reanimator”, leads an adaptation of a novel by Charlie Higson in which a housepainter accepts a repugnant job: dispose of a body.

Stuart Gordon is a cult-film legend. That is all.

Los Zafiros/The Sapphires: Music from the Edge of Time (US, 2003)
Documentary

4p, May 23, Broadway Performance Hall

9:30p, May 25, Broadway Performance Hall

A documentary chronicling Los Zafiros, who combined Cuban music with American doo-wop. Success in Cuba and America is followed by the inevitable sad second act.

My Architect (US, 2002)
Documentary

6:30p, May 24, Harvard Exit

4p, May 26, Pacific Place

In 1974, influential architect Louis Kahn was found dead and unidentified in Penn Station. As his family learned the story of his passing, the architect’s secret lives – lives, not life – came to light. This film, by the architect’s son, tells the story.

The Naked Proof (US, 2003)
Other

6:30p, May 25, Egyptian

4p, June 13, Cinerama

World Premiere – Locally made.

“An engaging philosophical romantic comedy.” The cast includes the celebrated playwright August Wilson, (“The Piano Lesson”, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” and many more important contemporary plays) as well as The Stranger’s Charles Mudede, a thoughtful local writer if ever there was one.

I’m developing a story for Tablet on this film, how it got made, and the director, Jamie Hook.

 Nudity Required (US, 2003)
Other

1:45p, May 25, Egyptian

7p, June 10, Broadway Performance Hall

World Premiere.

“Daydreaming” bowling alley employees in Bemerton opt for the production of a porn flick over continuing in the bowling alley line of work.

Humina!

The One-Armed Swordsman (HK/China, 1967)
Action/Thriller (HK, Cops, Etc)

11:30a, May 25, Harvard Exit

This “revenge thriller” is decribed as “the key transitional film between the old-school wuxia
swordplay picture and what we now think of as the kung-fu movie.”

Thanks for clearing that up for us.

Overnight (US, 2003)
Documentary

4p, June 12, Egyptian

6:30p, June 13, Egyptian

A documentary about “little-known filmmaker Troy Duffy,” the bar that Miramax honcho Harvey Weinstein bought for Duffy, and the filmmaker’s project, “The Boondock Saints.”

Ping Pong (Japan, 2002)
Action/Thriller (HK, Cops, Etc)

1p, June 9, Pacific Place

9:30p, June 10, Egyptian

This film had the most intruiguing of the trailers at the press opening for the festival – featuring improbable and surreal special effects intercut with gritted-teeth intensity table-tennis action, the audience didn’t know what to make of it – especially because of the lack of subtitles.

Whether the exhibited film is subtitled or not, the trailer’s vigor and originality of vision intrigued me enough that I really hope to see this film.

P.T.U. (HK, 2002)
Action/Thriller (HK, Cops, Etc)

9:30p, June 13, Cinerama

4p, June 14, Cinerama

U.S. Premiere

Cops v. gangsters in Hong Kong. Mmm, tasty!

Return to the 36th Chamber (HK/China, 1980)
Action/Thriller (HK, Cops, Etc)

7p, June 10, Harvard Exit

A “quasi-sequel,” the program guide notes that this film popularized “martial arts comedy in 1980s Hong Kong cinema.”

So Close (HK, 2002)
Action/Thriller (HK, Cops, Etc)

7p, may 27, Egyptian

mid, may 30, Egyptian

I incorrectly described this film as missing from the program guide on May 7.

The film looked impossibly hot in the trailer. Cute girls, amazing fight scenes, crazy effects: the program guide’s summary of the silly plot in no way conveys the potential impact of the film.

Stoked: The Rose and Fall of Gator (US, 2003)
Documentary

4:45p, June 9, Cinerama

Mark “Gator” Rogowski was an early pro skateboader. He’s in prison for the murder of “his friend, Jessica Bergsten.”

This documentary takes a look at what happened.

As a longtime punk rocker who well remembers the peculiar relationship of punk rock and skaters in the mid-eighties, I’m interested.

