The most comprehensive SIFF guide in the city (ours!) will be available to the public later this afternoon. There is, however, one aspect of the festival we weren't able to preview fully in SIFF Notes. Short films are all over the festival; whether tucked before feature programs or smashed together in packages, they're so numerous that probability dictates many will be of dubious quality.

Here are your best bets:

LOCAL LUMINARIES:
—Dayna Hanson (formerly of 33 Fainting Spells) has a short, entitled Diesel Engine, that looks to be an elaboration of her performance Spirit Under the Influence, which I reviewed last spring. Unfortunately, it precedes a dance feature, and dance features are almost always too long.

—Gaelen Hanson (also formerly of 33 Fainting Spells, no relation) has a new dance film called Your Lights Are Out or Burning Badly (great title), with a score by Kinski. It's probably more along the lines of 33 Fainting Spells' fantastic dance films like Measure (SIFF 2001). Precedes the same dance feature.

—Stranger Genius Award-winner David Russo expresses his artful frustration with arts bureaucracy in I Am (Not) Van Gogh. It's entertaining enough to hear him rant about said subject in person; I can't wait to see what he does with it on film. Precedes The Puffy Chair, a movie that Charles Mudede liked.

—Portland filmmaker Vanessa Renwick, whose films I sometimes like and sometimes don't, has a pretty-looking movie about Vancouver: Portrait #1: Cascadia Terminal. Part of a shorts package.

Continue reading "In Praise of SIFF Shorts" »

(From A Soap, playing at SIFF, and highly recommended by our reviewer Lindy West.)

You may be the kind of person who avoids SIFF movies that are opening in Seattle imminently; you may want to be first on your block to see the new Robert Altman. Either way, you want to know what's opening here, and when it's opening, so you don't waste your hard-earned time/cash.

Opening dates are always tentative, but you can count on the calendar shows—Northwest Film Forum, Varsity, and also the Grand Illusion (though so far the GI doesn't have any crossover programming)—to stay solid. If it's a low-profile movie and it's got a date but it's not at the NWFF, there's maybe a five percent chance that it won't ultimately open in Seattle at all.

Sketches of Frank Gehry (Landmark Theatres, June 2)
Twelve and Holding (June 2)
The Proposition (Landmark, June 9)
A Prairie Home Companion (June 9)
The Heart of the Game (Landmark, June 14)
Beowulf & Grendel (Landmark, Jun 16)
Wah-Wah (Landmark, June 16)
Expiration Date (Landmark, June 21)
Wordplay (June 23)
The King (Varsity calendar show, June 23)
Strangers With Candy (Landmark, July 7)
Russian Dolls (NWFF, July 7, available now on Comcast On Demand)
Leonard Cohen I'm Your Man (July 14)
Who Killed the Electric Car? (Landmark, July 14)
Three Times (NWFF, July 14, available now on Comcast On Demand)
Crossing the Bridge (Northwest Film Forum, July 28)
Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Varsity, July 28)
Brothers of the Head (Varsity, Aug 11)
The Science of Sleep (Aug 11)
Factotum (Aug 25)
Heading South (Varsity, Aug 25)
Another Gay Movie (Varsity, Sept 1)
Pierrepoint (September sometime)
Container (not confirmed)
Close to Home (not confirmed)
Princesses (not confirmed)

For tickets, see seattlefilm.org.

The umpteenth annual, most-unnecessarily-gargantuan film festival of all, our own Seattle International Film Festival, starts Thursday, May 25: which is, not coincidentally, also the date you can pick up our gargantuan SIFF NOTES guide to the movies. Don't miss it—I guarantee we'll have more real reviews than anybody else in town.

The official guide to the festival, which will give you a basic idea of what the movies are about, is out now, and the box office is open. Check out the SIFF website to research and buy tickets.

Here are some quick highlights, specially curated for the tastes of Slog readers:

Love/hate Dale Chihuly? He's been invited to introduce and discuss a favorite film, and he chose a Western called Lonely Are the Brave, which is about the threat of "encroaching technological progress." Hmm.

This great picture is from The Window, a film noir with baby cheeks, being shown in a newly restored print.

Want to hit the big names?

-Christopher Doyle did the cinematography for the retro melodrama Perhaps Love.
-Whack Czech animator Jan Svankmajer has a new one called Lunacy.
-Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert, and Philip Seymour Hoffman are in the big-screen prequel to Strangers With Candy.
-Michael Gondry's The Science of Sleep, starring Gael García Bernal (who's also in some mediocre movies in the fest) and Charlotte Gainsbourg.
-François Ozon (Swimming Pool, Sitcom) gives us Les temps qui reste, with Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, a favorite actress of mine, and some cute boys.
-Hou Hsiao-hsien's Three Times has finally made it to Seattle, however belatedly.
-The increasingly bizarro Lukas Moodysson (Show Me Love, but also A Hole in My Heart) goes hole-hog experimental with Container, a movie with a whispery, unrelated voiceover by Jena Malone.

Looking for the weirdest movie experience of your life?

-Try Princess Raccoon, a whack opera/tap-dancing/Snow White/Romeo and Juliet/musical about half-raccoon spirits who aren't allowed to fall in love with humans. (Guess what happens.)
-The Midnight Adrenaline movie Evil Aliens is about just that.
-The Last Communist is a documentary-musical about the exiled Communist leader of Malaysia. That's right, a musical!

Won't sit still for a movie unless it's about politics and current events?

-Road to Guantanamo, by Michael Winterbottom, is about torture, among other things.
-Who Killed the Electric Car? is about a slick little number called the EV-1.

More highlights and tips to come.