First SIFF Weekend

Despite failing to obtain tickets for any Saturday films, I think I'm off to a pretty good start. I saw 5 movies so far:

·        Quand J'étais Chanteur (translates to "The Singer") stars Gérard Depardieu (translates to "Gérard of by God") as an aging dance-hall singer who unexpectedly scores with a hot, young, real-estate agent. Good for him.

·        Papurika is a Japanese Animé that some would describe as "weird", but to use such a banale word as "weird" seriously understates the kind of film this is. We need a weirder adjective. Where's my thesaurus?... "peculiar"... "kooky"... "heteromorphic"... yeah, that's it, it's heteromorphic.

·        Vanaja would be your standard "the old customs are unfair toward women" kind of story if it weren't for the occasional dance scenes. It looks a bit like an early form of interpretive break-dancing to me, but I liked it.

·        King of Kong is the best film so far, and quite likely to retain the title until the end of the festival. Amongst a dozen or so top "classic video game" players, the movie concentrates on the top two "Donkey Kong" players. Ultimately, what differentiates the two is far more revealing than the numerical difference between their high scores.

·        Monkey Warfare is a movie about revolutionaries fighting to oppressive regime of Canada. Yes, you read that right. Very instructional actually. I learned how to make a Molotov Cocktail. Can't wait to try it out in the next revolution I participate in.

SIFF Happens: Patrick's Film Festival Primer

Are you considering attending the Seattle International Film Festival? Oh... ok then. Well, if you know somebody who does, then have them read this guide first.

First, do the math.

A single movie ticket is 10$, a pass is 800$. That means to make it financially advantageous, you'd have to watch at least 81 movies in 3 weeks. That may seem like an impossible task, but it's not. By carefully choosing the right movies, you could actually see 110 movies during the SIFF. But even yours truly would never attempt such a feat.

Clearly, the pass is not meant to save you money. What it does give you is the ability to get in the theatre before all those people who did do the math, thereby giving you first pick at the best seats. Very useful for people who don't feel like spending more time standing in line for a movie than actually watching the movie.

But there are ways of bending/cheating the rules. One way is to form a movie-going group, buy one pass for the group and one member uses it to get in the pass-holder line. The rest of the group buys normal tickets and go stand at the end of the line (three blocks away). The pass-holder member gets in and puts jackets on several seats, enough for the whole group. Voila.

But there is another way (which might be a new trick this year) that doesn't require accomplices (they're likely to rat you out anyway), but will cost you a little bit more money. It involves the "back-2-back" pass. The idea is that if you're watching one movie, you can't get a good seat for the next movie because you can't get in line early enough. To fix this, they allow you to get in after the pass-holders, but before the other ticket-holders.

If you're willing to pay 20$ to not stand in line for two hours, then you can do this:

1) Buy tickets for the movie you intend to see AND for the movie that plays just before it (at same venue). But you need to obtain the paper tickets in advance, that is, before that first movie starts (the one you don't want to see).

2) Tear the first movie ticket at the perforations. Throw away the short piece, keep the long one.

3) Arrive at the movie theater about 20 minutes before the second movie (the one you want to see) and go to the end of the pass-holder's line. When you reach the door, tell the ticket guy that you just saw the first movie but that you didn't notice the guy handing out the back-2-back passes, show them your torn ticket for the first movie and your ticket for the second movie and they'll let you in. Sneaky, ain't it?

If you don't want to pay 20$, you can always do a variation on this where you buy a ticket for the second movie, but show up an hour before the first movie (which you don't want to see) and stand in the ticket-holder's line just long enough for the guy to give you a back-2-back pass and then go shopping, see another movie, whatever. You now have what you need to get to the end of the pass-holder's line 20 minutes before your movie starts.

Second, plan ahead.

Especially if you're by yourself. Control your bladder. You can't go to the bathroom while you're standing in line, you'll lose your spot. When the line starts moving into the theatre, know where you want to sit. There's a lot of people behind you, there's no time for indecisiveness.

Third, play your part.

This is an international film festival, make sure you practice your generic European accent so you can sound foreign. Note that you don't want to sound like you speak a specific foreign language because in this crowd, you're likely to run into someone that actually does speak that language and they'll expose you for the phony that you are.

If you're watching a foreign-language film, laugh when others laugh, gasp when they gasp, otherwise you risk exposing yourself as a clueless American who meant to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3 but got lost and got into the wrong theatre.

But do get the large soda and large popcorn, you are, after all, at the largest film festival in America.

Fourth, stuff the ballot boxes.

When going into the theatre, they'll be 4 or 5 guys handing out voting slips. Grab one from each guy. If you really love or really hate the film, you can vote multiple times. If you don't feel strongly about this particular film, you can always save the voting slips for the next film.

Fifth, be kind, shut up.

Don't talk during the film. Not even in a generic European accent.

This also applies to your electronic pets (cell phones, PDAs, pagers, etc...). Forgetting to silence them before the film is a major faux pas. To actually answer a phone call in the middle of a film will get you shot from the balcony.