The Dark SIFF has returned

It's been an eventful few weeks on the movie front as we dodge the shitty movies that get thrown at us left and right. Chinese audiences weren't too keen on The Da Vinci Code, in part because most of the people who had gone to see it had already read the book, and the plot of the movie hewed so closely to the book that there was little suspense as to what the conclusion would be. Oh well, at least we have the 9th Shanghai International Film Festival (Jun 17-25) to look forward to. Or not -- we've never been before. Several years ago, we went to buy tickets, but quickly lost heart after we saw the huge lines. Movie theater etiquette aside, we see no real point in spending that much dough when films like The Passenger are readily available at your local DVD shop -- every day is a film festival in Shanghai!

This year, the introduction of online submissions to the SIFF resulted in a whopping 746 films being selected, with 17 films in competition fo the Jin Jue Award. You can see a list of those 17 films here. As for the schedule and the opening and closing films -- well, we couldn't find that information, or rather, after clicking on some non-functioning links, were discouraged rather quickly.

Will the SIFF one day become a world-class film festival? Or has that day already arrived? Either way, the movies are important to the city's and nation's development, or as the Shanghai Daily says, in its uniquely pithy manner, "After film ecology is No. 1".

Photo from fsonline.com.