VIFF 2013 Preview: Proposed Schedule

Part of my on-going coverage of VIFF 2013. Here is an index.

One week from today, I'll be arriving in lovely Vancouver, BC for my fifth trip to the Vancouver International Film Festival. I'll be there for a week, about half of the festival's run, which is as long as I could trick the wife into taking care of the kids for me. Over the next few days, I'll be watching a few movies to get me in the mood, films I haven't seen yet from directors I've discovered over the years at the festival: Johnnie To, Hong Sangsoo and Liu Jiayin.

But before then, I thought I'd start with a list of the films I'm hoping to see while I'm there. As usual, there's a ton of stuff I'd like to see, much more than I'll physically be able to make it to, for reasons of geography, chronology and my own health (there seems to be a limit to how many four and five movie days in a row I can manage before catching a cold). So I look at this list as more aspirational than a prediction of what I'll actually make it to see. Some of the films overlap and so I'll have to choose only one, these are marked with an * while I try and decide. If you've got a case for or against any of these (or if you think I'm overlooking something), feel free to let me know.

Sean's Theoretical VIFF 2013 Schedule:

Saturday, Sep 28

The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh)

The Great Passage (Ishii Yuya)

Good Vibrations (Lisa Barros D'Sa & Glenn Leyburn)

Sunday, Sep 29

Gebo and the Shadow (Manoel de Oliveira)

Bends (Flora Lau)*
A Field in England (Ben Wheatley)*

Burn, Release, Explode, the Invincible (Kim Soohyun)

Four Ways to Die in My Hometown (Chai Chunya)

Monday, Sep 30

Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)

Yumen (Xu Ruotao, J.P. Sniadecki, Huang Xiang)

My First Love (Tsuruoka Keiko)

Our Sunhi (Hong Sangsoo)

Tuesday, Oct 01

New World (Park Hoonjung)

Boomerang Family (Song Haesung)*
Heli (Amat Escalante)*
9 Muses of Star Empire (Lee Harkjoon)*

A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness (Ben Rivers, Ben Russell)

The Past (Asghar Farhadi)*
3x3D (Jean-Luc Godard, Peter Greenaway, Edgar Pêra)*

Wednesday, Oct 02

Stand Clear of the Closing Doors (Sam Fleischner)

Trap Street (Vivian Qu)*
Closed Curtain (Jafar Panahi, Kambuzia Partovi)*

The Summer of Flying Fish (Marcela Said)*
The Spider's Lair (Jason Paul Laxamana)*
The Dirties (Matt Johnson)*

Distant (Yang Zhengfan)

La última película (Raya Martin, Mark Peranson)

Thursday, Oct 03

The Invisible Woman (Ralph Fiennes)

Anatomy of a Paperclip (Ikeda Akira)

Rhymes for Young Ghouls (Jeff Barnaby)*
A Time in Quchi (Chang Tso-chi)*

A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke)

Redemption/The King's Body/Mahjong (Miguel Gomes, João Pedro Rodrigues, João Rui Guerra da Mata)

Friday, Oct 04

Exhibition (Joanna Hogg)

Once Upon a Forest (Luc Jacquet)

Camille Claudel, 1915 (Bruno Dumont)

The Story of My Death (Albert Serra)

Saturday, Oct 05

The Gardener (Mohsen Makhmalbaf)*
Blue is the Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche)*
Like Father, Like Son (Koreeda Hirokazu)*
Wolf Children (Hosoda Mamoru)*
Longing for the Rain (Yang Lina)*

This Month in Rankings

It's been a month since I updated these rankings, and a few weeks since I've written anything here at all other than my annual All-Time Top 100 List. In that time, I brought the Summer of Sammo to an end, with final reviews of Ashes of Time Redux, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, My Heart is that Eternal Rose and Boat People. In all I watched 83 movies during the Summer of Sammo, roughly from Memorial Day to Labor Day, and of course I have a ranked list of them all over at Letterboxd.

In other media, several episodes of The George Sanders Show have been recorded: on Sons of the Desert and Ishtar, on The Grandmaster and A Touch of Zen, on The Top Ten Films of All-Time, on The Killing and The Black Stallion, and on Once Upon a Time in America and The Roaring Twenties. The first of several planned episodes of They Shot Pictures on director John Ford is up as well, this one covering his Westerns and focusing on Stagecoach, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Two Rode Together in particular. Our second Akira Kurosawa episode, covering his samurai films, should be up any day now as well.

Coming up over the next few weeks, I'm heading once again to the Vancouver International Film Festival. This will be my fifth trip to VIFF, and for the first time I'll be there as an officially recognized member of the press. So look for a bunch of reviews from that. Before heading out, I plan to watch and review a few VIFF-related films to get me warmed-up, and hopefully I'll write that one last review to complete my coverage of VIFF 2012. We'll have a festival recap episode of They Shot Pictures as well, comparing my Vancouver experience with Seema's time at the Toronto Film Festival. I'm also just starting research for our Claire Denis episode. Meanwhile, The George Sanders Show will be taking a look at two Harakiris and then the two Solarises.

