All things perfect and poisonous

Red Road - United Kingdom, Thriller I learned at this screening that Red Road is the first of a trilogy of Advance Party films. This is a project in which films from different filmmakers will follow characters originated by Scherfig and Jensen. It sounds like a great project just to see how different filmmakers re-imagine these same characters in two more films. But anyway... onto the first of the trilogy, Red Road . Red Road is a debut feature from director, Andrea Arnold. It is set in Scotland and follows Jackie (Kate Dickie). Jackie spends her days watching the CCTV monitors, watching for signs of trouble or illegal activity. I had to look up the use of CCTV in the UK to determine how widespread it really is, because I was wondering whether Jackie's job was a bit of paranoid, big brother science fiction, but it turns out that it is estimated that there are around 4,000,000 CCTV cameras all over the UK and that people, like Jackie, watch for suspicious activity 24 hour

The Aerial - Argentina, SciFi I have a history of seeing memorable silent films at the northwest film forum, so it shouldn't be a surprise that the first movie attended at SIFF 2007 would be a silent film at the northwest film forum. As with all of the other silent films, I was charmed. There is something inherently appealing in silent films that modern movies don't contain. There is a special aesthetic appeal of old black+white film and a simplicity to the story telling necessitated by the pause in action cut with the titles. Guy Maddin is known for making very quirky, modern silent films and The Aerial is another, modern silent film, although there is sound in the film, it is the story that keeps the characters silent. The setting is a place where Mr. TV is in control and the people have lost their voices. There is one woman, The Voice, who has a voice, but otherwise, all inhabitants of the city communicate through reading lips and the view is given subtitles for all