Hounds, Manufactured Landscapes, The Year of Living Dangerously, I Dot the Eye

Four movies today and I'm still in one little piece! The Full Series Pass comes with a few perks, one of which is being able to dart into the theater before the rest of the crowd to use the bathroom without waiting in line. This comes in very handy when you're hopped up on caffeine and going through tons of water on a hot day.

SIFF seems to assemble a bunch of their lesser-known movies into the 2pm weekday slots for most days. The audiences are usually very mixed and most showings seem very sparsely attended. This isn't always the case, but I notice it frequently. I like these showings though because they're generally pretty decent but overlooked films. Last year I saw Host & Guest from one of these timeslots which I liked a lot. Today, Hounds was showing over at Pacific Place so I hauled on over to check it out.

Throughout the beginning of Hounds there are stark white wide shots of cold landscape. There is no music for a good half or 2/3rds of the movie. Character dialogue is very curt. Everything feels very tightly restrained. Perhaps this speaks to the stereotype of the cold, calculating German people, or perhaps it's simply for dramatic effect. Whatever it is, it creates an interesting mood across the storyline that makes way for strong punctuation by short musical pieces and expanded dialogue later on as the movie progresses. This extremely careful pacing and planning pay off very well, in addition to the controlled cinematography that is very deliberate in its commentary on the characters. The movie itself is about a boy who discovers his now-separated father is seeing his ex-wife's sister. He becomes friends with a girl who is mute which eventually evolves into a love story. It's definitely not fast-paced or action packed, but the rewards that come from the careful exploration of each character within their environment are great and their numerous subtleties very satisfying. I really liked the direction on this movie overall. The story itself not quite as much, but what was done to illustrate it was pulled off very nicely.

I had previously skipped Manufactured Landscapes but fortunately another showing happened in the same theater I was already at so I stayed. This movie explores the photography work of Edward Burtynsky. His photographs explore the large scale effect of man on the earth. During the movie, he talks a bit about how he doesn't necessarily comment on whether that's good or bad, but instead lets viewers draw their own conclusion. The photographs are completely amazing, and this neutral stance is notable considering how sharply the works comment upon our environmental problems. The movie very accurately captures both Burtynsky's still photographic work and thought process, as well as his overall vision through the cinematography. In just the first scene alone, we spend several minutes viewing the interior of a very huge factory as the camera tracks across each aisle. This live view perfectly accompanies Burtynsky's still photos, giving them even more weight and communicating his overall conceptual ideas through the movie camera lens.

I have to say, his photographs alone are pretty awesome. Just that alone makes this movie worth seeing, because there is something about the scale of them that makes them very suited towards view on a large screen. Besides that though, the movie really adds a lot to his photographs. It's not just a documentary on him and his still photos, it is in and of itself an extension of his work. The idea of the movie screen being an extension of still photography and picking up where it physically cannot works very effectively here with the theme of human effect on environment in being able to really show the moving sum of parts that create the effects captured so well by Burtynsky's camera.

My only gripes about Manufactured Landscapes is that there are a few overuses of a particular type of still photography transition effect to communicate the enormity of the photographic subjects, and the latter half of the movie wasn't quite as moving to me as the first half, perhaps because it delves very specifically into subjects without retaining more of a global view.

The Year of Living Dangerously is a movie from 1982 starring Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver. At first I was a little weary of seeing this, it just seemed like the type of movie I probably wouldn't have seen when it was released either, but I'm really glad I went. It's part a story of a journalist and his career woes, and part a love story. There are certain devices that always get me worked up about movies, the first being movies about filmmaking (Cinema Paradiso, for example), and the second is movies that feature still photography processing. This one had the latter. Anyway, Living Dangerously's story and set location, along with some very fine acting and well developed characters, made it stand out as a winner.

And finally the last feature of the day was a shorts package of avant garde work I Dot the Eye over at Northwest Film Forum. I've seen some of their experimental curations before and it can be very hit or miss, so I was pretty much prepared for anything. Unfortunately I wasn't completely thrilled with any of the films shown as part of this package. I loved the experimental nature of all the films, and I enjoyed the usage of 16mm in several of the shorts, but did not find much to grab onto or be inspired by. Several of the movies seemed to make little sense even in the context of experimental, and a couple were just plain drab. The director for the last one, I'm Keith Hernandez was there for a Q&A afterwards about his film, which was pretty well done and probably my only real favorite.

Audience Watch: I had the unfortunate luck of sitting next to at least several older women during one of the movies who reeked of "old lady perfume." During this, I also sat near a man who was constantly writing on a notepad and would flip the page every 5 minutes. I don't know who this guy was, but I find it hard to believe he was with the press or anything, so I don't know what his story was but it was extremely irritating. Later when the movie ended he let out this huge sigh and verbal end note that I had trouble interpreting but seemed to succinctly punctuate his overall irritant level.