SLIFF 2008: A Tour Guide

November 20, 2008 at 4:47 pm | Posted in Brian Vacek, Movies, SLIFF | 1 Comment
Tags: Brian Vacek, film, movie, Review, SLIFF

The St. Louis International Film Festival is a great time to enjoy yourself and take in a new film or two. That is, if you happen to be a casual movie-goer. If you’re a fanatical cinephile, its a stressfully delightful gauntlet run through an international smorgasbord of films that consumes your every waking hour and drives your loved ones to insanity. I walk the latter path.

I’m new here at Highway 61, but I’ve been blogging for some time now over at The Film Walrus where I babble incoherently about movies when I should probably be cooking, cleaning and socially interacting. I’m going to babble about movies here, too. With good reason: there’s so many films at SLIFF that no single person could see them all.

So you’ll probably be seeing a sustained spurt of my reviews over the next few weeks as I dash between the Tivoli, Plaza Frontenac and Webster making my sleepless eyes bleed and belatedly typing up my opinions. While these will be too late to do you any immediate good, most of these films are already available on DVD or in theaters or will be soon. I encourage you to seek out any films that sound interesting and, of course, you should do your own exploring of SLIFF’s offerings while the festival rages on.

If you need a quick tour guide, though, to sift through the many, many choices, I offer some advise: be eclectic. See features, documentaries, shorts, etc. See films from countries you know nothing about. Take a chance on a new director. Take in a mix of genre fluff and art house.

And keep an eye out for me! Here’s my schedule for this year:

Fri the 14th: Vanaja, Interkosmos with The Juche Idea, Shadowland

Sat the 15th: Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Slumdog Millionaire, Alone

Mon the 17th: All for Free, Special

Tues the 18th: Opera Jawa, Heartbeat Detector

Wed the 19th: The Pope’s Toilet, Stranded

Thurs the 20th: Of Parents and Children

Fri the 21st: The Custodian, Timecrimes

Sat the 22nd: The Trap, The Class, Yesterday Was A Lie

Sun the 23rd: Little Heroes, From Inside, The Wrestler