Look What I Found

I am so ready for Tuesday night’s season premiere of Lost. I came to it late in the day, powering through all five seasons last fall. I don’t know if I could have maintained enthusiasm over five years, but watching it all in one fell swoop – which, in terms of time spent, is the equivalent of reading a 5,000 page novel – kept me consistently engaged, even when an occasional episode or story arc fell flat.

And while the story is compelling, what kept me coming back was the characters. As a warm-up to the sixth season, I tried to pick out my favorite moments from the previous five, and found they were all ones in which the actors were given some wonderful bit of business to do – and delivered.

Season 1: Sexy bad boy Sawyer and mysterious fugitive Kate take a break from the crisis of the week to play a flirty game of “I never,” which allows them to reveal to each other (and to the audience) some amusing and telling bits of personal information. This scene made them both more sympathetic, and set up their relationship for the rest of the series.

Season 2: A stranger claiming to be Henry Gale, a hot air balloonist who has crash landed on the island, lets down his guard while breakfasting with Jack and Locke, giving us a glimpse of his true identity: evil genius Benjamin Linus, leader of the Others. What a clever way to introduce the villain! (And what a villain!)

The opening sequence of season 3, which lasts about four and a half minutes, is extraordinary: in this short time a major new character is introduced, the roles of three others (Others!) are clarified, several story lines are set up, and we get to see a plane fall apart in midair. I love that the whole first minute is devoted to a previously unknown character having a small nervous breakdown in front of a mirror.

Season 4: Yes, it’s over the top, but the telephonic reunion of Desmond and Penny makes me go misty every time I watch it. Likeable Des has had a really bad few years – he’s been imprisoned, shipwrecked, held captive in the hatch, immersed in negatively charged exotic matter, thrown about in time, and his brain is about to explode. Here, he finally gets a break.

Season 5: This may not be the best moment, but it made me laugh very hard: Hurley, recently thrown back in time to the late 1970s, is interrogated by the Dharma Initiative’s Dr. Pierre Chang.

Honorable mention: John Locke and the orange.

Extra, Extra!

Zombies of Mass Destruction plays nationwide this week as part of something called After Dark Horrorfest 4. If you support low budget filmmaking in Washington state, go see it. Or at least check out the below trailer, and be impressed with what a little money and a lot of ingenuity can get done. If you pause the trailer at 1:50, you will very briefly see me as a zombie, shambling across the Port Gamble cemetery in a large flannel nightgown. (It was freezing, and I actually had a whole set of clothes on underneath.) This was my first and to date most memorable experience as a film extra. (I’ve written about my “work” on another film, Robinson Devor’s North American, here.)

Serious Basterd Zombies Get Lost

I missed way too many movies in 2009 to even attempt a Top 10 list, but a few highlights come to mind:

A Serious Man is funny, philosophical, has a cool ‘60s aesthetic, and the ending made me go “Whoa!” (Seriously, I actually said it out loud.)

Quentin Tarantino meets “WWII guys on a mission” genre – I knew I would love Inglourious Basterds, and it was so. I grinned all the way home.

Seeing Once Upon A Time in the West on the big screen was a thrill. So was seeing myself (if very briefly) in Zombies of Mass Destruction.

I rediscovered TV this year, thanks to Netflix and Hulu. An unexpected delight was getting lost in five seasons of Lost, which looks great on Blu-Ray. I’m now officially obsessed, preparing my predictions for the final season and counting down the days to February 2nd …

My SIFF Award Goes to …

I’ve had a week to digest the 40 films I saw in the 2009 Seattle International Film Festival, and if I had my own audience-of-one award to bestow, it would be to Humpday, the third feature by Seattle filmmaker Lynn Shelton. I wrote about it for Randomville in a piece on Northwest comedies in SIFF. It opens in theaters July 10th; visit the Humpday website to see the trailer. (Above photo is courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.)

Read about the other movies Mackenzie McAninch and I admired in Randomville’s SIFF wrap-up article.

29 Down, 11 To Go

Whew – film festivals can be exhausting, especially when you have a job, too. My second round of SIFF previews are now posted at Randomville.

Finally got to see ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction, the first film I volunteered for as an extra. I ended up with a few seconds of strategic screen time; a shot of me, as a zombie wearing a huge plaid nightgown, shambling menacingly toward the camera, is used to illustrate a claim that the zombie outbreak is punishment against “sinners and unitarians.” That made me smile.

