SIFF'in It, Part Deux

Actually, I wrote this earlier in the week and just never posted it here. Aw well. It's still pretty timely!

Last night was another SIFF double-header, and the two films we screened couldn't have been any more different from one another; but they were equally entertaining.

Factotum (based on Charles Bukowski's novel) was excellent I love Matt Dillon -- I really do. I think he's a highly-accomplished actor and this role was a tough one. He plays a drunk who goes through a series of jobs, usually getting canned on the first day for wandering off to the bar; and though he's pretty wasted most of the time, his wit is dry and sardonic. Living in cheap rooms, with or without his drunken love interest (played by Lili Taylor) he writes short stories and submits them to Black Sparrow, who actually accepts one of his pieces, titled similarly to Bukowski's works like "Poems Written Before Jumping out of an 8 Story Window" or "All the Assholes in the World and Mine". I was bummed that Dillon did a no-show last night at the screening, but I guess he had more important things to do last night like tape an awards show. Woo-hoo.

So we walked down to Pacific Place from the Egyptian and shopped at Nordy's as a palette cleanser for the next film. Thank God, too, because I don't think I could've sat through both in one theatre, back-to-back. We went from gritty and raw to pouf pop.

The documentary on George Michael was enlightening in that it took his "Behind the Music" one step further with Michael explaining the whole Sony Music lawsuit and why he seemingly disappeared off the charts here in the States while continuing to sell millions of records in the rest of the world. I don't "love" George Michael--I grew up with Wham U.K., so to me he's like this cousin I have whom I enjoy talking to during the holidays but don't keep up with much any other time during the year. But I think he's very talented and had a lot of bad shit happen to him that pretty much took the wind out of his sails.