These are the movies I watched and rewatched over the last month or so, and where they place on my year-by-year rankings.

The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin) - 1, 1925
The Music Box (James Parrott) - 6, 1932
Sons of the Desert (William A. Seiter) - 12, 1933
Smart Blonde (Frank McDonald) - 29, 1937
The Roaring Twenties (Raoul Walsh) - 11, 1939
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (Akira Kurosawa) - 6, 1945
Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa) - 1, 1954
The Killing (Stanley Kubrick) - 7, 1956

Sons of the Good Earth (King Hu) - 17, 1965
A Touch of Zen (King Hu) - 1, 1971
A New Leaf (Elaine May) - 4, 1971
The Black Stallion (Carroll Ballard) - 6, 1979
The Sword (Patrick Tam) - 21, 1980
The Happenings (Yim Ho) - 23, 1980
Boat People (Ann Hui) - 8, 1982

Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone) - 11, 1984
Cherie (Patrick Tam) - 23, 1984
Ran (Akira Kurosawa) - 1, 1985
A Chinese Ghost Story (Ching Siu-tung) - 19, 1987
Rouge (Stanley Kwan) - 2, 1988
Chocolate (Claire Denis) - 7, 1988
My Heart is that Eternal Rose (Patrick Tam) - 9, 1989
He's a Woman, She's a Man (Peter Chan) - 17, 1994

I Can't Sleep (Claire Denis) - 22, 1994
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee) - 4, 2000
Zoolander (Ben Stiller) - 17, 2001
After This, Our Exile (Patrick Tam) - 32, 2006
Ashes of Time Redux (Wong Kar-wai) - 4, 2008
Ip Man 2 (Herman Yau) - 43, 2010
The Grandmaster (Wong Kar-wai) - 2013

VIFF 2013 Index

This is an index of my posts relating to the 2013 Vancouver International Film Festival.

Previews:

Proposed Schedule - Sep 21, 2013
Nobody's Daughter Haewon (Hong, 13) - Sep 23, 2013
Blind Detective (To, 13) - Sep 26, 2013

Reviews:

The Great Passage (Ishii, 13) & Good Vibrations (Barros D'Sa & Leyburn, 12) - Sep 29, 2013
Gebo and the Shadow (Oliveira, 12) - Sep 30, 2013
Bends (Lau, 13) - Oct 01, 2013
Burn, Release, Explode, the Invincible (Kim, 13) - Oct 01, 2013
Four Ways to Die in My Hometown (Chai, 12) - Oct 02, 2013
Dragons and Tigers Awards - Oct 04, 2013
Stray Dogs (Tsai, 13) - Oct 04, 2013
Yumen (Sniadecki, Xu & Huang, 13) - Oct 23, 2013
La última película (Martin & Peranson, 13) - Feb 28, 2014

Podcasts:

They Shot Pictures Ep #21: Festival Recaps Part One - Oct 17, 2013
They Shot Pictures Ep #22: Festival Recaps Part Two - Oct 30, 2013

Ranking:

1. La última película (Raya Martin & Mark Peranson)

2. The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh)

3. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke)

4. Wolf Children (Mamoru Hosada)

5. Our Sunhi (Hong Sangsoo)

6. A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness (Ben Rivers & Ben Russell)

7. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)

8. Four Ways to Die in My Hometown (Chai Chunya)

9. Yumen (JP Sniadecki, Xu Ruotao, & Huang Xiang)

10. The Great Passage (Yuya Ishii)

11. Trap Street (Vivian Qu)

12. New World (Park Hoonjung)

13. Distant (Yang Zhengfan)

14. Mahjong (João Rui Guerra da Mata & João Pedro Rodrigues)

15. Anatomy of a Paperclip (Ikeda Akira)

16. Gebo and the Shadow (Manoel de Oliveira)

17. 9 Muses of Star Empire (Lee Harkjoon)

18. Burn Release Explode The Invincible (Kim Soohyun)

19. Redemption (Miguel Gomes)

20. Bends (Flora Lau)

21. 3x3D (Peter Greenaway, Edgar Pera, Jean-Luc Godard)

22. My First Love (Keiko Tsuruoka)

23. Grigris (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun)

24. Good Vibrations (Lisa Barros D'Sa & Glenn Leyburn)

25. Longing for the Rain (Yang Lina)

26. The King's Body (João Pedro Rodrigues)

27. The Spider's Lair (Jason Paul Laxamana)

28. Camille Claudel 1915 (Bruno Dumont)

(links are to letterboxd comments)