All SIFF All the Time

White Tank Top has the pleasure of covering the 36th (I think) Seattle International Film Festival. Updates from the stable of talented City Arts writers can be found at the CAB SIFF page.

So far the films I've seen are most notable for the chemistry between the principal actors. In Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman's The Extra Man, Kevin Kline and Paul Dano make a good comedic duo, but Dano and the temporarily-freed-by-Tom Katie Holmes produce negative sparks.


Results are much warmer between the exquisite Tilda Swinton in Luca Guadagnino's swooning I Am Love. She lights up the screen with Edoardo Gabbriellini, a man able to tempt a modern day Milanese princess with his exploits in the kitchen.


But the most exciting development might be the electricity between youngsters Jesse Eisenberg and Ari Graynor in Holy Rollers. They are powerful acting together, so much so that I wish director Robert Asch hadn't been resigned to make a small good film instead of a large great one.

Pranksy

This week I borrowed a Frank O'Hara poem as a response to the Banksy film Exit Through the Gift Shop. I find the whole Banksy phenomenon hard to swallow—do we really need to be upset that a single Banksy rat stencil was lost in a Melbourne street-cleaning?



When I worked at a Capitol Hill bookstore, two types of people picked up the Banksy book Wall and Piece we carried: young guys in hoodies browsing the pages and older folks dressed for a night out who would bring a copy to the register and ask “do you have a clean copy of this for me to buy?” This distinction between Banksy consumers is further defined by Exit Through the Gift Shop (it can’t be a coincidence that forged Princess Di banknotes are the best art he’s ever made).