Currently playing at the Seattle International Film Festival, Personal Gold is a personal experience gilded in the minds of those who participated and filmed it. For anyone else watching, it’s an infomercial wrapped in a rote exercise in pedantic feel-good documentary filmmaking. This is like going to a baseball game that has a 20-minute time-share pitch before the first at-bat, and again between every half-inning.
Mark Duplass, star of the film, was in attendance for SIFF’s closing night, and answered a few questions for Scene-Stealers.
The central premise of Mirage Men, a documentary currently playing at the Seattle International Film Festival, is that all of this alien abduction hoopla, all this U.F.O. and conspiracy theory enthusiasm, is the intended byproduct of a deliberate government-sanctioned disinformation campaign.
A direct follow-up to 2009’s Dead Snow, director Tommy Wirkola is back with another take-no-prisoners examination of how bad it could get if not just zombies, but Nazi-zombies mucked about and started some shit.
Another report from SIFF 2014! A Patriotic Man: The year is 1980, and members of Finland’s national ski team are looking for any advantage so that they might medal at the Olympics in Lake Placid.
Yes, three and a half weeks on, and the 39th annual Seattle International Film Festival is finally in the books. Frequent visitors to Scene-Stealers these last couple of weeks likely noticed a slew of reviews for films playing at the festival, and might have been even more surprised to see so many positive remarks, yet the evidence bore it out: this was one hell of a year for cinema at SIFF!
During the 2013 Seattle International Film Festival, I’ve had an opportunity to see tons of indie films and have conversations with the talent involved in making them. Here is my video interview with ‘Jump’ director Kieron J. Walsh.
Cullen Hoback’s new documentary, Terms and Conditions May Apply, holds that the proliferation of information via the Internet is being used to bilk people and, worse, rob them of their freedoms.
The practical effects and location shooting only further enhance and lend gravitas and a sense of authenticity to The Deep. Having played at this year’s Seattle International Film Festival, it’s in the running for the best film going at that event this year.
An internalized, meditative journey through maybe the darkest, most terrifying moment in any person’s life, Miller pieces his movie together by absorbing Shannon’s performance via a series of long, mostly-silent takes.
Icelandic drama ‘Volcano (Eldfjall)’ offers honest truths about age, love, loss, and what it means to dedicate one’s self to another ‘til death do you part.
Warren Cantrell reviews a new indie film from the 2012 Seattle International Film Festival: The point of the film isn’t to reveal any deeper truths about Martin or his world, but is instead a vicious exercise in cringe-cinema.
‘Game of Werewolves’ screened at the at the 2012 Seattle International Film Festival and I was lucky enough not only to review the film, but to snag a quick video interview with director Juan Martinez Moreno!
Actor-turned-director Matthew Lillard (Hackers, Scream, Scooby-Doo) has offered up his own treatise on late adolescence in the form of his debut directorial feature, Fat Kid Rules the World, and while it’s no Breakfast Club, its heart and sense of authenticity match up with anything Hughes ever delivered.
‘I Am Not a Hipster’ is a one-week snapshot, and is an exploration into what it means to be a part of a community (even one so quirky as “hipster”), and how powerfully therapeutic music can be for a broken soul.