Mudede and Annie will Slog about the SIFF opening night party later, but three preliminaries:

1. Son of Rambow was adorable. Little British kids in the ’80s making a dead-earnest prequel to First Blood? Hard to beat. Plus a French dandy exchange student, an oppressive religious cult called the Brethren, a teacher who impales himself with nose-hair clippers, and hyper-real shots of kids falling through trees and getting catapulted through junkyards for their jerry-rigged action sequences. You can’t see it at this year’s festival, but it’ll be released in 2008. Go.

2. Next year, I’m showing up at least 45 minutes late. The opening remarks (which sounded like a p.r. orgy—”Seattle is passionate about film!” “SIFF is passionate about Seattle!” “The Mayor’s Office of Film and Music is passionate about SIFF!”) were interminable.

3. I wish I had a photo of the ubiquitous Culture Hippie. He was there at the after-party, in his beard and purple t-shirt and Guatemala shorts and sandals and beret. While the suits and swanky dresses stood around the empty dance floor, making stiff small talk over the night’s first free drink, the Culture Hippie breached the no-dance perimeter, threw himself beneath the sparkling disco ball, and did his freaky-deaky undulations to the ’80s music. Faces around the dance floor turned shades of embarrassed and alarmed. It was great.