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Seattle's International Film Festival: Part 11

By Sara M. Fetters.

And The Winners Are...

The 27^th annual Seattle International Film Festival came to a close Sunday evening with a gala world premier screening of Alan Rudolph’s new star-studded feature Investigating Sex. Suppose to be a wry comedy about 1920’s academics discussing the nature of sex openly and free of taboos, the film has been rumored to be a tour-de-force return to form for the notoriously hit-and-miss director. I’d love to say that it was, but sadly, I lost my closing night pass so your guess is as good as mine.

Oh well, that’s life. To be completely honest, I’m not too shaken up about missing it. I’d only seen 73 films at the festival up to that point, so missing one was not earth shattering at that point. I admit I would have liked to have met Nick Nolte, I’ve been a huge fan for ages, but even that doesn’t depress me like it would have a mere 25 days ago when the festival began.

The big news of the night, however, was the announcements in regards to the audience and jury awards for this year’s festival. Surprises aplenty, that’s for sure.

The big winner? Survivor host Jeff Probst’s debut film Finder’s Fee won the Golden Space Needle Award for best picture from SIFF audience goers. "I'm not gonna lie," said the surprised filmmaker as he accepted the prize from festival co-founder Darryl Macdonald at the Space Needle. "This is cool. This is great." After more than 77,000 votes were cast for over 250 films, Finder’s Fee’s win is even more surprising considering the highly touted competition it faced, most notably Tim Blake Nelson’s O, Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World and John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

All three films didn’t leave the festival empty handed, however. Nelson was the narrow audience award winner for his brilliantly executed high school Shakespearean adaptation over Probst and Thora Birch was the runaway winner for best actress for stunning turn in Ghost World.  The runner-up for best actor was Birch’s costar Steve Buscemi who lost to the Hedwig’s creator and glamour queen John Cameron Mitchell. Chosen as best documentary was George Butler's The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition. Best short subject was Glen Gaylord's Boychick.

As for the special jury awards, Michael Polish's Jackpot and Jason Bloom's Viva Las Nowhere were the surprise winners of the top prizes in the New American Cinema category.  They beat out such highly touted rivals such as audience winner Finder’s Fee, Hedwig, Kathryn Bigelow’s The Weight of Water, Jan Egleson’s The Blue Diner, Christine Lahti’s My First Mister, Alison Ander’s Things Behind the Sun and Ed Burns’ Sidewalks of New York. Garrett Barrett's Farewell to Harry won the "Shooting in Seattle" prize for best local film and Lukas Moodysson's comedy-drama about commune life Together won the jury award in the New Director’s Showcase category. The jury also made special mention of Reza Parsa's politically charged Before the Storm and Chan-wook Park’s Joint Security Area as "films of tremendous social import."

Also receiving a special award was former Seattle Times film critic John Hartl honored with a special Golden Space Needle award for his "outstanding contributions to cinema in Seattle." Hartl worked 34 years as a film critic for the Seattle Times before retiring earlier this year.

…And What About My Picks?

My personal choices haven’t really changed too much.  Here they all are, as well as a few other awards and comments in regards to the 2001 edition of the Seattle International Film Festival.

Best Picture: Takeshi Kitano’s Brother (I know – you’re all shocked I’m sure).

Best Director: Terry Zwigoff for Ghost World. While Brother was the better film overall, no movie caught my attention liked Zwigoff’s glorious adaptation of Daniel Clowes graphic novel.

Best Actress: Margherita Buy, Ignorant Fairies.

Best Actor: Germán Jaramillo, Our Lady of the Assassins.

Best Screenplay: Zwigoff and Clowes for Ghost World.

Best Documentary: Kate Davis’ Southern Comfort, Chris Hegedus and Jehane Noujaim’s Startup.com and Laurent Bécue-Renard’s That the Women Live! – all so good I can’t choose between them.

Best Cinematography: Pin Bing Lee for Vertical Rays of the Sun.

