SIFF'in It

Pa and I caught two films at SIFF on Friday night: Conversations with Other Women and Nick Cave's highly-anticipated, The Proposition. I thought Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter were wonderful together in Conversations as the divorced couple who ran into each other after 9 years (sounds vaguely familiar, doesn't it???? except !!!SPOILER ALERT!!! that couple does the unthinkable and they actually sleep together...thereby making them both feel sad, lonely and depressed afterwards. Well, DUH!) At first, the split screen was a tad distracting, but then it was actually very playful in that it depicted a lot of what each character was thinking. Very nicely done!


The Proposition was pretty damn heavy and filled with gore but beautifully shot. Guy Pearce and John Hurt--two favorites of mine were pretty good, especially Hurt who does every role over-the-top. I'm not really big on westerns--and have little to NO knowledge of life in the Australian Outback when the British were trying to "civilize" the land; but it's definintely something I'd like to learn.

So what's next--who knows. Pa and I are still SIFFting through the schedule, and as a break from all that heady stuff, we took Mr. Na to the NW Folklife Festival to see some Ukrainian dancers and musicians and chow down the usual "festival food"--not to mention perusing through the usual vendors who sell boxes in which to put your weed. And after attending a birthday party in the afternoon, we saw Over the Hedge which was, ya know, not SIFF material but cute and heavy on the adult references (Mama, why are you laughing? What's so funny?) Besides, how could you go wrong with a soundtrack from Ben Folds? Much better than that syrupy Jack Johnson who RUINED the Curious George movie.