Surplus (Sweden, 2002)
Documentary

7p, June 12, Broadway Performance Hall

1:45p, June 15, Broadway Performance Hall

The Swedes take a look at the ideas of Eugene’s John Zerzan, an author whose a controversial anti-consumerist philosophy and ideas have had a formative effect on the development of West Coast anti-globalization activists and protests.

Swordswoman of Huangjiang (HK/China, 1930)
Action/Thriller (HK, Cops, Etc)

1:45p, June 7, Egyptian

Long-time readers will not be surprised to hear that if I had to pick just one film to see at the festival, this would be it. A silent film shot in Hong Kong in 1930, it’s described as a precursor to HK sword-and -sorcery films.

The film will be accompanied by a live performance by Aono Jikken Ensemble.

I love my silent movies!

Tribal Journey: Celebrating our Ancestors (US, 2003)
Documentary

4p, May 25, Egyptian

World Premiere.

A fleet of handmade canoes voyage from Vancouver Island and down the Pacific Coast of Washington State. The journey is a political and cultural statement on the part of the coastal Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest.

Under Another Sky (Algeria/France, 2002)
Other

7p, June 2, Egyptian

A French-Algerian youth is deported to Algeria where his family bears “heavy secrets.”

All Algerians bear heavy secrets, and it’s a crime that the suffering of ths country – and the brilliance of it’s people – is so little known.

Vengeance (HK/China, 1970)
Action/Thriller (HK, Cops, Etc)

11:30a, June 1, Harvard Exit

Blood! Peckinpah’s films influenced Hong Kong, yes they did.

Wattstax: 2003 Special Edition (US, 1973/2003)
Documentary

mid, may 23, Egyptian

The 1973 concert in Watts, featuring basically everyone who was recording for Stax records at the time, has long been recognized as both the source of one of the great rock films (that would be this one) and a crucial document of a slice of America’s zeitgeist.

The Weather Underground (US, 2003)
Documentary

4p, May 23, Egyptian

9:30p, May 27, Broadway Performance Hall

What do you get when you combine college students and explosives?

Try this: an exploded townhouse, bank robberies, and assorted acts of revolutionary mayhem, to no lasting societal effect.

So what happened, anyway? I believe the film will set out to answer at least some of these questions.

Whale Rider (New Zealand/Germany, 2002)
Other

6:30p, May 31, Egyptian

4:45p, June 4, Egyptian

This film sported the most commercially appealing trailer screened at the press launch on May 7, and won Best Film at the 2002 Toronto Film Festival and Audience Favorite at Sundance 2003.

A Maori chieftain’s granddaughter insists on inclusion in chiefly training, over his resistance. Hint: there are whales, an unbeleivably cute little girl stars, and – dude – it’s set in New Zealand.

I bet they already have property negotiations underway for plush toys and spinoff shows.

Posted on by mwhybark

SIFF: press launch

I went to the press launch for the Seattle International Fim Festival (SIFF) on May 7, and it was interesting. The festival will be larger than ever, and I believe I heard it described as the largest international film festival in North America this year. There will be 220 features and 75 shorts. Of these, 55 will be U.S. or North American premieres. No special announcement was made regarding world premieres, and I didn’t think to ask.

Of special note are a couple of areas the festival is highlighting: documentaries, and what they are calling “Heroic Grace“, Hong Kong action movies. There will be 46 documentaries screened during the festival, and while the SIFF Guide only mentions nine films under the “Heroic Grace” heading, I suspect there are more films than that in the festival that have Hong Kong connections.

Some of the other areas of special interest that the Festival will be highlighting are “Cloud Kingdom“, recent films from South Korea; “Women in Cinema“, highlighted by the promising Maori film Whale Rider, and “Spawned in Seattle“, a two-day series of events focusing on the work of people from the region.

Additionally, the Screenings for Students offers FREE TICKETS to selected screenings for students – run, don’t walk, to the SIFF Box Office in Pacific Place, mm’kay? It’s a floor or two down from the theaters. The box office also will host an exhibition of Polish cinema posters that runs for the duration of the Festival.

The complete listing of SIFF Events is quite extensive.