Best Film Unjustly Being Passed Over for Theatrical Distribution: Egelson’s The Blue Diner.

Worst Film Unjustly Being Given a Theatrical Distribution: Dominique Dereddere’s insipid Everybody’s Famous.

Best Performance in a Bad Film: Judy Davis’ stunning work in the otherwise awful Gaudi Afternoon.

Proof The Desperately Seeking Susan was a Fluke for Director Susan Seidelman: Gaudi Afternoon again – it’s been 16 years since Susan and Seidelman has made eight feature films, all of them bad.

Best Australian Interpretation of When Harry Met Sally: Jonathan Teplitzky’s derivative if still charming debut Better Than Sex.

Best Australian Interpretation of an Ingmar Bergman Film: Paul Cox’s talky but masterful Innocence.

Best Australian Lesbian 1940’s Style Film Noir Murder Mystery: Samantha Lang’s Monkey’s Mask.

Reason Australian Films Should Never Be Allowed at SIFF Ever Again: Rebel Penfold-Russell’s truly awful WillFull. A producer of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Penfold-Russell confuses chaos with directing and assumes it is entertaining and amusing. It isn’t.

Most Stunningly Audacious Film That You’ll Never See: Kinji Fukasaku’s Survivor/Lord of the Flies/Most Dangerous Game hybrid Battle Royale. 

Most Stunningly Audacious Film I Hope You’ll Never See: Sergio Bizzio’s man and his sheep love story Animal.  Unless you’re into bestiality porn, I’d suggest you take the opportunity and miss this one.

Best Reason to Still Be Excited About Josh Hartnett and Julia Stiles: After lowering all cinematic expectations, Hartnett with the insipid Pearl Harbor and Stiles with the dry melodrama Save the Last Dance, both actors turn in career-best performances in the controversial and fantastic high school morality tale O.

Best Shakespearean Adaptation: O again. Tim Blake Nelson and Brad Kaaya have crafted one of the year’s best films.

Worst Shakespearean Adaptation: Campbell Scott and Eric Simonson’s three-hour version of Hamlet. Halfway through, I tried to fall asleep. Unfortunately, I couldn’t so I had to watch the final 90 minutes.

Best Reason to See Five Films in One Day: Sex, Shame & Tears followed by Film Noir followed by Nang Nak followed by The Road Home followed by Crimson Rivers equals a glorious day film viewing.

Worst Reason to See Five Films in One Day: Any day where your last film is the completely awful Spanish serial killer thriller Plenilunio. Awful. That is all I can say.

Best Part of SIFF’s Focus on Thailand: Nonzee Nimibutr’s gorgeous, dreamy and quite moving ghost story Nang Nak.

Most Overrated Film from Thailand: Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s quirky black comedy 6ixtynin9. At an hour, it would have been perfect. Unfortunately, it was nearly two.

Example That the Horror Film is Live and Well: John Fawcett’s scary and funny high school take off on An American Werewolf in London, Ginger Snaps and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s unsettling and creepy Séance.

Example that the Musical is Back with a Vengeance: Hedwig and the Angry Inch, no surprise there.

Films I Can’t Wait to Track Down and See Again (in no particular order): Brother, The Blue Diner, Hedwig, Ghost World, Week in the Life of Man, Séance, Nang Nak, Our Lady of the Assassins, Ignorant Fairies, Vertical Rays of the Sun, The Big Animal, Ginger Snaps, Southern Comfort, My First Mister, Dora-Heita, Film Noir, The Road Home, O, Battle Royale, Innocence, Startup.com, That the Women Live, Vertical Rays of the Sun, A Matter of Taste, Le Rat.

Films I Hope to Never See Again (in no particular order): Scout’s Honor, Glamour, Liam, Sky Hook, Everybody’s Famous, Animal, England!, The Closet, Gaudi Afternoon, Princesa.

Film I NEVER Want to Hear About EVER Again: Plenilunio.

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