Fourth Row Center

The Seattle Film Festival wrapped for the year and all-in-all I had a great time. For one who enjoys movies, the film festival experience is unique and fascinating. I saw dozens of movies, met many interesting people, learned about movies and the film making process from many of the artists involved, and ate at Bill’s Pizza a couple of times, which has become part of the festival experience for my movie-going buddy Dan and me. This year’s Secret Festival was a smash as well, but I am unable to communicate anything about any of the films I saw there. I have eleven months to rest up before the 2009 Seattle International Film Festival.

Each year at the film festival I always manage to find a small independent film that I might not have otherwise had the chance to see, the kind of film that will make the festival and art house circuit but is unlikely to flicker across screens at the suburban multiplex. Previously it was a clever little death by milk comedy called Expiration Date . This year it's another Seattle-filmed flick called Visioneers . Thematically reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, Visioneers is the story of George (comedian Zack Galifianakis ), a man with dreams stuck in a drab world of mindless conformity and desperately wishes for a way out amid a growing national crisis in which the emotional and the discontent inexplicably explode. His absent brother, having extricated himself from society, returns and moves into the pool house with designs on becoming a pole vaulter, and George realizes that his brother is truly free – free from the constraints of society and free from the risk of unnecess...

Two documentaries stood out in my mind at this year's Seattle Film Festival, and they could not have been more different. The first, Alone in Four Walls , is a lyrically shot documentary about nine to thirteen-year-old boys serving time for crimes ranging from theft to murder in a rural Russian prison for boys. The film is startling in that the inmates are indeed children: frightened, weeping and pining for parents who never come to visit. As sympathy for the boys begins to mount, Director Alexandra Westmeier takes her audience outside the prison walls to the sad, angry and sometimes bitter families who tell stories of oft times startling delinquency, including the story of one of the featured boys' grisly murder of a friend. Westmeier had free access within the walls of the prison and the result – a simple film told in images and interviews without narration and commentary – is powerful and mesmerizing. Man on Wire , from France, is a first rate documentary that feels like a...

Over the past few weeks I have been attending the Seattle Film Festival. I have enjoyed a few outstanding flicks, like director Anand ( Shopgirl ) Tucker's When Did You Last See Your Father?, as well as a little gem of a movie called Phoebe in Wonderland with Felicity Huffman, Bill Pullman and a remarkable Elle Fanning. There was some mediocre fare ( Continental, a Film Without Guns and the Sundance award-winner Ballast ) among the films I saw, and a couple of great documentaries as well. Then of course, amid the hits, there were the misses: Huddersfield , a pointless drama from Serbia, and The Bluetooth Virgin, a small film about struggling Hollywood screenwriters, were two outright snoozers . I've also attended some interesting presentations and Q&A from writers, directors and actors attending the festival. Among the highlights were two foreign films brought to the festival from Japan and Australia, respectively: Love and Honor , a period samurai movie, and The Chi...

A disastrous fire on the Universal back lot destroyed a number of exterior sets this past weekend, including the clock tower from the Back to the Future movies. To see it as pictured here, in 1992, you will need a Delorean. A very special Delorean.