After the Festival people spoke we were shown a half-hour of trailers. As SIFF Director Darrel McDonald took care to note, most of the films that appear at SIFF are the works of independent filmmakers that lack the resources to produce trailers, let alone get them rated. Keeping that in mind, there were some appealing possibilities.

One of the two most conventionally appealing trailers was for the previously-mentioned Whale Rider, which appears to be the story of a Maori girl who struggles to take up her family’s traditional role in Maori culture as chieftains, crossing a gender boundary to do so. Whales! Cute little girls learning staff fighting! Cool Maori tattoos! The auditorium sighed with desire.

Director Niki Caro’s 2002 film won the 2002 Toronto Film Festival Best Film and the Sundance 2003 Audience Award, Best Film. It will only have two festival showings, but with awards like that it’s no surprise to hear that Whale Rider already has a distribution agreement with Newmarket Films.

The other trailer that garnered positive reaction for it’s fluid, flashy screen presence is the Hong Kong action flick So Close, which combined impossibly stylish, stylized action scenes of balletic grace and strikingly commercial high-fashion costume design with digital effects – something like The Matrix meets Crouching Tiger, but in present-day Asia (possibly Hong Kong). The (ahem) kicker? The film’s lead action heroines are two beauties, who act as assassins in “the high-stakes–world of corporate intrigue” (or something like that).

Frustratingly, the film does not appear in the festival guide.

Finally, the single most astonishing trailer is for a film whose name did not appear on screen in a script that I can read. The film’s trailer presented what appeared to be a buddy story about two young athletes, devoted to the challenging sport – of high-powered table tennis.

The American audience chuckled at the novelty of such a thing, and then the trailer began to present a rapid-fire avalanche of surreal images, the originality of the visuals heightened by the fact that we could only make four words in the entire trailer: “I can flyy,” echoing in heavily accented English as a young man leaps from an urban bridge toward the water below, his flight arrested by the camera as it orbits his frozen fall. A man, facing away, slouchingly hunched in a locker room, butterfly wings flexing from his back, suffused with light. Just after, less than a second of a person emerging from a vat of ping-pong balls. The juxtaposition of the butterfly wings and the egg-like ping-pong balls evoked birth and transformation.

All of this was intercut with frenetic table-tennis action. Taken together, it was by far the most powerful of the trailers. Certainly part of the power stemmed from the mystery of the experience, as the trailer was not subtitled in any way.

The film, it turns out, is called (duh) Ping Pong!

Also shown were trailers for the upcoming Philip Seymour Hoffman vehicle, Owning Mahowny, in which a nebbish who works at a bank leads a double life as a high-rolling gambler; I Capture the Castle, a leading candidate for a date flick at SIFF for me personally, and Double Vision, which ambitiously seeks to combine the supernatural horror thriller with the detective film and sets it squarely in Hong Kong.

China loomed large in the trailer presence, with about half, it seemed to me, of the trailers flacking films that originated either in HK or the mainland itself.

Following the trailers, the Fesitval’s premiere film, Argentina’s Valentin was shown, which I regrettably had to miss (my dear wife was home sick in bed).

Films that were not discussed or previewed in which I have an interest include a screening of all nine Animatrix shorts (as I type this sentence, SIFF’s website has just gone down) – just one showing, though, kids! It’s on May 31 at the Egyptian.

Speaking of genre animation, The Tortoise and the Hare, a long unfinished but recently completed film from stop-motion master Ray Harryhausen will be shown along with the maestro’s Jason and the Argonauts. But wait! That’s not all!

Harryhausen himself will be present for the screening, and will talk about his career. Mmmm, inn-ter-view. Cross your fingers.

Jeff Goldblum is the other onsite high-profile guest – no word on an Apple Store walkthrough yet 😉 .

I have had an opportunity to flag the films I hope to see or catch press screenings of and will dash off that list as well… Hopefully I can link to the SIFF site, but the web gods are in charge of that now.

Generally speaking I will be focused on genre flicks and local work. I hope to be able to pick one or more of the local pieces to work up a feature for Tablet in addition to whatever Cinescape assignments I might put out.