The early slot is, as usual, relatively weak—good for me, bad for retirees. I’m calling it a tossup between the heart-warming/crushing doc Song Sung Blue (4:30 pm at Harvard Exit) and the sadly ahistorical Mongol (4 pm at Uptown). Song Sung Blue doesn’t have distribution, though, while Mongol will be opening in Seattle on June 20th.

In the next slot, we like everything! Nearly. This is the opening night of ShortsFest Weekend (or, as I prefer to call it, the Shorts Ghetto), and that’s your cue to avoid SIFF Cinema for the next four days. There are okay little movies scattered throughout the weekend, but it’s almost never worth sitting through five or eight other noxious little piles of excrement to get there. Unless you actually enjoy saccharine sentiments, too-clever kernels of plot, and amateurish production values.

If you’re not that kind of freak, try the steroids exposé Bigger, Stronger, Faster* (4:15 pm at Pacific Place) or the gays-in-the-military doc Ask Not (7 pm at the Harvard Exit)—which brings me to this burning question: Whose clever idea was it to program the gays-in-the-military doc opposite the Tori Spelling gays-in-the-marriage comedy Kiss the Bride, anyway? (P.S.: If you want to see Tori Spelling, I won’t tell—it’s 7 pm at the Egyptian, but you have to pony up for the afterparty, because the film-only tickets are sold out.)

Finally, head directly to Bad Habits (9:45 pm at the Egyptian), the only Don’t Miss! of the day.