11 Down, 29 To Go

My (somewhat arbitrary, somewhat Biblical) goal is to see 40 movies in this year’s Seattle International Film Festival, which starts tonight. Because I’m writing about it for Randomville, I have access to screener DVDs, and I’ve already made a small dent in the massive heap of cinema that is SIFF. My top picks so far are a French fairy tale (Bluebeard), a Bosnian drama (Snow), and an Estonian dark comedy (Sugisball) – none of which I would have predicted. That’s what makes SIFF so much fun! More to come after a marathon of theater screenings this weekend …

Stuff That’s Going Around

Aside from the swine flu, that is. Last week I had the privilege to see two amazing teams of people who were in town doing their thing: Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton, the authors of Picking Cotton, and Harry Shearer, Michael McKean and Christopher Guest, also known as Spinal Tap.

In 1984, when she was in college, Thompson-Cannino was raped in her home by a stranger. She provided the police with a detailed description of her attacker, and picked Cotton as her assailant from a line-up. She was certain he was guilty. Cotton served 11 years in prison, then was freed by DNA evidence in 1995. Together, they tell the incredible story of how Cotton forgave and befriended Thompson-Cannino, who was shattered when she learned of her mistake. It’s a powerful tale that moved me greatly. Their travels and media appearances are listed on their website.

Also on tour are Shearer, McKean and Guest, three talented musicians who happen to be pretty funny as well. Called “Unwigged and Unplugged”, their show features the three in street clothes and street personae, playing the music of their alter egos Spinal Tap and The Folksmen on (mostly) acoustic instruments. They banter and tell stories, show archival and fan videos on a big screen, and utilize a few low budget, carefully chosen props. It’s a charming, low key evening that left the Seattle audience beaming. Here’s a souvenir:

He Said What?

Today I had the good fortune to see The Untouchables as it should be seen, on the (really) big screen, at Seattle’s Cinerama Theater. There’s a lot to love about this over-the-top Brian De Palma melodrama, which is basically a classic western transplanted to Depression-era Chicago. I had forgotten that David Mamet wrote the screenplay, as it is nothing like the small-scale psychodramas he is best known for. The Untouchables is more action than talk, and could almost be a silent film – but one would miss Robert De Niro’s line deliveries. His loquacious Al Capone is a lot more fun than any of the good guys.

I learned today that for years I have been misquoting a line of dialogue from the chaotic courtroom showdown that caps the film. As I remember it, Capone screams at Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner), “You’re nothing but a lot of talk in a cheap suit!” It turns out the line is actually “You’re nothing but a lot of talk and a badge,” which I probably misheard as “You’re nothing but a lot of talk and a bad suit,” then revised from there. Too bad – I like my version better. Maybe I need to write a courtroom drama just so I can use it.

For those of you who haven’t seen The Untouchables, here’s De Niro’s infamous “baseball” scene, which starts out Damon Runyonesque but quickly turns toward Sam Peckinpah:

Breaking News: An Awards Show Gets Something Right

A question I posed on this blog last fall — “Who is Tom McCarthy?” — was answered yesterday by Film Independent during its annual Spirit Awards: he is the Best Director of 2008. Yay! One pleasant surprise is the most I expect from any awards show. Will there be one tonight? The Oscars seem a bit pre-ordained, which is perhaps fitting, giving the theme of frontrunner Slumdog Millionaire. But take a look at the Original Screenplay nominees: Frozen River, Happy-Go-Lucky, In Bruges, Milk, WALL-E. These rank high among my favorite films of last year, so the list alone is a pleasant surprise. A five-way tie would be pretty cool, though.

Notes From An Obamecca

I write from New York City, where I’m relaxing a bit after a thrilling three days in Washington, D.C. Like many who arrived there without a ticket to the inauguration, I didn’t know where I would actually be when Barack Obama was sworn in as our 44th President – I just knew it would be somewhere with a really big TV screen. As it turned out, a comfortable seat in Constitution Hall proved more tempting than shivering in the shadow of the Washington Monument. It got even better when the empty seat next to me was taken by Betty, a 69-year-old African-American veteran of the civil rights movement currently living in the San Francisco Bay area. With great emotion in her voice, she told me something I’ve heard dozens of times recently but am not tired of: “I never thought I’d live to see this day.” I can’t think of anything else to say, but I do have a few photos to share here.