When I was in high school I ran across Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee mysteries. To this New England girl, the combination of a Dutch author writing stories about an ancient Chinese judge with some historical basis was readercrack. It was exotic and cool and nobody else I knew had ever heard of these books and I was in fifty kinds of heaven. This is ( Read more... )

There had been enough buzz about Sweden's "Sound of Noise" that we put it on our calendar. I'm so glad we did!

This is a joyful film about art, street art as opposed to plasticized art spoon fed to the masses as portrayed in the film by a bland Haydn concert and muzak piped over street speakers. Its heroes, or anti-heroes as your preference may be ( Read more... )

"The Importance of Being Earnest" done properly is like being served up a floating island for dessert. You wouldn't normally have such a thing, but  it sure is tasty. It makes you wonder why you don't have it more often. Oh yes, because of the trouble to make it.

This filmed production of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" wasn't ( Read more... )

Forget Alcott, Longfellow, James, Dickinson, Emerson, Wadsworth, Thoreau, Seuss, Stowe, Hawthorne, Frost, Picoult, irving,(well, maybe not Hawthorne or Frost or Irving).

The authors of New England's soul are Lovecraft and King.

My reason is because they capture a sense of place that feels right to me. It may not be a "nice" place. Some locations are ( Read more... )

"Young Goethe" was the most Hollywood-y movie I've seen so far. Very slick and pretty and clean and it went down easily. Which is not a bad thing. If you've seen "Shakespeare in Love," you can probably pick up on much of the story, moved up a century or two and north to Germany.

Young Goethe fails his school exams. Dad sends him off to the ( Read more... )

Based (loosely) on a memoir by Colette, this was a film I had really been looking forward to. It's with regret that I say I was disappointed."On tour" felt like a movie in search of a scriptwriter. So I was led to the reluctant conclusion that Mathieu Almaric, as adorable as I find him, and as good an actor as he can be, is not a particularly good ( Read more... )

"Thief of Bagdad" is one of those classic silent films that I'd always heard about but somehow never got around to seeing, so I was thrilled to hear that it would play at SIFF this year. The fact that it would have a soundtrack by ELO put together by Shadoe Sevens, who I'd never heard of, was interesting but not important to me. I wanted to see the ( Read more... )

Sure you could watch some deep French movie full of insight and melancholy. Or you could watch the Norwegian flick, Trollhunter.

I am certain which one would make you happier.

At almost midnight on a work night I left the theater buoyant, cheerful, and ready to take on a forest of trolls. It was just that kind of movie.

One part Scooby Doo, one part X ( Read more... )

Originally a British TV show, “The Trip” is a (mostly) humorous roadtrip across north Britain dining at out of the way fine restaurants. In an American movie, the two guys would be mismatched scalawags, have hare-brained adventures, and come out the other end best buddies having perhaps learned a thing or two about life, themselves and What’s ( Read more... )

After much pain and anguish and wrestling with schedules, here's the second half of my SIFF schedule. So many things I will miss!  But 12 movies in all is more than I normally see (out) in a year.

5/28  11:00 AM Page One: Inside the NYT at The Egyptian

5/30  4:30 PM Young Goethe In Love at The Neptune (boo)

6/3  12:00AM The Whisperer in the Darkness ( Read more... )